Tag Archive for ‘Israel’

Israel in a Post-American Era

Given the coordination of the Palestinian actions, we may be on the verge either of a Facebook revolution or a “third intifada,” an uprising by Palestinians in Israel, the occupied territories, and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of descendants of the original exiles still live.

Engaging Syria, Undermining Iran

In his comment on my latest on the Israeli-Palestinian saga, WGN host Milt Rosenberg notes that we are now dealing with Iran as much as with the PLO government: behind Hamas and Hizbollah, and alongside Syria and Lebanon, lurks the government in Teheran. “That elephant in the room must be named, confronted and undermined,” he says.

An Exercise in Futility

Never in the field of Arab-Israeli conflict was so little expected by so many from so few. That is the accurate and near-universal verdict on the opening of the latest series in the longest-running soap opera in the world.

GOP Blank Check for War?

It is startling to learn 47 House Republicans just signed on to H.R. 1553 declaring unequivocal “support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran . . . including the use of military force.”

Hitchens and Israel

The print issue of National Review has a very revealing review of Christopher Hitchens’ autobiography by Ronald Radosh.  It comes as no surprise that Radosh praises the book and its author as a “voice to treasure”; Hitchens has been enjoying neocon praise since he emerged as a very vocal supporter of the neocon project of using American blood and treasure to impose democracy on the Mideast.  What is surprising, given NR’s history, is where Radosh chooses to criticize Hitchens.  Hitchens is not criticized for his jihad against religion, which is arguably at the heart of Hitchens’ worldview.  Instead, Radosh charges that Hitchens is insufficiently supportive of Israel, which Radosh sees as part of Hitchens’ being “strangely unable to empathize with ‘the tribe,’” a peculiar term Radosh employs because Hitchens has Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side.  The same priorities are reflected at NRO, where piece after piece extolls Israel and no dissent on American policy toward Israel is allowed.

If anyone had predicted 50 years ago that the magazine founded by the author of God and Man at Yale would someday view hostility to Christianity as no big deal and would instead have as its litmus test support for Israel, he would have been laughed at.  Nonetheless, he would have been right.

An Anniversary Ignored

Tuesday was the 43rd anniversary of an event that many want to see vanish down the Memory Hole. On June 8, 1967, Israeli airmen and sailors killed 33 American sailors and one civilian during their attack on the USS Liberty, and wounded another 171 American sailors.

Lift the Siege of Gaza

That bloody debacle in the Eastern Mediterranean last Sunday was an inevitable result of Israel doing what it always seems to do: going beyond what is essential to her security, to impose collective punishment upon any and all it regards as hostile to Israel.

Bibi’s Hollow Victory

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”

With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not occupied land.

Netanyahu for President

Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the United States, rallying his troops and hectoring the administration. I stand in such awe of this man that I propose we suspend our now pointless requirement of being American born and run Mr. Netanyahu as the candidate of both parties. Why not? It’s not as if the US government, under either Democrats or Republicans, were not already AIPAC Inc.

The Poodle Gets Kicked

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode.

First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.”