Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
Sitting in my hand is Alan Dershowitz’s official critique of the Goldstone Report. I am going to devote time in the near future to rebutting some of the ridiculous claims he makes. To foreshadow my criticisms, Dershowitz’s primary tactic is to exaggerate willfully the claims made by the Goldstone report so he can shoot them [...]
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From a few thousand miles away, or even from the relative safety of a television image in Tel Aviv living room, it can seem as though the spiral of violence in the Middle East spins ruthlessly with no end and no beginning. In this confusing situation, people then insert their own ideological perspectives: each suicide [...]
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Dear Haitians, forgive me for using your current and historical suffering to make a political point about a distant land. Nothing I say is intended to diminish your real suffering and remarkable steadfastness in the face of often externally created adversity. Given your history, there is a strong comparison to be made with the currently [...]
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When Israel was destroying Gaza in December 2008, Obama was preparing to take office as president. Progressives around the world turned to him to use his surging diplomatic power to pressure Israel to end the massacre. He stayed silent, for days and weeks, the negative space created by his newfound lack of words filled with [...]
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One year ago, Israel destroyed Gaza. Over 1000 noncombatant human beings, who used to laugh and think and eat and shit and much else besides, were simply eliminated as part of Israeli military action. Was it intentional? I don’t think so, although the more I read about the Dahiya Doctrine the more uncertain I get [...]
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We have all heard it a million times: Israel does not target civilians; it only attacks military targets. I can barely count the number of times I have heard this argument from my family and friends. When all evidence of the Israeli destruction of Beirut or Gaza or wherever comes to light, this is the [...]
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Last week I highlighted a recent essay in the New Yorker on Gaza. I had a number of problems with the details of the article, but despite those concerns I considered it one of the deeper analyses I had seen in a mainstream American media outlet. What attracted me to the article? First, the lead [...]
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(Photo credit: Christian Als / New Yorker) Leave it to the New Yorker to provide such a haunting portrait of Gaza. One aspect of the article that I think is excellent is that because its filled with so much ugly detail about Israeli and Hamas’ actions, it seems to jar deeply and offend every ideologue [...]
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“Iwant to know how and why it was decided to embark on Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip and to expand it into a ground offensive,” Aluf Benn, diplomatic editor of Haaretz, thunders today: I want to know if the decisions were affected by the Israeli election campaign then underway and the change in [...]
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Is it really that difficult for Israelis to accept responsibility for their actions, for even some of their actions? Today, President Shimon Peres went to a Jewish high school in the Western Galilee and said this: Commenting on the peace negotiations [sic] between Israel and the Palestinians, Peres said that “the problem is not on [...]
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