Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about how the current Gaza war has overwhelming support in Israel. I have no doubt that is true. But, except for serving as a vehicle to get the “Israeli viewpoint” across, this article is not newsworthy. Tweet
Lebanon
Feb
11
AronT on February 11th, 2008
Captain Renault’s famous statement sums up in one pithy saying all the hundreds of pages of verbiage of the Winograd report: the Israeli political leadership and the IDF command gambled with the lives of Israeli soldiers and citizens — and lost. Somehow both the political elite and the “man in the street” seem to be [...]
Continue reading about Feature: I’m shocked, shocked to find gambling is going on here!
Question Four: The end justifies the means, so why are you complaining about a few civilians killed if in the long run many more lives will be saved? Question Five: The number would be unnoticed if the victims had died at the hands of an Arab government. Israel is far more moral than its enemies so why does the whole [...]
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Question: Terrorists only understand force and nothing will stop them except their destruction. How can we negotiate with terrorists? Answer: The underlying thinking behind this world-view (now embodied in the US by the neo-cons) is so simplistic, one wonders how otherwise intelligent people can spout such nonsense. Tweet
Continue reading about Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions – Number Three
Nicholas Kristof column today addresses a more sophisticated variant of the first question I raised. Obviously his mild criticism of Israel’s approach made all the “pro-Israel” types flood his mailbox. Here’s how he phrases the question he received from his readers: “What else can a country do when it is subjected to rocket attacks and [...]
Continue reading about Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions – Number Two
When I was young, one of my favorite magazines was William Gaines’ Mad Magazine. In the tradition of great Jewish subversives, Gaines poked fun at all the pieties of middle class American society, provoking young minds to think differently than their elders. One of my favorite sections of the magazine was called “Snappy Answers to [...]
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Laurie King-Irani writes about Lebanon. “Despite conspiracy theories and grim assessments to the contrary, something new, amazing, and precious is indeed being born in Lebanon: an indigenous, responsive, truly plural form of democracy that is not Made in the USA, but forged out of a long and difficult Arab experience. Apparently, many thought this would [...]
Continue reading about Single minds, double standards, and plural societies
Nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece titled Hypocrisy and Empire Part I. I raised some questions from my good friend Sister B. and promised to answer them in part II. For many reasons I never got around to writing that second article. However, since hypocrisy has been my theme for the last few [...]