Goliath the Israel Slayer: Why Max Blumenthal’s New Book is a Painful Read
Blumenthal’s Goliath is not funny, nor is it very entertaining. It is, for many reasons, often painful to read.
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Updated: Dr. Oz Thinks Anti-Muslim’s Sugar-Daddy Sheldon Adelson is “Not So Bad”
The doctor dances with settlers.
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Discovering “Little Syria”—New York’s Long-Lost Arab Neighborhood
The seven of us stood in the parking lot of the office building across the street, and Joe opened the zippered cover of his three-ring binder full of painstakingly collected photographs of the old neighborhood gathered for the exhibition. As he began reading aloud an oral history from Marian Sahadi Ciacci—“A Syrian who married an Italian!”—it felt like a religious occasion, a conjuring out of almost nothing of an entire world gone by.
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Can Interfaith Dialogue Cure Religious Violence?
I think we should be cautious about attempts to frame the Boston bombings, or for that matter any profound act of violence, mainly as a failure of (or an injunction for) “interfaith cooperation.”
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Multifaith Weight Loss: The Problem of Fat, the Promise of Peace
When things go well, feelings of “joy” and being “moved” abound, much like the Slim Peace participants claim of their experience. It is unclear whether such events actually change how these Jews and Muslims perceive each other, or if they only change how Jews and Muslims view themselves.
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What Makes a Human Bomb Tick?
Western experts, looking for a comprehensible narrative, mistake consistency for fact. The misconceptions are further compounded by how difficult it is to identify a potential suicide—even mental health professionals can get it wrong—and how easy it is to conflate suicide terrorists with regular terrorists, the vast majority of whom don’t strap on bombs, preferring to stay alive and fight.
Read MoreThere’s Something Rotten in Ireland
Creepy postings on the Israeli embassy’s FB wall are getting a lot of press.
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Because God Tells Me So; Do Jews Have a “Historic Right” to Israel?
As Jewish institutional support of pro-Israel positions is showing signs of breaking down, it’s an opportunity to take a critical look at a widely-made claim that Jews have a “historical right” to the land of Israel.
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From Confusion to Kardashian: Misreading the Middle East
What happens in the Middle East isn’t always about us.
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Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns
I know it sounds strange but it’s a great time to be an Jewish American activist working for Middle East peace. After all these years in the closet there’s hope that the Beinartians and the Lernerites have begun a critical dialogue for Jewish Americans.
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