Gershom Gorenberg
Is this all coincidence? Or is part of what’s been happening in the Middle East for the past two weeks a result of the U.S. president declaring that the conflict of civilizations is over? My new article in The American Prospect examines the evidence.
Barack Obama spoke in Cairo two weeks ago. The Middle East [...]

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Haim Watzman
Sometimes a mediocre film puts everything in perspective. When the lights went down in the Cinematheque last night I was in the middle of discussion with my companion (full disclosure: I’m married to her) how to parse Bibi’s two-state speech. One position (not mine) was that the prime minister had offered an honest and [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg
Bloggingheads invited me to talk with neocon David (“Axis of Evil”) Frum about the election fallout here, the new administration there, and what it would take to reach peace.

You can watch here on SoJo, or switch to blogggingheads.tv if you want to zoom in on a particular topic.

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When Pete Seeger rewrote chapter 3 of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) as a song, he changed just a few words at the end, making it, “A time for peace – I swear it’s not too late.”
I don’t think it’s too late for Israelis and Palestinians to make peace. But waiting will make it more difficult. On the [...]

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Haim Watzman
Daneila London-Dekel, Ha’aretz’s down-to-earth editorial cartoonist, injects a little realism into today’s paper, which consists almost entirely of a series of articles expressing amazement, wonder, and admiration at Barack Obama’s election.
I’m also in a state of amazement, wonder, and admiration but I appreciate London-Dekel’s reminder that we’ve still got to get the kids dressed, [...]

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Oops. It didn’t work. Labeling him a Muslim, labeling him a crazy black man, saying he’ll be bad for Israel. Apparently, those scare tactics stirred up exactly that minority of American Jews who don’t vote Democratic anyway. Well, we all have relatives we don’t understand. The rest know how to translate “In every generation, a [...]

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For nearly all of the 31 years that I’ve lived in Jerusalem, I’ve felt that this is where history happens, that my old friends in America are merely in the bleachers. For the past few months, and especially last night, the roles were reversed. Over there, back in the old country, they were making the [...]

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Haim Watzman
There wasn’t much to read in this morning’s Ha’aretz. Nearly every one of the paper’s senior writers has written a piece about how amazing it is that the United States is on the verge of electing a black president.
It is amazing, of course, especially for anyone my age and above, those who can [...]

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The price of being a citizen of two countries, it seems, is that elections never stop. So even before the American election winds up in one final festival of long lines, hanging chads, and voter intimidation, Israel is about to begin a new national campaign. Unlike the U.S. vote, the Israeli one will provide over [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg
The premise of the Great Schlep was that young Jews of Obama should visit their grandparents in Florida to make sure they vote in a manner befitting members of the tribe. Behind that premise were several more suppositions: that Florida is in play, that rightwing hatemail labeling Obama as a Muslim and anti-Israel [...]

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Haim Watzman
It’s Sukkot and I’m supposed to be having a good time instead of blogging. But I just mailed in my U.S. ballot (my first since 1980, see Should Obama Get My Vote?) and my inbox and Facebook page are filling up with links to endless articles and posts about whether Jews should vote for [...]

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The author of The Kite Runner has the courage and confidence to raise a necessary issue: The anti-Muslim incitement that has become part of the Republican campaign against Obama:
Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama.
…Never mind that such jeers are deeply [...]

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