July 21, 2014 The Limits of Empathy: “Eyeless in Gaza” From Ernest R. May’s “Lessons of the Past” (1973) to Yuen Foong Khong’s “Analogies at War” (1992) to Jeffrey Record’s “Making War, Thinking History” (2006), historians have argued about the use—and abuse—of historical analogies by decision makers. It is now conventional wisdom that Lyndon Johnson’s advisers were misled into going to war in Vietnam by […] Anti-Zionism Blog
July 20, 2014 Interesting Takes on the Shoot Down While a Russian government news agency—presumably to distract attention from Putin’s bloody fingerprints in Ukraine—joins the pummeling of Israel for its “slaughter” in Gaza, an anti-Semitic blogger, Wayne Madsen, claims that it is Tel Aviv that shot down the Malaysian plane to deflect attention, also from Gaza: “Ukrainian government, Russia, and Donetsk People’s Republic all […] Blog
July 20, 2014 Thinking About the Thinkable in the Mideast Ninety-year old Henry Kissinger is in the hospital for heart surgery. Herman Kahn—author of “Thinking About the Unthinkable” and an influence on Kissinger (along with Count Metternich and Bismarck)—is long dead. The contours of the unthinkable in the Mideast—Israel vs. Iranian nukes—are already clear. The question now is the thinkable in the short and intermediate […] Blog
July 20, 2014 Chicago: Whose Kind of Town? From the “Chicago Tribune”: “Several vehicles in the Pulaski Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side were targeted with anti-Jewish leaflets, police said. “Six vehicles were discovered with leaflets on Saturday on the 6300 block of North Monticello Avenue, said Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Jose Estrada. “The leaflets were found on the windshields of […] Blog
July 18, 2014 More From the Julius Streicher of the Internet In Gaza, the Hamas propaganda machine is still spewing that Israel’s defensive operations in Hamastan are motivated by the need for non-Jewish children’s blood to make matza for Passover. From his comfortable perch in the U.S., Andrew Sullivan offers complementary “blood libel” spin worthy of Julius Streicher: “Both [Putin and Netanyahu] have been riding nationalist […] Blog
July 17, 2014 Support for Israel by the Numbers A new Pew Research Center poll shows 51 percent American support for Israel compared to 14 percent for the Palestinians. The gap hasn’t changed much since 1978. The significant change is in the partisan gap, with 73 percent of Republicans supportive of Israel, compared to 44 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Independents. The […] Blog
July 17, 2014 The Mideast Gospel According to David Horowitz On a talk radio show, David Horowitz, editor of “Front Page” Magazine, claimed: “Hamas is worse than the Nazis. [Adolf] Hitler hid the Final Solution, [his] hideous plan to exterminate the Jews. “Hamas has it in its charter, and every day you hear them shouting it from the rooftops. ‘We want to kill all the […] Blog
July 17, 2014 The University of Oregon’s New “Animal House” I taught at the University of Oregon, Eugene, way back when the campus was the setting for “Animal House” (1978) starring John Belushi. Now, following the swastiska spray painting of a back door a few years ago of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, the same has been done to mails boxes in front of […] Blog
July 17, 2014 LDB President to Testify on Federal Sexual Harassment Policy The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced today that Louis D. Brandeis Center President Kenneth L. Marcus will at the Commission’s Briefing on Federal Enforcement of Title IX Sexual Harassment Law in Elementary, Secondary, and Post-secondary Schools on Friday July 25, 2014, at 9:00 a.m. Blog
July 15, 2014 The Mideast Gospel According to Andrew Sullivan The dissection of Andrew Sullivan I did a few years ago for the “Jerusalem Post” needs an update. Here is the most recent example of the vicious anti-Israel rant that has been characteristic of Andrew Sullivan for about 10 years. Defenders of Israel are guilty of distracting: “from the fact that Hamas itself did not […] Blog