May 28, 2021

If you love Hitler, you can find a home on Twitter

According to CNN, "Facebook will no longer remove claims that Covid-19 was man-made."  Wonderful!  Yet why did Facebook appropriate the right to be an arbiter in scientific disputes to begin with?  That is simi...

September 22, 2020

Amateur Jared Kushner vs. Pro John Kerry

Donald Trump has outsourced his Middle East policy to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.  At best, it would be a waste of time, as Kushner had no experience in foreign policy.  At worst, he will use this opportunity to line his own po...

May 23, 2020

As Israel-haters go, who's WHO?

Who says that WHO (World Health Organization) is merely inefficient, irrelevant and mainly preoccupied with promoting China’s agenda? WHO has other interests as well and it pursues them with a remarkable consistency. For example, W...

April 20, 2020

Propaganda masquerading as fact-checking

Fact-checking was devised to be a trusted way to separate fact from fiction.  In reality, many journalists use the label "fact-checking" as a cover for promoting their own biases.  A case in point is an Associated Press ...

February 8, 2020

What Would Karl Marx Say If He Met Bernie Sanders?

In an imagined meeting between Marxism's founder, Karl Marx and socialist Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, we do not know of course, what they would say, but one thing is certain – Marx would have been dumbfounded to ...

August 11, 2019

Paradoxes of the Middle East: An FAQ

It has become a cliché to say America is torn apart on many issues, including the situation of Israel and the Middle East.  To some degree, this political fault line runs along the generational line: the older people tend to support ...

March 27, 2016

J. Magnes and the Orwellian Ministry of Truth

The University of California at Berkeley's library has a Jewish museum.  Its official name is The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.  Who was the person whose name appears on its plaque? Here is a brief bio-sketch.  He wa...

May 10, 2015

The Return of Academic Anti-Semitism

The rise of anti-Semitism in U.S. colleges has alarmed conservative groups for quite some time, yet it was largely ignored by the liberal media until recently. The turning point was a spate of shocking, high-profile incidents involving student g...

November 13, 2012

Israel and Public Opinion

Breaking news headlines scream that Israel is one of the most negatively viewed countries in the world. These headlines refer to a poll conducted annually by the BBC World Service. The poll was taken in 22 countries and asked the respondents to rate ...

June 8, 2011

The Predictable Middle East Crisis

Can we know what will happen in the Middle East?  William Gibson, an author and prophet of the information age, who, among other things, coined the word cyberspace, says that the future is predictable: "The future is already here -- it's just no...

March 20, 2011

We Are All Adrift on a Ship of Fools

In the recent flurry of news reports from the Middle East, this item slipped by, largely unnoticed.   Four thousand Tunisians arrived illegally by boat in Italy in just four days after the triumph of the pro-democracy movement in their nati...

February 6, 2011

Hollowing Out Science and Engineering Careers

"Education is the best investment in our future."  Twenty years ago I would not have doubted such an obvious truism.  But a recent party conversation made me have second thoughts.  We talked about how various college majors c...

December 21, 2010

My Discovery of America (Progressive America, That Is)

This is a true story, but it could have been written by Franz Kafka.  It is 1976.  I am a young scientist who has just immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union.  One of my colleagues, Professor K., who knows me through my ...

October 10, 2010

Who are the Jews?

Claims that contemporary Jews are imposters, not the descendants of biblical Jews, have been around for years and come in many flavors. First, there are several plain vanilla versions, whose proponents are unencumbered by the pesky burden of sch...

September 5, 2010

Trials of the Diaspora

Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in Englandby Anthony JuliusPublished by Oxford University Press in 2010, 811+LVIII pagesIf history books are indeed written by the victors, this one must be an exception. Its author is continuing a s...

August 31, 2010

Islam, Islamophobia, Christophobia, and Jew hatred

Here is a reality check to keep in mind when someone issues another condemnation of Islamophobia in the Western World.  Surely, we have plenty of room for improvement, but we are pikers at the game of religious discrimination.In many Muslim coun...