December 21, 2021

Is the New York Times moderating its stance on Israel?

I was pleasantly surprised by the tone of a New York Times' recent report from Gaza by Patrick Kingsley, "Hamas, Claiming Victory Over Israel, Is Stuck in Same Old Cycle" — a tone I don't think I have ...

December 7, 2021

Teen Vogue advises its readers: To stay in the right, don't read

Toward the end of his life, Mark Twain grew increasingly pessimistic about human nature, obsessing about "the damned human race" and expressing in his anonymously published book What is Man?, a view that a man is just a machine, devoid of f...

September 23, 2021

Voting for Democrats takes a deadly turn

Finally, "progressive" chickens have come home to roost.  Whatever the rhetoric I read in the past, I did not expect to read the headline "Democratic party leadership in the US House of representatives blocked $1 billion...

September 20, 2021

Why the New York Times can't get its Israel story right

It is human to err, and journalists, being but human, err routinely. Some errors are just minor slips that do not alter the overall picture, but others offer a wide window into a reporter’s total lack of understanding that will fundamentally co...

August 27, 2021

Whom is Israel to trust?

The headline of the New York Times' analysis of the relationship between Israel's Mossad and the CIA has a plaintive tone of injured innocence: "Israel's Spy Agency Snubbed the U.S. Can Trust Be Restored?"  ...

August 7, 2021

Hezb'allah and the Druze

The recent exchange of fire over the Israeli-Lebanese border — Palestinian groups in Lebanon firing three rockets, Israel responding with the tank fire and aircraft strikes, and Hezb'allah firing a salvo of about twenty of it...

July 29, 2021

Ben & Jerry: Malicious, maybe; clueless, definitely

The fascinating thing about Ben & Jerry's founders' "guest essay" in the New York Times defending their board's decision to stop sales in what they call "occupied Palestinian territories" is how utte...

July 22, 2021

Anti-settler settlers

Hypocrisy is a fascinating phenomenon.  When Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush tweeted that "This land is stolen land and Black people still aren't free," I expected this woman of honesty, honor, and integrity to immediately ...

July 12, 2021

On Palestinians, Biden is still clueless

One thought kept going through my mind as I read the report titled "US to Israel: No Palestinian punitive home razing, we won't let this drop": "Americans can't be that stupid!"  The article outlined the dispute ...

June 29, 2021

The NYT fails to follow its own advice

The New York Times' notoriously anti-Israel columnist Nicholas Kristof recently enlightened us with a highly hopeful piece titled "How Can You Hate Me When You Don't Even Know Me?" that shows how calm, emphatic r...

June 22, 2021

John Bolton should not play Obama/Biden game on the Iran 'deal'

It would never have occurred to me to call John Bolton "naïve" on anything, let alone the Iran nuclear "deal," but his recent Newsmax interview left me puzzled.  This was not because Ambassador Bolton chan...

June 17, 2021

NY university faculty union exercises weapons-grade sophistry in anti-Israel 'resolution'

Sometimes, a question can be constructed so as to contain a pre-designed answer rather than to inquire.  The classic example of such a "loaded question" comes from classical Greece: "Have you stopped beating your father?...

June 12, 2021

Selling the 'reasonableness' of the Iran deal

The legal profession developed an interesting way of thinking about thinking.  To lawyers, thinking comes in two varieties: one that must satisfy a "strict scrutiny" standard, the other, that of mere "reasonableness."...

June 8, 2021

Is Blinken blinking on Iran?

I hope I am not reading too much into Secretary Blinken's pessimistic report on the status of the Vienna negotiations on re-joining Obama's Iran nuclear deal.  But it does not sound good — for two reasons, one obviou...

June 7, 2021

Who -- or What -- Occupies Gaza?

The article of faith that unites all who condemn Israel's response to Hamas rockets in the latest escalation with Gaza, from the most rabid Islamists to the hyper sophisticated (or so they think) pundits from the New York Times and dwel...

June 4, 2021

The NYT vs. Israel

When I saw the title of an opinion piece by the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof, "Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair?"  I did not hold my breath in expectation that his answer would be, "they were not, and...

May 25, 2021

What is more sad than the occupation? The need for it.

Not unnaturally, the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, and Arab-Jewish violence inside Israel, attracted much media attention. Day after day, pages of the New York Times were filled with reports and opinions from the region -- often of very q...

May 21, 2021

Bernie Sanders's bloody folly

Bernie Sanders cited "a moment when US-made bombs are devastating Gaza, and killing women and children" as a reason for his attempt to block a $735-million weapons sale to Israel.  Suppose Bernie really care...

May 20, 2021

BLM and settler colonialism

A bunch of people who live in a land that is not their own are fed up with their helplessness and, determined to guide their own destiny, return to their ancestral land to build a country of their own. Some, like Black Lives Matter, call this...

May 1, 2021

Now hiring college grads is racist, too

I treated the NPR story on some companies' decision to loosen hiring requirements for certain jobs by not requiring a college degree as background noise, until at the very end I was startled by its dismissive description of a college diploma as j...

April 29, 2021

Human Rights Watch's double-speak, and its discontents

One has to be careful around tar: while tarring the other, one may besmear one's own self. This, to judge by the New York Times article on the 213-page Human Rights Watch report accusing Israel of apartheid, is exactly what...

April 27, 2021

The New York Times knows more than one way to lie

As I read the New York Times' recent report about clashes in Jerusalem, subtitled, in the best man-bites-dog tradition "The violence broke out as an extremist Jewish supremacy group marched in the city, chanting, “Death to Arabs,...

April 25, 2021

New York Times gets 'more honest' about Iran deal

"Iranians and Americans need to be more honest about their past actions," the New York Times' Editorial Board intones in its opinion titled "Why the Past Haunts Talks With Iran."  This intriguing combination of ...

April 12, 2021

The New York Times and Natanz: A study in contrasts

The radio was on as I was reading the New York Times Editorial Board's opinion titled "'Maximum Pressure' on Iran Has Failed."  A return to the nuclear deal is the first step out of the "morass"...

April 9, 2021

Meet the new Iran deal, worse than the old deal

Though there is much political theater in the negotiations on the U.S. getting back to Obama's "deal" with Iran, it is a foregone conclusion that America will fall back in line.  Yes, we are told that the outcome is uncertain....

March 29, 2021

NYT: the Iranian bomb leads to women's rights

On Sunday, an opinion piece by two Iranian ladies appeared in the New York Times pressuring  the Biden administration to return to Obama's Iran "deal" that gave legitimacy to Iran's nuclear program in exchange for a f...

March 17, 2021

Why should we stop with gender fluidity?

Worried that the surprise I felt that "detransitioning, the process of reverting to the sex assigned at birth" and its accompanying moral dilemmas had been deemed worthy of an NPR segment (as if public funds could not be better sp...

March 14, 2021

New York Times' sob story on underfunded Palestinian school misses the big problem

Golda Meir famously observed that Arab-Israeli peace will arrive only when the Palestinians start loving their children more than they hate the Israelis. That time has not yet arrived — which is an obvious, though not the intended, message o...

March 11, 2021

The two forgotten wrongs in the George Floyd case

There was something jarring in the summary of the story of George Floyd that the New York Times published to refresh our memories on the eve of what promises to be a gripping event — the televised trial of Officer Derek Chauvin w...

March 10, 2021

Why the NY Times ignored the attack on Ras Tanura

When I read over the weekend that Iran-backed Houthis attempted to mount a 12-drone attack on Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia (the world's biggest oil port), I wanted to check with the New York Times — but there was n...

March 7, 2021

Palestinians trash a PA-sanctioned concert. Guess who's at fault!

I know you are eager to know the answer, so I won't hold you in suspense.  The fault is Israel's.  Can it be any other way if New York Times reports the story? When you are at the New York Times, you know that Isra...

February 28, 2021

American journalists and editors were duped in the Jamal Khashoggi case

I know that it is bad to blame the victim.  I also know that one should not speak ill of the dead.  And yet, the New York Times' two indignant editorials and two news articles in just one day (here is a sample) ...

February 25, 2021

To the New York Times, prioritizing friends over enemies is amoral

The New York Times is an amazing paper.  Take the report titled "Israel Gives Vaccine to Far-Off Allies, as Palestinians Wait."  The gist of it is this: Israel has a small surplus of COVID vaccine doses and, as...

February 17, 2021

Biden's secretary of state omits one crucial detail in selling disastrous Iran deal

The word "temporarily" is out of favor nowadays.  I noted it skipped in the paragraph on Obama's 2015 Iran nuclear deal in an article on Biden's newly appointed point person on Iran, Robert Malley: "the White House...

February 7, 2021

Suddenly, Twitter is concerned about free speech

If you think the title is a joke, it isn't.  Indeed, just the other day, a "Twitter spokesperson" expressed alarm about actions that "undermine the public conversation and the rights of people to make their voices he...

January 26, 2021

A modest proposal: Cancel all laws

Leftists are endlessly concerned about the fact that laws have different effects on different groups of people.  It does not seem to have occurred to them that the logical alternatives are much worse. On seeing the headline of New York T...

January 24, 2021

Stop credulously calling China a 'people's republic'

A word is more than just a neutral label attached to an object; it also carries a time-hardened public attitude.  The easiest way to change the attitude is to change the label; hence, I heard on NPR a mention of "sex workers."...

January 20, 2021

The magical mutating Iran coverage at the New York Times.

One does not need to study biology to understand the concept of mutation. Reading the New York Times report on Iran is enough. Within two months, America’s self-styled paper of record completely reversed its original Iran narrative. Consider...

January 15, 2021

The author of Dare to Speak wants Trump impeached for daring to speak

The classical definition of hypocrisy — murdering one's parents and pleading for clemency on the grounds of being an orphan — got a very close real-life competitor. I'm talking of Suzanne Nossel, "the chief execu...

January 13, 2021

New York Times blames January 6 on lies. But whose lies are at fault?

The New York Times' news analysis piece titled "The Art of the Lie? The Bigger the Better" puts the blame for January 6 riots, as can be guessed from the title, squarely on lies. While I don't disagree with this diagnos...

January 6, 2021

Can Trump's presidency shake Americans' undue respect for the judicial process?

Trump's unsuccessful attempt to have the courts look into the election irregularities had a welcome effect of making us look into how judging gets done. One would think the judicial decision-making process is a natural part of journalistic rep...

August 16, 2020

Iran and Hezb’allahs theodicy problem in Beirut

When I heard that Beirut's blast was a result of negligence, the first thought that crossed my mind was, "How will Iran and Hezb’allah account for Allah allowing such a disaster to happen to devotees of jihad?" After all, both...

December 13, 2019

Is the personal 'I' a royal 'we'?

As an ex-Soviet for whom English is a second language, I occasionally run into linguistic constructs that I find puzzling, and I have to turn to native English-speakers for explanation.  The debate over articles of impeachment of President ...

November 21, 2019

Who would benefit from a Biden investigation?

My radio was on as I ate my lunch, and as I heard a bit of the public deposition of Ambassador Gordon Sondland, I pricked my ears as at the following exchange.  (I do not pretend to quote, but just to relay the sense of what was said.) C...

October 7, 2019

Another triumph of political correctness

The French are in the grips of bitter soul-searching: an employee at Paris police headquarters knifed four police officers to death.  How could it happen that the signs that something was wrong with the man have been missed? ...

September 26, 2019

A simple solution for the logjam in Israel

The Israeli political system has gotten a real stress test in the last half a year.  Designed to provide governance by consensus, the law demands that the prime minister–to-be must have the confidence of the majority of parliamentaria...

August 22, 2019

NY Times' take on Trump's Jewish 'disloyalty' remark is disingenuous

Predictably, President Trump's remark "I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty" caused a firestorm of righteous indignation from every direction. ...

August 20, 2019

Rashida rolls on

The Rashida Tlaib story has been by now retold ad nauseam: the Israel-hating congresswoman wanted to come to Israel to grandstand and advocate for boycott of the country; the Israeli government (with a little push from President Trump) showed he...

June 24, 2019

Palestinians defy Trump

From the terrible squealing by the Palestinian leadership that greeted the unveiling of the economic component of Trump's blueprint for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one would be excused for thinking that Trump was plannin...

May 5, 2019

The way 'land for peace' could work in the Middle East

As I was reading the news of the latest flare-up between Gaza and Israel, in which two Israeli soldiers were hit by sniper fire and an 80-year-old woman was badly wounded by shrapnel from one of two hundred rockets fired by Hamas and Islamic Jih...

March 26, 2019

The allegiances of Ilhan Omar

There has been of late a lot of wringing of hands about freshman Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar's accusations that American Jews have dual loyalty.  Her tweets were seen as odiously anti-Semitic even by such knee-jer...

October 27, 2018

The worm turns on the BDS crowd

I never met intellectual backers of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement – so I went to listen to complaints of suppression of their "right to boycott" at a panel discussion held the other day at NYU. Their ta...

September 24, 2018

Russian animation of IL-20 incident fails to enlighten

I am no military analyst by any stretch of the imagination, but when matters are explained to me in great detail, even I can understand. The Russian Defense Ministry just put together such an explanation for non-professionals in the form...

January 26, 2018

John Kerry's fear: His Nobel going to Trump

What could have motivated John Kerry to try undermining U.S. Mideast diplomacy by encouraging Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to reject the Trump administration's efforts at peacemaking and telling Abbas to "stay strong in his ...

December 7, 2017

Trump to Abbas: Negotiate

Different observers see different motives for President Trump's U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.  European leaders such as the French president and the pope see in Mr. Trump a naïf desperately out of touch with ...

July 27, 2017

The Palestinian application of chutzpah on the Temple Mount

The classic example of chutzpah is to kill one's parents and then demand clemency in the court on the grounds of being an orphan. People laugh hearing this example despite its gruesomeness, for no one in his right mind can take it seriously....

May 7, 2017

The Palestinians could use some Trump pressure

Obama was a sensible, understanding guy.  He knew the limits of American power and was careful not to overstep them. Iran installs uranium-enrichment centrifuges, engages in nuclear warhead design, develops long-range missiles?  Mr. Obam...

September 9, 2016

Hillary and Trump on nuclear deterrence: Not so different?

It was a huge crowd that attended a recent discussion with a very knowledgeable and exceedingly witty Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia group, moderated by a well known New York radio personality, Brian Lehrer of WNYC, himself a delightful master of reparte...

August 8, 2016

Obama chooses containment

There is no shortage of articles like this recent one expressing amazement at the leaked secret rider to the Iran nuclear deal that lets Iran operate advanced centrifuges in just ten years instead of the officially announced fifteen. ...

June 17, 2016

Desperate to cover up Iran lie, Kerry shills for business with the mullahs

During the debate about the Iran deal a year ago, one of Obama's/Kerry's arguments ran essentially as follows.  Sanctions were no longer sustainable.  European companies were so eager to do business with Iran that their governments ...

December 4, 2015

On Israel, no daylight between Trump and Obama

A few months ago, overhearing some ladies in the audience of a pro-Israel lecture trash Donald Trump, and clearly sensing that they were Obama fans, I turned to them and said, "At least he will be a huge improvement over the current inhabitant o...

November 21, 2015

The Greatest Generation, and today's

Sometimes, the New York Times surprises one with its choice of the matter it reports.  One would think that after Mr. Obama signed the identical twin of the Munich deal that all but grants Iran the ability to make an atom bomb in 15 years, and w...

August 13, 2015

Vote for nuclear Iran, then march in Israel Day parade?

Every year, New York hosts a "Celebrate Israel" parade.  On that day, tens of thousands of enthusiastic marchers are greeted by tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters of Israel along much of the length of 5th Avenue.  ...

August 10, 2015

The Obama Doctrine: "Danger? Paper it over!"

In a recent American University speech directed at the opponents of his deal with Iran, President Obama made a remarkable statement: his opponents "were the same people who created the 'drumbeat of war' and played on public fears to push...

August 9, 2015

Bizarre: Obama looks into mirror, does not see Chamberlain

You just can't make this up.  The New York Times is not a funny paper, and its article on the tension between Obama and AIPAC over the Iran deal was by no means a stand-up comic's script.  Yet I could not help laughing at readi...

August 8, 2015

Senator Gillibrand's approval of Iran deal is based on ignorance, and must be reversed

The news came that New York’s Senate delegation is split on the Iran deal: Senator Schumer opposes it, and Senator Gillibrand plans to vote for it.  I called Senator Gillibrand's office to find out her reasoning and was directed to ...

August 5, 2015

Supporters of the Iran deal speak out (on NPR)

NPR had a couple of fascinating interviews lately with the supporters of the Iran deal. First, there was an interview with a rare bird indeed, "an Israeli who thinks the nuclear deal with Iran is good ... Efraim Halevy. Years ago he ran the M...

June 3, 2015

What kind of Jew is President Obama?

Mr. Obama is a frustrated man: "Obama's close advisor David Axelrod ... recalled Obama venting in a moment of contemplation, telling him, 'You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office. For peopl...

April 5, 2015

NPR: The Deal Struck with Iran Was Not the Deal Announced by President

NPR aired a fascinating segment Saturday morning.  "Iranian and American officials are busy selling the deal back home, but it does seem as if they're talking about two different agreements."  "The American description of...

March 23, 2015

Obama is enraged - by Netanyahu quoting Kerry

According to the April 18, 2013 U.K. Telegraph: "Mr Kerry, the US secretary of state, told the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that the 'window' for a two state solution was 'shutting'...