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Updated 11/07/09 @ 10:12PM EDT
- President Obama canceled a scheduled appearance before the Jewish federations' General Assembly.
- The Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution urging equal services for Israeli Arabs.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency has evidence that Iran may have tested an advanced nuclear warhead design, according to a British newspaper.
- The United States vetoed an Israeli plan to attack a ship bearing weapons allegedly from Iran to Hezbollah, according to a report in an Arabic-language newspaper.
- The Obama administration expects to keep working with Mahmoud Abbas despite his planned resignation as Palestinian Authority president.
- Obama cancels GA appearance
- Reform endorse qual treatment for Israeli Arabs
- Iran may have tested secret nuclear warhead design
- Report: U.S. stopped Israeli attack on weapons ship
- U.S. sees Abbas in continuing role
- Groups blast UNGA Goldstone vote
- Israel delivers swine flu vaccines to Palestinian Authority
- Abbas announces he won’t run for re-election
- Obama’s Nobel, Israel’s problem?
- Jews of color come together to explore identity
- FBI: Alleged spy wannabe asked for Israeli citizenship
- Family likely murdered by professional killer
- New signs that Ethiopian aliyah will resume
- U.S. appetite for Israeli food grows
- Female Orthodox scholars helping women talk about sex
- Attacks on J Street as parley approaches
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Posted in: Clarifying the debate about Roger Cohen
03/30/09 05:43 PM
Not having visited Iran, I have no way to evaluate the accuracy of Cohen's article -- and neither has Heilman. It is surpassingly bad journalism -- actually, it's not journalism at all -- to assert what you cannot support. What I will assert, supported by personal observation, is that there is, in America, a very bright line beyond which the organized Jewish community regards everyone as anti-Semitic. That line keeps moving further and further to the right. Which is one reason why so many American Jews want nothing to do with Jews, Judaism or Israel, why they marry non-Jews, why the vigorous motions of American Jewry -- so vital to Israel's solvency -- may be no more than post-mortem effects. I shall await with sword unbated the accusations that I am anti-Semitic.
Posted in: Gaza, the fridge in Gilo and moral responsibility
01/02/09 02:54 PM
So what would a "proportionate" response look like -- or have looked like, the moment to apply it having passed? Probably much like the targeted strikes that Israel has carried out from time to time over the last several years, to very little discernible effect. With an election looming, the urge was overwhelming and irresistible to do something decisive, or that at least gave evidence a decision had been made. I think it's impossible to imagine a "proportionate" response that would amount to more than a gesture -- though, of course, the attacks from Gaza are themselves gestures and hardly unendurable (so far). But where power is distributed disproprotionately, so that fanatical minorities, for private benefit, can undermine public will and hold whole polities hostage, what hope is there for any sort of proportionality? That's not a rhetorical question.
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