Paul Berman: What You Can't Say About Islamism

"What You Can't Say About Islamism," Paul Berman. Wall Street Journal. July 10, 2010.
[link to full article not permanent]

Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism (2003), a book I cannot recommend highly enough, reflects on the critics of his recent book, Flight of the Intellectuals (which I have not read).


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Hollow Men -- Lee Smith's column in Tablet this week

"Hollow Men: Why Israel's enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals," Lee Smith. Tablet Magazine (July 14, 2010).

Smith is on a roll these days, here exploring why it's so fashionable to be anti-Israel among today's intellectual elite.

In reality, of course, Israel isn’t all that heroic. No one and nothing is. Israel’s men and women of honor do not accomplish Homeric deeds in south Lebanon or Gaza to the beat of martial songs, like the resistance; instead they ride the bus home on the weekend to see their parents, go out drinking with friends, and pick up the wrong guy or girl in a smoky bar with awful pop music. “Our warriors,” says one former tank driver, “are Jewish boys who are bossed around by their wives.” And yet during the war with Hezbollah four years ago, the country’s incompetent political and military leadership sent too many of those Jewish boys to their deaths, without sufficient training or a strategy for victory. It seems like almost every day there is news that another of Israel’s chief political leaders is under investigation for corruption charges, which is to say the system is rotten and the system works. To say that Israel is normal is to say that it is, like all democracies, mediocre.

Intellectuals are not interested in the quotidian mediocrity of a functioning democracy. They are interested in ideas. Once an idea is realized in the form of a political organization that must function on a day-to-day basis, it is difficult for men and women of ideas to stomach the result.

 Read the whole thing

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Lee Smith's (sort of) defense of Octavia Nasr at The Weekly Standard

"The Western Press and Hezbollah," Lee Smith. The Weekly Standard. July 13, 2010.

I think he's right that Nasr is, in a way, a scapegoat for a much more profound problem that the Western media is unwilling to address in earnest.

"Who knows what Octavia Nasr really thinks about Fadlallah, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that she fell prey to minority politics, twice over. As a Christian journalist working in a Muslim majority region, she imagined her profession of respect for a theorist of terror would win her bona fides as an “objective” reporter. And as an Arab she’s taking the fall for a conviction held by virtually all of her Western professional peers."

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Giving the lie to latest theory of why Jews are responsible for all our problems

"Why the Death of Israel Would Not Slow Anti-U.S. Terrorism," IPT News (The Investigative Project on Terrorism).  July 12, 2010.

Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2054/why-the-death-of-israel-wouldnt-slow-anti-us

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Knesset conversions bill

Governing conversions--one of the biggest intra-Jewish controversies

It's hard to believe that the fault line here is merely Israel versus the Jewish diaspora.

What else it means, well, I am happy to hear suggestions.

**For previous news about this conversion bill, see my permanent page on "Other stories in Israeli and Jewish politics."

"Sharansky: We can't divide Jewish people," Yediot Aharanot. July 13, 2010.

"American Jews say they feel 'betrayed' by Knesset conversion bill," Natasha Mozgovaya. Haaretz. July 13, 2010

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IDF's report on flotilla: commandos performed well despite poor intelligence

The IDF internal investigation panel, led by retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, presented its conclusions today.

See:

"Stark variance in coverage of IDF flotilla probe," Justjournalism.com. July 13, 2010.

"IDF to blame navy in scathing report on Gaza flotilla raid," Tomer Zarchin, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel. Haaretz. July 12, 2010.


"Eiland Report Finds, 'Mistakes, But No Failures,'" Hanan Greenberg. Yediot Aharanot. July 12, 2010.

"Israeli Military Finds Flotilla Killings Justified," Ethan Bronner. New York Times. July 12, 2010.

"Israel Report Cites Flawed Planning," Charles Levinson. Wall Street Journal. July 12, 2010.

"Gaza Flotilla: Tsahal identified 'errors'-- The IDF military investigation exonerates the commandos but criticizes their hierarchy," Adrien Jaulmes. Le Figaro. July 12, 2010.


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Israel: more than just foreign policy

"Knesset committee approves conversion bill," Kobi Nahshoni. Yediot Aharanot (July 12, 2010).

See my permanent page on this and OTHER big stories in Israeli and Jewish politics.