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An Iraq War veteran (of mixed Ashkenazi and Iraqi Jewish ancestry) and two-time failed Republican candidate for public office, Elan Carr, was appointed in Feb. 2019 as State Dept. “Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combatting anti-Semitism.”  Carr’s been in the news for advocating an aggressive strategy of “philo-Semitism,” going on the offensive against antisemitism by projecting […]

There are at least 30 to 40 million Kurds living in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.  They are the largest ethnic group whose aspirations for self-determination were ignored by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that officially ended World War I.  They’ve gone through more than their fair share of conflict and persecution since, including the […]

With a virtual tie between Likud and Blue-White, an interesting question is whether Netanyahu must go.  Given his olympic abilities as a survivor, one hesitates to completely rule him out, but it seems unlikely that he can still emerge as prime minister.  Among other open questions: Would he remain Likud leader without being prime minister?  And […]

The following revisits debates from recent decades that still weigh upon American Jews and supporters of Israel, but leaves aside blatant antisemitic conspiracy theories.  How do we fairly assess the impact of the “Israel Lobby” and the neoconservatives on the al Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and on the US response — including its misadventure in Iraq?  […]

This is the second of two posts.  Click here for the first.   Late in the afternoon, I received a second shock which pulled me in the other direction, to feel protective of Israel.  I often participate in a “meetup” to discuss history, current events and political philosophies.  A session that I attended that day discussed […]

In the wake of the Bahrain conference on the economic phase of the Trump administration’s purported peace plan, the PBS Newshour aired Judy Woodruff’s interview with Pres. Trump’s special envoy, Jason Greenblatt.  Although more diplomatic in tone than the current US ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, Greenblatt is cut from the same pro-settlements cloth as […]

Madonna defied BDS by performing at this year’s Eurovision contest held in Tel Aviv (her fourth visit to Israel). She subtly signaled support for a two-state solution by having one dancer wearing a Palestinian flag on her back while arm-in-arm with another dancer with an Israeli flag on his back. Somewhat enigmatically, a couple of […]