Next week the Jewish high holidays begin. And countless synagogues will have Zionist statements in their services, even if it’s just the Israeli flag on the altar. (While a very conscious minority of synagogues will offer open services that do not include paeans to Israel.) One stark measure of devotion to Israel is the promotion... Read More

John Gunther Dean, now 92, and a former American ambassador to five countries, has long maintained that Israel was behind his attempted assassination on August 28, 1980, in a suburb of Beirut, which was attributed to a rightwing Lebanese group. Dean and his wife and daughter and son-in-law were in a motorcade and narrowly escaped... Read More

It finally happened. In the last day or so, major mainstream voices condemned Israel’s shootings of unarmed Palestinian protesters on March 30, in which 17 were killed. Chris Hayes did it on MSNBC last night. “A frankly unconscionable use of force.” Ayman Mohyeldin of MSNBC called out the racism in the media’s indifference to the... Read More

The simple truth about John Bolton’s appointment to national security adviser is that the Republicans need Sheldon Adelson’s money in order to be competitive in the coming midterms, and John Bolton is a tool of Sheldon Adelson. The appointment of course is a complete reversal of Donald Trump’s declaration during the campaign that the Iraq... Read More

That orgy of elite devotion to Israel that is the AIPAC policy conference has featured one prominent Democrat after another seeking to outflank the Trump administration in their expressions of love for Israel. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer took the prize by slinging mud at Palestinians and Arabs as the reason there is no end... Read More

Everyone should read Henry Siegman’s long piece in the National Interest on the “Implications of President Trump’s Jerusalem Ploy.” Siegman is a great leader because he has bucked the American and Jewish establishment, of which he is a member, to declare that the two-state solution is dead and buried. He is also a prophet inasmuch... Read More

After a video came out this week of two young Palestinian women slapping Israeli soldiers in the occupied village of Nabi Saleh, the Israeli leftwing group Peace Now tweeted that the soldiers were “heroes” for not responding violently, and issued a statement commending the soldiers for “demonstrating moral fortitude in the face of an attempted... Read More

The authors of The Israel Lobby went on Chicago radio station WBEZ last week to reflect on their achievement after ten years. No, not 60 Minutes. Not The New York Times. Not MSNBC. But WBEZ radio. It is a great interview by Jerome McDonnell about a stupendous achievement. As I wrote ten years ago, this... Read More

There is only one story in the news, for followers of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and that is Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grim’s report at the Intercept yesterday on new legislation in the Congress that would criminalize support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). The bill is such a crude example of overreach by the Israel... Read More

On May 2, James North and Phil Weiss talked with Norman Finkelstein in his Brooklyn home about the Six Day War, its history, its mythology and its impact on US Jewish life. Finkelstein then revised the transcript of that conversation. Weiss: How important was the Six-Day War in your neighborhood when you were a kid?... Read More

I completely believe that Donald Trump was in bed with the Russians before the election and the campaign may well have intrigued with Vladimir Putin with respect to Wikileaks and that helped defeat Hillary Clinton. I believe that because that’s how the world works; because a lot of very smart people in the liberal establishment... Read More

Good evening, thank you so much for taking time out of what I know are your busy schedules to be here now. My thanks to Jenny Tonge for making this meeting possible; and I would like to thank three people without whom the book would not exist: Karl Sabbagh, my publisher; Ghada Karmi, who inspired... Read More

We interviewed Norman Finkelstein, the noted scholar of the Israel/Palestine conflict, in Brooklyn on April 8 and followed up with email exchanges. The following text contains both oral and written responses to our questions. PART 1: SANDERS Q. You’ve been canvassing for Bernie Sanders. Tell us why you’re so excited. I’ve witnessed three great social... Read More

In the Emperor’s New Clothes, only the little boy can say that the emperor is naked. The good news about yesterday’s speech by Netanyahu to a joint meeting of Congress is that lots of media are taking on that boy’s role, and pointing out the nudity: exclaiming over the fact that a foreign leader came... Read More