Last week, the Movement for Black Lives – a coalition of groups inspired by Black Lives Matter – released a 37,000-word platform. In its foreign policy section, the platform calls Israel an apartheid state, endorses the BDS and condemns the “genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” The American Jewish establishment reacted with outrage. African-American activists were outraged by the outrage. Welcome to the new ...
I’ve found the Khizr Khan vs. Donald Trump clash exhilarating. It’s the closest thing Americans have yet seen to the famed “Have you no sense of decency, sir,” riposte that helped doom Joseph McCarthy. But it’s disturbing, too. If it proves that America can overcome the bigotry and ignorance that Trump represents, it also shows how much Trump has already set America back. ...
Want to know how the American Jewish establishment keeps American politicians from questioning Israeli policy in the West Bank? This is how. …
The Democratic convention, which culminated on Thursday night with Hillary Clinton, was inverted. Usually, supporting actors cover policy specifics and flay the opposing candidate. The nominee comes on at the end and offers a vision. Hillary Clinton doesn’t do vision well. So, wisely, her campaign turned the paradigm on its head. The emotion, the vision, the rhetorical power came from others: from Barack Obama and ...
I love Bill Clinton. But I didn’t love his speech Tuesday night in Philadelphia. Given the job of humanizing his wife, he came across as genuinely smitten. But he failed to do what he’s done in every convention speech he’s delivered since 1992: tell a story about where America is today and what can be done to move it forward. He called his wife a ...
Many commentators, watching the two party’s conventions, have noted that Democrats and Republicans seemed to describing different countries. But if you listened carefully last night, you heard two groups of Democrats describing different countries too. …
Corrupt political behavior, George Orwell famously taught, usually begins with corrupt political language. With the Democrats holding their convention this week in Philadelphia, let’s take their platform on Israel as exhibit A. …
In 2008, Barack Obama famously wanted a “team of rivals” in his administration. He began with his running mate, who was utterly unlike him. Obama was a political newcomer; Joe Biden was a Beltway veteran. Obama appealed to African Americans and upscale liberals; Biden appealed to blue collar whites. Obama was disciplined; Biden was unruly. Obama was cool; Biden was warm. …
Maybe Donald Trump is lucky that Ted Cruz knifed him on Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention. Otherwise, the big story would be Trump’s new interview with The New York Times. Trump’s most astonishing policy statement is his declaration that America would only defend the Baltic states from Russian attack if he concluded that they “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” Given that Trump ...
Jawad Abu Aisha owns a cluttered yard in H2, the sector of Hebron that falls under direct Israeli control. He’d like to turn it into a cinema. Many local Palestinians — lacking recreational opportunities — would like to help him. But Abu Aisha says that Jewish settlers, and the Israeli military, prevent him from developing the space. In a democracy, if your neighbors impede construction ...