Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

A note before I begin this post. I am a supporter of Israel. I am a supporter of Jewish philanthropy, including philanthropy which supports Israeli social projects. I am a supporter of Israel studies on campus. But I am not a supporter of partisan teaching that conceals a political agenda. I am in favor of teaching about Israel in a non-partisan fashion that allows students to argue the merits of the issues and make up their own minds.

Washington Jewish Week recently reported that students in a George Washington University course on the Israeli-Arab conflict complained that their instructor, Hanna Diskin, was spending all of her class time promoting a highly partisan view of the conflict that favored Israel. On hearing of this, Diskin fled the classroom and quit leaving the University and department in a lurch. If Diskin had stood her ground and defended herself I think people might approach this bizarre incident differently. But her precipitous flight has led Jerry Haber and myself to do some digging and what we’ve discovered has alarmed us.

Jerry wrote a damning post yesterday about Diskin’s academic background and suitability to teach the course she was instructing. Among other things:

The instructor, Hannah Diskin, was described by the WJU as “visiting from Hebrew University”. and a “postdoctoral fellow” funded by Mitchell Bard’s American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. And indeed, Dr. Diskin is listed as a postdoctoral fellow for the current year on the AICE website…

Dr. Diskin’s cv which appears not on the Hebrew University website, but — surprise!– on the website of the West Bank Ariel College of Judea and Samaria. (Yes, that’s the one that calls itself a “university center”, despite that it is not recognized as such by the Israel Council of Higher Education)

First, Dr. Diskin, who is listed by AICE as an “AICE supported postdoctoral fellow” at GWU this year, received her doctorate from Tel-Aviv university over twenty-five years ago. Generally, the limit for eligibility of postdoctoral fellows is seven, maybe, nine years. Why would AICE award somebody like Dr. Diskin a posdoctoral fellowship?

Second, Dr. Diskin is not on the faculty of Hebrew University, so she cannot be described as “visiting from Hebrew university.” Her cv lists her as having a “teaching position” at Hebrew University from 1992-2005 in the Political Science department. That is usually code for being an adjunct instructor. Her husband, Avraham Diskin, is a professor in that department and a former chair. He is a visiting professor at GW this year. (Oddly, this was not mentioned in the WJW article.) In fact, if I understand her employment history correctly, she has never been more than an adjunct at Hebrew University or any other university inside or outside of Israel. From 2001 she is listed as the Director General of a publishing company.

Third, Dr. Diskin’s area of scholarly expertise — according to her publication history — is Polish-Christian relations. The only book that she has authored by herself is entitled, The Seeds of Triumph: Church and State in Gomulka’s Poland — a book that was published twenty years after she received her doctorate. She has coauthored with her husband several articles in one of his main areas of scholarly expertise, the Israeli electoral system. She has not authored a single article on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, as far as I know.

Let me be clear again–I have no problem with someone like Hanna Diskin teaching the GW course or with the spouse of a professor teaching on the same campus as him. But the facts of this case are so egregious as to warrant full review by AICE, its funders and George Washington. When there is little or no oversight of multi-million dollar philanthropic-academic projects like AICE this is what happens. Boondoggles like the one which allowed Hannah Diskin to teach propaganda at a major U.S. university tarnish the good name of all the serious, reputable scholars in the field of Israel studies.

Haber continues his critique of the AICE program at George Washington:

My problem is not with Dr. Diskin, but with GW, which allowed an advocacy operation like AICE sponsor an adjunct instructor who is an expert in Polish-Christian relations to teach a class on the Arab-Israel conflict!

I won’t even begin to comment on the appropriateness of her assigning as one of the two books in the class, Mitchell Bard’s Myths and Facts, a highly biased and one-sided polemic that has no academic value whatsoever. Bard’s organization sponsors her, and then she turns around and assigns Bard’s book?

Nor will I speculate that the position was arranged for her by AICE as part of a package deal that brought her husband and her to GW on her husband’s sabbatical. That is not the issue. Had she been teaching in her field of expertise, or even in her area of teaching competence, without such tendentious sources, then who would have cared?

When are universities going to learn that they cannot be cavalier with accepting money from outside organizations that fund teachers who, based on the news report, do not meet the minimum standards of objectivity? Assigning the Bard book in a college classroom, if true, is a big smoking gun.

I’ve done some further research on AICE myself. The academic program it sponsors is largely funded by the Lynn and Charles Schusterman Foundation, a large Jewish philanthropic enterprise which funds a diverse set of priorities. A review of its Israel giving does show that it funds a great deal of Israel advocacy programs on campus. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, it should be noted that many such programs come across as little more than propaganda apparatuses for a pro-Israel agenda. In fact, I have learned from a former AIPAC staffer that the Foundation funds virtually the entire AIPAC on Campus program (under the rubric of the American-Israel Education Foundation, AIPAC’s non-profit vehicle) including the director, Jonathan Kessler’s salary. Stacy Schusterman serves on AIPAC’s executive committee as did her father, Charles who was the group’s vice-president. The family is heavily involved with Republican Party politics.

Given the Schusterman-Bard AIPAC affiliations one has to ask whether AICE’s campus program is a subtle attempt by AIPAC to interject itself into the academic arena. A direct intervention would of course be unacceptable and seen as partisan interference in academic discourse. But Mitchell Bard is enough of an independent operator to give AICE the veneer of academic respectability it needs. I may be overstating AIPAC’s interest in this. But if that is so it is only because AICE seems so insular, opaque, and partisan. I note that AICE doesn’t even list its visiting scholars nor their designated campuses on its own website.

The Schusterman website notes it has given AICE nearly $3-million over five years to create 20-30 such academic positions each year. Mitchell Bard, a former AIPAC staffer, appears to be the sole paid staff of AICE (he runs it out of a basement office in his home) who receives $125,000 per year for his efforts (see AICE’s IRS form 990 (pdf)). I don’t know the nature of Bard’s work for this project, but it would seem to me that spending 17% of such a grant to fund one administrative position is a bit excessive. But that’s something the Foundation needs to take up with Bard if it hasn’t done so already.

AICE claims that there is an advisory board which oversees the Schusterman program. But the “advisory board” listed on its website is not an academic board. I’m guessing that there is no academic oversight of the Schusterman program by AICE.

Bard himself is a well-known pro-Israel propagandist in the AIPAC mold. No doubt this fact endeared him to the Schustermans who appear to be strong supporters of AIPAC. But a review of any of Bard’s writing in the Jewish Virtual Library website he maintains or the The Complete Idiot’s (!) Guide to Middle East Conflict which he edited shows him to be a pure partisan. What gave the Schustermans the impression that their funds would be well-spent by a character like Mitchell Bard is beyond me–unless they wanted a highly partisan pro-Israel academic program.

A clue to the ideological agenda behind AICE’s work can be found in this illuminating passage from the Philanthropy Roundtable:

Another potentially helpful development in higher education is the rise of Israel studies. This small but growing field offers college students a way to study the politics and culture of a country that sits near the center of many events. It’s not the ideal lens for studying the entire Middle East, but it does have the potential to increase knowledge about an important nation. It also offers a helpful corrective to Middle Eastern studies programs that are compromised by anti-Israeli bias.

What is deeply problematic about this statement is that without even intending to do so it concedes that AICE-type programs are meant as an attempt to address a perceived ideological imbalance in Middle East studies programs. I should note that the so-called “bias” is perceived by groups like Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine, and AICE which are themselves accused of harboring deep-seated ideological biases.

The Roundtable article continues:

“A couple of years ago, we conducted a survey and discovered that the vast majority of colleges and universities don’t offer any courses on Israel,” says Lisa Eisen, national program director of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. “Our goal is to create opportunities for students to learn about Israel both in and out of its conflict — everything from Jewish literature to modern counterterrorism — in accurate ways.”

Working through the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the Schusterman Family Foundation sponsors visiting professorships in the United States for Israeli scholars and gives awards to graduate students who want to research topics in Israel. It currently supports programs at Brandeis, Columbia, UCLA and several other schools.

Improving the quality of university study of the Middle East faces real obstacles. “Donors need to be very careful about how they give to universities because their money can be used for purposes that are contrary to their intentions,” warns Mitchell Bard of the AICE.

Bard points to the case of Helen Diller, the wife of real-estate developer Sanford Diller. In 2004, she gave $5 million to the University of California at Berkeley and its Center for Middle East Studies to finance research grants and underwrite visiting professorships.

“You know what’s going on over there,” she said of Berkeley to a San Francisco Jewish newspaper. “With the protesting and this and that, we need to get a real strong Jewish studies program in there….Hopefully, it will be more enlightening to have a visiting professor and it’ll calm down over there.”

Berkeley didn’t seem to care about this motive. As its first Diller Visiting Professor, the university hired Oren Yiftachel — “one of the Israeli academics most critical of his country’s policies,” according to Moment, a Jewish magazine that covered the controversy. Diller was helpless. “Having given the endowment, there was nothing she could do but wince,” reported Moment.

Again, the passage is deeply problematic. First, the fact that Moment Magazine accuses Yiftachel of being one of the most critical academics of Israeli policy without any proof is dubious. Second, there are MANY Israeli academics who criticize Israeli policy, both Zionist and non-Zionist. Yiftachel is certainly not “one of the most critical.” In fact, he is but one of many. And in fact, he is a highly respected geographer at Ben Gurion University. It should also be noted that the attacks against Yiftachel emanate from the usual suspect right-wing sources, Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine, Martin Kramer, and academic neo-Kahanist Steven Plaut. Third, the notion that a serious academic cannot teach critically about issues related to Israel and the Middle East conflict is also alarming and runs counter to the concept of critical thinking that should characterize academic discourse. Fourth, the notion that Mitchell Bard is in a better position to vet the bona fides of Israel studies professors than UC Berkeley is entirely bogus. What special academic expertise does he have that the professors at UC Berkeley don’t have? Isn’t it possible that the very bias Bard accuses UC Berkeley of practicing is mirrored in his own decision regarding AICE appointments? But with the major difference that Bard is an unaccountable one man band, while UC Berkeley at least has an academic system of vetting such appointments with layers of accountability?

I would go further. Has AICE appointed ANY Israeli academics to its positions with critical views of Israeli policy? What are the ideological views of those it does appoint? Has it appointed anyone with the critical perspectives of a Shlomo Ben Ami, Tom Segev, Neve Gordon, Martin Van Creveld, Zeev Sternhell, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Brom, Menachem Klein, etc.? I don’t know the answer to this question. But I would challenge them to show us that they do not have an ideological axe to grind.

If the Schustermans had entrusted their money to a reputable nonpartisan academic consultant or Jewish foundation which funds Israel studies programs, I would support their program wholeheartedly. In fact, they have provided a $15 million grant to support Israeli studies at Brandeis University. This is money undoubtedly well-spent. But the AICE project appears to be little more than a boondoggle to benefit partisan pro-Israel academics (and their spouses) looking for a comfy year at a U.S. campus; not to mention Mitch Bard.

AICE’s 990 form notes that as of 2006 it funded similar programs at the following institutions:

University of Texas
Stanford University
Syracuse University (Maxwell School)
Washington University (St. Louis)
University of Florida
Rutgers University
University of Arizona
Harvard University

It’s possible that each of these institutions have qualified people filling their AICE positions. But if George Washington can make the mistake it did virtually any campus could do the same. Again, I would urge Schusterman and each campus to redouble their efforts to vet their scholars and assure their suitability to teach the courses they are assigned. I would also examine carefully the course curricula and assigned textbooks to ensure they are not out and out propaganda like AIPAC’s Myths and Facts.

Hat tip to Muzzlewatch.

tags american-israel-cooperative-exchange, george-washington-university, hannah-diskin, lynn-and-charles-schusterman-foundation, mitchell-bard, pro-israel-campus-advocacy

I just plain don’t feel much like writing a full blown post today. But I’ve been reading some terrific material at other blogs and would like to point you to some important reading.

First, Muzzlewatch reports on the odd development at George Washington University of an Israeli visiting instructor quitting in a huff when her students (some Jewish) accused her of being a pro-Israel partisan instead of a dispassionate academic. It seems that the University has accepted funding for several positions (including this one) from a foundation run by notorious pro-Israel ideologue and former AIPAC staffer, Mitchell Bard.

Jerry Haber does some terrific sleuthing to discover that Hannah Diskin, the instructor in question, is not affiliated with the Hebrew University as the original Washington Jewish Week story contends. Rather, she is affiliated with the West Bank’s Ariel College, an unaccredited Israeli institution.

I would like to know who are the sugar daddies funding Bard’s academic positions. Could it be that they might be AIPAC megadonors, which would mean that AIPAC is surreptitiously (and indirectly of course) attempting to slant the teching of Israel and Zionism in the college classroom. Perhaps a view of the Foundation’s IRS 990 form might tell us something on that score (I haven’t done this yet).

Sol Salbe links to another terrific piece of investigative journalism by Daphna Berman (who broke the Other Israel Film Festival story recently) in Haaretz. She investigates a juicy scandal simmering at the Shalem Center, home of American-Jewish neocon demi-god and Wall Street Journal darling, Michael Oren. After reading this, it seems to me that Shalem is nothing more than a warmed over version of the Hudson Institute. The most riveting fact (besides the inter-office sex and director’s directives about the precise angle at which to staple reports) in this expose is the worship by the three Shalem founders of Meir Kahane during their college days at Princeton. How can such an institution command any respect with this intellectual/political pedigree?

I just read Jerry Haber’s recap of this article and he has one hilarious comment on the hot sex at Shalem:

Of course, there is the usual nepotism associated with family businesses. Yoram’s brother, David, worked there for twelve years in an executive position…until he was forced to leave because of an affair he conducted with one of his subordinates. (At the time he was working on a book on the Ten Commandments – or maybe, for him, the Nine)

tags daphna-berman, george-washington-university, jerry-haber, magnes-zionist, mitchell-bard, muzzlewatch, shalem-center

Tonight is not a good night for Rachel Neuwirth. Like Casey at the bat, she took a mighty swing & like Casey she struck out.

She sued me for libel in Los Angeles Superior Court because I called her a “Kahanist swine.” Her claim was that this was the same as claiming she was a Jewish terrorist since Kahane Chai, Meir Kahane’s Israeli political party, is designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist organization.

Her attorney, Charles Fonarow, told my attorneys that her case was a “slam dunk.” Seems Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Reid had a different idea. It’s also important to note that Judge Reid is no activist liberal judge. He teaches law at Pepperdine University law school where Kenneth Starr is the dean. He’s a law and order conservative and he understood the principles of free blog speech that were involved in this case. He understood that calling someone a Kahanist swine, while not perhaps the most refined turn of phrase in the world, is permitted in the context of public discourse on an issue of great civic importance.

We won the case with an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) motion under which the defendant must prove that his speech was made in a public arena and furthered a public good and that the plaintiff was a public figure. Rachel’s key argument was that she is a private figure (she argued that she was merely a real estate agent) and the my blog was a private forum (because I “controlled” it), all of which are patently false since she herself calls herself an “internationally respected journalist” in her online bio. That my blog is a public forum is also patently obvious as 250,000 unique visitors each year indicate. And I no more ‘control’ the 6,000 comments published on my blog than I control the entire web.

One of the beauties of the SLAPP motion is that the losing plaintiff must pay defendant’s reasonable court costs. This system was purposely designed to inhibit well-heeled individuals from bringing frivolous lawsuits against whistle blowers and other do-gooders. As the judge’s ruling states:

These lawsuits are generally brought to chill the valid exercise of constitutional rights. A SLAPP suit lacks merit and will achieve its objective if it depletes the defendant’s resources or energy because the aim is not to win but to detract the defendant from his or her objective. [An anti-SLAPP motion] is a procedural remedy to dispose of such suits expeditiously and thereby protect defendants’ free exercise of First Amendment rights on matters of public interest

So Rachel will have to dip into her savings to pay for our legal bills. I say “ours” since Rachel figured she’d kill two “kapo” birds with one stone by also including Joel Beinin in her suit. No doubt Joel is a figure who particularly irks her since he holds a distinguished academic position at Stanford University. Unfortunately, she struck out as her suit against Beinin failed as well.

The judge understood the important of protecting speech on an issue as critical and controversial as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and agreed that Neuwirth was merely trying to stifle speech she disagreed with–rather than bringing a serious charge of libel.

He also raised an importance point which even I hadn’t considered in preparing my defense. Since truth is a defense in libel suits why didn’t she argue that the portion of my statement in which I called her a “Kahanist” was false? I think we could’ve made a good case against her if she’d raised this defense since her views, like Kahane’s, are so virulently anti-Arab. But she never even made the claim.

Another good point that he raised was that just as no reasonable reader would believe I was calling her a literal “swine,” so no reasonable reader would believe I was calling her a literal Kahanist “terrorist.”

Neuwirth’s claim against Joel Beinin involved a statement he made in the Alef discussion group informing members that she had made a death threat against him. She, along with Campus Watch, have claimed that this is a lie. Well, now I have the police report in front of me from the Stanford University Department of Public Safety reported (case IR 03 265 0181) on September 22, 2003. Beinin is so weary of this matter that he expressly asked me not to publish the report details here. But suffice it to say that Neuwirth DID call him a kapo and other vulgar demeaning terms. She likened him to Daniel Pearl and said that Beinin might meet the same fate as a traitor to his people. She noted that Hitler took care of those who were traitors first (not sure what this means exactly). Beinin felt so disturbed by the content of her calls that he called the police. The report quotes verbatim from her calls and documents the threat.

Now, I want to address the hazirfleisch with the unlikely name of “Cinnamon Stillwell” at Campus Watch who called Beinin a liar. During the lawsuit I could not speak of this matter on advice of counsel. But now the world can see who lied and who told the truth.

My attorney tells me that Neuwirth appeared quite upset at the end of the hearing. Her attorney told Judge Reid that he planned to appeal his decision to the State Court of Appeals. They were apparently both upset that the ’slam’ didn’t ‘dunk.’ But the fact that the judge wrote a ten-page, intensively-researched opinion shows that the judge attached considerable importance both to the case and to his decision. It’s hard to believe that a higher court would rule against Judge Reid in this matter unless he made a serious error. And the very fact of the length of the brief and the amount of effort he lavished on it argues against that possibility.

Though I do not wish for an appeal, I would welcome one for one reason only. The higher this case goes, if affirmed, the more important a precedent it becomes in California jurisprudence. Protecting the rights of those who debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a matter worth fighting for and worthy of judicial affirmation.

Finally, I’d like to thank my pro bono legal team from Dewey & LeBoeuf. They are heroes to me. They took this on out of a commitment to protect First Amendment rights and with little prospect of financial remuneration. They believed in my right to speak out forcefully about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Unfortunately, others have threatened me with similar lawsuits in the past and perhaps some will do so in future. I think we have taken a stand that such intimidation will be met with a firm defense of my First Amendment rights and those of all bloggers.

tags death-threat-against-Joel-beinin, kahanist, libel-lawsuit, rachel-neuwirth, slapp-motion

My brother visited this weekend for Thanksgiving and told me he’d heard from an old friend I hadn’t seen since about 1983, Merle Bachman. We’d been friends back when I was in a Comp Lit doctoral program at UC Berkeley. Merle wrote poetry I recall and knew my brother from Brandeis. I had no idea she’d completed a PhD program in Yiddish literature, begun teaching and was about to publish her doctoral dissertation until Todd told me all this.

When I pursued my PhD degree (which I never completed) I spent one summer studying Yiddish at YIVO because I felt it was important to recover the richness of its almost slaughtered literary tradition. In fact, much of my life has been devoted to the idea of appreciating, preserving and recovering such traditions. It’s also the reason why I co-founded the Bay Area Jewish Music Festival with Gerry Tenny in the early 1980s.

I’m pleased to say that Merle’s upcoming book, Recovering Yiddishland: Threshold Moments in American Literature, appears to cover some of the same ground as I mentioned above:

According to traditional narratives of immigrant assimilation, Jews freely surrendered Yiddish language and culture in their desire for an American identity. In Recovering “Yiddishland” Bachman offers a challenge to this conventional literary history, returning readers to a threshold where Americanization also meant ambivalence and resistance. She reconstructs “Yiddishland” as a cultural space produced by Yiddish immigrant writers from the 1890s through the 1930s, largely within the sphere of New York City.

The book spotlights significant works by Yiddish immigrant writers that reveal unexpected and illuminating critiques of Americanization. The author takes a fresh look at Abraham Cahan’s Yekl and Anzia Yezierska’s Hungry Hearts. Bachman discusses the modernist poet Mikhl Likht, whose simultaneous embrace of American literature and resistance to English assimilation marked him as the supreme “threshold” poet. Combining sophisticated academic analysis of literary works with her own personal encounters with Yiddish writing, Bachman offers a provocative and highly readable contribution to Jewish literary history.

When I was growing up I used to spend a week in summer visiting my mother’s parents in their small Washington Heights apartment which they’d lived in for over 40 years. One day, she told me about what it was like to attend public school as a Yiddish-speaking immigrant child. She said that if the children spoke Yiddish in class their teacher beat them. This was the American way of acculturation. Beat it out of you. So no, many Jews didn’t freely surrender their language and culture. They realized that they had to do so or else.

In some small way, I think that is why Merle and I are doing some of the things we are doing now. Trying to recover some of these traditions that have been beaten out of us. It’s our form of resistance to the prevailing cultural homogenization of American culture. It’s our form of saying this is the unique legacy we bring to America’s cultural table.

tags assimilation, merle-bachman, recovering-yiddishland, yiddish-language-and-culture

Leave it to Jack Rosen, who somehow several years ago wrested control of the American Jewish Congress and destroyed its illustrious history as a liberal Jewish group, to slavishly support Bush foreign policy. But this time, he’s taken it to extremes. For some odd reason, Rosen has adopted Pervez Musharraf as the AJC’s poster Arab leader. He feted him at an award dinner in 2005 and just made a long, strange trip to Pakistan to visit his crony and do—well, we’re not exactly sure what:

A few days before Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte traveled to Islamabad last week to impress upon General Pervez Musharraf the need to restore democratic rule in Pakistan, another American envoy quietly landed in the capital to chat with the Pakistani president and army chief.

With the blessing of Washington, Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress’s Council for World Jewry, traveled halfway across the globe for a face-to-face meeting with Musharraf, who he had hailed two years ago as a courageous leader and driving force in Jewish-Muslim dialogue.

Rosen’s letter to the editor makes clear, despite some murmurings to the contrary, that bolstering Pakistani democracy was not a concern of Rosen’s:

The most compelling idea that should inform our policy toward Pakistan is the urgent need to keep that country’s nuclear arsenal out of the hands of the Islamist extremists. That requires some stability, which rests, inter alia, on cooperation between a strong military and a strong executive branch…

The real choice we face is not between Musharraf and a return to an effective democratic system, but between Musharraf and the possible collapse of Pakistan.

What Rosen’s “analysis” entirely neglects is the glaring fact that the Pakistani military has failed in its fight against the Taliban and Islamic extremists in the time since it took power through a military coup and it continues to fail after Musharraf declared martial law. Musharaf gives no sense whatsoever of how his suspension of the country’s constitution will give him powers he doesn’t already have to battle successfully against those forces Rosen sees as so dangerous to Pakistan and the world.

One wonders if Rosen is so committed to the continued military rule of Pakistan and to the suspension of Pakistani democracy whether he harbors some of those same feelings about Israeli democracy?

Another big fan of Musharraf’s is new Rudy Giuliani Jewish anti-jihadi consultant, Daniel Pipes. Birds of a feather. All of Rosen’s international jet-setting to prop up military dictators makes me hanker for the glory days of Henry Siegman and the progressive AJC of old.

I’m dying to find a picture somewhere of Rosen and Musharraf shaking hands. Dear reader, please find one to feature here.

tags jack-rosen-visits-musharaf, jewish-group-supports-pakistani-military-rule

Today's NY Times headline: In Bush’s Last Year, Modest Domestic Aims. Modest aims for a VERY modest presidency. And all I can say is bless us all that the George Bush of capacious and ruinous political ambition has been replaced by the chastened George Bush of his final year. Hopefully, his ability to do evil at home and abroad has been considerably diminished.

John Howard celebrating his pre-historic Viking roots (Fairfax archive) I don't usually write about Australian politics here. But in the course of writing this blog and other online posting I've become friends with Sol Salbe, a Melbourne Israeli-Australian peace activist and Violet Crumble, my partner in Israel Palestine Forum. I've also had a long-running distaste for another Australian-Israeli blogger with the mysterious name of Aussie Dave (Dave L.). So it gives me great pleasure to announce that the Australian Liberal (conservative) Party has taken a drubbing and lost power after eleven years to the Labor Party. Not only this, for the first time since 1929 a sitting PM has ...

George Bush and Condi Rice have achieved a major success in persuading the Saudis and entire Arab League to attend the Annapolis peace conference. Not only do the participants guarantee that Annapolis won't fail even before it started they also give it the imprimatur of widespread Arab participation, which at least gives Annapolis a running chance of achieving something worthwhile. The NY Times reports from Arab sources that the Syrians are likely to join too as long as they feel the Golan issue is addressed seriously. I find it preposterous that Condi is refusing to place the item on the formal agenda and that this is the sole obstacle to Syrian participation. To stand on ceremony on ...

Thanks to Israel Palestine Forum member, Bridgebuilder who pointed me to one of the clearest and most persuasive analyses of what needs to happen at Annapolis for it to succeed. Making the Inevitable Happen is written by Bernard Avishai, a noted Israeli historian of Zionism and Sami Bahour, a Palestinian-American entrepreneur. Here is how their column begins: Anybody who knows anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict knows that the leaders expected at a summit meeting in Annapolis, Md., later this month, won't devise a deal. That's because the outlines of the deal have already been devised, in bits and pieces, through the Clinton parameters; the Taba summit; the Arab League proposal; international law, including myriad U.N. resolutions; ...

But we'll let you, dear reader, be the judge. Ami Eden, the editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has accused me in a series of private e mails of lying about JTA's coverage of the Desmond Tutu fake quote controversy. You'll recall that JTA published a fabricated quotation from Tutu that equated Israel with Hitler. The real source of the statement was not Tutu, but Mort Klein of the ZOA who falsely attributed it to the South African Nobel Prize winner. Both Muzzlewatch and I called JTA's attention to the fact that they'd been had by Klein. For some reason it took them six whole days to acknowledge anything was wrong--and when they did they could only muster this: A ...