Israel
This Sunday: In Conversation with Daniel Ori and Dan Nadel
This Sunday at 11:30am, at B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side, I’ll be talking with bassist Daniel Ori and guitarist Dan Nadel about Israeli jazz, New York jazz, international jazz, hybrid jazz and not-jazz, and whatever else crosses our minds. Looking forward to it. They’ll each perform afterwards. The event is sponsored by Congregation Romemu in honor of Yom
Nir Rosen, major war monger
After critiquing Nir Rosen’s shoddy excuse-making for terrorism in January 2009, I paid only slight attention to his work. But on the occasions when I stumbled onto his Twitter feed, I actually had to stop and wonder whether someone had hacked his account. The opinions were so extreme, so loutish, so flagrantly unprofessional, so obviously unbecoming of a Fellow at
Nicaragua’s glass house
Just a note on the ironic timing. UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua issued his call for a boycott of Israel — and his antisemitic charge that Palestinians are being “crucified” — just as the NY Times and Marc Cooper report on the increasing authoritarianism and corruption of the neo-Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega.
Israeli musicians bullied, not bowed
Many an unkind word has been said about the late scholar and radical Palestinian activist Edward Said, but at least he firmly believed in the necessity of cultural contacts between Arabs and Israelis, so much so that he co-founded (with Daniel Barenboim) the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, one of the most notable peace-oriented artistic endeavors ever to have come out of
Harry’s Place silenced
Jenna Delich, a member of Britain’s University and College Union (UCU), is part of a small UCU faction favoring a boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals. The other day on the UCU activist discussion list she circulated a link concerning the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a link that directed readers to the neo-Nazi website of David Duke. “No comment necessary.
Where to begin?
“The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel,” Ms. Weitz, 83, said, lingering over brunch. This appears early in Jodi Kantor’s piece on Florida Jews and the election. Since Obama’s “attitude towards Israel” is roughly 100 percent supportive, it’s hard to know what Ms. Weitz means. But it becomes clearer further down
The Israel-Syria talks
My good friend Yigal Schleifer of the Christian Science Monitor on the lead-up to the current Israel-Syria negotiations in Turkey.