Litmus tests are dangerous conveniences. We all have them, we all use them, perhaps thinking of them as our own personal “red lines”: Cross them, and you’re in the enemy camp. Be cruel to a child, oppose progressive taxation, make excuses for torture or for terrorism, deny the Holocaust or view Israel with contempt and you have crossed mine, you are on the other side. These single factors are for me decisive, and that’s the standard definition of a litmus test.Read More
Where exactly — or even approximately — is “the center”? Is the center necessarily “the mainstream?” What if, instead of the conventional normal distribution — two dwindling slopes trailing off from a large hump between them — the distribution looks more like a “U,” with most people at either end and the middle nearly empty? Or an “L,” with most people off to one side?Read More
Like sharks entering a cove teeming with frenzied fish, loathers of Zion have opened their jaws wide and then, with delight, gripped their prey. For them, the Goldstone report is delectable, albeit it merely whets but does not satisfy their appetite. It confirms what they have known all along, that Israel is a criminal state, that its probationary period is long since over, that the time for its total isolation has come and the time for its collapse draws near.Read More
At last I have use of the word: Surprize! For that is surely the least that can be said about this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.Read More
Let us speak of heroes. Not, mind you, the voguish kind, whether the super-powered sci-fi heroes of the NBC television show or the very nice people nominated for United Jewish Communities’ current folly, “Jewish Community Hero of the Year.” I mean the real kind, the kind before whom we stand in awe.Read More