the definite article 66
good reading for shabbat!
“In the late 1980s, the early Cancel Culture movement scored its first-ever prime kill: the writer Saul Bellow. At the time of his blacklisting, Bellow had been publishing for more than four decades, managing to rack up along the way a Pulitzer, the Nobel Prize for Literature and three National Book Awards for Fiction—a record that stands to this day. Bellow was easily the most garlanded novelist in the whole of American Letters. But that meant nothing to the P.C. mobs out for his scalp who, when they finally got it, pushed us ever closer to the sort of dystopian future that Bellow had been warning the public about for years, in both fiction and non-fiction.”
Add this to the list of things of which I had no knowledge. True, I’m not such a Bellow’s fan, but this does give a context to his book Ravelstein.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-175087732
If you believe that the pro-Israeli lobby runs DC, then don’t read this piece because you will be disappointed. And then when you find out who really DOES run DC, uh, you probably won’t be so surprised.
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I paid for a subscription to Rod Dreher’s Diary a few months ago. Don’t tell my rabbi. Rod is a passionate Christian and it appears not infrequently in his writing. But he is also a clear-headed thinker and analyst of the woes of the anti-semitic right wing, which - as a conservative himself - worries the bejabbers out of him. Recently he’s been quoting Hannah Arendt a lot, thinking that many of the signs that she notes as depicting a society ripe for a fascist takeover exist in America.
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https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/5559/the-gray-lady-and-the-jewish-state/
Well, if the recent revelations about the BBC aren’t enough, here comes along a book that rips the head off “All the News Fit to Print” from he “Newspaper of Record.” Don’t think you know it all already and pass this by. It is truly shocking.
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“In a recent interview with the BBC, King Abdullah II of Jordan posed an uncomfortable question. “What is the mandate of security forces inside of Gaza?” he asked. Peacekeeping might be viable, but, he warned, “if it’s peace-enforcing, nobody will want to touch that.”His comments left me feeling deeply conflicted. On the one hand, they echoed an old pattern, in which Arab countries voice their support for the goals of the Palestinian people, such as gaining statehood or disarming Hamas, but show no inclination to do the heavy lifting themselves. On the other hand, King Abdullah is surely correct that no Arab or Muslim country will want to place its soldiers between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces.”
This is not news, because people have been saying this for well over a year. But if you need to be reminded about what an awful idea it was to declare an end to the war before actually getting a force in there, well, here’s a reminder and a forecast for the immediate future.
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“I still remember when Yasir Arafat, Edward Said, and Judith Butler were out to prove that the Palestinian “revolution”—and even Hizballah and Hamas—were full members of the “global left” deserving solidarity from decent people.” - It’s like Martin Kramer almost says this with a certain amount of nostalgia. But what this really is? A reply to an earlier article in Tivka by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour questioning the ideological antecedents of the Palestinian movement, in which Kramer strikes a bold blow for the rehabilitation of Bernard Lewis. Avery good article and I also recommend the article it is responding to , and also another article on Substack on how full of nonsense and falsehood was the book Orientalism by Edward Said.
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You thought I would not give a chance to spit on the BBC? Well, here it is presented in full glory from the oh so poignant pen of Melanie Phillips
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https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-873575
The JP reports on the results of a poll conducted by the JPPI (Jewish People Policy Institute) tracking some interesting results on attitudes of Israelis towards the war and their government after the war (if indeed we are “after”). There are some surprises here, so don’t think you know what it’s going to say before you read it.
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Shari Oz is fearless. She’s willing to say stuff people don’t want to hear for the silly reason that it happens to be true. She actually red texts, looks at history, and uses plain-as-day reasoning to stuff people would bend reality rather than hear. Try this one.
Of course I had to like this because you shared my article but there other stuff has good reading also