Zionism isn't a Dirty Word Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has provoked yet another international diplomatic stir with Israel. Speaking, (where else?), at a United Nations conference in Vienna last week, Erdogan listed “Zionism” alongside “fascism” and “Islamophobia” as “crime[s] against humanity.” The remark promptly drew criticism from Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, and...
For Iran, the Holocaust is just another tragedy – if it ever happened On Monday, I invited Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to visit Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial. Salehi was addressing a packed audience at the German Council on Foreign Relations, delivering a peculiarly titled speech, “Iran’s Role in Regional Peace and Balance of Power.” Peculiar, because it is Iran which is supplying weapons, soldiers, and tactical support...
Who's Threatening World Peace? How did it come to pass that Israel is now widely perceived as equally culpable, if not more so, for the potential eruption of another Middle Eastern war? To hear some of America’s most influential pundits tell it, Israel – not the state pledging to wipe it off the face of the earth – will...
Is "The Dictator" Racist? Even before it hit theaters, Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” – a gross-out parody of autocrats and the Western leftists who romanticize them – was met with cries that it’s racist. “Judging from the trailer,” Palestinian-American comedian Dean Obeidallah declared in a commentary for CNN.com, Baron Cohen’s portrayal is “essentially the same as white performers...
The Fallacy of the "Pinkwashing" Argument On March 16, a group of gay Israeli teenagers was set to meet with the Seattle LGBT Commission, a body representing the interests of the gay community before the city government. The students were touring the United States under the auspices of the Alliance of Israeli LGBT Educational Organizations, a network of groups that support...
A Hero Who Doesn't Exist On the recent remarks of the Israeli Ambassador to Belarus