James Kirchick
By James Kirchick
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Opinion South Africa’s ANC Lurches Into Anti-Semitism
In October, the African National Congress dropped all pretense and announced its support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. The declaration came at the third International Solidarity Conference, a conclave of left-wing groups that was hosted by the ANC in Pretoria and overwhelmingly endorsed the call. Baleka Mbete, ANC chairperson and former…
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News Transylvanian Drama Over Fascist’s Ashes
In the scenic and enchanting lands of Transylvania, the ashes of a dead fascist have sparked a diplomatic incident. On May 27, the remains of Hungarian writer and politician Jozsef Nyiro were supposed to be reburied in the Romanian town of Odorheiu Secuiesc. The village is today heavily populated with Hungarians, as it was part…
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Opinion Havel Was Friend of Israel and Jews
In the summer of 1990, the newly elected president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, caused not a small degree of controversy when he announced his attendance at the Salzburg Music Festival in Austria. Classical music galas tend not to be scenes of political dispute, but this involved the resurrection of European ghosts other than Mozart. Austria’s…
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Opinion The Obama Lobby
When the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street was founded over a year ago, many in the Jewish community predicted that it would have little to no influence in the shaping of American foreign policy. While American Jews are indeed overwhelmingly left-of-center in their political orientation, they also happen to hold rather hawkish views on…
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Culture Bad Samaritans
Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution By Ian Kershaw Yale University Press, 400 pages, $35. A recent news item in The New York Times highlighted the matter of collective indifference. Time-lapse pictures from a security camera showed a woman collapse onto the floor of a Brooklyn hospital waiting room. Though there were a number…
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Culture Hunting in Zimbabwe For Identity And Family
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun By Peter Godwin Little, Brown and Company, 352 pages, $24.99. Last August, I visited an elderly Jewish couple at their spacious apartment in an affluent neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. A distant family friend had referred to them as people who would welcome the opportunity to take me out…
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News Ranting Poet’s Visit Makes For a Disturbing Week at Yale
As Yale Daily News columnist Eli Muller put it last Friday, “It has been an unpleasant week to be Jewish at Yale.” The trouble started when the university’s Afro-American Cultural Center decided to host controversial poet Amiri Baraka for a reading and discussion of his poem, “Somebody Blew Up America.” In that now infamous work,…
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