Robert Novak, Columnist and Israel Critic, Dies at 78
Robert Novak, the Jewish-born influential conservative columnist who often criticized Israel, has died.
Novak died Tuesday in Washington after a long struggle with brain cancer. He was 78.
Writing a syndicated column with the late Rowland Evans, Novak worked sources deep inside government and more than once broke news that helped shift the outcome of an election.
The column’s revelation in 1976 that a high-ranking Ford administration official said that Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe was preferable to the nationalism that might otherwise have ensued eventually doomed Gerald Ford’s prospects of retaining the presidency.
Novak ran a running battle with pro-Israel groups, claiming they were unduly influential in Washington and that Israel was principally to blame for the exodus of Palestinian Christians.
He did not identify as Jewish and late in life converted to Roman Catholicism. Novak celebrated his conversion in interviews, but in other writings excoriated Jews in public service who were not shy about their faith.
Novak’s career sputtered because of his involvement in the Bush administration’s retaliatory leaking in 2003 of the name of Valerie Plame, the CIA operative who was married to Joseph Wilson, a prominent Iraq war critic.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
