Michelle Goldberg

Saving Secular Society

Michelle Goldberg — 2006-05-16T21:47:00Z

Whenever I talk about the growing power of the evangelical right with friends, they always ask the same question: What can we do? Usually I reply with a joke: Keep a bag packed and your passport current. I don't really mean it, but my anxiety is genuine. It's one thing to have a government that shows contempt for civil liberties; America has survived such men before. It's quite another to have a mass movement-the largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation-rise up in opposition to the rights of its fellow citizens. The Constitution protects minorities, but that protection is not absolute; with a sufficiently sympathetic or apathetic majority, a tightly organized faction can get around it. (...) -

Is the "Israel lobby" distorting America's Mideast policies?

Michelle Goldberg — 2006-04-18T10:28:00Z

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, political science professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago respectively, apparently hoped to break through the taboos against criticizing Israel and its American supporters with their baldly titled paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." It was published last month in the London Review of Books and, in an expanded version, on the Web site of the Kennedy School of Government, where Walt is academic dean. The article argues that the United States' close relationship with Israel is not in America's national interest — that it is, indeed, counterproductive — and that it is sustained largely through the work of the Israel lobby (Walt and Mearsheimer refer to it, simply and ominously, as "the Lobby.") Walt and Mearsheimer also argue that the Lobby was a major force pushing for war in Iraq, a war they vocally opposed.

The authors were immediately subject to withering attacks, including predictable charges of anti-Semitism. On one level, these attacks are examples of the very phenomenon the writers describe. Yet for anyone who hopes for a more open and critical discussion of the Israel lobby, their paper presents profound problems. This is not just a case of brave academics telling taboo truths. In taking on such a sensitive, fraught subject, one might expect such eminent scholars to make their case airtight. Instead, they've blundered forth with an article that has several factual mistakes and baffling omissions, one that seems expressly designed to elicit exactly the reaction it has received. The power of the Israel lobby is something that deserves a full and fearless airing, but this paper could make such an airing less, not more likely. (...)

- / Salon.com

Love your enemies

Michelle Goldberg — 2005-12-08T04:18:00Z

Peace activist Tom Fox has lived in Baghdad by the words of Jesus. Now he faces murder by terrorists. Was his mission in vain?

Dec. 7, 2005 | Living in Iraq, Tom Fox wrote of his struggles to transcend rage and fear, to forgive his enemies even as they threatened his life and murdered people around him. Now his faith is being put to the ultimate test. On Nov. 26 in Baghdad, the 54-year-old musician from Virginia and three other volunteers with the pacifist group Christian Peacemaker Teams were kidnapped by a previously unknown band of insurgents calling themselves the Swords of Truth Brigade. This weekend, their captors released a video threatening to execute the four men unless all the prisoners in Iraqi and coalition custody are released by Thursday, Dec. 8. (...)

- / Salon.com

New York Lockdown

Michelle Goldberg — 2004-08-11T14:49:00Z

If you're a delegate attending the Republican national convention at Madison Square Garden later this month, Jamie Moran knows where you're staying. He knows where you're eating and what Broadway musical you plan on seeing. For the past nine months, Moran has been living off savings earned as an office manager at a nonprofit and working full-time to disrupt the RNC. (...) -