The New Republic

  "Unfriendly Fire: Why Did Israeli Troops Attack The USS Liberty?" July 23, 2001   "The Rescuer," Review of Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, by David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, October 28, 2002   READ MORE >>

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The seventh floor of the U.S. State Department is a generally dreary place. Its employees roam hallways so long and confusing that they are color-coded for guidance. Fluorescent lights throw down a harsh hospital glare. But, to most State employees, the "real" seventh floor is a secure area, protected by armed guards and doors that require electronic keys, where the department's top staffers, including the secretary herself, spend their days. There, Hillary Clinton works from a gently lit, wood-paneled office adorned with portraits of her predecessors. READ MORE >>

Last year, a new Middle East lobby called J Street was formed to push American Jewish opinion in a more conciliatory direction. "What we're responding to," wrote J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami last year, "is that for too long there's been an alliance between the neo-cons, the radical right ofthe Christian Zionist movement and the far-right portions of the Jewish community that has really locked up what it means to be pro-Israel." READ MORE >>

Earlier this month, Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher--last seen serving as the third wheel on John McCain and Sarah Palin's increasingly disastrous blind date--traded in his toilet jack for a handheld microphone and traveled to the Middle East to become a foreign correspondent covering the Israel-Hamas war for the conservative website Pajamas Media. Alas, he wasn't terribly impressed with his new colleagues. "I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting," Wurzelbacher said in the Israeli city of Sderot, where he was, from all appearances, reporting. "You know, war is hell. READ MORE >>

Last year, a new Middle East lobby called J Street was formed to push American Jewish opinion in a more conciliatory direction. "What we're responding to," wrote J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami last year, "is that for too long there's been an alliance between the neo-cons, the radical right of the Christian Zionist movement and the far-right portions of the Jewish community that has really locked up what it means to be pro-Israel." READ MORE >>

Dennis Ross is a highly capable diplomat (and frequent TNR contributor), so I was pleased to see that he'll be joining Obama's foreign policy team. But the scope of his brief gives me some pause. Ross has been given the title of ambassador at large, with a portfolio that apparently includes everything from Israel to Iran. READ MORE >>

If we needed reminding, the carnage in Mumbai proved yet again that South Asia is home to some of the world's deadliest Islamist terrorists. Usually missing from press coverage, though, is any sense of the origin of these movements, which are often assumed to be tied to the grievances of the Arab Middle East and the fate of Jerusalem. READ MORE >>

Martin Kramer is one of America's great scholars on Arab and Islamic affairs.  With a PhD from Princeton, he has written nine books including Ivory Towers on Sand, which was actually a revelation in and to the academy of how intellectually and financially indentured is much of the professoriate in the field. Via the Shalem Center:   READ MORE >>

Making the Cut: How Cosmetic Surgery is Transforming Our Lives By Anthony Elliott (Reaktion Books, 155 pp., $19.95) Lying on a couch in the office of one of the hairdressing salons that she owns in London, Sharyn Hughes perused the advertising brochure she had been sent by Makeover Getaways: READ MORE >>