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On the weekend I visited the Kreeger Museum in Washington for the first time. It’s the home the late David Lloyd Kreeger (GEICO), built to house his private collection of Picassos, Monets, Renoirs, etc. The house was designed by famed American “Glass House” architect Philip Johnson. As it happens, Johnson designed one building that stands in Israel (arguably to make amends for being pro-Nazi in the 1930s). Here’s a photo of it. What is it? Answer: http://sco.lt/4wfx7B.

As Palestinians mark their failure to strangle Israel at birth (they call it ‘Nakba Day’), I re-up a post from a few years back, in which I show that Palestinian contempt for assumed Jewish cowardice underpinned their complacence in 1948. (“There was a belief that the Jews were generally cowards,” wrote the late Northwestern professor Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, a refugee from Jaffa, in a telling memoir.) It’s a species of antisemitism, and it persists among “one-staters,“ who think of the Jews as too cowardly to do what it would take to preserve a Jewish state. The Palestinians fell victim in 1948—to their own prejudice. ‘Nakba Day’ continues the tradition.


Muftis of Morningside Heights by Martin Kramer (2008)
www.martinkramer.org
“Palestinian conduct in the war conformed almost precisely to the conduct they had expected of the Jews—something that made them contemptible in their own eyes and those of other Arabs.”

Hamas “prime minister” of the Palestinian emirate of Gaza, Ismail Haniya, presses his kisser to the hand of creepy old antisemite Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now visiting Gaza, where he has urged Hamas never to give up an inch of Palestine (as if they needed persuading). “Our whole ambition is to die on the path to Allah,” he said on arrival (http://bit.ly/itsthethoughtthatcounts).

Almost five years ago, I recommended Mohsin Hamid’s novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” here: http://bit.ly/mohsinhamid. I just saw the film, directed by Mira Nair, and I recommend that too (although it’s not entirely faithful to the novel, in that it resolves the Pakistani protagonist’s dilemma). It’s more thoughtful than “Argo,” and the final equivalent of a chase scene is more credible too.


The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Trailer
"A young Pakistani man finds himself embroiled in a conflict between his American Dream, a hostage crisis, and the enduring call of his family's homeland."

Antisemitic bigot and hate-monger Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi explains why he refused to attend a recent interfaith dialogue in Doha, Qatar, because of the participation of Jews (none of whom, I would guess, were Israelis): http://youtu.be/RsUCWRVYZFY. Why does anyone think he would contribute anything to such a dialogue anyway? I once had a brief clash with Qaradawi in Doha at a different sort of dialogue, which I described here: http://bit.ly/qaradawisuperstar. And no, I didn’t shake his blood-stained hand.