Worst and dimmest
I haven't posted anything in two weeks, which should be a cause for celebration. The usual blogger lament stands: work makes blogging, and much else, impossible, so let's try to make up for some lost time.

Here is a rather angry piece I wrote for the Daily Star's opinion page on Ehud Barak, who was cited in the recent Or Commission report on the gunning down of Arab-Israeli protestors in 2000. I've never cared for Barak, who was always more bluster than anything else, and have found his post-election defeat persona even more insufferable than the one he had while in office.

I still recall what he told Benny Morris in the New York Review of Books exchange with Robert Malley and Husseing Agha, describing Arabic culture as one "in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judaeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't."

Coming from a man who often proved to be a splendid liar himself, this was truly remarkable.