Martin Kramer is an authority on the modern Middle East. He is president-designate of Shalem College in Jerusalem (in formation) and the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Follow Martin Kramer on Twitter.Ivory Towers on Sand
Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America appeared six weeks after 9/11, and gave rise to an intense controversy. Seven years after publication, the book has been made available as a free download. Click here.
Israel Lobby
Martin Kramer has written several critiques of the Israel Lobby thesis of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. In reverse chronological order:
• Israel, Iraq, and Cold Feet
• The American Interest
• Mearsheimer/Walt Retreat
• Israel, Oil, Realism
• Israel and Iraq War
• A Powerful Lobby
• Stephen Walt's World
Events
8 past eventsSee All
- How Not to Fix the Middle East...
Roone Arledge Lerner Cinema, Columb...
Monday, November 16 at 8:00pm - Obama and the Two-State Solution
Woodrow Wilson International Center...
Monday, June 8 at 9:00am - 9th Annual Herzliya Conference
Inter-Disciplinary Center (IDC) Campus
Tuesday, February 3 at 9:45am - 6th Annual Jerusalem Conference
Regency Hotel
Tuesday, January 27 at 2:00pm - The US and Israeli Roles in th...
Institute for National Security Stu...
Thursday, December 18 at 2:10pm - What is Middle Eastern Studies...
Grand Salon
Friday, November 28 at 6:00pm - Iran, Hezballah, and Hamas: Te...
Hudson Institute
Wednesday, November 19 at 9:00am - Is Peace Possible?
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Monday, November 10 at 6:30pm
Martin Kramer Another bubble bursts. The article does reassure us that the NYU venture in Abu Dhabi is solid. I think it's the academic equivalent of a toxic derivative.
www.nytimes.com
After the collapse of the emirate’s economy, American schools’ outposts there are having trouble attracting enough students to survive.
Martin Kramer The Legatum Prosperity Index looks at religiosity worldwide. Go to the link, and then click on "Middle East and North Africa" for a surprise. Here's how it begins: "The Jewish state of Israel, ironically..."
www.realclearworld.com
The Legatum Prosperity Index rates more than 100 nations worldwide according to how well they cultivate empirically-tested drivers of economic and social well-being.
Martin Kramer "If the R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazi Jews do indeed represent the vestiges of the mysterious Khazars then, according to our data, this contribution was limited to either a single founder or a few closely related men, and does not exceed approx. 12% of the present-day Ashkenazim." Does that include the inventor Shlomo Sand?
www.nature.com
A total of 495 DNA samples, from different sources, were collected from paternally unrelated male Ashkenazi Jews, irrespective of their religious status (Cohen, Levite, Israelite).
Martin Kramer Palestine Today news agency (via Marty Peretz) brings our attention to the crushing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, via these photographs on Gazans' preparations for the Eid Al-Adha holiday one month ago. Things look grim.
Martin Kramer Dept. of Specious Analogies: "What we need to do is to bring Hamas to a point where it will understand that it is in its interest to reach an accommodation with Israel. And I believe that they are on the way. When Gorbachev concluded it was in the interest of the Soviet Union to bring an end to the Cold War, it was the... Soviets who took care of the Communist party, and actually sent it into opposition."
bit.ly
Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy on the prospects for peace with the Palestinians, and Iran, and why Israel is indestructible.
Martin Kramer Jordanian prof on Al Jazeera: "There is a well-known example from an Arab country, which goes like this... A teacher asked: Who can give me the name of a creature that flies? One student said: A cow. The teacher said: You idiot, cows don't fly. Whose son are you? The boy said: I'm the son of so-and-so, who's a colonel ...in the army. So the teacher said: Cows fly, but they don't rise up from the ground."
www.memri.org
Excerpts from Al Jazeera debate on the state of Arab universities, with Jordanian university professor Adib Al-Zu'bi and Arab Students' Union head Ahmad Al-Shater.
Martin Kramer When pigs fly. Here's another Palestinian 'intellectual' living in a fantasy world of his own making, stimulating himself in public. The more interesting question is why the LA-LA Times continues to run pieces by supporters of the one-state hallucination.
www.latimes.com
Those who believe in coexistence must begin to seriously think of the legal and constitutional mechanisms needed to safeguard the rights of a Jewish minority in Israel-Palestine.
Martin Kramer A Turkish official quoted: "Bashar Asad has two lines of speech, one for the region and one for the west. He doesn't say the same thing on BBC and al-Jazeera. It's double-talk. Here it is acceptable. His interlocutors must understand this is not unusual in the region. Americans might think it devious. He sees it as bei...ng polite." Ha! When Asad double-talked the Turks on the PKK, they nearly whacked him.
www.guardian.co.uk
Syria is one country where the inner workings of the regime can seem baffling. A report by the Int' Crisis Group (ICG) about Syrian foreign policy sheds some light on this intriguing puzzle.
Martin Kramer Perhaps this explains more than reproductive health. (Only second-cousin and closer marriages are represented. Tadmouri et al., ‘Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs’, Reproductive Health 2009 6:17, http://3.ly/xVW)
www.reproductive-health-journal.com
Martin Kramer From the man who brought you analogies between Saudi Arabia and the Amish, between Al Qaeda and David Koresh, here's a new one, between Israeli policy and the cigarette industry. Juanalogies! Collect 'em all.
www.juancole.com
I would argue that it is one of a growing number of signs that far right policies of Kadima and Likud are increasingly analogous to what happened to the cigarette industry.
Martin Kramer Haaretz's Aluf Benn thought he had an 'exclusive' on Thursday with a map of the Olmert proposal to Abbas (here: http://3.ly/g6J). The wire services all picked this up as 'news.' In fact, the Foundation for Middle East Peace put precisely this map on its website over a year ago. See it at the link. Also, here is the sup...posed deal on Jerusalem—a map Haaretz didn't run: http://3.ly/4gpd.
www.flickr.com
Map for the Foundation for Middle East Peace by Jan de Jong.
Martin Kramer In this television report, Richard Landes, Gil Troy, Itamar Marcus, Yehuda Bauer and others explain the how stigmatizing Israel is related to anti-Semitism. Thanks to Richard for invoking my 'Ivory Towers on Sand' here.
www.jewishtvnetwork.com
Experts discuss issues raised during an anti-Semitism conference meeting in Israel this week.
Martin Kramer Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas PM, on Monday: "Hamas will not be satisfied with the liberation of Gaza! Hamas will not establish an emirate or state or independent entity in Gaza. Hamas looks toward Palestine! All Palestine! The liberation of Gaza is only a step on the road to the complete and total liberation of all Palestine,... with the help of God Almighty" (at minute 1:40).
www.youtube.com
نحن لا نقيم دوله فى غزه ولا إماره ..بل نتطلع الى تحرير كل فلسطي
Martin Kramer Bernard Lewis in dialogue with Itamar Rabinovich on 'The Middle East and Middle Eastern Studies', Tel Aviv University on January 3. Full details at the link. I plan to be there.
www.dayan.org
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