Martin Kramer
Martin Kramer is an authority on the modern Middle East. He holds research fellowships in Jerusalem, Cambridge, and Washington, and is author of the weblog Sandbox and co-convener of Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH). Updates daily.
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View Martin Kramer's curriculum vitae, with links to all his on-line books, articles, and lectures.

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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

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Events

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Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer Another quirky report of my Columbia lecture. It’s a bit like reading students’ exam papers. There’s always something arbitrary (and thus surprising) about what gets through and what doesn’t. So “velvet glove” becomes “white glove,“ Obama’s dithering is turned into “dithering praise” of him by others, Columbia is said to have its own Middle East policy, etc. Still, you get the idea.

Source: bwog.net
As a decorated hero in the world of academic politiking, Professor Martin Kramer was expected to lambaste Columbia’s approach to Middle Eastern policy.
Carl Prine
Carl Prine
I kind of like the phrase "dithering praise." Sounds like something Pope would've written, rhymed perhaps with "Devil's Haze" or something like that in a couplet kvetching about British foreign policy.

Regardless, it should seem like a student's exam because the blog is written by an undergrad (I believe) on behalf of the campus paper.
Wed at 11:01am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer A rough-and-ready summary of my appearance last night at Columbia. My thesis, a bit muddled here, is that Obama’s Middle East policy is plagued by a contradiction. The administration undercuts its own ambitious agenda, by its own ambivalence about US dominance. (Obama: “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.”) If the Mideast thinks US power is waning, no one will comply. And they haven’t.

Source: www.columbiaspectator.com
Martin Kramer may not know how to fix the Middle East, but he knows how not to do it.
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer The Shalem Center recently published a new and complete Hebrew translation of Hobbes’s Leviathan. It’s the subject of this roundtable, whose participants consider the significance of Hobbes in Israel and the significance of Hebraism in Hobbes.

Source: roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com
What a first full translation of "Leviathan" says about the current concerns of political thought.
Donna Robinson Divine
Donna Robinson Divine
I always bring in the Hebrew and English text of Job when I teach the Leviathan to my Smith students. I try to show them how Hobbes was trying to write his own Bible of political science in the text.
November 17 at 10:30am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer “David Newman [Ben-Gurion U] said the monitoring groups hoped to redirect donations to right-wing academic institutions and think tanks, such as the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem.” First, Shalem is not “right-wing” by any present Israeli standard. Second, I don’t know of any “redirected” donations that have come our way, or any effort by any “monitoring group” to send donors our way. Newman must have made it up.

Source: www.thenational.ae
Right-wing groups want to create a climate of fear among left-wing scholars at Israeli universities by emulating the “witch-hunt” tactics found in the US, Israeli professors claim.
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
Of course he made it up.
November 15 at 9:33pm
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
Ask me about the Marxist inversion of the McCarthyite hollow and distorted fantasy. I worked with R.N.Sanford who was forced out of UC Berkeley after his truly principled refusal to not be bullied by a true Right Wing " McCarthyite ( in its proper usage) "Loyalty Oath" in 1950.
Cook, are you SO desperate for money that you grovel and lie and bow before the Emirates' "Royalty?" Shameful deceit and revisionist-as-you-go "scholarship." Shame on you, anti-Semitic mercenary.
November 15 at 9:42pm
Christopher Wilken
Christopher Wilken
It sounds like the author is telling us to be very wary of these powerful Jewish organizations and the threat they pose... The stories may change slightly, but the themes never do.
November 16 at 6:33am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer I take some small share of credit for blocking the appointment of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council. Read this recent speech by him, just to see how deep the pathology still runs. Israeli actions caused 9/11, which led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “There is nothing at all ambiguous or unclear” about it, it’s “obvious.” What a subtle mind.

Source: www.mepc.org
"The 9/11 assault on the United States was carried out by Muslim extremists motivated in large measure by their resentment of U.S. support for Israel and its actions.”
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
You have helped save a lot of lives and misery. Kol ha'Kavod. 'Pathological' used in its intended clinical context,also.
November 14 at 11:31am
Elly
Elly
There is still a whole lot going on regarding 9/11.
Recently I received an invitation from the Danish www.i11time.dk to tell about: 2 flights, 3 towers. Still no answer. Building 7, the unexplained collaps and 28 more questions in relation to 9/11. Connected with www911.thruth.org.
Read also : MUJCA-NET is a group of scholars, religious leaders ... Read Moreand activists dedicated to uniting members of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths in pursuit of 9/11 truth. We choose to respond grounded in love rather than fear and will not be indifferent to those who have suffered from policies based on unlikely explanations of 9/11.
November 14 at 12:46pm
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer You'll need a Columbia ID to attend.

Columbia University International Relations Forum (CUIRF)
Location:Roone Arledge Lerner Cinema, Columbia University
Time:8:00PM Monday, November 16th
Gary Katz
November 13 at 12:53pm
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
Well, how did it go????
November 17 at 4:50am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer Walter Russell Mead has the bug: “The core problem we face is that the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with some minor modifications leaves too many Palestinians out in the cold.” There’s no more land to divvy, “so what else can we put on the table? Inevitably the answers come down to two things: dignity and money.” Tell me, how do you dignify total defeat? And money? Send it straight to Zurich.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com
With the Palestinian leadership threatening to walk, Walter Russell Mead breaks down the president’s mistakes—and how we can get the peace process going again.
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer Please circulate and share.

Source: philanthropy.com
"The Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research and educational institution, seeks an experienced Major Gifts Executive to direct our North American fundraising efforts to establish Shalem College, the first liberal arts college in Israel."
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer The “one-state solution” fringe cult has a headache in Hussein Ibish. He’s written a book (http://3.ly/3gj) demolishing the analogy with South Africa and the reality-deprived fantasy of a utopian single state. Now on his blog, Ibish delivers a punch to Ali Abunimah, who’s made a cottage industry out of “one state” and who was last seen being ejected for disorderly conduct from Ehud Olmert’s speech at U of Chicago.

Source: www.ibishblog.com
“I can see no other way of arriving at a one-state outcome than decades, and possibly longer, of brutal armed struggle that is increasingly fanatical and increasingly religious.”
Jonathan Usher
Jonathan Usher
The one state should be an expanded Jordan with Israel and Jordan dividing the West Bank between them. Jordan is already an Arab "Palestinian?" state as the majority of their subjects call themselves "Palestinians".
November 11 at 8:42pm
Michael Kochin
Michael Kochin
Today we have a three state situation (Israel, Gaza, Jordan). This situation is preferred by all regional parties to the visible alternatives.
November 12 at 12:08am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer A line suited to a character in Alice in Wonderland: “Just as the perfect can be the enemy of the good, so the good can be the enemy of the real, which is the key to the possible.” And this: “Some will deduce from this that little can be done. It is a conclusion that betrays a lack of imagination.” Are you an enemy of the real or a friend of the imagined? Beware, you have entered... the Peace Process Zone.

Source: www.nybooks.com
"There must be a better way than the flailing and failing to which all have become inured."
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
A new dimension, beyond the grasp of sane people.
November 12 at 3:09pm
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer Does Robert Malley have a clue? Now he wants to create “a sense of novelty” in the peace process by... wait for it... appealing to the Palestinian refugees! It’s necessary to “find a way to show that whatever solution you're pursuing takes into account the world view, the histories, and the concerns and the aspirations of the diaspora.” The jeep is stuck in the mud, and Malley’s solution is to double the load.

Source: www.cfr.org
Veteran Middle East expert Robert Malley, who served as special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs for President Bill Clinton, says it is time to "rethink" negotiations that have failed to produce a solution between Palestinians and Israelis.
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
How did such intelligent people get so DUMB on this one issue???
November 9 at 12:57pm
Christopher Wilken
Christopher Wilken
"The jeep is stuck in the mud, and Malley’s solution is to double the load." That's a very good way to put it. Diaspora, which diaspora? Somehow I don't think he means both.
November 9 at 2:03pm
Jonathan Usher
Jonathan Usher
All the intelligent people are dumb on this issue. I'm not intelligent so my solution, that Israel and Jordan divide up the West Bank, before the Islamist Hamas gets control of it, is the only smart answer. Jordan is already a "Palestiniian" state. The King of Jordan just must ensure that they are not destabilized by owning a large piece of the West Bank and its crazy population.
November 9 at 2:42pm
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer Tunku Varadarajan: “President Obama asked us not to jump to conclusions. To many Americans, this was a grating request, of a piece with the political correctness that was responsible for the hands-off treatment by the Army of Maj. Hasan. How else could he have been left in the position of treating US troops, given the stories we've now heard about his incendiary statements and apparent incompetence?”

Source: www.forbes.com
"We don't have to be paranoid about Arab males; we just have to avoid the opposite: Being fearful of coming across as Islamophobic, and thereby failing to look straight at a situation."
Jonathan Usher
Jonathan Usher
We should never jump to conclusions. We don't need a philo-islamist like Obama to tell us that. However when the facts are known we should act on them reasonably and realistically. To even suggest that this has nothing at all to do with Islam is even crazier than Maj. Hasan.
November 9 at 2:29pm
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer Ralph Peters at his finest. Asked whether the Fort Hood shooter was a disturbed individual who snapped or an Islamist terrorist, Peters made this retort: "I don’t think there is any contradiction. Terrorists are not by nature happy campers, suicide bombers aren’t necessarily from the middle of the Bell Curve."

Source: www.youtube.com
“What happened yesterday at Fort Hood is the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.... I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient for Washington to face the facts.”
Carl Prine
Carl Prine
I'm not disputing Pipes' larger complaint about reporters and their inability to come to terms with Salafi terror. Rather, I would caution that the facts so far compiled would truncate the timeline of MAJ Hasan's reported radicalization.

Bear in mind that this was a man who enlisted in the infantry reserves shortly after the Gulf War, then went to AMEDD basic out of medical school (which made him an officer). That's not exactly the SOP for junior jihadists spouting a fatwa from an Egyptian firebrand.

Something happened to change him, and it happened relatively recently (within, say, the last two years). Apparently, his commanders at AMEDD didn't feel that he was a threat to patients or others because they promoted him in May and marked him for deployment overseas.... Read More

The hedgehoggish sort of worldview that would force MAJ Hasan into a paradigm apparently shared by global jihadists doesn't interest me and, I suspect, it also doesn't thrill Professor Kramer.

As a fox, I like to compile little things to see how they scab into some version of a reality. I can't dismiss those at his Killeen mosque who said that he didn't seem a radical, or his commander at Ft Hood who didn't notice any of this behavior, or his own officer records.

This isn't to suggest that he's not the latest iteration of SGT Hasan Akbar, only that we need to know more because such knowledge likely will help us understand motivations of similar young men in the future.
November 9 at 11:41am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer
Sob-to-the-judge strategy: "The Arab-Israeli conflict may shift from the battlefield to international organisations and courts. Israel may be forced to recognise fundamental Palestinian political aspirations, and even the right of return eventually, by order of the international community." Is that pathetic? Arab state...s have dropped out, Israel has whipped the "resistance" (three times since 2002), so the Pals will bank on... the Goldstones?Read More

Source: english.aljazeera.net
Expert says state's influence upon public opinion has not grown with its military power.
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
We're ON this!!!
November 4 at 9:11pm
Gary Katz
Gary Katz
On the clinical/mass psychological level, even the internalized lies can be neutralized, but counter-psychological warfare and psy ops MUST be mobilized and utilized. Even Freud finally acknowledged this as he waited and, therefore, BARELY escaped the Nazis.
November 4 at 9:26pm
Isaac
Isaac
Asaad Aboukhalil is the jerk whose blog "the angry arab" is full of BS, always ranting about israel, the us, arab givernments but hey, he prefer life in the US.
November 5 at 4:52am
Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer
"An international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam." And Sheikh Qaradawi as adviser! Life imitates art! The late Richard Grenier wrote a hilarious novel, "The Marrakesh One-Two" (1983), about a gaffe-filled, intrigue-ridden attempt to make a biopic... on Muhammad ("The Second Greatest Story Ever Told"?) It will leave you in stitches.Read More

Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Barrie Osborne, part of the Oscar-winning team behind the Lord of the Rings films, says the new production 'will educate people about the true meaning of Islam'. In accordance with Islamic law, the prophet will not actually be depicted on screen.
Arun Kapil
Arun Kapil
Thanks for the tip on Marrakesh One-Two. Will look for it.
November 4 at 10:21am