When politicians speak, we ought to listen — but we must listen attentively, critically, and with the understanding that their language is designed to mask the truth rather than reveal it. I am beginning to realize that listening to a politician’s speech is probably as much of an art as speaking like one. Neither of these is my…
As I continue a close reading of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress, I am learning to appreciate just how relevant George Orwell is for our understanding of contemporary politics. In this post, I will draw upon Orwell’s work once again in order to explain what Netanyahu really means when he uses words like “peace,”…
In my previous post, I commented on Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated use of the word “friend” during his speech to the US Congress. I tried to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion in order to reveal what is really going on when he says something like “Israel has no better friend than America, and America has no better friend than…