Jeffrey Goldberg

The heretofore-obscure American Studies Association, which recently voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions, quite obviously lives in a sealed room of its own manufacture.

Its leadership appears a bit shell-shocked that its vote to oppose the free exchange of ideas (because that is what an academic boycott accomplishes) wasn't hailed across academia. Quite the opposite, in fact: University presidents have announced their opposition by the dozens. The American Association of University Professors has lambasted the group. And in an obviously unintended consequence, a number of universities have quit the ASA in protest.

And the winner of the annual “Most Convoluted Conspiracy Theory to Emerge from the Egyptian Fever Swamp” prize is the writer Amr Ammar, who alleged earlier this month on Tahrir TV that talk-show host Jon Stewart, working in tandem with former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, is asserting dominion over Egypt on behalf of the Jews. Or something like that -- the nature of Egyptian conspiracy theories (a subject that has interested me for a long time) is such that they are often not explicable, even on their own terms.

This particularly ripe theory has its roots in a visit earlier this year to Cairo by Stewart, who made an appearance on the satirist Bassem Youssef’s show. (Stewart has been famously supportive of Youssef, who is loathed in Cairo by the type of people whose loathing a satirist would seek.) On Youssef’s show, Stewart joked that, while on a temporary hiatus from his own show, he had become somewhat aimless. “As you know, my people like to wander the desert,” he said. “It’s been two weeks. I’ve got 50 weeks and 38 years left.” This was an historic moment -- an inside Jewish joke (of the non-anti-Semitic variety) made before a live Egyptian studio audience, which laughed, at least a little.

Gun-control advocates both gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands last weekend -- a year after the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre -- over their inability to advance their movement’s agenda. Newtown, in the view of many people (including those who know better) should have been the incident that finally catalyzed revolutionary change.

What explains the apparent helplessness of the gun-control movement? Here are a few possible explanations:

(Corrects number of boycotts in ninth paragraph.)

In the matter of the American Studies Association's just-ratified boycott of Israeli academic institutions, one must be thankful that the organization’s president, Curtis Marez, is something of a dolt. What did Marez -- an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California at San Diego -- do to earn this designation? He failed to challenge the allegation that he was leading an effort to scapegoat Jews. Savvier scapegoaters know how indispensably important it is to deny singling out the world’s one Jewish country for discriminatory treatment simply because it is Jewish. When asked “Why Israel?” they are ready with an answer: “Because Israel is a uniquely evil country.”

Cecil B. DeMille still has me half-convinced that Moses was a strappingly handsome man of pronounced Anglo-Saxon appearance. Growing up, I watched “The Ten Commandments” every Passover, and the charismatic Charlton Heston has a way of imprinting himself permanently on a child’s mind. So I am half-sympathetic to Megyn Kelly, the Fox News anchor who earlier this week said, during an on-air debate about depictions of Santa Claus (because there’s nothing else going on in the world, apparently), that “Jesus was a white man.” She went on to say, “He’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa. I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?”

Kelly is uncomfortable with change, which is fine. Discomfort with change is one of the themes of Fox News. It is possible to argue that Kelly wants to impose her own vision of Jesus on a multicultural U.S., and this is troubling. But it doesn’t seem to be too terrible a crime for a person to embrace a specific understanding of the physical appearance of Jesus.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a passionately pro-Israel speech this past weekend at the Saban Forum in Washington. On matters concerning Israel’s security, its international legitimacy and its demographic future, he showed himself to be a true friend. There are people in Israel -- there were people at the Willard Hotel, where Kerry gave the speech, in fact -- who did not consider this speech pro-Israel, but they are deluding themselves.

Kerry proved a couple of things. First, while he is more than capable of loose-cannoning his way across the Middle East, and while he is on occasion alarmingly optimistic about a range of issues that don't warrant optimism, he is also committed, in a bone-deep way, to Israel’s well-being. He is an exemplar of a slowly vanishing type of Democratic Party leader, someone with great, and uncomplicated, affection for the promise of Zionism.

In a speech this weekend, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stated that his country has no partner for peace. “As someone who supported (the) Oslo (peace process), I’m learning that on the other side we have no partner for two states for two people. There is no one on the other side,” he said, according to the Jerusalem Post. The implication of this statement is obvious: No partner means no need for compromise.

Ya’alon’s assertion runs counter to his own government’s policy, articulated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is that the Palestinian Authority, under President Mahmoud Abbas, is a legitimate partner for peace talks.

Here, as promised, are my reasons to feel positive about the (still unimplemented) interim nuclear deal between the Great Powers and Iran:

Just kidding. Sort of. While I believe that Iran has so far generally outsmarted, and outplayed, the West (and I include Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel as one of those countries that has been outplayed), and while I think that Iran is perilously close to crossing the nuclear threshold, I also think that the interim agreement could make the world a provisionally safer place. To do so, it will have to serve as a path to a final agreement that includes dismantling key elements of the nuclear program, a rollback that would put the country years -- rather than weeks or months -- away from producing the bomb, should its leaders decide that they definitively want one.

The interim nuclear agreement between the Great Powers (such as they are) and Iran is creating a lot of anxiety for people who support the deal, because not much proof has been offered to suggest that it will actually work. And by “not much proof,” I mean, “no proof.”

Why support it, then? Because, so far, the remote possibility that this agreement will lead to the denuclearization of Iran beats the alternative: military action by the U.S. or, worse, by Israel. All options should be on the table, but, really, the military option could be disastrous.

In an interview with Charles Gati in Politico Magazine, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, proves once again that he is a man of profound religious faith. He worships at the Church of Linkage, which holds that Israel's settlement policy on the West Bank is the primary cause of Middle East instability and a principal cause -- if not the main cause -- of the U.S.’s troubles in the Muslim world.

Before I go on, the usual caveats: The settlement project -- especially those settlements far from Jerusalem that have been planted in the middle of thickly populated Palestinian areas -- is a strategic and moral disaster for Israel. The settlements should be dismantled. They threaten Israel’s standing in the world; they threaten to undermine the very nature and purpose of Israel. And so on. I’ve written before about the threat that settlements pose, at great length.