The Prophet

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Chillax

By Rob Eshman

Every day, more like every hour of every day, I get e-mails, letters and phone calls crying out that Israel faces dire threat, if not certain doom.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Neda Square

By Rob Eshman

Everybody with a cause, everybody angry at a country eventually ends up in front of the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard at Veteran Avenue, waving a poster at passing cars, hoping for a honk. It may not be the most effective form of activism, but at least it tries to reach Angelenos where we live: in our cars.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Thanks, Chief

By Rob Eshman

The way I see it, after a sheriff rides into town, cleans the place up, then rides off into the sunset — those townspeople better be out in the center of Main Street, waving goodbye and choking back tears.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Higher Learning

By Rob Eshman

My friend Norma came up to me at the celebration following my daughter’s bat mitzvah and said, “Do you know how special this is?”

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Who Killed the Biodiesel Car? [VIDEO]

By Rob Eshman

This past summer, the last two Westside gas stations offering 99 percent pure biodiesel closed down their pumps. You can still buy regular gasoline at those stations, but the Great Green Hope of the Millenium, a powerful fuel made from sustainable organic matter, is nowhere to be found. Well, not quite.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Loving Luntz

By Rob Eshman

I have tried to hate Frank Luntz, but I can’t. Luntz is the Republican-aligned pollster and wordsmith who devised the Contract with America that thrust Newt Gingrich into power. He renamed the estate tax the “death tax” and sealed its doom in public opinion.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Give J a Chance

The people trying to discredit J Street, the new left-leaning pro-Israel lobbying group, are using many of the same tactics Barack Obama’s opponents used to try to derail his presidential campaign. I have one question for them: How’d that work out?

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Marking Outrage

By Rob Eshman

A few weeks after Sept. 11, I visited the site of the wreckage with a group of Jewish journalists. The makeshift museum that had sprung up along the perimeter fence — photos, snapshots, handmade “Have You Seen Her?” posters, flowers and toys — was as tragic as anything I’ve ever seen.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Kill Wilhelm

By Rob Eshman

I watched two Holocaust revenge movies this weekend, the first of which left me wondering: How did Quentin Tarantino get inside the mind of every 12-year-old Jewish boy born since 1939? His “Inglourious Basterds” is about a secret team of American Jews sent behind enemy lines during World War II to kill and terrorize Nazis — in other words, it’s what all of us growing up wished “The Dirty Dozen” and “The Great Escape” and “Guns of Navarone” were about. We wanted to be Steve McQueen on his motorcycle, or Anthony Quinn with his plastique explosives. As Nazis blew up around us, we imagined ourselves taking extra delight in knowing we weren’t just winning the war, we were getting even.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

EveryJew

By Rob Eshman

Fern Wallach is my mother-in-law’s sister’s daughter. You’ll want to keep that in mind for this column to make sense.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Free at Last?

By Rob Eshman

I’m no different than most Jews — I enjoy a good Kiddush.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Beautiful Souls

By Rob Eshman

Not long before he became Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, historian Michael Oren wrote an essay in Commentary magazine on the “seven existential threats” his country faces.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Divest Now

By Rob Eshman

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Active Memory

By Rob Eshman

Fifteen years ago this week, a bomb ripped into the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) building, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and wounding more than 250.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Sedentary

By Rob Eshman

You know how every deli has its table of regulars, the same aging Jewish men who tell the same jokes, kvetch over the same aches and pains, order the same turkey sandwiches (dry) and complain about how the world is going to pot?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

One Day

By Rob Eshman

I have seen the Jewish future — it’s loud, and hypnotic, and it reeks of pot.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Education of Roger Cohen

By Rob Eshman

Some of the most moving and fearless reporting out of Iran this past week has flowed from the pen of New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. Cohen was with anti-Ahmadinejad protesters as riot police chased them with electric batons and tear gas into a small hiding place.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Three Speeches

By Rob Eshman

OK, let’s tally up the historic Middle East speeches this month. First, there was President Barack Obama’s June 4 address at Cairo University, where he charted a new course for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Iran First

By Rob Eshman

I’ve had six different conversations over the past two weeks with the leaders of six different pro-Israel groups, few of whom get along particularly well and none of whom work closely together.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Runaway

By Rob Eshman

All great literature, and most good Disney movies, begin with a missing parent. And so “The Happy Life of Martin Manrique” begins with these words:

Monday, April 27, 2009

The Good Doctor

By Rob Eshman

I first heard about Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish when everyone else did. As he was being interviewed live, in Hebrew, on Israeli television describing the conditions inside Gaza in the midst of the last war, the news came in that an Israeli tank shell had landed on his home and killed his three daughters. It happened at 3:05 p.m. on Jan. 16, 2009.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Smarty Pants

By Rob Eshman

So I woke up Saturday morning to discover I was brilliant. That’s what the Los Angeles Times reported, right there on the front page of the paper, Column One, Section A.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

‘My Name is Joseph Neustadt’

By Rob Eshman

When I finally spoke with Joseph Neustadt by phone, I told him how nice it had been to see him a few weeks ago in person.

“We’ve never met,” he said.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

American Idols

By Rob Eshman

Last Saturday night, I was at the Honda Center in Anaheim watching Billy Joel in concert. He was banging about the piano, singing his heart out, doing all those great songs about being young and horny and streetwise back in the old Italian neighborhood.