In an extraordinary and unexpected twist to the Eitingon family saga, Israeli historians Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez recently unearthed the heretofore-unknown relationship between Max Eitingon and his "secret" son-in-law, leading Soviet nuclear physicist Yuli Khariton, who was known to some as a Soviet J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Writing in the Independent, Avi Shlaim, author of Israel and Palestine, argues that Barack Obama must stand up to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Nayanyahu, not only to save the fragile stability of the Middle East, but to protect the interests of the United States, and his own credibility as leader of the free world.
Shlaim describes Netanyahu's government as the most "aggressively right-wing, diplomatically intransigent, and overtly racist" in Israel's history, and Netanyahu himself as "a bellicose, right-wing Israeli nationalist, a rejectionist on the subject of Palestinian national rights, and a reactionary who is deeply wedded to the status quo."
In a recent contribution to the Notre Dame Philosophical Review, Martin Jay reflected on Towards a New Manifesto, the lengthy exchange between Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, which Verso published last fall. The dialogue, which went on for several days in the mid 1950s and was initially transcribed by Adorno's wife Gretel, today stands as a fascinating document that touches on a wide range of issues central to Adorno and Horkheimer and to the broader trajectory of critical theory. As Jay notes in his review, the publication of this exchange offers rare insight into the thought processes of these two leading members of the Frankfurt School, veering from the highly abstract to the urgently concrete, and registering the live intellectual development of some of the ideas whose later evolution ended up being so decisive for the course of critical social, political and philosophical thought in the second half of the 20th century.