My recent interview with NYT columnist Roger Cohen appears in this week’s Jewish Chronicle.

Jewish journalists have spent a good part of this year criticizing Cohen’s articles on Iran and Israel.

Cohen believes that the widely-held view of Iran as a pariah state, ready to launch a nuclear missile at Israel the first chance it gets, is mistaken. He also regularly lays blame for the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Israel’s door.

Though I had plenty of space for the interview, there was still much that had to be left out. Among those edited comments, he told me:

I don’t buy the view that the Israelis just want peace and we just don’t have an interlocutor. I think there’s plenty of blame to go around and I don’t see reasonable Israel on one side and unreasonable Palestinians on the other.

I think there’s been a tremendous daily humiliation of the Palestinians from the Israeli side and there’s been the absolute prioritization of security over any risk for peace.

And on Iran:

I don’t believe in the victory of the West and Liberalism over political Islam. I don’t think political Islam is going to disappear. I think one reason Iran is so important is they have lived [inaud] for 30 years and they are not dreaming of a Caliphate in Iran. They are not dreaming of what the Al Qaeda cronies are dreaming of. They know it is give and take. It’s compromise. That’s the reality of the Middle East.

You can read the interview here.

My other story this week is a juicy tale concerning the unexpected resignation of a leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi from a powerful US organization called Eternal Jewish Family. It seems that posters have been popping up around Jerusalem threatening Rabbi Leib Tropper to step down from the group he founded or have “his disgrace” revealed. You can read my story here. The more salacious version doing the blog rounds can be found here.

Finally, I will be taking part in a panel discussion about Jewish Heroes at the 92Y Tribeca on Saturday evening. I’d love to see you there.