Best Friends?

An e-mail exchange between a Washington and Jerusalem-based reporter takes stock of the changing relationship between the U.S. and Israel. “James Risen, a Washington-based writer, and Yossi Klein Halevi, a Jerusalem-based writer, have been friends since they both crashed the Nazi Party headquarters in Chicago as student reporters 30 years ago. They have been joking and arguing about news and politics ever since, especially when it comes to Israel and the Middle East. This e-mail exchange began in the shadow of the dispute between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. It became obvious that Washington and Jerusalem were experiencing a failure to communicate, and so Risen and Halevi thought it might be valuable to lay out what Americans and Israelis are saying about each other—but not to each other.”