Barenboim, Oz make top 100 list in 'Foreign Policy'

3 Israelis listed among Foreign Policy, Prospect's top 100 most influential intellectuals.

By AMIR MIZROCH
DANIEL BARENBOIM 88 224 (photo credit: AP)
DANIEL BARENBOIM 88 224
(photo credit: AP)
Three Israelis have been listed among the top 100 most influential public intellectuals compiled by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. The Foreign Policy/Prospect list of top public intellectuals aims to "reveal the thinkers who are shaping the tenor of our time." The three Israelis named are pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, psychologist Daniel Kahneman and author Amos Oz. The magazines cited Barenboim as an outspoken critic of Israeli policies in the territories. Barenboim is "conductor for life" at the Berlin State Opera and a multiple-Grammy winner. Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman was cited for his work on "prospect theory." Kahneman is senior scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Eugene Higgins professor of psychology emeritus at Princeton. He co-wrote "Why Hawks Win" in the January/February 2007 issue of FP, which was selected for publication in The Best American Political Writing 2007. Novelist Amos Oz, a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University, was among the first to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He co-founded Peace Now in 1978. His most recent nonfiction book is How to Cure a Fanatic. Others on the list include: Pope Benedict, linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, biologist Richard Dawkins, Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, French essayist Alain Finkielkraut, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, climate change crusader Al Gore, Clash of Civilizations author Samuel Huntington, democracy activist and chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, Egypt's Amr Khaled, a Muslim televangelist, Middle East historian Bernard Lewis, Palestinian diplomat Sari Nusseibeh and novelist Salman Rushdie. The list is included in the latest issue of the influential magazine, whose cover story is entitled "The Israel Myth." The story, written by Gershon Gorenberg, argues that "six decades after its founding, the Jewish state is neither as vulnerable as its supporters claim nor as callous and calculating as its critics imagine. But if it is to continue defying all expectations, Israel must first confront its own mythology."