Birthday Month Roundup

It's February, which is Black History Month, or as it's better known around some parts, "Why Isn't There a White History Month" Month. It's also my birthday month! To celebrate the august occasion, here's a roundup!

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The Biden administration announces sanctions against named Israelis implicated in radical settler violence. And while it starts with four people, it lays the foundation for much more sweeping action. People say Tom Friedman is the Biden administration's external "whisper", but maybe he's listening to me?

Speaking of Friedman, I'd love it if his proposed "Biden doctrine" became a reality. It might be wishcasting, but then, it might not (see, e.g., the above entry).

A very interesting conversation between Joshua Leifer and some Israeli leftists, including Standing Together's Sally Abed (and credit where it's due on the hat tip). I particularly appreciate Abed completing a circle that often is left unconnected: "Palestinian liberation necessitates Jewish safety, and vice versa. And I say it to both sides. You’re pro-Israel? You need to liberate Palestinians. You’re pro-Palestinian? You need to talk about Jewish safety." As another conversant observed, it's very obvious "that Hamas went for everyone—that they weren’t just trying to kill Jews," and that acknowledgment is part of -- not a distraction from -- their calls for a ceasefire.

And speaking of Standing Together, the BDS movement is currently targeting them for a boycott as a "normalizing" op. For the most part, this smacks of jealousy -- Standing Together has been getting a bunch of good press as the first significant Israeli organization actively calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (while also stressing the importance of returning Israeli hostages), and if there's one thing BDS activists cannot abide, it's the notion that Israelis are valid contributors to the creation of a just future for Israelis and Palestinians. In my endless search for silver linings, however, I will say that probably the fastest way for Standing Together to gain credibility with more centrist-y Israeli and diaspora Jews is to be publicly hated by BDS. Great heroes need great villains, after all.

I'm on the record as supporting the right and utility of judges offering their extra-legal "moral" opinion on issues that come before them, so long as this opinion does not displace the formal legal analysis. Opinions like, say, Justice Stewart's in Griswold, which both characterized Connecticut's anti-contraception law as "uncommonly silly" (a moral judgment) while nonetheless concluding it was constitutionally permitted (a legal judgment) are valuable contributors to public conversation. On that note, Judge Jeffrey White's just-released opinion dismissing on political question grounds a claim that the Biden administration's support for Israel is violating its duties under the Genocide Convention (a ruling which is I think indisputably correct on the law), while also making evident his personal sympathy with the plaintiff's substantive arguments, is -- regardless of whether one agrees with said moral judgment -- exactly how opinions like this should go. Some judges on the Northern District of Texas would do well to take notes. (For what it's worth, Judge White is a George W. Bush appointee and now a senior judge in the Northern District of California).

Oregon Republicans in the state legislature have a tendency of just refusing to show up to work to sabotage our state's legislative agenda. Oregon voters got tired of it and passed a constitutional amendment barring legislators from running for reelection if they miss too many session. Oregon Republicans kept doing it. And now those Oregon Republicans are barred from running for reelection.

MESA Objects to the Most Milquetoast Possible Manner of Addressing Member's Conspiracy-Mongering

Shortly after the attempted assassination of Salmon Rushdie, a Denver University professor went on a podcast to opine on the assailant's possible motivations. The professor, Nader Hashemi, suggested that it was "more likely" that the attacker was duped into his conduct by the Mossad as a backdoor means of scuttling nascent talks to reenter the Iran deal. This unfounded conspiratorial assertion was, in turn, roundly blasted by the Jewish community.

Of course, it is the case that members of an academic community have the right to forward unfounded conspiratorial assertions. Perhaps cognizant of that right, Denver University issued an extremely mild and tepid response to the controversy. Here's what they wrote:

Professor Hashemi spoke as an individual faculty member and does not speak for the university. While we wholeheartedly respect academic freedom and freedom of speech, his comments do not reflect the point of view of the university, nor are we aware of any facts that support his view. The safety of every speaker and every student on our campus, and all campuses, is critical to our society. We condemn the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. And it goes without saying that we remain committed to assuring that the experience of our Jewish students, faculty and staff is safe, supportive, respectful and welcoming.

One cannot get more milquetoast than that. That's not necessarily a criticism -- there are, again, academic freedom concerns in play here that militate against a more robust response. In any event, all this statement does is (a) affirm Hashemi didn't speak for the university (true), (b) he has academic freedom (true), (c) there is no factual foundation to his unsupported musing about Mossad involvement (true), (d) the stabbing of Rushdie is bad (true), and they are committed to maintaining a respectful, supportive, welcoming, and safe experience for Jewish students on campus (hopefully true). That is utterly unremarkable.

It was also far too much for the Middle Eastern Studies Association, which wrote a seven paragraph letter to the President of the University demanding the statement be retracted and an apology rendered to Prof. Hashemi.

What's especially stunning about the MESA letter is it seems to admit that Hashemi's "speculations" are entirely foundationless and lacking in evidence, yet takes that fact as an argument for why Hashemi should be immune from even the most tepid of critical response. The scenarios Prof. Hashemi spun out, the letter concedes, "were all obviously entirely speculative, as to our knowledge no evidence has thus far emerged about the attacker’s motivation or connections." But precisely because Hashemi's arguments were pure unfounded speculation, the university should not have "publicly distanced itself from one of its own faculty members for having engaged in legitimate speculation about the politics surrounding the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie."

It's not actually the case that no evidence has emerged about the attacker's motivations -- putting aside the fact that Iran had put a hit out on Rushdie, the attacker had made social media posts sympathetic to Iran's Revolutionary Guard and reportedly had a fake driver's license featuring the name of an Iran-backed Hezbollah commander -- but the argument is staggering on its own terms: "Hashemi knew absolutely nothing, so any wild speculations he might have engaged in are therefore legitimate." Mossad did it -- legitimate. George Soros did it -- legitimate. Antifa did it -- legitimate. Lizard people did it -- legitimate. A secret underground network of American Mosques plotted simultaneously to help do it -- legitimate. It's speculation! Who can say what's true or not?

To state this is to refute it. And of course, it is fanciful to think that these other "speculations" would be treated so sanguinely by MESA. The reason why utterly unfounded speculations about the Mossad is considered fair game, while utterly unfounded speculations about, say, antifa is not, is because for some Israel is at least on the suspect list for any evil that occurs in the world until proven otherwise. This is why lack of evidence makes it legitimate to "speculate" about Israel's involvement. No matter how seemingly distant or fanciful, Israel is always guilty till proven innocent. In a world where we know nothing, Israel is responsible for everything.

On that note, MESA is clearly most upset that the university statement even gestured sideways at the prospect of antisemitism by committing to provide a supportive environment for Jewish students, since antisemitism allegations "as we know all too well have not infrequently been weaponized by organizations and media outlets seeking to suppress the expression of opinions with which they disagree" (paging JILV!). Even the indirect promise of supporting Jews served to "validate the attacks to which Professor Hashemi has been subjected while also compromising his academic freedom."

On the latter part: the attacks do not compromise Prof. Hashemi's academic freedom, because Prof. Hashemi has no academic freedom entitlement to be free of criticism -- including criticism that contains the dreaded "antisemitism" allegation -- for engaging in completely unfounded conspiratorial allegations about the Mossad. On the former, MESA's statement fails because there is nothing wrong with "validating" the notion that completely unfounded "speculation" about the Mossad being behind unrelated acts of evil in the world is potentially antisemitic. It's antisemitic for the same reason "the Mossad was behind 9/11" is antisemitic, and I defy MESA to offer a principle that distinguishes the former from the latter. Even the JDA suggests that "grossly exaggerating [Israel's] actual influence can be a coded way of racializing and stigmatizing Jews" -- surely, a clause which encompasses screeching "it's a Mossad plot!" any time something bad happens in the world.

Ultimately, one can criticize the Denver University statement for being too mild, or you can think it struck the right tone in recognizing Prof. Hashemi's academic freedom while appropriately distancing the university from his ramblings and promising to support those hurt by them. MESA's argument that the statement goes too far is absurd on its face, and speaks to the profound lack of seriousness with which that organization takes matters of antisemitism and Jewish equity.

The Abraham Accords and The Prospects of Israeli/Palestinian Peace

I am a booster of the Abraham Accords. I consider them an unadulterated good. In a region of the world that has been beset by tension and conflict, anything that is a step towards collaboration and cooperation is a good thing, and I have no problem saying so.

Some have suggested that the Abraham Accords makes an Israeli/Palestinian peace accord less likely, and oppose them on that basis (or purportedly on that basis). I am not sure whether that's true, but I do think it's worth thinking about how the Abraham Accords interact with a common narrative about the viability of an Israeli/Palestinian peace process -- the idea that an Israeli/Palestinian accord will only come into being if it is attached to a wider regional deal. How do the Abraham Accords affect that narrative?

One way one might think about it is as follows: Israel has, from its founding, labored under a genuine risk of existential destruction that has understandably colored all of its security determinations. The idea that the West Bank (particularly the Jordan Valley) is necessary as a "buffer" in case of attack in an example: something that at face value is an Israeli/Palestinian matter is inextricable from Israel's region-wide security posture. If this is one's view, then the Abraham Accords are a net positive for the prospects of peace insofar as they represent a significant diminishing of existential military threats Israel faces from its neighbors. This, in turn, allows for Israel to relate to the issues of occupation of Palestine qua Palestine, as opposed to re-situating the occupation as part of larger regional security issues (where the existential threats to Israel's safety have, historically speaking, been more salient).

Now to be clear, "diminishing" the existential risks that come from hostile neighboring military powers is not the same as "eliminating" them. Not counting Palestine, two of Israel's four bordering neighbors (Syria and Lebanon) retain a highly belligerent, aggressive posture toward Israel, and that doesn't even get into Iran. Still, there is a marked difference in Israel's existential situation when it was genuinely all alone in the region compared to when it is increasingly aligned with a significant regional bloc. If one has been cynical about or excusing of (choose your favored verbiage) peace prospects because Israel is "surrounded by enemies who want to destroy it", then the breaking of that proverbial (and sometimes not-so-proverbial) siege should be heartening (or take away the excuse).

But there's another line on this that I've sometimes heard. Some people are arguing that the Abraham Accords prove that Israel doesn't need to make peace with Palestine in order to make peace with its neighbors. These people style themselves as responding to hectoring leftists who insisted that if Israel wants to be an integrated member of the Middle East community of nations it would have to resolve the occupation of Palestine first. The target of said hectoring are those members of Israeli society who very much desire the former but have little interest in pursuing the former; the idea is that the former is the leverage necessary to stop foot-dragging on the latter.  But the Abraham Accords falsified the premise, so now these Israelis are celebrating being able to have their cake and eat it too -- they got what they want (regional integration) without ever having to compromise on Palestine at all. For these people, the Abraham Accords are a net negative for the prospects of a peace accord with Palestine; they feel more emboldened that they needn't take a step they do not want to take because a potential cost now appears to have rendered moot.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that, for Israelis who genuinely want a peace deal with Palestinians and an end to the occupation, the Abraham Accords make it easier for them to say "yes"; and for those who at root wish to thwart such a deal, the Abraham Accords make it easier for them to say "no". For those of us on the outside, and particularly those of us who are cheerleaders for the Abraham Accords, it is important that we stress the narrative that bolsters the former framing. In particular, it means starting to lay off some of the well-worn, historically reasonable but perhaps now dated, rhetoric about Israel being "surrounded by enemies". The reason we celebrate the Abraham Accords is precisely that it represents a break from that history; but we cannot return to it at convenience in order to justify more hesitation and foot-dragging on robustly and vigorously supporting an end to the occupation.

Quick Thoughts on the Israel/UAE Deal

As you may have heard, Israel and the UAE have announced a historic agreement to normalize ties, in exchange for which Israel has committed to "suspend" plans to annex the West Bank. My quick thoughts:

• This is a good thing. And it's okay to say it's a good thing! It doesn't make you a Trump supporter to say this is a good thing!
• If you can only take joy in policy announcements these days if they anger someone you hate, be advised that the extreme settler-right in Israel is furious about this -- they view it as Bibi once again Lucy-and-the-footballing them with regard to annexation.
• In all seriousness, this is probably the biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Trump's entire term. Of course, when one zooms out, that means his biggest foreign policy accomplishment is "Israel establishing diplomatic relations with its third Arab neighbor, in exchange for which Israel steps off a ledge Trump put them on." Less impressive.
• The best defense you can give of Trump's approach here, appearing to green-light annexation, is that it was a case of brinkmanship that paid off. Still a hell of a gamble though. When David Friedman says Israel could have annexation or peace, but not both, he's basically admitting his favored policy was one which would have denied Israel peace for generations.
• In "brinkmanship doesn't always pay off", see also Iran, whose increasingly belligerent orientation towards its Arab neighbors has had the effect of drawing them closer to Israel in ways unthinkable in the recent past.
• Will this announcement be an "icebreaker" for other Arab states to follow suit? I've seen Bahrain and Oman cited as candidates. One awkward but probably accurate assessment: It's simultaneously healthy for Israel and its Arab neighbors to develop closer ties and for the U.S. and Israel to have greater critical distance.
• While stopping annexation is an unambiguous good thing, it still leaves in place a status quo where Palestinians are under occupation and lack full democratic and self-determination rights. "Stopping annexation" is not and should not be the be-all-end-all of American support for Palestinian equality.
• Has annexation been stopped? Bibi is saying it is still "on the table". What's that I often hear about leaders who say one thing to their domestic audiences and another to international listeners? (I actually think this is Bibi once again playing the rule of Lucy vis-a-vis the settler-right and putting the football back down, but still).

Trump's Mideast Peace Plan is Going To Be YUGE!

The Trump administration is getting ready to announce its big Mideast Peace Plan. Details are sparse, but we already know a few things which won't be included:

According to the report, the officials said the plan does not have a set of guiding principles.

Alright.

Also, they said, the plan also does not prescribe whether the outcome should be one states or two states, nor does it call a “fair and just solution” for Palestinian refugees.

Hmm.

The White House must now figure out how to present the plan so that it is not immediately rejected by the Palestinians.

I'll bet.

What is Going on at Fresno State?

There's a brewing controversy at Fresno State, where the university has restarted a search for the Edward Said Professorship of Middle East Studies after determining that the current search -- which had already selected a series of finalists -- had various procedural defects in violation of university guidelines (all the finalists were invited to reapply in the new search). An emeritus professor of Linguistics at the university, Vida Samiian, has publicly alleged, however, that this is all a pretext and that the search was canceled due "a documented campaign of harassment and intimidation ... by Israel advocacy groups" seeking to "derail" the search.

That sounds pretty bad. The problem is that, as my friend Steven Lubet has observed, there is virtually no evidence backing up these allegations. The university administration flatly denies having even been contacted by, much less subjected to pressure from, any outside groups. And Ben Sales at JTA interviewed members of the (relatively small) Fresno-area Jewish community had found that nobody there had even heard of the search, much less agitated against it.

The closest thing to actual evidence that Samiian has in her letter is a few instances of relatively anodyne expressions of concern by Jewish faculty members about how the search was progressing. She histrionically labels these "harassment", but they deserve that label only if it expands to encompass "Jews saying words." And again, none of them speak to any sort of campaign or concerted effort by anyone to have the search canceled (there is one stray reference to "outside" concerns about the search, but again, nobody has presented any proof of any such outside pressure manifesting).

Of course, a complete lack of evidence didn't stop JVP from rapidly circulating a letter taking as fact that the search was canceled "in response to pressures from Israel advocacy groups" who "launched a campaign to cancel the search altogether". Abba Eban once famously quipped that "If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions." So too, it seems, that if JVP circulates a letter saying Fresno State was devoured by a hellmouth and Israel had summoned it, it would amass 500 signatures within the week.

Lubet uses this to coin the term "Occam's BDS razor": the simplest explanation, anytime anything on campus doesn't go precisely the way pro-Palestinian advocates would like, is the interference of nefarious pro-Israel lobbying. We can see how that mentality shook out at Fresno both "vertically" and "horizontally". "Vertically", a few offhand remarks that were critical of the search proceedings got elevated to cases of "harassment". And "horizontally", these few remarks were roped together to form the locus of an imagined conspiracy of intimidation against the entire search. The ease at which these jumps are made is itself illustrative of antisemitism in its structural dimension -- even the tiniest shreds of Jewish public or private  discourse immediately metastasize into dark threats of domineering power. Such moves, I have to think, wouldn't fly (or wouldn't fly as easily) were they not so easily slotted into the grooves of antisemitic discourse.

So underneath all of this sound and fury, is there any there, there? It seems supremely unlikely that there was any "pressure" or "campaign" from Israel advocacy groups with respect to this search. But if there is a bare kernel here, I suspect it's something like the following: the administration admits it was too slow to catch onto the procedural shortcomings of the search (lack of approval by a specific department, failure to form the search committee via departmental election, and unauthorized contact and participation by an external member -- likely Samiian). And I doubt that there are many faculty members at Fresno State or anywhere else who care about such things for their own sake. So, it is entirely plausible that the person who alerted the Fresno State administration to these irregularities did so not because of a deep, dispassionate commitment to the faculty handbook, but because of more, shall we say, substantive concerns about how the search was progressing.

One could say, then, that the irregularities were a "pretext", in that nobody would have cared about such procedural failings had the search not been independently controversial. However, it is also fair to observe that the whole reason we have requirements of procedure is precisely to create confidence in faculty searches in circumstances where controversy is expected. Procedures like these matter most in circumstances where one might worry about efforts to "stack" a search committee or otherwise buttonhole it into a particular ideological or political box -- efforts almost certainly made easier when one circumvents normal requirements of faculty election and oversight. More to the point: It is wholly unsurprising that nobody cares about procedural defaults in cases that nobody cares about. We have procedural rules precisely for the cases that people do care about.

My comments in no way should be taken to impugn those persons who were selected as finalists and have gotten caught up in the middle of this controversy. I know nothing about them, and they may well be superb candidates whose virtues would be recognized by a search committee which was operating entirely above board. But surely we can be concerned with the celerity with which a very inside-baseball procedural dispute was elevated -- on the basis of virtually no evidence -- into a grand conspiracy of Jewish intimidation, and the ease with which many bought into it.

The New White Flight

Arwa Mahdawi has a thoughtful column on an upcoming change in the US census that would create a separate category of "Middle Eastern" (currently, they're considered "White").

The title and subtitle imply that this is an act of exclusion and marginalization (Mahdawi's own words are considerably more measured); but much of the history behind this change is campaigns by Middle Eastern Americans to "check it right; you ain't White!"  Meanwhile, last year I linked to an interesting article in Ha'aretz interviewing Middle Eastern Jews in America regarding how they felt about the change -- their thoughts were interesting in their ambivalence (identifying as Middle Eastern, but frequently not identifying as "people of color").

There is something intriguing about this -- for the most part, the racialization process in American history has been about groups struggling to "become" White and to preserve that status once attained. Yet now we're seeing at least some groups try to resist being identified as White, a new and novel form of flight from Whiteness. I've seen it before (at an earlier age identified with it) amongst Ashkenazi Jews, and now we're seeing it from many Middle Eastern and Arab Americans. At the very least, this suggests some level of improvement in racial egalitarianism ("some", of course, not being a synonym for "adequate") -- we've moved from a world in which non-Whiteness was flatly incompatible with being an equal American to one in which people can at least conceptualize "choosing" to be non-White without it coming off as a death wish.

Still, that doesn't explain the motive of why persons would proactively view Whiteness as mischaracterizing their identity. What makes it not the right box? What I suspect is going on here is the sense that being viewed as "White" is thought to diminish or negate the existence of significant ethnic oppression. "White" people are privileged, and so to the extent that Arab Americans are not privileged on account of their ethnicity, coding them as "White" misrepresents their social status in significant ways. Now, one might wonder why this would be so: we can talk of gay Whites as being simultaneously privileged (as White) and subordinated (as gay); so too we might be able to say that White Middle Easterners are privileged (as White) and subordinated (as Middle Easterners). But the idea seems to be that Whiteness absorbs certain types of marginalization -- particularly those based on ethnicity (this is probably related to the loose borders between "race" and "ethnicity" as concepts). Gayness and Whiteness are in different domains, but if a Middle Easterner is White, their Middle Easternness is a subcategory of their Whiteness.

"Can You Be a Zionist Feminist?" Who Knows!

"Can You Be A Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour Says No." blares the headline of The Nation. The Jewish press dutifully followed their lead, writing "Pro-Palestinian activist: Support for Israel and feminism are incompatible." And so I thought "well apparently Sarsour's experiment with treating mainstream Jews respectfully has come to an end."

But dig a little deeper and ... well, it's confusing. Because if you actually read The Nation interview, Sarsour never actually takes the position ascribed to her in the title. Now to be clear, she doesn't disavow it either. It's just ... not what she was asked, and not what she answered. Indeed, just compare the title and the subtitle:

Can You Be a Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour Says No 

The prominent Palestinian-American feminist responds to claims that anti-Zionism has no place in the feminist movement.

You'll notice that these are two very different statements -- the first affirming that Zionists have no place in feminism, the second affirming that anti-Zionists do have a place in feminism. Now, they could be reconciled: One side says Zionists, but not anti-Zionists, can be feminists; the other side saying anti-Zionists, but not Zionists, can be feminists. But this of course obscures a median position, which is that both can be feminists -- or, more conditionally, both can be feminists if they meet certain qualifications regarding respect for all women (including those women whose rights and security are often thought to be undervalued by the movement in question).

So what position does Sarsour take? Is she saying that yes, anti-Zionists have a place in the feminist movement? Is she saying that no, Zionists have no such place? Is she restricting her critique to "right-wing Zionists" (Sarsour actually never speaks of "Zionists" simpliciter, only "right-wing Zionists")? Or is she saying something different entirely, namely that Israel is a country, which does things criticizable, and therefore a feminist movement has to be open to criticism of Israel?

It's entirely unclear, and that unclearness is I think primarily attributable to The Nation. I honestly don't know if The Nation understands there is a difference between saying Zionists are categorically barred, saying that anti-Zionists should not be excluded, and saying that a feminist movement will sometimes entail criticism of Israel. These clearly distinct concepts are so consistently run together that I really have no idea if The Nation grasps that they're not the same thing. And so while it's entirely plausible that Sarsour does hold to the hardline position ascribed to her in the title, The Nation ends up obscuring more than it illuminates because when it comes to matters like Zionism, anti-Zionism, and Jewish inclusion, it's really, really not good at its job.

None of this is to say that there aren't elements of what Sarsour does (clearly) say which can be critiqued. Take her statement that "anyone who wants to call themselves an activist cannot be selective. There is no country in this world that is immune to violating human rights." Perfectly defensible in the abstract, but it elides the reality that there is in fact there is in these movements in fact quite a bit of "selectiveness." The Women's Strike Platform's characterization of the "decolonization of Palestine" as "the beating heart of the movement" is the only international controversy to gain any mention anywhere in the document (the reference to Mexico is, in context, clearly about American actions, not Mexican ones). It's like Curtis Marez's famously blithe defense of singling out Israel for boycotts -- "one has to start somewhere." It's a far less effective retort when one seems to end there too.

Still, it is quite right in principle that a feminist must be an advocate for all women, and a critic of all policies (national or otherwise) which act to exclude women. And I'll go further: Zionism is a diverse movement with many streams, including ones which are liberal in the criticism of malign Israeli policies and insistent on securing Palestinian equality (this is one of the reasons why a flat exclusion of "Zionists" from the feminist pantheon is unjustifiable). Yet it is undeniable that, in its primary political manifestation (that is, as state policy), Zionism has frequently resulted in severe injustices to Palestinians (men and women alike), of which the continued denial of Palestinian self-determination is only the most severe. It is not fair to impute that to all Zionists. It is fair to ask that persons who call themselves Zionists grapple with this history and practice in a way that demonstrates serious commitment to rectifying it.

Yet critically, the same goes for anti-Zionists. They, too, cannot be "selective"; they, too, must be open to critiques about countries and movements and practices that have served to oppress. And in doing so, they too must stand for all women, including Jewish women, including Jewish Israeli women. Anti-Zionism, too, has its gendered oppressions; its moments and practices where it leverages the vulnerability of Jewish or Israeli women or explodes into grotesque violence. We remember, after all, the feminist lawyer in Egypt who reportedly endorsed rape as a tool of anti-Zionist resistance; extolling to the Israeli women across the border "leave the land so we won't rape you."  And today offered a particularly vicious illustration of the intersection, as Ahmed Daqamseh -- a former Jordanian soldier who massacred seven Israeli eighth-grade girls visiting his country on a field trip -- was released from prison. Upon his release, he told reporters that "The Israelis are the human waste of people, that the rest of the world has vomited up at our feet. We must eliminate them by fire or by burial." When deciding whether someone who helped blow up two more Jews in a supermarket should take on a leading role in this new feminist movement, this practice should matter.

The easy move here is to dismiss the above cases as aberrations or, supposedly more damningly, as disconnected from power. But here, too, we must note that, while anti-Zionism is a diverse and variegated movement in how it manifests in academia or social circles, in its primary political manifestation as state policy it has frequently resulted in severe injustices to Jews (men and women alike). Anti-Zionism as a political form claims as its most decisive political action not the liberation of Palestinians but the mass oppression and expulsions of Jews from Middle Eastern countries, undertaken explicitly under an anti-Zionist banner. If it seems like anti-Zionism-as-politics does not currently manifest in this form of direct, unmediated danger to Jewish lives, that's primarily because there are virtually no Jews left in the locations where anti-Zionism manifests as politically dominant. Again, this does not mean that all anti-Zionists endorse these acts. It does mean that persons who call themselves anti-Zionists must grapple with this history and practice in a way that demonstrates serious commitment to rectifying it. Because feminism really cannot be selective, it cannot be concerned with the fates of only the right sorts of women.

We all have our blind spots and things we need to work on. It is perhaps relevant, then, to mention the occasion where I first encountered Linda Sarsour. It was after she spoke at the First Annual Jews of Color conference, telling Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews that "We will welcome you and embrace you in your full complexity. We’re waiting for you at the Arab American Association." JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) promptly asked her if she would be willing to partner with them, a predominantly Zionist organization.

@lsarsour Does your “embrace” of Mizrahi Jews in “our full complexity” include Zionists? Interested in partnering? https://t.co/eT0U1dPEck

— JIMENA (@JIMENA_Voice) May 5, 2016

Sarsour proceeded to ignore them entirely. Some complexity. We weren't off to a good start.

Yet despite all of this and as cutting as I might seem here, it is important to emphasize also that there is a fair amount of rhetoric ginned up around Linda Sarsour that is -- without mincing words -- complete bullshit. The most grotesque is that which invokes her support of "Sharia law", using language that echoes in form and tone efforts to demonize observant Jews by reference to the most extreme iterations of Halacha (I can look favorably upon Jewish law and still find the Agunah doctrine execrable; likewise Sarsour can speak positively of Sharia while not endorsing crediting women half that of men. Only antisemites and Islamophobes think otherwise, or think it is fair to ascribe monolithic -- and reactionary -- uniformity to a pluralistic and contested legal tradition).

Likewise those who accuse her of opportunism when she helped raise funds to restore desecrated gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis. The raw fact is that she came through -- in deed, not just word -- when those Jews needed her, and I can be critical of problematic elements of her political profile without needing to look a gift horse in the mouth. Ditto her behavior as Women's March co-organizer, where in contrast to her flamethrower reputation she did not act in a way that would have functionally excluded the vast majority of Jews from participating (indeed, it was these steps that made what I initially took to be her statement to The Nation something disappointing, as opposed to predictable).

In any event.

Palestinian women are women. Israeli women are women. Muslim women are women. Jewish women are women. And, since we ought to be intersectional about it, Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jewish women are women. A feminism which does not stand with, protect, uphold, promote, elevate, and engage with all of these women is a feminism that fails. Because Linda Sarsour is absolutely right: feminism cannot be selective.

Sigal Samuel on the Jews of Color Conference

Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel -- follow her) provides powerful reflections on the recent conference for Jews of Color (including Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews). I highly encourage you to read it. There's a lot to be said about it. Some of it is heartening -- it was obvious that for many participants this conference filled a significant void in their Jewish experience which is overwhelmingly dominated by European Ashkenazim. Some of it is disheartening -- Samuel relates how Jews who identified as pro-Israel or Zionist did not feel comfortable voicing those opinions (progressive inclusiveness only gets you so far), and notes the marked absence of Israeli Jewish participants which (in the words of one of the few Israelis in attendance) created an "America-centric" program. Some of it is uncertain, like the promise from an executive at a prominent Arab-American organization that Mizrahi Jews are welcome in her group (are they welcome if they're Israeli-American Mizrahi Zionists who challenge the prefigured understanding of what "Arab" self-determination means? If so, that would be a huge step towards genuine allyship).

Samuel's account makes it clear that this was a conference of a particular political vibe -- lots of talk of "privilege" and "triggering" -- and so one can shake one's head about whether it is truly representative of Mizrahi, Sephardic, or Jews of Color as broader communities. But if one is to register that complaint, one has to interrogate why it was the leftist branch of the community which organized the conference, and why the "representative" Jewish establishment has failed to do so. One can't complain about a slanted conference if one isn't having any conference at all.

It seems that, by and large, this conference was a success, and I'm happy to report that fact. It should be followed up with more. More meetings, more organizing, more latitude, more perspectives. If one is worried that voices outside the ultra-left are uncomfortable in this space, organize spaces where they too feel free to speak. If you're unhappy about the paucity of Israeli voices in this conversation, then put in the work to get more Israelis to the table. Put in the work, or don't complain when others don't do the work to your liking.

I've been hoping for some time to organize a conference on non-European and non-Ashkenazi Jews here at Berkeley (albeit probably more academic than activist-y). It's a daunting task, but it would help shed light on a daunting struggle. I wouldn't see it as a response to this event but the next step following from it. As far as I'm concerned, a thousand flowers should bloom, and Jews of all backgrounds and all political persuasions should have a home in the Jewish community to voice their perspective.

The Issue is Mizrahi Power

The article Analucia Lopezrevoredo and I wrote on the general failure of intersectional analysis to account for Mizrahi Jewish experience (and, more generally, how Mizrahi Jewish experience is erased in broader discourse about Jews -- regardless of whether the speaker falls on the ideological spectrum) has been featured on the Treyf podcast. They brought on llan Benattar from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice’s Mizrahi caucus to comment; he was ... not a fan. The podcast hosts themselves alluded to finding many of our points interesting, but never really got to say which ones -- one gets the sense, though, that their position is that "the article raised a lot of good points right up until the parts where it implicated us in the problem."

In any event, speaking for myself and not Analucia or JIMENA (who are capable of correcting the misapprehensions Benattar has about JIMENA's mission), I found that Benattar's comments were an excellent encapsulation of our core thesis regarding Mizrahi Jewish inclusion (or lack thereof) in broader patterns of discourse.

Let's put two excerpts side by side. Here is how Benattar charaacterizes the core argument of our article, which he terms a case of "Mizrahi-washing":

And here is the part of our article that is most directly germane: 

When asked to speak at certain Zionist functions, many Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa are asked to focus on the mistreatment they experienced under Arab rule—not the ways in which they successfully coexisted with Muslims, or the serious discrimination they have faced in Israeli society after arriving in the Promised Land. In anti-Zionist circles the situation inverts: the hosts are delighted to hear tales of Israeli malfeasance but are deeply hostile if the topic turns to the oppression and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries or if the Jews proclaim a proud connection to Israel. Either way, non-Ashkenazi Jews are engaged with only as far as they support someone else’s narrative. Once they seek to speak in their own voice, their putative allies disappear.

Not only are we perfectly cognizant of the manner in which Ashkenazim have historically been dominant in Zionist circles and have sought to deemphasize the interconnection many Mizrahi Jews have had with Arab history, particularly when they clash with Zionist narratives, we lead with it. Our sin is nothing more than the concurrent observation that the same is true of the anti-Zionist movement: also historically Ashkenazi dominated (at least in its Jewish manifestation), also quite prone to deemphasizing aspects of Mizrahi identity when they conflict with anti-Zionist shibboleths. The sins are identical: "non-Ashkenazi Jews are engaged with only as far as they support someone else’s narrative." None of this is to say that there have not been significant Zionist and anti-Zionist Mizrahi voices, none of this is to say that "to be Mizrahi is to be Zionist" (or not). To frame the question in this way misses the point entirely. We are quite clear that the crucial obligation for non-Mizrahim is to confront the community as it is, on its terms, irrespective of whether those terms are Zionist. It's not us that are seeking to essentialize Mizrahim into one mode of being vis-a-vis Zionism.

The reason we link this up to certain practices in anti-Zionist circles isn't because "to be Mizrahi is to be Zionist", it's simply because as a matter of raw numerical fact many are, and "irrespective of whether those terms are Zionist" cuts both ways. If one excises the Zionist part of the Mizrahi community from the part one is willing to talk to, one is left with a lot fewer Mizrahim. That is no doubt to the benefit of Ilan Benattar, since it means a lot more people will be talking to him. But it is not a viable nor a progressive proposition for engaging across difference; it inscribes the very sort of exclusion we critique.*

Indeed, I think we need to interrogate the move being made here more closely. It is highly reminiscent of Herman Cain's plantation politics: Most Blacks are being duped and deceived by the Democratic Party which wants to keep them "on the plantation," their condition is used as a tool to support politics "we" (those like Cain) know are bad, but a few Blacks, like Cain, "can think for themselves" and are the ones you should listen to. And likewise, Benattar casts contemporary Mizrahi politics as being obscured from itself, the product of a Zionist-Ashkenazi effort to make it in its own image for its own ends, such that it is okay to generally ignore Mizrahi Jews (who largely remain on the Zionist plantation) in favor of the few, like him, who see past the ruse and can tell you what's what.

Now here I want to be very careful about the point being made. It is not that Jews (Mizrahi or otherwise) are not entitled to critique or dissent from the prevailing orthodoxies in the community. I do not believe that Ilan Benattar or Herman Cain (or Ben Carson or Clarence Thomas or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz) have any particular obligation to adopt the political posture of their broader community. I have always firmly taken the stand that there is no legitimate politics (based on solidarity or anything else) that writes such dissent out; and that means (among other things) that it is flatly wrong to claim that Jewish anti-Zionists have forfeited their Jewishness by virtue of their position. From my personal vantage point, such a stance would make me a terrible Zionist -- I view Zionism as about Jewish self-determination, and that includes the right of a Jewish self to determine that Zionism is incompatible with their assessment of the Jewish condition or Jewish obligations. One can argue against the positions on their merits; but the fact of adopting the positions doesn't mean the speaker "isn't Jewish" or is a "self-hating Jew" or whatnot (for the same reasons I object to referring to Cruz or Thomas as race traitors or Uncle Toms or what have you). Jews should have the same right as anyone else to come to positions that you or I think are wrong.

So the problem isn't the critique itself, that's fair game. The problem rather is in the final step -- the proffer that one can justly ignore most members of the outgroup and instead only speak to the dissident wing. That silencing -- really tokenizing -- move is what's objectionable; the forwarding of oneself as a substitute for engagement with the broader community constructed as defective and unworthy of deliberative inclusion. When outgroups (whether we're talking about Jews generally, or Mizrahi Jews specifically, or Blacks, or Latinos, or Palestinians for that matter) say things that are hard to hear or which raise difficult critiques of passionately-held positions, the right move is not to race off to find your friend who agrees with you and be assured that everything's alright. One need not assent, but one should at least listen and think. And so here I will cop to at least one of the many motives that Benattar ascribes to Analucia and myself: We do need to engage with Mizrahi perspectives in Israel, even when they seem quite distant from our own ethnic, political, or cultural priors. Why? Because that's what one does when trying to ethically encounter difference -- particularly difference that is paired with historical patterns of marginalization.

In terms of substantive responses to our article, I think that covers it. But I did also want to make a note of one of the particular rhetorical stylings that was deployed. Throughout his segment, Benattar accused Analucia and I of "co-opting" the language of intersectionality for our own supposedly right-wing ambitions. He used this word so many times I think he must have hired Marco Rubio's speech coach. And on one level, I find this amusing: I've sometimes remarked that intersectionality brings out my inner hipster -- I was reading it way before it was cool (before Benattar even got to college, in fact) -- so who's really appropriating what here?

But the bigger point is, once again, about exclusion. The language of "co-option", obviously, is intricately connecting to the language of standing -- who is authorized to use terms like "intersectionality" and who is trespassing? We already knew, of course, that Jews generally have no standing to utilize such terms on our own behalf, we now know the same is true of non-Ashkenazi Jews specifically (at least when they do so in ways that are not ideologically amenable to particular elements of the left). Our alleged deficiency is that we are insufficiently "progressive"; left unsaid is who established the metric of "progressive" and who installed Benattar as its arbiter. Why should Analucia or myself cede him, or anyone else, that authority? Why is it just accepted that Jewish entry into progressive spaces is always on a probationary basis?

One can see a very particular sort of anti-Semitic exclusion operating here: Jews are not equal members of political communities (progressive or otherwise) we inhabit; we are members to the extent that others permit us to be; which typically manifests as membership to the extent that we affirm the understandings of the dominant groups. Hence, when we level what we take to be a progressive critique at a progressive discourse surrounding Jews, the fact of our dissent is itself sufficient to exile us from the relevant interpretative community. We are not entitled to stake independent claims on progressive concepts when doing so conflicts with how the "real" progressives, the people empowered to govern the borders of "progressive", conceptualize the understanding of "progressive." It's the same damn sin again, we are entitled to partake in discourse "only as far as [we] support someone else’s narrative."

The issue, as Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz wrote so long ago, is power. Who has it, who wants it. In both the substantive and rhetorical formulations, one can see how Benattar's goal is to delegitimize wide swaths of deliberative contributions from progressive consideration and concentrate progressive discursive power in the hands of people like himself. There is no space for an internal progressive critique by Jews of progressive discourse, because once it emerges it ceases being progressive (now right-wing trolling). There is no space for a Mizrahi critique of anti-Zionist practices because once it emerges it ceases being Mizrahi (now Ashkenazi false consciousness). Hence how Analucia and JIMENA can each be dismissed here as co-opters and appropriators -- what credential exactly are they missing such that their deployment of the term intersectionality is inauthentic? For other readers, of course, the problem is inverted -- there is no space for a Mizrahi critique of Jewish Zionist practices because once it emerges it ceases to be Jewish (what, exactly, are they missing?). All of this is the same politics -- just swapping out whose ox is gored. Progressivism, as I understand it (and we already know how much that's worth) is about breaking down such patterns of power and domination. Progressivism, as many others understand it, seems to be more about reshuffling the deck.

The issue is power -- who has it, who wants it. I do not think that Mizrahi Jews, or any Jews, need to be Zionist, I do not think that it is my place to tell Mizrahi Jews what to be. I think that Mizrahi Jews, like all Jews, should be decide for themselves how they conceptualize their condition and their situation; as it happens, many have decided that Zionism fits, some have come to a contrary conclusion. And then I think that other people should be willing to listen and engage with their reckoning, regardless of whether it coheres to the narratives we began with or not.

* Here Benattar accuses us of ignoring the BDS movement's long-stated principle that it targets "institutions, not individuals". The reason I ignore it is that it is impossible to credit. First, I'm dubious that the alleged principle is even a coherent one, as if in multilayered and stratified societies any of us come in as atomized individualized disconnected from surrounding social, cultural, or academic institutions (such a libertarian way of looking at human experience is particularly difficult to swallow in a discussion of intersectionality, which is quite concerned with how we are bound up in a multitude of overlapping identity affiliations that cannot be disaggregated from our core "individual" selves). And second, even if the principle could be expressed coherently it has been breached so often in practice that I can't view it as anything other than rhetorical. There is no serious likelihood that the BDS movement will, in fact, engage with the Israeli Mizrahi community as currently constituted regardless of whether they try to speak "individually" or "institutionally"; more likely (as in the "A Wider Bridge" fiasco -- an organization which, incidentally, has been far better than most about incorporating Mizrahi voices) any efforts to bring such "individual" voices to the fore will be deemed "institutionally" suspect (Benattar even throws out the term "Mizrahi-washing") and thus subject to boycott.

"An Intersectional Failure" To Include Mizrahim

Tablet Magazine has just published an article, "An Intersectional Failure: How Both Israel’s Backers and Critics Write Mizrahi Jews Out of the Story", that looks at recent discussions concerning intersectionality and how they might apply to the situation of Mizrahi and other non-Ashkenazi Jews. The article, coauthored by JIMENA's Analucia Lopezrevoredo and myself, notes that even as there has been a recent flurry of  writing on intersectionality as it pertains to the Jewish community, none of the writers (critics or defenders of the concept) have even mentioned Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews. This absence echoes a larger erasure of non-Ashkenazim from both Jewish and non-Jewish conceptions of the global Jewish community.

Title notwithstanding, this is not a problem restricted to the context of Israel. Certainly, discussions about Israel -- whether they seek to cast it as a "White" state by and for European colonists or downplay the very real discrimination and mistreatment non-Ashkenazi Jews continue to experience in Israel -- are one very important forum where this phenomenon can be identified. But there are more broad cultural implications as well, including disrupting the assumption in Western circles (Jewish and non-Jewish) that Ashkenazi culture is the default Jewish culture, emphasizing and celebrating the long history many Jews had in the Arab world and their important contributions to Arab and Middle Eastern culture, and incorporating the plight of Jews driven out of Arab countries into broader discussions of achieving a Mideast peace.

These issues, as one might expect, do not lend themselves uniformly to either conventional "left" or "right" narratives.  But too often, "non-Ashkenazi Jews are engaged with only as far as they support someone else’s narrative. Once they seek to speak in their own voice, their putative allies disappear." That needs to change.

Our concluding paragraph reads as follows:

Mizrahi, Sephardic, and other non-Ashkenazi Jews have stories and demands which pose a challenge to Jewish and non-Jewish groups of any political persuasion. But the obligation to be intersectional does not end when a marginalized group ceases to say what one wants to hear. Taking non-European Jews seriously means taking them seriously on their own terms. This basic principle of justice is one in which both the non-Jewish and Ashkenazi Jewish communities have often failed to uphold. They, and we, need to do better.

Speaking for myself, I hope that this column triggers a needed discussion both in and out of the Jewish community. Serious consideration of non-Ashkenazi Jewish perspectives is not an option for groups that want to talk about Jews, or Middle Easterners, in a just and egalitarian fashion.

Two Links on the Mizrahi Moment

Two older links regarding Mizrahi Jews that I'm posting because (a) they're good articles and (b)  I want to ensure I have them saved for later.

The first, by Ophir Toubul, argues that Israel's White Ashkenazi Left Doesn't Own the Peace Process. I actually had already read this piece before and found it exceptionally insightful, and wanted to make sure I had it memorialized for future reference.  It presents the case for a "Mizrahification" of the peace process and Israel writ large that can genuinely and respectfully interrelate with the broader Middle Eastern community, without pretending that the Mizrahi community represents some post-Zionist fantasy of Jews alienated against Israel and ready to effectively jettison their Jewish communal affiliation and become a subordinate member of a pan-Arab identity.

The second, which I found while searching for the first, interviews American Mizrahi Jews to get their thoughts on a movement by American Arab groups to get "Middle Eastern" disaggregated from "White" on the Census. Their thoughts are fascinating, complex, and often deeply ambivalent. Most would identify as Middle Eastern if given the chance, and many articulated instances of discrimination based on their Middle Eastern appearance. But unlike their Muslim and Christian Arab brethren (organizing under the slogan "Check it right, you ain’t white!"), the Jews were often reluctant to self-identify as "people of color." Some suggested that for them anti-Semitism was a more serious day-to-day discriminatory threat than anti-Middle Eastern sentiment, and (implicitly) that "people of color" denotes a particular type of discrimination qualitatively different from that which they experienced. Others simply didn't seem to view identifying as "Middle Eastern" and identifying as "White" as competitive with one another.

Anyway, both articles are good reads, and so both are getting a plug and permanent enshrinement on my blog's archives. Congratulations.

Take Me Down To The Other Side

Robert Fisk is deeply frustrated that his fellow journalists haven't figured out how to blame ISIS on Israel and the West yet.

That's a little unfair. But not really. Fisk's main argument is that ISIS' breathtaking barbarity has blinded journalists to one of their paramount duties: to report on "the other side of the story." As applied to ISIS, that's one of those statements that makes one recoil at first glance, makes sense when you think about it, but is repulsive anew once one sees how Fisk operationalizes it.

Journalists absolutely should examine all sides of the story, including a story like ISIS. Figuring out the "why" -- the actual undergirding ideology of ISIS and how it conceptualizes itself - is a valuable service and an important journalistic project. Graeme Woods' chilling report in The Atlantic is an excellent example of this.

But Fisk doesn't actually seem to want this. What he wants, desperately, is not the "other side" of the story but a very specific story that would contextualize ISIS into a framework of global relations he's comfortable with.

So how, today, do we tell the “other side” of the story? Of course, we can trace the seedlings and the saplings of this cult of lost souls to the decades of cruelty which local Middle Eastern despots – usually with our complete support – visited upon their people. Or the hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims for whose death we were ultimately responsible during and after our frightful – or “bloodthirsty” or “twisted” or “vile” – 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Of course" we can? Maybe we can. But maybe not. There's no guarantee that ISIS' emergence is primarily attributable to Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. To be sure, it's doubtful that any contemporary historical phenomenon can wholly be divorced from such influences -- but at that level of generality the point becomes banal. Outside such tautological points, it may still be the case that ISIS is the direct love-child of bad acts from western governments. But it might also be the case that it is primarily the result of indigenous forces and should be related to as such.

Robert Fisk's story of the Middle East has long been one where most of the injustices, the barbarism, the death and the mutilation can firmly be laid at the feet of western (and Jewish) actors. ISIS challenges that story; it presents a different story that doesn't easily align itself with the older narrative. Ultimately, Fisk isn't calling for the "other side" to be told, he's expressing frustration that his story isn't. But sometimes even the "other side of the story" isn't the one you want to hear.

Doing Anything for Iran

There is an old joke amongst academics, one that I guess is probably falling out of favor but which I still find funny, that goes as follows:

An attractive female student walks into her professor's office, closes the door, and walks suggestively toward him. "I'd do anything to get an A on the final exam," she says.

"Anything?" the professor asks, eyebrows raised.

"Anything." She replies.

"Would you even," the professor leans in, "study?"

I'm reminded of this joke when I think about Israel, Iran, and all those (Netanyahu being the most prominent) who insist that the Palestinian question is trivial and unimportant compared to the existential threat of a nuclear Iran. They keep saying how we need to do anything to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. "Anything?" I want to ask. "Anything!" they thunder. "Would you even ... withdraw from settlements?" Of course not. That's a bridge too far.

The partisans in the crowd will no doubt insist the two issues should have nothing to do with one another. The President has, for his part, argued that Israel's continued settlement expansion is a major impediment in building global support for policies protective of Israel (such as, say, containing Iran). And he's made it quite clear that he could do a lot more for Israel vis-a-vis Iran if Israel did more for the Palestinians. Maybe he's being unfair. But if Iran really is the serious, eliminationist, existential threat that Netanyahu claims that it is (and I think there is ample reason to support that assessment), then it is more than a little unbecoming for him to put Israel at greater risk of utter annihilation to preserve a few outposts in a desert that everybody agrees should never have been built in the first place. It makes one think that maybe it's Israel that doesn't take the Iran threat as seriously as it should.

The other half of my frustration with conservative criticism of America's policy towards Iran is that I continue to have no sense about what alternative the conservatives think we should be pursuing (two years ago I mentioned how, just as the far-left has strained to figure out which side in the Syria conflict is "Zionist" so they know who to oppose, conservatives are straining to get a bead on what Obama's policy on Syria is so they can advocate the opposite). The Hudson Institute's Michael Doran penned a letter to my liberal Jewish friends that embodies the sin. Doran describes himself as a non-Jew who is an expert on middle east policy. His letter opens with a farcical claim that Obama suggests that his Jewish critics are exhibiting "dual loyalty"* and ends with an are-you-still-beating-your-wife question about whether Iran should "be the dominant power in the Middle East, and should we be helping it to become that power." In the middle is a lot of ventilation about how terrible America's policy has been towards Israel, Iran, and Syria, but not a hint about what we should be doing instead. Consider this passage:

The plain fact is that the United States is doing nothing to arrest the projection and expansion of Iranian power in the region; quite the contrary. In Lebanon, for example, Washington has cut funding for Shiite figures who remain independent of Iran’s proxy Hizballah. In Iraq, the United States, through the Iraqi armed forces, is actually coordinating with Iranian-backed militias and serving as their air force. Indeed, wherever one looks in the Middle East, one can observe an American bias in favor of, to say the least, non-confrontation with Iran and its allies.

The pattern is most glaring in Syria, where the president has repeatedly avoided conflict with Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest ally. The tendency surfaced again a few weeks ago in connection with mounting evidence that Assad has routinely attacked his own people with gas. If true, this fact should trigger a sharp American response in keeping with the president’s famous “red line” on the use of chemical weapons. But when questioned on this matter at a press conference, he contrived to find a loophole. Assad’s forces, he said, have been deploying chlorine gas, which “historically” has not been considered a chemical weapon.

We are "doing nothing to arrest" Iran's power projections. We have "avoided conflict" with Syria. We have a "bias" in favor of "non-confrontation." Well, how should we "confront" these countries? Missile strikes? Ground troops? A tactical nuclear strike? Something non-violent? Doran doesn't say. I leave Doran's article without even a smidgen of an idea of what alternative foreign policy he'd prefer, unless he really is just advocating an all-out regional war (I have to add here that complaining about Obama's ambivalent Syria policy without mentioning the complication that ISIS brings to the table is nothing short of shocking).

Ultimately, one suspects that the major factor determining whether the Iran deal is a success or a failure will be whether the international community is willing to put some teeth into enforcing it going forward. That, in turn, depends a lot about how willing the West is to go to the mat for Israel when the chips are down, and that no doubt depends on Israel's standing in the world. Which, to circle back, suggests that maybe Israel should trade what it claims to be the trivial, unimportant conflict to shore up its standing in the major, existential one. That's what one does if one really thinks all options should be on the table. One of those options is saying "in a world where we're on the cusp of having a hostile, nuclear armed regional power on our doorstep, we simply can't afford the diplomatic and security costs of occupying the West Bank anymore."

To be sure, I've read enough complaints about the Iran deal from enough parties I respect for me to believe that it is decidedly worse than ideal. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd no doubt craft a different deal. Of course, if I could wave a magic wand I'd convert Iran into a liberal pluralist democracy which respects all of its neighbors and is friends to all of the woodland creatures. One makes deals with autocratic regimes pursuing nuclear weapons under less-than-ideal circumstances -- that comes with the territory. What I haven't seen is any plan or proposal that would lead to a better deal (or any alternative to signing a deal that would lead to better results than not having one). The conservative refrain that we need to do "anything" to stop Iran from getting a bomb seems to boil down to either one thing (war) or nothing (if they reject war).

* The claim is farcical because Obama is quite adamant that he believes his policies are in Israel's interest and are reflective of Jewish values --as Doran concedes. We might disagree with Obama descriptively on both those points, but by framing the debate in that term he's obviously saying it is permissible and salutary for Jews to think in terms of their own values and sense of what is good for Israel, and that this is a permissible (indeed, valuable) form of deliberation. If anything, this is sterling refutation of the scurrilous dual loyalty charge.

With Friends Like These....

A Facebook friend, with the ever-so-wry "just sayin'", just posted a quote attributed to a certain Father John Sheehan, S.J.:

“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”

As a pure statement of history, this is of course false. The U.S. has had its share of pre-1948 enemies in the Middle East (the Barbary Pirates, the Ottoman Empire in WWI, various Arab factions which sided with the Nazis in WWII, etc.).

But pushing beyond that, I think this statement needs to be unpacked a bit even if we took it at face value. The argument being made by our friendly Jesuit priest is that prior to Israel's establishment, we were all buddy-buddy with the dominant powers in the Middle East, but that all went to hell once the Jews had the temerity to establish their own state. Damn Jews.

This, of course, is an interesting view over how we should think about "friendship," to wit, that the most important consideration is whether it allows us to maintain and preserve preexisting relationships of power. Which ... okay, so that's one way of looking at it. Charles De Gaulle did say that "nations do not have friends, only interests." But I'd hope that's not the only way that we would think about how we select our friends.

Consider the following statement as a parallel:

"Every time anyone says that Blacks are Democrats' only friends in the South, I can't help but think that before Blacks were allowed to vote Democrats had all the votes in the South."

As a historical matter, this is at least as true (and probably more so) than Sheehan's statement. And some people do seem to resent Blacks for that, and essentially blame them for the Democratic Party's misfortunes in the American South. But most of us, one hopes, would recognize that supporting civil rights was the right thing to do regardless of whether it ultimately helped or hindered Democratic electoral fortunes. And if we're looking for someone to blame, it should be the White voters who decided that supporting civil rights was a dealbreaker, not the African-Americans who had the temerity to want to be treated as equals.

How much of the current strain between America and the countries of the Middle East can be attributed to the existence of Israel is debatable, but it is fair to say that most of these countries are less than keen on the friendship or the existence of an Israel at all. And they expressed that antipathy quite cogently, in the form of a series of wars and ethnically cleansing 99% of the Jewish population from the Arab World. Such actions don't always result in American opposition, particularly when (as noted) such opposition places us in conflict with the local elites. But where it does, it seems weird to object on the grounds that we weren't sufficiently solicitous of the preexisting hierarchy.

After doing all this work, I got interested in the provenance of the quote itself and who this "Father John Sheehan" is. And that is a surprisingly difficult proposition. The quote shows up a lot on Google, but it is almost invariably unsourced except to say "John Sheehan, S.J." The closest thing I've found to a source is a citation to Volume 21, No. 2, p. 34 (2002) of the Journal of Historical Review. The problem being that the Journal of Historical Review is the house journal of Holocaust-deniers -- it's a conspiracy website with footnotes. Meanwhile "John Sheehan" might as well be "John Doe" if you're thinking of generic name for a Jesuit Priest -- while that could just explain why it's so hard to find the particular "John Sheehan" who said it, it also might explain why there seemingly is no information of the "John Sheehan" who supposedly said it.

The bottom line is that I think the quote is a hoax -- it flies around various anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic circles, but I don't think it's real.

This story does come with a happy ending though: I posted all of this (including my sense that the quote was fake) on my friend's Facebook wall, and you know what she said? She thanked me for my sleuthing, admitted she had probably taken in, and resolved to be more careful next time (and affirmed that the quote did not express her views on the American/Israeli alliance, which she says should be preserved).

Obama's Mideast Speech

The buzz on this speech has already been fluctuated wildly, from "he won't say anything new" to "he's going to make an exceptionally bold and ambition statement on resolving the conflict."

I don't know which intuition is right, but the latter is obviously more fun to speculate over. So what do I want to hear?

1) Clear assertion of the right of Palestinians to a state, based on 1967 borders. There will be landswaps, and there should be landswaps, but the basic right of Palestinian statehood has to be acknowledged.

2) Clear statement that the establishment of a Palestinian state is in Israel's clear, existential interest. Palestinian statehood isn't a "favor", nor is it just idealistic posturing. It's a necessary condition to Israel's continued safety and security as a Jewish, democratic state.

3) Clear affirmation of Israel's right to defend itself and live inside secure borders. This is boilerplate at this point, but obviously remains important.

4) Clear rejection of the right of return. Rightly or wrongly, a speech that forwards points #1 and even #2 will be seized upon by rightist elements as "proof" that Obama is "anti-Israel". That's ridiculous, but it's reality. Observing that the right of return is a non-starter, and that at the end of the day not everyone is going to be able to live in the precise patch land they want to, is a good hedge against this. It's a known negotiation red-line, everyone knows that a final deal won't include it, something that is objectively hostile to final resolution of the conflict, and something that pro-Israel folks care about passionately. Compensation for refugees, yes, absolutely, but no right of return.

5) A call on both parties to hit the negotiating table. Both sides bear their share of the blame on this. The Palestinians got a 10 month settlement freeze, and spent much of that time dicking around rather than attempting to make any progress. On the other hand, that freeze was pretty anomalous for a Netanyahu administration that, by and large, is abjectly incompetent at best (with coalition members who are best described as fascistic). Whatever -- the point is that the only way things happen is if people sit down at a table and commit to banging an agreement out. Enough is enough.

How many of these points do you think Obama will hit? Fingers crossed for a good speech.

UPDATE: Four out of five, by my count. Obama specifically punted on refugees (as well as Jerusalem), but the functional replacement w/r/t my political analysis was his call for a demilitarized Palestinian state. I continue to be a little perplexed at why this is supposed to be so appealing. I want Palestine to have a monopoly of violence in its borders. The alternative isn't "no weapons in Palestine", but rather something like Hezbollah setting up shop with the actual government too weak to stop them (just like in Lebanon). But again -- whatever helps make a deal....

The Only Difference

There's a ton of talk out there about what Obama should or shouldn't have done with respect to the Egypt and Tunisian rebellions. One major refrain is that the success of the revolts in these two countries show that, had Obama pushed a little harder during Iran's 2009 Green Revolution, that country's dictatorship could have fallen too.

I'm dubious. The US didn't really do much of anything but watch and try and stay out of the fray in Egypt (Tunisia we barely even had time to react to). And when you think about it, how much can we do? Ultimately, any revolution is going to be in the hands of the people revolting -- it's their concerns and their conditions which dictate the course of the movement. Except where the US can credibly threaten to intervene militarily -- implausible in all the countries we're talking about -- there is very little we can do to influence the situation, at least overtly.

Actually, I think there is one very simple reason why Egypt succeeded where Iran failed. As LGM put it, the Tank commander said "no":

Last night, a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary Egyptian soldier's growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. We had witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

Thus when General Hassan al-Rawani told the massive crowds yesterday evening that "everything you want will be realised – all your demands will be met", the people cried back: "The army and the people stand together – the army and the people are united. The army and the people belong to one hand."

And that's the key difference. Protesters rarely stand any chance, pound-for-pound, against a halfway decent state military apparatus. The question is whether, when push comes to shove, the military is actually willing to crush the demonstrations violently, or whether they link up with them. In Egypt, they weren't willing to fire on their own people. In Iran, they were. And so we have our different outcomes.

In any event, we're going to get a bunch of new data points on this shortly. New protests are emerging in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran again. Obviously, I hope for the best in all of these countries. But I think the ultimate outcome is not likely to be contingent on what Americans say or do. It has to do with the nerve of the protesters, and the ultimate decisions of the country's military forces -- to join the revolution, or crush it.

The Irony Drips

Now, this is from Fox News, so trust it exactly that far, but they're reporting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now alleging that the US is conspiring to stop the savior of mankind from returning.

Why do I say the irony drips? Well, while Mr. Ahmadinejad is referring to the "Hidden Imam", here in America, most of the top policymakers have a different idea of who the messiah will be. And the eschatology behind that guy's return, so far as I understand it, revolves pretty heavily around getting loads of Jews to return to Israel. Now, Sarah Palin fantasies notwithstanding, thus far American policy has not been geared at encouraging Jews to flock en masse to the Holy Land -- and that's a good thing. But it does tickle me that, in a weird way, Ahmadinejad's statement is essentially that he wishes we would.

Freedom For All

An oldie but goodie from Fareed Zakaria:

This is the party's dilemma -- it wishes to spread liberty to people whom it doesn't really like.

That was back in 2004. It's still true.

Expanding Pro-Israel

In a meeting with Ohio Jewish leaders, Barack Obama argued that one can be pro-Israel without adhering to a specific right-wing vision of what Israel's future should look like:

"I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud ap-proach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.

"If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress," he said.

He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than "just crushing the opposition" is being "soft or anti-Israel."

Matthew Yglesias says "music to my ears", and Spencer Ackerman adds:

Now that is the sort of thing that a real friend of Israel says. Not a fair-weather fake friend who'd rather not risk angering your buddies, but the kind of friend who takes your car keys from your hand at the bar. Let's see the Rubins of the world twist his words, so we can demonstrate how little they actually care about the actually-existing state of Israel.

Agreed. One of the things I've tried to stress recently on the Israeli/Palestinian question is that it's not "pro-Israel" to envision it in perpetual, apocalyptic conflict with its neighbors. Jews die when Americans (usually American Christians) use Israel to reenact their favorite Crusade. And whatever else my personal religious or cultural beliefs regarding my obligation as a Jew toward the land of Israel entail, positioning myself as a tyrannical occupier depriving people of self-determination is not part of that vision.

None of this, obviously, is to say that I think Israel is the root cause of all evil in the region, or that Palestinians do not possess a major chunk of the blame for their own predicament by indulging in maximalist demands (including the destruction of Israel) and constant terrorist assaults. But I do think it's important to reiterate that there is no long term solution to the conflict that doesn't provide both people with a stable, secure, productive state, and that any move towards peace necessarily entails risk. "Crush them" can't always be the option of choice if things are to move forward, and it will take an American President who a) makes both sides understand that and b) makes both side understand that if one party exploits that trust, the US will not tolerate it, to really see progress on the issue.