Israel Set to Present Its Goldstone Rebuttal

Ha'aretz has the report that Israel is preparing to issue its rebuttal to the UN. I noted several weeks back that we should expect that some of Judge Goldstone's allegations would turn out to be inaccurate, not because of any malfeasance on his part, but simply because (for better or for worse) Israel did not cooperate with his investigation, meaning that much potentially exculpatory evidence was withheld from him. It looks like the report Israel is going to issue will include much of this evidence.

Whether or not we should ultimately judge this process as a serious one or not depends on what happens yet. It is almost undoubtedly true that some of the Goldstone allegations will turn out to be relatively conclusively wrong. It is also almost undoubtedly true that some of the Goldstone allegations which Israel will be contesting in its report will still have legs. What we would hope to see, then, is Judge Goldstone (and the relevant UN bodies) taking precisely that stance -- withdrawing certain claims, and digging in on others. It doesn't have to be debasing; he could say something like the following:

"Based on the evidence presented in this report, I am satisfied that the events that transpired on X date in Y location were within the bounds of accepted military practice. We regret that it could not be included in our findings, but this evidence was not made available to the commission at the time of its report, despite our efforts to secure Israel's cooperation. We reiterate our disappointment that Israel did not participate in our inquiry; as this example indicates, their non-participation unfortunately barred the committee from ascertaining the fullest, most accurate account possible of the events in question."

I'm not sure whether Judge Goldstone will react to this -- I continue to believe there were at least some admirable qualities undergirding why he took on this mission, but there is no doubt he feels burned by the response and I suspect he believes a substantial amount of his international credibility now rests on defending his report to the death. This is his legacy, for better or for worse, and he will not be remembered well if his legacy is "that report which he later admitted wildly exaggerated Israel's culpability for war crimes" (by pro-Israel loyalists for issuing the report, by anti-Israel partisans for admitting its shortcomings). I guess we'll see. As for the relevant UN bodies, well, them I have no hope for, because for them this was never about fairness or human rights to begin with -- there is no reason to suspect they'll change that now.

If It Means Some Infinitesimal Portion of the FRC's Tax Dollars Go To An Abortion, I'm All For It

John Cole gets a push poll from the FRC (the FRC push polls? But they're so moral and upright!) with such questions as "Do you support taxpayer funded abortions", "Do you support cuts of up to 50% in medicare in the Pelosi/Reid/Obama healthcare plan", and "Do you support backroom deals to pass the Pelosi/Reid/Obama healthcare plan?"

Chavez, Morales, and Robertson Duke It Out

For supremacy in the idiotic comments about Haiti contest. We've already discussed Robertson's contribution. Here's Morales:

President Evo Morales said Wednesday that Bolivia would seek U.N. condemnation of what he called the U.S. military occupation of earthquake-stricken Haiti. "The United States cannot use a natural disaster to militarily occupy Haiti," he told reporters at the presidential palace.

"Haiti doesn't need more blood," Morales added, implying that the militarized U.S. humanitarian mission could lead to bloodshed. His criticism echoed that of fellow leftist, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who said Sunday that "it appears the gringos are militarily occupying Haiti."

When asked Wednesday about the possibility of the U.N. General Assembly condemning the U.S., assembly spokesman Jean Viktor Nkolo pointed to previous U.N. statements expressing gratitude for U.S. help in Haiti.

The United Nations will soon sign an agreement with the U.S. stipulating the U.N. as the lead organization for security in Haiti, Edmond Mulet, acting U.N. special envoy to Haiti, said Tuesday.

And here's Chavez:

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez Wednesday accused the United States of causing the destruction in Haiti by testing a 'tectonic weapon' to induce the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last week.

President Chavez said the US was "playing God" by testing devices capable of creating eco-type catastrophes, the Spanish newspaper ABC quoted him as saying.

One thing that is missing from this "analysis" is why America has any particular interest in occupying Haiti. At least with Iraq, we have a facially plausible, though conspiratorial, interest in Iraq's oil (left unclear is why we couldn't just buy it from the Hussein regime, as he would have been quite glad to sell it to us). Haiti carries with it no such natural wealth; an occupation would be a massive expenditure of American resources (at a time when they are locked up in various other locations) for no apparent gain. I'm uncomfortable enough with bare materialist explanations for behavior (particularly when they are cast as a dualism: one side is materialist, the other side, of course, morally pure), but what we are supposed to imagine is that American's have some innate, pathological desire to control the world -- something in our national biology apparently turns us into sociopaths. We might describe such a view as racist.

UPDATE: The Chavez quote, at least, appears to be a fabrication that managed to get some legs in the global media. Interestingly, the statement was repeated both by anti-Chavez outlets like Fox News and pro-Chavez entities like Iran's Press TV, apparently because, as Harry's Place put it, it panders to the prejudices of both those who think Chavez is crazy, as well as those who think that America is.

In the Same Boat

A new Gallup poll concludes that the strongest predictor of anti-Muslim sentiment is ... anti-Jewish sentiment. Presumably, this indicates that both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiments still are primarily associated with the American right to far-right. The overlap doesn't really surprise me, though I'd be curious to see whether it is as extensive in Europe.

One thing I do wonder about, though, is reporting bias. Presumably, liberals who harbor negative feelings about Jews or Muslims are less likely to admit them, even to themselves, as such prejudice is dissonant with the prevailing self-image of what it means to be a good leftist. I doubt that Tom Hickey, for example, would be keen on confessing anti-Jewish prejudice, even to a pollster.

But taking the poll at face value (and to be clear, I feel reasonable in asserting that the poll captures a goodly portion of the social positions of Jews and Muslims in America), it does reinforce something Jews have known ever since we set foot on these shores: the only way to insure our security, is to insure the security of all vulnerable minorities here. Anytime America looks poised to create another division between "real" and "fake" Americans, Jews are at risk of falling into the latter camp. We're all in the same boat here.

More Fun in Denials

We already saw one walkback of what had seemed to be a breakthrough between Israel and one of its more implacable foes when the Iranian government denied one of its ministers shook hands with his Israeli counterpart at a conference. Today, we saw a similar dynamic with Hamas. The Jerusalem Post had a report claiming that Hamas' top West Bank representative signaled his willingness to nullify Hamas' anti-Semitic charter and recognize Israel's existence:

During the meeting in Hebron, [Aziz] Dwaik stressed that other Hamas leaders, including Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal and Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, have voiced support for the idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 boundaries.

"The [Hamas] charter was drafted more than 20 years ago," Dwaik noted, adding that his movement would even be prepared to "nullify" the document.

"No one wants to throw anyone into the sea," he said.

That would be good news. Unfortunately, Hamas immediately issued a furious denial, so who knows what's going on. A mistaken report by the JPost? A misunderstanding by Mr. Dwaik's interlocutor? A Hamas official who got too far ahead of himself and was slapped back into line? An example of double-speak -- one set of words for western audiences, and another for domestic consumption? So much ambiguity, so little time.

Can You See Color in a White Ball?

A new professional basketball league is starting up: the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA). What distinguishes it from the NBA, you might ask? Lack of Black people!

A new professional basketball league called the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) sent out a press release on Sunday saying that it intends to start its inaugural season in June, with teams in 12 U.S. cities. However, the AABA is different from other sports leagues because only players who are “natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.”

But don't worry! He says he's not racist, which, as we all know, is a failproof way of determining that someone is not racist:

“There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like.” [...]

He pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas’ indefinite suspension after bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room, as examples of fans’ dissatisfaction with the way current professional sports are run.

“Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?” he said. “That’s the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction.”

Nope, not racist at all. He just is forming an "all-American" all-White group (you'd think that'd be a contradiction), to play "fundamental basketball" (as distinguished from its "street ball" variant), as a way for White people to express their superior, "better" culture.

Hat tip to a certain ex-blogger whose Facebook account makes me think he's having trouble staying out of the game.

UPDATE: Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks it's a hoax. The thought crossed my mind as well.

Another Greeting

A few weeks ago, a top Iranian soccer official resigned after his body accidentally sent a greeting to their Israeli counterparts. This, on the other hand, looks far less accidental:

Israel's Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov made unlikely history in Madrid on Wednesday when he shook the hand of an Iranian tourism representative, Israel Radio reported.

The two found themselves face to face at a reception in Madrid with the Spanish Royal family.

Previously, when confronted with Israelis, Iranian officials have shunned contact. In the past, Iran has even pulled out of sporting tournaments to avoid encounters with Israeli athletes.

This time the Iranian representative, who like Misezhnikov, was visiting Madrid for a trade fair, surprised the Israeli minister and grasped his hand before inviting him to visit Iran.

Misezhnikov, who also visited the Egyptian, Jordanian and Moroccan stalls at the fair, replied that tourism could be a "bridge for peace" and that he looked forward to the day when all Israelis could visit Iran.

That was pretty clearly intentional. But what does it mean?

One possibility is a thawing, however slight, of Iran's hardline position towards Israel. That I doubt.

Another, somewhat more likely, is that this demonstrates weakness in Iran's government flowing out of their recent electoral repression, such that more and more government officials feel comfortable breaking from the official line.

A third, related interpretation is that openness to Israel of any form is understood in Iran as a repudiation of Ahmadinejad -- it is a way for dissident officials to signal their distance from the regime, or, more crudely, show their disdain for it.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this -- particularly if the Iranian official is forced, like his soccer peer, to resign.

UPDATE: Or there's option #4: denying it ever happened.

Mufti Pronouncement

The Mufti of Syria has a message of peace between Jews and Muslims:

Syria's foremost Muslim leader declared on Tuesday that Islam commands its followers to protect Judaism, according to Army Radio.

"If the Prophet Mohammed had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Mohammed himself a heretic," Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun, the Mufti of Syria, was quoted as telling a delegation of American academics visiting Damascus.

Hassoun, the leader of Syria's majority Sunni Muslim community, also told the delegates that Islam was a religion of peace, adding: "If Mohammed had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a prophet."

Intriguing.

Livni: I'll Face Arrest in the UK

Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (Kadima), who held a key position in Israel's government during Operation Cast Lead, has announced she is willing to stand trial in the UK to settle, once and for all, the war crimes claims against her (and by extension, against the government of Israel).

Tzipi Livni, leader of a key Israeli opposition party, said Monday she would be willing to face arrest to challenge the validity of war crimes charges reportedly filed against her in a British court.

"For me, this is not a question," Livni told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, when asked whether she was willing to face arrest. "I mean, yes, the answer is yes. I am."

A British court last year issued an arrest warrant for Livni, leader of Israel's Kadima Party. Details of the warrant were never made public; the warrant was reportedly later dropped.

"I would like this to be, in a way, maybe even a test case, because I'm willing to speak up and to speak about the military operation in Gaza Strip," Livni said.

Livni had served as Israel's foreign minister during an Israeli three-week military offensive against Hamas in Gaza that ended exactly one year ago. The United Nations and some human-rights groups have blamed Israel and Hamas for human rights abuses during the conflict.

But Livni, who is no longer in the Israeli government, defended the former government's decision to go to war, saying that the campaign was needed to confront rocket attacks by Palestinian movement Hamas on Israeli civilians, particularly those living in southern Israel.

"I know that the decisions that we made were crucial to give an answer to Israeli civilians that couldn't live in the south part of Israel and later or even also in different parts of Israel," she said.

"It was part of my responsibility, and this was the right answer. And I'm willing to stand for these reasons and to explain this to -- to the world and to any court."

A bit early for the trial of the century, no? But in reality, I expect this is simply another step in a high-stakes game of chicken. The UK doesn't want this trial to go off anymore than Israel does. It's the diplomatic equivalent of a hand grenade being tossed about. At some point, the train will be derailed.

Happy MLK Day!

Here at Chicago, we celebrate holidays, so I have the day off. Hope everyone is having a relaxing, rejuvenating day.

Abominable Snowmen

Massive, massive, Calvin & Hobbes-inspired win:

I Feel Better about that "C" in Spanish Class

An inquiry into some of the world's most difficult languages. Via early Debate Link fan Random Scrub.

Martirosyan Tops Ouma

If you're hungering for some of my vaunting boxing coverage, I recapped last night's bout between rising star Vanes Martirosyan and former beltholder Kassim Ouma. It wasn't a robbery, per se, but Vanes won by scorecards that I thought were pretty wide, particularly given that I had the fight scored for Ouma 96-93.

Fruits and Vegetables

A student newspaper at Notre Dame has issued an apology after running a cartoon with the following punchline:

"How do you turn a fruit into a vegetable?"

"No idea."

"With a baseball bat."

Here is the apology:

The editors of The Observer would like to publicly apologize for the publication of “The Mobile Party” in the Jan. 13 edition. The burden of responsibility ultimately lies on us for allowing it to go to print. 
There is no excuse that can be given and nothing that can be said to reverse the damage that has already been done by this egregious error in judgment. 


Allowing this cruel and hateful comic a place on our pages disgraced those values and severely hurt members of our Notre Dame family — our classmates, our friends. For this, we sincerely apologize. Unfortunately, the language of hate is an everyday reality in our society.”

The South Bend Tribune has the most complete coverage I've seen. Via Andrew Sullivan.

The Iraqi Jewish Archives

One of the artifacts recovered after the US invasion of Iraq were items detailing the long history of Iraq's Jews. Many of these pieces are currently being stored in America, and there is a bit of a fight brewing over whether and under what circumstances they should be returned.

There are, I think, three angles to this.

1) There is the fear that, in a country where "Jew" is a dirty word and anti-Semitism has considerable potency in the public square, the archives will simply not be safe in Iraq. There have already been concerns that Ezekiel's Shrine -- a Jewish holy place within Iraq -- will see its Jewish heritage erased under the guise of "restoration" under pressure by Islamic parties eager to suppress Jewish history and connections to the region.

2) The flip side of number one is the idea that preserving and publicly displaying Jewish cultural history in Iraq is an important way of restoring the values of pluralism and tolerance in that community, and dissipating the view that Jews are their enemies. During the controversy over Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni's possible elevation to a top UN position, one of the things that was concerning was his stated opposition to building a museum of Jewish-Egyptian culture on "anti-Zionist" grounds. This conflation of "Jew" with "Israel" in many parts of the Arab world is deeply problematic. Still more problematic is the ongoing belief that "Jews" aren't in some sense real human beings -- they continue to be perceived as a sort of extra-social malevolent force, based out of Israel, responsible for all global ills. Grounding Jewish lives and experience in their actual historical roots, including areas in the middle east, is important to checking that instinct. Many of the Iraqi officials who are promoting return of the artifacts to their country are making arguments that strongly echo the above. In large part, the debate between the first and second angles is whether a) you believe them and b) whether, even if you think they're genuine, you have confidence in their ability to maintain control over the situation in the face of hostile pressures.

3) The third angle has to do with whose heritage these pieces actually represent: Iraq's, or Iraq's Jews. Oh yes, middle eastern Jews -- how quickly they tend to be forgotten. The richness of Iraq's Jewish history is testament to its status as a centuries-old community that for a considerable time ranked as one of the largest in the world. Unfortunately, during the 20th century, the majority of the community was driven out through violence and intimidation; the current Jewish population of Iraq is estimated at around 10. Not 10,000 -- 10. Representatives of the Iraqi Jewish diaspora are somewhat incensed that their own history will be in the hands of the very people responsible for driving them out. More concretely, since substantial portions of the Iraqi Jewish community now resides in Israel, there is a good chance that any documents remaining inside Iraq will be inaccessible to them, as Iraq continues to have no diplomatic relations with Israel (hey, another victory for boycott policies!). The article indicates that representatives of the Iraqi Jewish community, though upset, are "resigned" that the material likely will be returned there -- which goes to show just how little power and influence that have on the decisions and discourses which affect their lives.

I don't have an answer to these problems -- they are quite vexing. But it is an issue that will have to be addressed somehow, in a way that is both just to all the heirs of the traditions at issue, and that contributes, as much as possible, to peaceful and just reconciliation between the affected communities.

They Don't Understand

Jon Chait, on Republicans ill-fated attempts to play the race game (they, it seems, are the only ones who see it as a game).

Steele perfectly embodies modern Republican racialism. Democratic racialism represents a perversion of the civil rights ideal--an opposition to racism taken to excesses of hypersensitivity, occasionally devolving into a mere political tactic. Republican racialism is an attempt to mimic Democratic racialism without first having any grasp of the original sentiment underlying it--a parodic replica of the original thing, like a person who decides to convert to Judaism by studying Madonna.

Republican racialism is not an expression of racism but, rather, a failure to understand racism. Obama’s appearance on the scene has made this misapprehension painfully apparent. On the right, there lies an enduring suspicion that Obama’s race has been his greatest, and possibly only, political asset. As Glenn Beck complained in 2008, “a lot of white people will say, ‘Look, I’m not racist. I voted for Barack Obama.’ ” Only white racial guilt could explain the inexplicable rise of this inexperienced, ultra-radical, teleprompter-dependent figure.

Chait notes that the first GOP response to the rise of Obama has been to "get their own Black guy" -- an instinct that also showed up in the Palin selection.

On the topic, see also LGM and Matt Yglesias

Race and the Decision to Arrest

An interesting ruling from the 9th Circuit in Elliot-Park v. Manglona, concerning allegations by the victim of a traffic accident that the officer on the scene refused to arrest the perpetrator because she (the victim) was Korean and the aggressor and officer were both Micronesian. The court held that such discriminatory treatment, if true, violated the victim's civil rights, rejecting the police officer's argument that there is no constitutional right to have your assailant arrested. This is intriguing, since generally decisions to arrest or not arrest are widely left to the officer's discretion. But the court not only ruled racially discriminatory decision making was impermissible, it ruled that this legal position was clearly established at the time of the alleged acts, thus stripping the officer's qualified immunity.

Via. And I should note that these are just allegations at this point -- at this point in the case's procedural posture, the reviewing courts must accept all of the plaintiff's allegations as true. But they are just that -- allegations -- for now. They have not been proven in a court of law. That doesn't make the legal precedent it has set any less interesting, but I think it's still important to note.

DC Nearly Reaches the Summit

A DC court has turned back a request by gay marriage opponents to put the question to a ballot. Under DC law, referendums are not allowed for questions that touch on the civil rights of residents, a clause which the elections board decided precluded putting gay marriage on the ballot. That decision was upheld by the court today.

Opponents still have a few chances to derail gay marriage in the district, but they're running out of time. They'll appeal this ruling, and they can try and get Congress to intercede, but both options are considered long shots.

Almost there. Almost there.

Random Congressional Thought

Am I crazy, or can I see ex-Rep. Harold Ford running for Senate in New York as a Republican?

He's tacking right to run in New York, which makes no sense. He's ambitious enough that I doubt he'd be deterred by some deep connection to the Democratic Party. He'd immediately become the most high profile Black Republican in the country (even more than Michael Steele). He'd ride a boondoggle of gushing press coverage about how the Democratic Party is falling apart (so much so that even a Black man is leaving the party).

Or maybe I'm crazy.

When You Lie Down With the Devil....

Pat Robertson explains why Haiti just lost thousands of people to a natural disaster:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."

Robertson said that "ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other" and he contrasted Haiti with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic.

Tough to top Ta-Nehisi here:

The next time your wondering why there are so few black Republicans, consider the fact this unreconstructed Confederate was not long ago one of their greatest crusaders. Consider that he is equating the resistance of slavery, with a rejection of Christ.

Incidentally, Matt Yglesias has the background on what event Robertson might be talking about. Unfortunately, for it to fit with his "devil" theory, we'd have to posit that the God of the French colonialists was the ward of slaveowners and the boot on the neck of the slaves -- a position you wouldn't expect Christians to be rushing towards.

Hanania on Hamas

Palestinian-American writer Ray Hanania, founder of the Yalla Peace movement, has asked his readers to distribute the column he wrote for the Jerusalem Post on Hamas in Gaza.

No problem. Mr. Hanania is fighting the good fight -- I'm happy to do anything I can to assist him in it.

Hey, You Never Know

From a Wall Street Journal profile of Judge Vaughn Walker, the man presiding over the challenge against California's Proposition 8:

Two days into the trial over the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban, Judge Vaughn Walker has upset some opponents of gay marriage by allowing gay couples to testify on the meaning of marriage.
[...]
Judge Walker has been open to testimony that was "totally irrelevant to the issues of the case," said former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III. He wrote in Sunday's New York Times that Judge Walker has tilted the case in favor of gay-marriage proponents.

...[Judge Walker] has a mainstream Republic pedigree. He was nominated for a judgeship by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, when Mr. Meese was attorney general.

Democrats assailed the nomination because Judge Walker was member of an all-male private club. (He resigned his membership during the nomination process.) Gay-rights activists protested his appointment because, as a private lawyer, he had represented the U.S. Olympic Committee in a copyright suit against an organization called the Gay Olympics.

Sometimes folks surprise you.

Radical Professors

One of the great strengths of America's constitutional and academic systems is the latitude they give towards free speech. We allow people to advocate overthrowing the government, so long as the call is "abstract" and no concrete steps are taken to effectuate the call. We allow professors with such manifestly anti-American views to continue teaching, unhindered and unmolested, because that's what academic freedom means.

So when this George Mason professor seemingly promotes overthrowing the American government (and, perhaps, watering a tree with President Obama's blood), know one thing: he absolutely has the right to do this. He will and should face no official professional sanction for declaring himself an enemy of the lawfully constituted government of the United States. Whatever we think of a university system which is inhabited by such radicals must take second chair to our commitment to free speech and academic liberty.

(Via)

UPDATE: The professor's post has been updated, removing the part about watering the tree of liberty with Obama's blood.

Sticky Slopes on the Charts

Download the new hit single Sticky Slopes -- currently ranked on the following charts:

Rights and Liberties (Recent Papers): #9

The Judiciary & Judicial Process (Recent Papers): #7

Social Movements (Recent Papers): #2

Political Behavior (Recent Papers): #4

Get in on the action! Download your copy today!

UPDATE: Discrimination, Law & Justice (Recent Papers): #7

You May Not Be a Racist, But Your Logic Needs Work

Dafydd (via) can prove he's not a racist:

To be a racist, one must, at the very least, believe in the concept of race -- where "race" means some discrete and self-perpetuating subgroup of humans, defined by skin color and a certain morphology, but that also affects behavior and (some argue) thought itself. Anybody who accuses (e.g.) Clarence Thomas of "acting white" passionately believes in race-determinism.

This seems accurate to most people; but I simply don't believe in different "races" of Man: The morphology is inconsistent and its connection with behavior and thought is utterly spurious.

It is absolutely true that skin color and morphology are not determinate of behavior or ideology. But it is absolutely false to say that one must hold a belief in such determinism in order to be racist.

[Before we go further, a warning: this is a long post. And it does not address the totality of Dafydd's post; I don't take on his (badly misguided) account of culture, for instance. It has a narrower focus: disproving that not believing in biologically determinate races necessarily makes one "not racist".]

It is notable that Dafydd doesn't provide a definition of racist -- something quite essential to the supposed proof that believing the above proposition (we'll call it proposition X) is a necessary condition for being racist. If "racist" was defined as "anyone who votes Republican" (what I imagine the frustrated GOPer seems to believe is the effective definition for many folks), then not believing X would be quite consistent with being racist. Of course, "voting Republican" is a bad definition of racist. But that just illustrates the need to give a solid definition of racism -- then we can figure out whether disbelief of X necessarily immunizes one to it.

So let's try and nail down what "racism" means. Dafydd doesn't seem to deny that there can be such thing as a racist, he just denies the existence of "races" as he defines them. This indicates that he believes there can be racists in a world where, as a matter of objective fact, there are no "races". The implication is that a "racist" is one who (falsely) believes that there are such things as biological races. This would complete Dafydd's syllogism nicely: Believing in the existence of "races" is not just necessary to be a racist, it is what it means to be racist. If X is necessary and sufficient to be racist, then not-X means not racist. Hurray!

So what's the problem? Well, several, but here's the first: Very few people define "racist" in this way. Racism is generally not thought to be an identifier of (even false) descriptive affiliations (akin to being a "flat-earther"). Rather, it is generally taken to involve certain normative commitments; namely, treating certain (other races) as inferior, or otherwise rejecting the rights and freedom of people on basis of their perceived racial affiliation. Of course, belief in innate behavioral differences between the races is plausibly taken to be highly correlated with such differential treatment. But they're not the same thing, and it is important to be clear about what the actual problem is. Presuming that Clarence Thomas has a normative obligation to hold certain beliefs because he is Black is racist. Presuming that Clarence Thomas washes his kinky hair less often than I do my straight hair is not (even if my supposition is incorrect).

Once we put that view of "racism" on the table, then the shortcomings of Dafydd's logic become quite apparent. We can imagine someone who cheerfully admits the following:

I fully accept that there are no inherent biological differences amongst the "races"; skin color and morphological differences have no bearing on either behavior or ideology. Nonetheless, I still do not believe that people with certain skin colors and/or morphological features, or their blood descendants, should have the right to vote. It's just a prejudice I have. Besides, restricting voting rights to persons with my skin color and morphology means my vote has proportionally more influence -- restricting voting rights along those lines is in my self-interest.

Would anybody hesitate to label this "racist"? Hopefully not, even though the espoused ideology is in no way dependent on racial biological determinism. At the end of the day, we are agnostic as to why a person believes that socio-political benefits should be distributed in ways that track morphology -- we just think it's bad, and criticize accordingly. A hint that this view is correct is how you reacted when you read the word "prejudice". Taking Dafydd's view for all its worth, "it's just a prejudice" would be an argument that what we're dealing with isn't racism, but simple insanity -- a normative stance completely devoid of rational reasons backing it up. But for most of us, "prejudice" is signal pointing towards racism, not its absence. Racism is the expressed normative view, not the putative factual accounts (or lack thereof) backing it up.

Seems like a small outlier? Alright, let's push it a step further. Presumably, part of what is driving Dafydd's intuition is that the only reason one would hold the above normative commitments is if one already has some account of "other races" to treat differently, the very premise Dafydd rejects. Yes, we can imagine someone who is cheerfully agnostic to this question, but surely by and large he's right.

Except not, or at least not necessarily. Now the problem comes in the restrictive definition Dafydd gives to "race" (biological determinants of behavior). I'd argue that most scholars wouldn't define "race" this way, at least not anymore. The general view on race nowadays is that it is a socially constructed form of categorization that has no biological basis, but which has historically and contemporaneously been used as a method for distributing socio-political benefits and burdens (by "socio-political" I mean to encompass both legal rights, like voting, and also social treatment, like stereotyping -- such as Justice Thomas being accused of "acting White" -- or suburban "White flight". I also include economic discrimination, like redlining and employment discrimination.). This definition is perfectly consistent with Dafydd's rejection of proposition X.

The history of race in America is one in which such benefits and burdens were so distributed. The category doesn't depend on whatever faux-biological rationales were originally given for it. A mistaken biological belief may have gotten the ball rolling, but now it has its own momentum. Indeed, while I'm willing to concede arguendo that race gained its original salience through bad scientific beliefs, I don't have to: We can imagine a situation where elites conspired to simply make up biological racial determinism and spread it amongst the people to justify enacting racist policies, never actually believing it themselves (highly unlikely), or where people deluded themselves into believing in biological racial determinism as an ex post facto way of rationalizing the creation of a state of affairs they'd otherwise consider to be unjust (far more likely). Both permutations demonstrate the unnecessary nature of a metaphysical underpinning for a race to have salience.

So if race doesn't correspond to a real biological thing, what is race? Simple: Race is race; that is, race is that which we have described as and made policy based upon its identification as race. There is nothing but the edifice. That it turns out there is no biology underlying the whole deal doesn't cause the schema to snap out of existence, it just emphasizes that there is nothing beneath the construct.

Race can be thought of as an building. Perhaps some unenlightened people would think that the building was a natural feature of the world; there from creation. As it turns out, we know that it was, quite literally, socially constructed. But that constructed quality (distinguished from being metaphysically grounded) doesn't make any less "real". Calling out the building as being "constructed" doesn't itself do anything; it doesn't cause the edifice to come crashing down, it has very little effect on whatever social or political arrangements have developed around the building. Same with concepts. Whether the categorization schema continues to have salience ("as a method for distributing socio-political benefits") is completely divorced from whether the belief that originally motivated its creation was ever factually correct, whether anyone still holds it today, indeed, whether anyone ever genuinely held the view at all. Call it a simulacrum, call it hyperreality -- big words for a not-actually-that-controversial position. Now let's be clear, it could be that the categorization system of race no longer does have salience. Buildings don't last forever; the point of the analogy is simply that you have to do work beyond a mere expression of disbelief to bring them down. Whether race continues to have salience in the distribution of socio-political benefits and burdens, as it had done for many, many years, is an empirical question.

That was a tragically long diversion: I apologize. So let's circle back to the supposed topic of the post: the possibility of being racist without believing in biological racial determinism. What we've accomplished is clarifying our terms. "Race" is not a descriptor mapping onto any brute biological race, race is a socially constructed categorization schema which at at least some historical point salience as a manner of distributing socio-political benefits and burdens, one that has no content but that which we've created for it (which doesn't mean we can simply declare, ala Santa Claus, our disbelief in it to make it disappear). Empirically, we then have to look to see if the system still is active -- if we still do, in fact, distribute benefits and burdens in way that tracks the lines the system draws. The evidence here is overwhelmingly that yes we do; this post is too long already for me to elaborate beyond that.

And what is a racist? I'd say a concept or argument or behavior is racist if it causes or reinforces unequal inegalitarian distribution of benefits and burdens on racial lines. It's not any descriptive beliefs, it's not the mere usage of race, it's not even the existence of the category -- it's the perpetuation of inequality on lines tracking the category. Calling a person racist probably means they have a normative commitment to such a state of affairs; the question, really, is at what level of knowledge we demand: to borrow from criminal law, is it intent, knowledge, recklessness, negligence, or absolute liability? I can't resolve that question.

I will say this: people, including people who believe themselves to be non-racist, act in ways that discriminate on basis of race -- they adhere to the categorization schema. The literature on subconscious racism is overwhelming in this respect. Regardless of whether we label them "racist" or not, what is clear is that the cognitive state of believing that race "doesn't exist", or believing oneself not to be racist, has very little to do with whether the categorization system of race maintains its salience; assuming that one has an obligation to be anti-racism, not just "not racist", this is a damning moral flaw. More likely, trying to restrict the field of racism so narrowly to outdated questions of biological determinism is generally a signal that one is unwilling to look at the question in its full breadth or depth, meaning that one is unlikely to have much of an effect on dissipating it.

So here are the conclusions:

(1) Logically, it is pretty much just wrong to say that a belief in biological racial determinism is necessary to be a racist, unless your definition of racist simply is "one who believes that";

(2) The likelihood that someone who does not hold that belief is a "racist" is highly dependent on our definition of racism; and

(3) There is virtually no reason to believe that not believing in racial biological determinism will do anything to break down the continued salience of race as a categorization schema, which to my mind is a far more pressing issue than whether we get to use the word "racist" or not.

Timmy, Please

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, widely viewed as a rising GOP star, has a plan for getting the budget back into balance:

Balancing the budget will require some tough decisions. Congress must reduce discretionary spending in real terms, with exceptions for key programs such as military, veterans, and public safety. The Congress must also reject costly new spending initiatives, like new health care entitlements.

There is, alas, a problem:

Someone needs to tell Pawlenty that discretionary spending except for "military, veterans, and public safety" is less than $400 billion a year. A real reduction of, say 10 percent (a ridiculous amount but use it for simplicity sake) would save a little more than $40 billion from the baseline and that doesn't come close to doing what needs to be done.

Finish us off, Matt Yglesias:

If I were planning on running for election, I might not be comfortable saying “to deal with the long-term federal budget deficit we need higher taxes and we need to slow the growth of Medicare spending.” But if you’re not willing to say “we need higher taxes and we need to slow the growth of Medicare spending” then you shouldn’t run around talking about the long-term federal budget deficit. There’s really nothing else to say about it.

Fictive Republican budget hawkery strikes again!

TNC on Senator Reid

Count me in the camp of folks who think Senator Reid's comments were clearly racially insensitive, but not a "racial slur". "Negro" as a referent to African-Americans is the sort of thing you say if you're totally out of touch with racial progress over the past, oh, 50 years. It's how you 75 year old great uncle from rural Kansas would put it -- he doesn't mean harm by it, he's just entirely clueless. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a bad thing -- we want our senators to have a better finger on the pulse of America's citizenry than that, and it's worrisome when they don't. But there is a qualitative difference between being that sort of person, and, say, endorsing White supremacy.

A point Ta-Nehisi Coates makes quite well:

Claiming that Harry Reid's comments are the same [as Lott's], is like claiming that referring to Jews as "Hebrews" is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling "Segregation Forever!" would have cured us of "all these problems."

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid's comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren't simply having a hard time re-branding, they don't actually understand how and why they got the tag.

These guys are lost. But Michael Steele's "off the hook" strategy will, presumably, point the way back. Not for nothing, I offer the wise and venerable words of my people: Negro, please.

As I've come to realize, they really believe this shit. They genuinely think that this is how racial politics work. And they are going to be woefully disappointed when the Black community doesn't respond they way the GOP expects them to.

Or perhaps alternatively, this isn't about Black people at all. This isn't about trying to level the playing field in terms of competing for Black voters. This is about blurring the line for White voters, relying on the widespread White misconception of what racism is and what is and is not racism to think that Democrats and Republicans are essentially the same (because canvassing the Black community on the matter is, of course, out of the question).

The Internets Do Not Welcome You, Mr. Schill

My University of Chicago spam filter just tagged a message from the new Dean of the Law School. Ouch.

Cheap Talk

Snarking at a Bob Herbert column which -- quite accurately -- frets that Americans are getting distracting from the critical issues facing our country by obsessive focus on a few issues (such as the would-be Detroit airline bomber), Jeffrey Goldberg titles his post "Easy for You To Say" and writes "Try telling this to the people on that plane."

What does that even mean? Anytime someone faces a serious threat to their life, that's going to be a big deal to them. I don't mean to be callous, but that fact does not mean it automatically is a big deal for us as a society.

The failed attack on the airliner obviously is not a minor issue. But neither is it worthy of the all-consuming focus that it risks morphing into.

Do People Really Deny This?

I can never figure out if I grew up and continue to exist in a totally unique environment, or I'm just totally disconnected from the broader Jewish psyche, or what, because I had no idea that it was a Jewish article of faith that al-Qaeda's actions and support are entirely unconnected to Israel.

Of course they are! Opposition to Israel is part and parcel of the package that al-Qaeda represents. And so it make sense that, as a high profile enemy of Israel, persons upset with Israel for a variety of legitimate or illegitimate reasons will be attracted to it.

I do think Ackerman is right that some Jews get nervous when this is expounded upon too vigorously, because it can lead to Michael Scheuer-esque positions basically advocating throwing Israel to the wolves to appease al-Qaeda. But there are separate issues.

Moreover, Ackerman is clearly right about this:

The answer for the U.S. is not to sever ties with Israel or turn hostile toward it. It’s to seek an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict and a stable Middle East. That will not stop Islamic extremism. Maybe I should say it again in capitol letters: A TWO-STATE SOLUTION WILL NOT STOP ISLAMIC EXTREMISM. Extremists are going to be extremists. They demagogue. They use pretexts. That’s what they do. You deal with that. The proper response is to reduce the circumstances under which their demagoguery resonates. And that’s why ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and midwifing a Palestinian state is so important. This is in our interests, it’s in Israel’s interests, it’s in the Palestinians interests, it’s in the Arab world’s interests, and it’s expressly against al-Qaeda’s interests. It’s in absolutely no way an “appeasement” of al-Qaeda unless you believe that Arabs and Muslims are naturally inclined to bandwagon with al-Qaeda. And that makes you a racist and safe to ignore.

Maybe not "safe to ignore", because such racism still has plenty of purchase in American life. But the general sentiments are right.

New Jersey Rejects Gay Marriage Bill

The state senate just voted it down, 20-14.

I wonder what went through the minds of the 20 nay votes? I hope, for their sakes, that theirs was a vote of conscience. They have to know that in 20-some years, they will be regarded as some of the great political villains of our time. That's a rather high price to pay for mere political expediency or populist demagoguery.

LOL....sob

Fun fact -- I actually have been on the phone with my health care provider over the past few weeks to settle some stuff (they have my birth date and gender wrong, and they are approaching Minnesota-levels of passive-aggressiveness in "attempting" to solve the problem).

ChaitBlog

Jonathan Chait gets a blog all his own on the TNR website. Nice!

UPDATE: Turns out it's replacing the old Plank blog, so that's bittersweet. Meanwhile, a nice sample of Chait's newest forum is his post on the transgender quota of one. "It's very odd to witness a part of the political discourse where one side understands that its actual views are so completely socially unacceptable that they can't be expressed, and must be replaced with nonsense terms."

Why Does Jennifer Rubin Hate American Jews?

When DougJ asked "why do so many right-wing Jewish Americans hate other Jewish Americans so much" in response to reading this Jennifer Rubin piece asking "Why Jews Hate Palin", I thought he might have been being a bit harsh. Then I read the Rubin article, and, geez, I'm eating my words. Rubin's piece simply drips with contempt towards the American Jewish community. They are just outraged that Jews are Jews. We saw the same thing when Norman Podhoertz published Why are Jews Liberal (Leon Wieseltier's evisceration of this was classic).

There are two things going on here. First is Rubin's befuddlement that Jews don't run like teen rock fans into the arms of anyone who is "vocally" pro-Israel. We're savvy enough to interrogate what that means, and not everyone who says (or even believes) they are pro-Israel actually qualifies in a manner consistent with how Jews understand the term. Palin's creepily maximalist positions on the conflict are way out of the Jewish mainstream -- her position here is a bug, not a feature! And no, it's not a manifestation of "stereotypes" against Christian evangelicals to say so. We're entitled to choose what constitutes being our friend.

Second, while Rubin at least doesn't succumb to the common misconception that Jews are single-issue Israel voters, she does brush all the other issues we care about aside with careless ease (how many brownie points is she supposed to earn because she didn't commit to pursuing an actively "creationist" agenda as Governor?). Sarah Palin inspires special animosity amongst Jews because Sarah Palin is currently the highest profile member of the purely anti-intellect, theocratic wing of the Republican Party that is an anathema to virtually all of the broadly held positions of the average American Jew. I doubt, say, Jim Inhofe would fare much better if he had been nominated for Vice President (I was trying to think of another politician who is not just as identified with the far right as Palin is, but at least approaches her positive vibration of hostility towards intellectual attainment).

And our other (supposed) attributes are met with nothing short of seething hatred. Jews are snobby elitists, Jews don't have respect for the working class, Jews look down on anyone who isn't sipping a latte at a Harvard bookstore, Jews would never stoop so low as to join the military or play hockey. It's amazing to me that it's a Jewish writer we're dealing with here -- this simply a litany of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Moreover, she even throws into the pile a bunch of supposed "problems" with Palin that had no linkage to the Jewish community whatsoever except through her amateur psychoanalysis. Jews don't like the "sexual" Palin because they like their female politicians frumpy. Jews don't like Palin having five kids because we're post-sexual revolution liberals who hold mothers in contempt (or something -- maybe it's because Jewish women are frigid? It was a bit more incoherent than usual here).

It is certainly true that Jews value education, intellect, and policy knowledge greatly. And we're perfectly willing to admire these traits when they manifest in persons of whatever background (Bill Clinton grew up dirt poor, and Joe Biden comes from decidedly working-class Scranton with degrees from not-exactly-elite Delaware and Syracuse). Governor Palin isn't just missing these qualities, she holds active contempt for them. She doesn't just govern on "instinct", she thinks wonks are worthy of scorn. She doesn't just come from a rural area, she thinks that city-dwellers aren't real Americans (I have continued concern about how the distinctive GOP trope rallying against "urban intellectual elites" is an anti-Semitic dogwhistle). She doesn't just lack basic awareness of important political issues, she actively seeds misinformation.

Of course we're going to dislike her. She is the culmination of every trend in the modern Republican Party that's led to its virtual abandonment by the Jewish community.

That's why Jews hate Sarah Palin. The question is, why does Jennifer Rubin hate us so much for it?

UPDATE: See also Ned Resnikoff, Capital J, and especially David Frum.

Another Organ Trafficking Case

As Harry's Place put it, "You won’t have seen this on Press TV".

In September, 11 Jordanians were extradited by Cairo and charged in Amman with trafficking in human organs, mainly kidneys, and selling them illegally in Egypt for up to 30,000 dollars each.
[...]
According to a recent government study of 130 cases in which kidneys were sold, nearly 80 percent of "donors" were Palestinians from Baqaa in northwest Amman, the largest refugee camp in the country.

Most were under the age of 31, lived in absolute poverty and had no criminal record.

The study said operations to remove the kidneys used to take place in Iraq, but since the 2003 US-led invasion, young men are now sent to Egypt, India and Pakistan.

I write this not to mirror the insane hellstorm that came along with the sensationalist "Israel organ theft" story (see my guide for the perplexed on that issue). The point is merely that crime happens; it happens worldwide. When it happens, it should be punished. But crime is not an example of a incurable sickness in an entire culture. One shouldn't take this story to say "Jordan should be destroyed" or "Jordan should be a pariah state". And I doubt anyone will.

Yikes

At least one Dakotan is upset by the announced retirement of Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND). Real upset:

Fuck! I bet Pomeroy doesn’t even run.

In ND, a popular, well-liked Republican with a good track record will beat pretty much any Democrat. Dorgan won an open seat to get in. Conrad squeaked by an asshole (Mark Andrews) in a semi-upset. Never seen even a good D beat a decent R in an open election in my lifetime in either Dakota.

But, goddamit, once they get in they fucking stay in for life. That’s just part of the deal, D or R. Karl Mundt, Nixon’s right-hand man on the HUAC, was in a fucking coma for half of his last term after he got into the Senate. Quentin Burdick died in office, like a real man, after forty-fucking-two years in the Senate. Tim Johnson’s brain fucking exploded and he can barely talk, but he ran for re-election and won.

Dorgan has always been a prissy little bitch. He wasn’t man enough to run against Andrews, so Conrad went for it and won. Fucking Byron had to sit around and wait for Burdick to die before he could sack up and run.

He should have been making a smelly puddle in his Depends before he even thought of retirement. What a sorry excuse for a politician.

The Democrats should snatch that ridiculous fucking toupee off of his square farmboy knothead, burn it in the middle of the mall, bury the ashes and have the rest of the caucus piss on the spot.

Family lore is that my father is mortal enemies with Senator Dorgan. This is obviously an exaggeration -- I think they were on opposing sides of some matter years back, and it got somewhat acrimonious, but I suspect it's much like the supposed rivalry between my high school and Montgomery Blair HS -- all in the head of one side.* Dad did once beat Rudy Giuliani in court though.

* Blair thought they were our arch-rivals, but we didn't know, because as far as we were concerned our rival was Churchill. One day a bunch of Blair students came in the middle of the night and painted our school rock Blair colors -- but it took us the entire day to figure out it was them, because we had no idea what their colors were.

On Refusing to be a "Good Jew"

The "good Jew" is a common trope in Jewish history. A statement attributed to a variety of Nazi officials was that every German "knows one good Jew" -- the exceptions that belie the general rule of Jewish mendacity, parochialism, ruthlessness, avarice, and evil. We should not be distracted. Meanwhile, within the Jewish community, there are those who assume they can escape anti-Semitism by becoming "the good Jew" -- by assimilating into the gentile majority, by adopting the political and ideological convictions of the surrounding society, and often by publicly and viciously repudiating those signals and signs which represent the Jewish community in the public eye. Some anti-Semites offer the same deal: you can escape the wrath coming down on the Jews, if only you turn on your fellows. It's hardly a situation unique to the Jews -- Malcolm X's "house negro" is the obvious analogue -- it's just our particular iteration of a common problem facing oppressed groups in societies shot through with racism.

The American poet Alice Walker had quote attributed to her, one that I've always found meaningful: "No one is your friend who demands your silence."

Alice Walker also recently took a trip to Gaza along with Code Pink, and had some interesting things to say about Israel:

There are differing opinions about this, of course, but my belief is that when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet.

Ms. Walker's post is about many things (many not relating to Israel at all), but the discussion about Israel and Jews is intriguing to me. Not, primarily, because of the tension between the quote I knew from Ms. Walker, and her demand that Israeli Jews be silenced in the debate over the future of their country (and those who, it must be said, would comprise roughly 50% of the combined population of Israel and Palestine). It is the sad truth that commitment to the liberation of some people is often paired with belief in the suppression of others; it no longer surprises me to find that people with unimpeachable anti-racism credentials in one field succumb to horrific bigotry in another.

Rather, it is her discourse on Jews that interested me. Ms. Walker's ex-husband was Jewish, and she relates how, "like so many Jews in America, my former husband could not tolerate criticism of Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians."

I gave her [an old Palestinian woman] a gift I had brought, and she thanked me. Looking into my eyes she said: May God protect you from the Jews. When the young Palestinian interpreter told me what she’d said, I responded: It’s too late, I already married one. I said this partly because, like so many Jews in America, my former husband could not tolerate criticism of Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians. Our very different positions on what is happening now in Palestine/Israel and what has been happening for over fifty years, has been perhaps our most severe disagreement. It is a subject we have never been able to rationally discuss. He does not see the racist treatment of Palestinians as the same racist treatment of blacks and some Jews that he fought against so nobly in Mississippi.
[...]
This is one reason I understand the courage it takes for some Jews to speak out against Israeli brutality and against what they know are crimes against humanity. Most Jews who know their own history see how relentlessly the Israeli government is attempting to turn Palestinians into the “new Jews,” patterned on Jews of the holocaust era, as if someone must hold that place, in order for Jews to avoid it.

I hardly contest that many Jews have a blind-spot towards the sufferings of the Palestinian people -- it is a subject I have wrestled with deeply myself. But what strikes me here is the extraordinarily pronounced erasure of Jewish perspective and experience that Ms. Walker engages in. First, that she cannot even conceptualize the possibility that ingrained prejudice that Jews face worldwide, on a daily basis, is a relevant prism for viewing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Rebecca Lesses did a good job parsing all of this; I'd merely add that a woman who puts quotation marks around "holocaust" (lower-case as well) is unfortunately not an unlikely candidate for displaying this lack of empathy.

This, of course, goes back to her conviction that Israeli Jews (and, it seems, most Jews period) are not viable candidates to be discussants in questions of justice. It is a sentiment that makes sense only when one believes they have nothing to contribute. And that sentiment, in turn, relies on the larger claim that Jewish history and experience is effectively a null entity. Ultimately, that Jews themselves are unworthy of political equality. Perhaps this explains the "unholy glee", to quote Professor Lessee, Ms. Walker evinces "in the thought that Jews will once again be a minority in Palestine, as if this is really the correct state of affairs. Jews should know their place, which is not to be able to wield power by controlling their own independent state." The goal is the reinscription of domination over Jews. Equality is for equals. Jews are not equal. Jews must always exist, if they must at all, at the sufferance of others.

Second, one gets the clear feeling that Ms. Walker views the Jewish community in the same way that, well, Jews have most often been viewed throughout history: as diseased, as needing salvation by enlightened outsiders who come only to save us from ourselves. Ms. Walker laments that she was never able to "rationally discuss" the Israel/Palestine issue with her husband (who here is representative of the Jewish community). And why would she be expected to? In the context of Jewish rights, Jews are always taken to be irrational sociopaths, incapable of political communication, and worthy of social expulsion while our betters discuss our fate. Perhaps there is no tension after all between the views expressed here and her aforementioned quote -- one could hardly expect to be friends with such a creature. "Most Jews" don't take Ms. Walker's views on the conflict, but, she asserts, "Most Jews who know their own history" do. The beleaguered Jewish minority, those rare, special few who can transcend their provincial nature and see themselves for who they really are -- those are the saved, and the rest of us are the fallen. Ms. Walker wants to choose Jewish leaders for the Jews, because -- I can't stress this enough -- ultimately, Ms. Walker rejects the notion that Jews are deserving of autonomy and independent development. Jews don't have rights, Jews acceptable to Alice Walker have rights.

But let's talk about this claim about who knows what about Jewish history. I would have presumed I, being Jewish, would know my history quite well. I had forgotten the key clause -- being Jewish. Jews never have possessed the right to define the contours of what Judaism means. That right has always been appropriated by non-Jews like Ms. Walker. It goes without saying that her account of the history here is nearly unspeakably shallow. Jewish migration to what is now Israel predates the Holocaust, most Israeli Jews aren't of European descent (let alone resettled refugees from WWII -- the flatly racist erasure of the existence and history of Arab Jews continues apace here), the British opposed the partition plan, there are, in fact, quite few catastrophes post-dating WWII which would bear much resemblance to the Holocaust (although given the weak grasp Ms. Walker has on what the Holocaust -- excuse me, "holocaust" -- actually entailed, perhaps this is symptomatic of the greater flaw). None of this matters, though, because Ms. Walker possesses the trump card: She's not Jewish. You want to know the story of our "own history"? That's it in a nutshell.

"No one is your friend who demands your silence." The great thing about quotes such as this is that they transcend the author -- they become clarion calls for justice even when their progenitors stray from the path. I do not believe that mutual communication -- open ears and open hearts -- is a luxury in the quest for justice; I believe it is indispensable. As Iris Marion Young wrote, "Normative judgment is best understood as the product of dialogue under conditions of equality and mutual respect. Ideally, the outcome of such dialogue and judgment is just and legitimate only if all the affected perspectives have a voice." It is incumbent upon Jews and Israelis to listen and hear the claims and assertions of Arabs and Palestinians, and Christians and atheists and Europeans and non-Jewish people of color, because that is what political equality and mutual co-existence demand. But it is likewise incumbent upon non-Jews and non-Israelis to hear the narratives and stories of the Jewish people -- to accept that our narratives and stories and experiences and history have meaning and value and worth, and cannot be dismissed as they so often have simply because you're not Jewish and so you can. That way lies the route to oppression. That way is, indeed, the embodiment of the oppression that I as a Jew must struggle against on a daily basis. Ms. Walker, intentionally or not, is part of that oppressive structure which chokes off my life and contributes to the (frankly not unreasonable, given our history) belief amongst Jews that we will never be safe unless we are in a situation where outsiders aren't in a position to dominate us. By her own standards she is not my friend; she is not an ally I can rely upon in times of trouble, or injustice, or hate or violence or need. I don't think it is an expression of shrill Jewish craziness to believe that a discussion between Alice Walker and Ismail Haniyeh (but from which Jews (excepting, of course, the permissible "good Jews") are proactively excluded) is one unlikely to result in a just outcome vis-a-vis the Jews. And I do not see it as being either in my personal interests, or the interests of international justice, to buy into a framework in which I am pre-emptively labeled the enemy.

I noted once before my affinity for Christine Littleton's claim that the feminist method starts "with the very radical act of taking women seriously, believing that what we say about ourselves and our experience is important and valid, even when (or perhaps especially when) it has little or no relationship to what has been or is being said about us." I firmly believe that the route to all egalitarian treatment lies in the same prescription. I refuse to be a "good Jew", because I refuse to accept, as Ms. Walker would have me do, the notion that my experience as a Jew is worthless, that I must defer to the non-Jewish world in determining what it means to be Jewish and what constitutes Jewish authenticity, that it is the natural order of things that I be subject to the will and dominance of others, or that I be, in short, a second class citizen of the world. Such a refusal bears little relation to what is said about Jews -- by Ms. Walker or others. But that makes it even more important that we be the ones to start saying them. And that means we can't be "good Jews".

Malawi Gay Marriage Trial Set for January

Two Malawian men are scheduled to face trial on charges of gay sex (a holdover law from British colonial eras) after they attempted to marry each other in a traditional African ceremony. Police have also arrested prominent human rights defenders of the couple, on trumped up charges of distributing "pornography" (here, safer sex guides).

In somewhat related news, the American fundamentalists who traveled to Uganda preaching messages of hatred towards homosexuals are now embarrassed that their efforts bore fruit with the now-inamous "kill the gays" bill. I'd be more impressed with their contrition, of course, if they returned to the country and began preaching that the moral evil they've unleashed is far, far in excess of whatever beef they have with homosexuality. But that won't happen, so color me unimpressed.

Who are the Settlers?

The Israel Policy Forum has an excellent interview with Dr. Shlomo Fischer, the founding director of Yesodot-The Center for Torah and Democracy and a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the topic. It makes for great background reading on one of Israel's most entrenched social problems.

Siege Mentalities

Jeffrey Goldberg signs on to Bradley Burston's declaration that the siege of Gaza is Israel's worst mistake of the past decade. Goldberg clarifies that the bigger problem was that the disengagement was unilateral, as opposed to negotiated:

For my money, the worst mistake Israel made was the mistake that led, ultimately, to the siege of Gaza: The 2005 unilateral withdrawal. Leaving Gaza wasn't the problem, of course -- you'd think the Jews would have learned sooner (see: Samson) that Gaza is no good for Jews, and Ariel Sharon was right to get out. But the method he used was tragic. By refusing to negotiate his exit from Gaza, he strengthened the hand of Hamas. If he had negotiated the withdrawal with the Palestinian Authority, he would have a) extracted concessions from the Palestinians, and b) strengthened the moderates. The moderates would have been credited by their people for coaxing Israel out of Gaza. Instead, Hamas won the round, and then won the election, and then won the coup, and then, in a way, won the most recent war against Israel, and certainly the public relations war, which is the sort of war that really matters in the Middle East, and which Israel almost never fails to lose.

Matt Yglesias thinks that analysis is descriptively spot on, but says it wasn't a "mistake", because many of the architects of the pull-out were trying to slow down the peace process and delay pressure for further change.

There's obviously truth to this, but I think this is overstated in the same way that general efforts to discern the "intent" behind legislative goals supported by a broad coalition of political actors are usually misguided. The hope that disengagement would delay the peace process may have motivated the more conservative members of Sharon's coalition, but it seems weird to say that the more liberal MKs had the same instinct. And most of the opposition in Israel to withdrawal came from the right, not the left. Meanwhile, while the chain of events identified by Goldberg certainly are not positive developments, I doubt that Sharon, were he to awake from his coma, would dispute that -- he wouldn't be proclaiming that his plan went according to playbook.

On the broader indictment of Israel's current policy on Gaza, one thing I've been meaning to say is that I'm not sure if there is anyway to get the supporters of the status quo to admit defeat. The stated goals of the current blockade are, of course, to break Hamas and end terrorism against Israelis. Of course, it is pretty clear that the policy is a failure in these respects -- Hamas remains firmly in control, and its capacity and desire for terrorist violence has waxed, not waned. And that very fact -- that Gaza still remains radicalized -- is then used to justify continuing the blockade. The fact of failure is the warrant for not amending the failed policy.

I don't want to push this too far -- I think this is part of the broader what do you do when nothing works problem -- but it is worth noting.

More to the Blogosphere

I'm pleased to add the comebacking Judeosphere to my blogroll, which returns to the 'tubes after a two year absence. He's already highlighted reasons to avoid alarmism about the "growing" BDS movement against Israel. Yes, the country is export-dependent -- but most of those exports are technology related that it is essentially impracticable to boycott (unless the boycotters want to dump their cellphones). I'd also note that the pro-peace community has begun to effectively mobilize against the BDS forces, which is above all the most important thing we can do to stop them from further sabotaging the prospects of a peaceful, just end to the conflict.

ALI Abandons the Death Penalty

The American Law Institute -- perhaps the most influential organization in shaping the contours of American criminal law -- has officially decided to cease giving guidance on the death penalty, "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."

This is roughly in line with my position on the topic, which is that I don't have a problem with capital punishment in the abstract, but in its day-to-day application (outside truly exceptional circumstances) I have no confidence in how it is carried out. I think it is pretty clear that the constitution contemplates capital punishment, and there isn't any particularly strong grounds to label it "cruel and unusual" as an abstract matter -- but as applied in this country it simply is not working in a way consistent with our ethical and constitutional commitments.

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience have proved that the system cannot reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent; risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

So yeah, that.

There is No Innocence in this Place

These words were actually spoken by an American governmental official to a detainee:

“There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.”

This is how moral credibility dies. This is how morality itself dies.

New Year's Resolutions, 2010 Edition

As is custom, we first reflect on how I did last year:

Met: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15

Failed: 4 (but that was the right call), 8, 9

Pick 'em: 7, 11

Not bad, I say!

Now, to this year's list:

1) Make law review board (Met);

2) Publish my comment (Met);

3) Continue to progress with "Sticky Slopes" (Met);

4) Land a clerkship (Met);

5) Work harder at treating Jill like the beautiful, delightful, love of my life that she is (Pick 'em -- I should never be fully satisfied on a resolution like this);

6) Get Gaston and Emily in a room together (Met -- but I overcooked it);

7) Don't blow my gainful summer employment (Met);

8) See a big chunk of my old high school and/or college friends (another wedding would help this) (Missed);

9) Take whatever steps possible this summer to see if I like and/or will be good at appellate litigation (Met);

10) Make sure the blog doesn't sputter out this summer (hopefully this doesn't conflict with #9) (Met -- barely);

11) Keep in touch with my Carleton professor-mentors (Met);

12) Solidify the Law & Society panel and, following that, rock it (Met);

13) Don't lose my green jacket (Missed);

14) Find some new albums to listen to (Pick 'em);

15) Beat Final Fantasy XIII (assuming it ever comes out) (Missed -- but it wasn't a very good game anyway).

For Me, Not You

This is one of those times when the quote of the day is entirely for my benefit (a way of preserving a quotation I'd otherwise lose):

"[I]n achieving equality for women . . . what matters (to a very large extent) is numbers--results--not abstract principles".

Mary E. Becker, Obscuring the Struggle: Sex Discrimination, Social Security, and Stone, Seidman, Sunstein and Tushnet's Constitutional Law, 89 Colum. L. Rev. 264, 274 (1989)

Greetings from Contested Kentucky!

I'm sitting in Louisville airport, waiting for a ride to take me to Madison, Indiana -- site of a much-anticipated wedding. Free wi-fi in the airport is a very nice thing (alas, it is a special, temporary offer). But I don't know if we'll have internet in our hotel in Madison (to be honest, I don't know if they have the internet in Madison, period) -- so I might be dark for a few more days yet.

We're Here!

Jill made it, albeit quite delayed, from Minnesota. So I've been busy. Also, this is a good post. That's all.

The TSA Game

Eric Posner explains TSA strategy, once we rule out impossible extremes:

Once you eliminate the implausible corner solutions—the TSA undertakes body cavity searches of every passenger, or security screenings are abolished—a number of consequences follow.

1. The TSA must randomize (play a “mixed strategy,” in game-theoretic parlance). Otherwise, terrorists can predict some of its precautions and evade them. The same principle explains why police vary patrol routes and road blocks. A NYT article today makes clear that the TSA is self-consciously randomizing to keep terrorists off guard.

2. At the social optimum, the number of successful terrorist attacks will be greater than zero. It might be argued that we have had too few successful terrorist attacks over the last few years rather than too many. The question is whether the implicit statistical valuation of life in TSA programs is too high. I suspect that the answer is yes, as is generally the case with airline safety.

3. Profiling is an effective strategy when, as here, terrorists come from a small group of (relatively) easily identifiable people. One suspects that this explains Israel’s success. But profiling places a large portion of the cost of deterrence on a small group, which makes some people morally uneasy.

4. Once the implausible corner-solutions are ruled out, any security policy or threshold will seem arbitrary because you have to draw the line somewhere, which means that it will be easy to point to some permitted activity that is only slightly different from what is forbidden (for example, carrying on 100 ml of liquid rather than 101 ml).

5. As for the “security theater” claim–

a. If ordinary people are fooled into thinking that the TSA is doing more than it is really doing, then at least some potential terrorists will be fooled as well, and so will be deterred from engaging in airplane-terrorism.

b. Ordinary people will also fly more often, which means that one of the goals of terrorists—to terrorize people so that they will pressure their government to make concessions to terrorists—will have failed.

How Chicago was that post? But he's right, though I'll note a tension between numbers 1 and 3. A profiling regime is by definition not random, so terrorists can construct an "anti-profile" to beat the system -- the so-called "carnival booth" (because it encourages terrorists to "step right up and see if they're a winner").

I also think that 5(a) is maybe overstated, as the point is that the facial security measures might fool us average rubes, but not anybody actually intent on breaching airport security. I suppose there might be some aspiring terrorist who is awestruck by the festival of it all, but I have to think that anybody who is intent on breaching TSA security won't give up that easily.

On the other hand, while I don't accept 2 whole-heartedly, I do think it is important to note that pretty much any feasible screening system we come up with will not be fail-proof. Terrorists might get through even if we do everything right. It's really annoying when people act as if pretty well random and unpredictable acts are examples of outrageous bureaucratic incompetence. The TSA isn't the Green Lantern -- it doesn't protect us just by willing it hard enough.

I Should Have Organized Better

I've written four squib posts today. A smarter blogger would have grouped them together and did a roundup. Instead, I'm now stuck with a few stray links still on my browser -- ones I don't want to lose, but not enough to create a true roundup. And I'm too embarrassed to push my short-game up to five and six. So -- to the internet I go, to try and find enough good material to make for a real roundup. My mistake is your gain.

* * *

The NYT reports on China's lock on the rare metals which are key to the technologies of the future. Via Chris Borgen, who writes: "Criminal gangs, geopolitics, and environmental collapse, make for a dangerous cocktail."

CNN: "Defying U.S. urging, Israel to build homes in Arab East Jerusalem." Well, to be fair, they're building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (contrary to seemingly popular belief, there were always Jewish neighborhoods in that quarter -- even prior to 1967). I agree with Jeffrey Goldberg that this is needless provocation on the part of the Israeli government, but the media could do a favor and not pour gasoline on it.

Also, I could have written Jeffrey Goldberg's response to Andrew Sullivan on the recent Hannah Rosenthal flap.

How much is the economy driving the Iranian protests?

California's initiative process is completely broken? You don't say!

There are worries that Islamic parties in Iraq are pushing to strip the Jewish heritage from Ezekiel's Shrine in Iraq, under the guise of restoring it.

It says something not-so-good that it took me quite some time to figure out they were talking about Georgia the country, not Georgia the state.

You want to know what's outrageous? Women voting for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Jessica Valenti and Jillian Hewitt vivisect.

* * *

Hey, that wasn't so bad! I bet you can't even figure out which links were the ones I originally had up on the browser!

And better news yet: Jill is flying into DC tomorrow night! So I might be a bit busy for awhile.

We're So Dead

Spencer Ackerman reminds us:

Umar Farouk “When There’s Nothing Left To Burn, You Must Set Your Crotch On Fire” Abdulmutallab is currently detained in a federal prison in Michigan. For now! In a few days he’ll use his Muslim heat vision to escape and run amok in Ann Arbor, shortly after America is brought to its knees by the force of his oratory in open federal court.

To Guantanamo he must go!

Do They Notice it isn't Working?

The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response reports that jihadist chatter is pointing towards further kidnappings of Israeli and American soldiers in order to "free Gaza". This comes from the pretty far-right INN, so take it with some salt, but assuming it's true -- have these folks noticed that this tactic isn't working? One would think that decades upon decades of history would give some indication of what strategies are likely to lead to Palestinian independence and which ones are not. Yet, violent warfare remains the dogma.

Kidnappings of this sort have traditionally led to one of two outcomes for Palestinians:

1) Prisoner exchanges (which I imagine groups like Hamas like, but have little to do with "freeing Gaza"), and/or

2) Bruising Israeli military campaigns.

The one thing they've had virtually no positive impact towards is convincing Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories.

Now, I'm being deliberately credulous here -- I'm acting as if the primary goal of Palestinian terrorist groups is "freeing Gaza" rather than inflicting pain on Israel. And we all know that isn't true -- these groups have always been willing to trade the former for the latter, and this would be yet another example.

Latin America Celebrates its First Gay Marriage

Congratulations to the happy couple, who were wed in southern Argentina yesterday.

Obama Condemns Iranian Crackdown

He's still got to walk that delicate line between buoying and discrediting the protesters, but this statement seems well-calibrated.

Blur to Black

I didn't comment on the mini-controversy where Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) seemed to think only Black people are on medicaid. But it fit very nicely with a broader truism among scholars of American race relations, which is that programs which benefit the poor nearly invariably are seen in the public eye as programs benefiting Blacks (think welfare).

And that, in turn, connects with Victor Davis Hanson's interpretation of Obamism:

It works like this: The ghetto resident, the denizen of the barrio, the abandoned and divorced waitress with three young children, can all chart their poverty and unhappiness not to accident, fate, bad luck, bad decisions, poor judgment, illegality or drug use, or simple tragedy, but rather exclusively to a system that is rigged to ensure oppression on the basis of race, class, and gender—often insidious and unfathomable except to the sensitive and gifted academic or community organizer.

So Obama combines the age-old belief that the state is there to level the playing field (rather than protect the rights of the individual and secure the safety of the people from foreign threats), with the postmodern notion that government must recompensate those by fiat on the basis on their race or class or gender. Remember all that, and everything from the Professor Gates incident, to the dutiful attendance at the foot of Rev. Wright to Van Jones become logical rather than aberrant. Michelle Obama could make $300,000 and she will always be more a victim than the Appalachian coal miner who earns $30,000, by virtue of her race and gender.

The problem, as Matt Yglesias pointed out, is that this doesn't jive with any of Obama's actual policy initiatives -- virtually all of which would advantage Mr. Coal Miner over Mrs. Obama. The Obama administration's domestic policy agenda has been singular in its lack of focus on issues of race and racial division (or even, really, racial harmony). It has studiously ducked the issue.

But it doesn't matter, because it never was about what the country (or what Black people) did or didn't do. To a significant swath of the country, all Black political action is presumed to be partisan racial gerrymandering, and all political action geared towards the poor is also presumed to be race-based wealth redistribution. Combine the two prejudices together, and you have a powerful political hurricane.

UPDATE: Also.