Supporting David Friedman Sells Out Young Zionist Jews

Berkeley is not the easiest place to be a Zionist Jew. To be sure, it is not the cataclysmic warzone it's sometimes portrayed as. Still, it's not exactly home turf. Being referred to as a Nazi due to one's position on Israel is not an everyday occurrence, but it's not a hypothetical concern either. A two-state solution respecting both Jewish and Palestinian self-determination rights is probably the median position, but it is not one you can take for granted.

Jews at Berkeley, and at other campuses around the country, have listened to many exhortations by our communal leaders about our need to stand strong in such climates. And we have, under difficult circumstances. Anyone paying attention to campus politics now knows the awkward position Jewish students are in, how concerns about Israel are often wedges that freeze Jews out of our own academic communities, how standing firm on principle regarding anti-Semitism puts us at odds with otherwise allied groups.

While we acted, our communal representatives promised that they had our backs. Referring to a Jew as a Nazi is intolerable anti-Semitism -- there can be little more horrifying, for a Jew, than being compared to a Nazi or Nazi collaborator. The two-state solution is a boundary that demarcates friend from foe. It may be hard, it may be awkward, but we were told that these were lines that could not be crossed. Ultimately, they expected us to police those lines. And we did our part, to the best of our ability.

And then David Friedman was nominated as Ambassador to Israel.

David Friedman, an avowed opponent of a two-state solution. David Friedman, who referred to large swath of American Jewry as "far worse than Kapos". David Friedman, who called the oldest American Jewish civil rights organization "morons" for standing up to clear anti-Semitic rhetoric in the presidential campaign. David Friedman, who enlisted the Holocaust to deflect attention from boasts of sexual assault. David Friedman, who -- in word and in deed -- seems to detest most of the Jews in his own country -- especially the young liberal Jews who inhabit our college campuses.

Now it was time for those communal representatives to have our backs. Now it was time for them to enforce those lines on our behalf. Now it was time for them to show courage in perilous waters, and say that this is the line, and David Friedman crossed it.

And suddenly, these representative groups clammed up.

Well, not all of them. Aside from the usual right-wing suspects, the World Jewish Congress endorsed Friedman today. The WJC's motto is "All Jews are responsible for one another." We now know the seriousness with which it takes that commitment. The bare minimum of being responsible for other Jews is to have their back when they're condemned as Nazi collaborators. If the WJC isn't willing to do that, it can forget about any talk about "responsibility".

As for other mainstream organizations, so far many of the main players have maintained, at best, a studious silence. AIPAC hasn't said a word. The AJC's statement was mush. The ADL has nothing on its page (Jonathan Greenblatt was on MSNBC tonight to talk on the nomination, but it doesn't look like he came out against).

I've talked a bit with folks on the inside of these organizations. They're not happy. But they stress the difficult position these organizations are in. Donor pressure. A need to appear even-handed. The importance of working with the new administration.

I get it. It's hard. But it was hard for us too, and we held the line. Because, we were told, this was the line the Jewish community had drawn.

And today, when adhering to those lines gets difficult for Jewish organizations, they had the opportunity to stand strong too.

When they fail to do so, it's worse than a disgrace to their stated principles. It's worse than a failure of political courage. It sells out the Jewish community they claim to protect. It abdicates their responsibility to the Jewish community to be our ally and shield regardless of political creed or partisan ideology. Millions of Jews now know that if they are tarred as Kapos or worse, the WJC will not have their backs. Indeed, it might proudly join hands with their slanderer. We are left wondering where the AJC or the ADL will be. Until proven otherwise, we cannot count on them anymore.

This is betrayal. And it is those of us in places like Berkeley, who have bravely fought on behalf of a Jewish and democratic Israel in an inhospitable climate, that will suffer the most from this act of deep, profound cowardice. The principles we fought for -- which we , relying on the representations of these communal bodies, declared were representative of American Jewry -- have been pulled out from under us. And for what? For access? For donor satisfaction? It is disgraceful.

I honestly don't know if these groups realize the peril they are in. They hear about angry Jewish millennials and think of the IfNotNow sorts, the JVP types, and conclude it's all a loud fringe. I am not IfNotNow and I'm certainly not JVP. I'm a committed Zionist in my politics and deeply institutionalist in my orientation. But in talking to other Jews like me -- proudly Zionist, proudly pro-Israel, connected to the inside baseball of Jewish life and aware of the realities of political machination -- there is a growing sense of rage at their supposed representatives that is on the cusp of bubbling over. They see that political capital is never spent on our behalf, that principles we're expected to cleave to on pain of exile are waived without hesitation when the right flouts them.

This cannot stand forever. It cannot indefinitely be the case that Jewish communal policy is set by a quarter of the Jewish community which openly holds two-thirds of us in contempt. And it cannot indefinitely be the case that Jewish communal representatives refrain from backing the American Jewish majority for fear of alienating that right-wing fringe. David Friedman puts that in stark relief -- backing him means selling us out. Policy disagreement can be mended, but this sort of betrayal -- finding out that it's actually a-okay to call us Nazi collaborators -- will not heal easily.

David Friedman does not represent a hard case. David Friedman represents the straightforward application of the principles mainline Jewish groups have long espoused, now to a right-wing provocateur. Simple as that.

For those groups which fail to rise to the challenge, it isn't going to matter at the end of the day whether they were lying about their professed principles or were simply too fearful to enforce them. We need Jewish organizations that are representative of American Jews. If the old guard can't do it, then the old guard will cease being relevant.

UPDATE: Here's the link to Greenblatt's segment on Friedman last night. It's, if anything, worse than I anticipated.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXIII: Psychology

Dylann Roof, the White Supremacist terrorist who was just convicted of murdering nine at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, now faces sentencing. He could receive the death penalty. One thing he will not do in his penalty phase is call a mental health expert or otherwise present mental health evidence. Why not? Glad you asked:

Roof, 22, who is acting as his own attorney during the penalty phase of the trial, said in a handwritten note to the court that he “will not be calling mental health experts or presenting mental health evidence.”

While the note did not specify the reason, his journal, filed with racist and anti-Semitic rants, which was introduced as evidence during the trial, says he considers psychology a “Jewish invention.”

“It is a Jewish invention and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they don’t,” Roof wrote, according to reports including from the Associated Press.

Actually, this one I feel like has a pretty long pedigree -- dating back to Freud. I suppose I hadn't realized it was still a "thing". But if the conspiracy means that Roof is more likely to receive the punishment he deserves, I suppose I can let him maintain his delusions idiosyncratic appraisal of social scientific development for a little while longer.

Republicans? Self-Regulate? What a Daft Idea!

There's an emergent pattern I'm seeing among many Republicans who by all rights should know the risks of a Trump administration, responding to Democrats expressing concerns over the radical first moves of the Trump administration. It goes like this:

Democrat: "Look at this terrible policy Trump is proposing/terrible nominee Trump has put forward/terrible advisor Trump has installed!"

Republican: "Haha! Bet you wish Reid hadn't abolished the filibuster/Obama hadn't expanded executive power/Clinton hadn't focused on social issues that cost you rust belt seats, don't you?"

Now, we can debate the merits of any of these things. For example, call me crazy but I continue to think that the Senate should generally run on the uncontroversial practice of majoritarian rule. In a democracy, the ultimate check against bad laws should be the people voting in good, civically-spirited legislators. Institutional barriers are important, but no set of norms can create good laws from bad actors. By and large, policies are going to reflect the character of the persons writing the policies -- that's baked into the democratic cake. If 52 GOP Senators mindlessly march in partisan lockstep to rubberstamp the entirety of the Trump agenda, the problem isn't majoritarianism, the problem is that the GOP lacks any principles beyond blind party loyalty.

And that gets to what's really striking about this line of argument: It takes for granted that our choices are either "an empowered Democratic Party" or "Trump gone wild." The idea that Republicans might exercise any meaningful oversight in the Trump administration is too fanciful to even be acknowledged. Again, I'm not sure these people realize exactly who they're insulting here.

Once more, I think this is related to the infantilization of the American right. Right now, it is an article of faith that Republicans simply will serve as the unmediated channels of the right-wing id. The job of Democrats is to act as the Republicans' babysitters -- to guard them from the consequences of their own tantrums. When Democrats are not sufficiently empowered to do that, the problem isn't that Republicans are incapable of self-regulation, it's that Democrats allowed themselves to lose the necessary influence to keep the GOP in check.

From a Democratic vantage point, this perspective makes sense -- our job is to win seats, and when we don't do that, we're doing something wrong. From an external observer's view (especially a Republican's view), it evinces an abdication of personal responsibility and civic duty on behalf of the GOP that should by all rights be shocking.

Would I be happier if the Democratic Party had enough seats in Congress to serve as a robust check on the Trump administration on their own? Obviously! But the thing is, 48 Democratic Senators would do a fine job constraining Trump's excesses if even 4 Republican colleagues joined them. The fact that this possibility doesn't occur to anyone -- even to persons who purported to be on the "Never Trump" train -- is proof of just how far the rot inside the GOP has spread.

The Real Problem the Right Has With J Street (It's Exactly What You Think)

Perhaps the most grotesque part of David Friedman's record regarding Israel was when he referred to J Streeters as "far worse than Kapos" -- Jews who collaborated with Nazis during the Holocaust.

In a post titled "The Real Problem with J Street" (twitter teased with "it's not what people think") the right-wing pro-Israel blog "Israelly Cool" more or less endorses the attack, writing that while Kapos were "forced" to betray their coreligionists, "J Street turned against its own people all by themselves. They didn’t need Nazis pointing guns to their heads to do that." I've said what needs to be said on that bit of viciousness, and won't rehash.

But they also contend that the reason Friedman and others dislike J Street actually has nothing to do with its advocacy for a two-state solution.

Let’s be real guys, J street isn’t about two states. Friedman would not have called them that if they were just a bunch of liberal Jews fighting for a two state solution. Heck, the Likud does not oppose two states. I don’t see Friedman having problems with them. I wouldn’t be against J Street if all they were about was advocating a two-state solution.

So what is it? Well, we're told, the problem is that J Street is nothing but a scold. It never praises Israel when it does things well.  It never backs Israel up when it's under attack. All it does is nag, nag, nag.

J Street is that snitch who screams about all your wrongdoings to not only your parents but also your aunts, uncles, cousins, your hairdresser, your manicurist, your dogsitter, your straight edge friend whom you know might judge you, and even that cute frum guy from shul who you’ve been trying to attract for the last few months. 

When you do right J Street is quiet. You get an A on an exam in a class you’ve been failing? Quiet. You defend a kid at school who is being bullied? Silence. You win a medal for citizenship? Silence. You sneeze the wrong way and you get a 2-hour lecture.

“You can never learn from praise, only criticism can make you better, so praise is pointless.”

That’s J Street’s motto. It was also something my mother said to me several years ago when I asked her why she never praised me, and then she apologized and changed her ways and now she’s great. J Street has no plans to apologize anytime soon. Actually everything is Israel’s fault.

I've never been a member of J Street. But I've seen them attacked this way a lot.* And it's untrue. Obviously, transparently, easily-proven-to-be untrue. As a public service, below is a small list of recent occasions where J Street praised, defended, or otherwise backed Israel:

August 23, 2016: J Street Condemns Fatah Boast of Murdering Israelis.

September 13, 2016: J Street Welcomes US-Israel Memorandum of Understanding [securing $3.8 billion of annual US aid to Israel].

October 9, 2016: J Street Saddened and Outraged by Jerusalem Terror Attack.

October 13, 2016: Resolution Adopted by UNESCO Member States Shows Contempt for Jewish People's Ties to the Temple Mount.

Oct. 26, 2016: Authorization of New Palestinian Construction in West Bank is Welcome Step; Must be Followed with Further Action.

Nov. 25, 2016: J Street Stands with Victims of Fires in Israel and West Bank.

Of course, this is not all that J Street does (nor should it be all J Street does). But it does falsify the argument from a certain class of J Street critics that their objections have nothing to do with J Street's policy ambitions and are simply due to the organization being "silent" any time Israel does something good or needs legitimate aid. When Israel does praiseworthy things, J Street praises it. When it needs backing, J Street urges it. These are mixed in -- as they should be -- with criticism when Israel does critique-worthy things, and pressure when Israel needs pressure to do things.

So why do people pretend that their problem with J Street is something that it isn't? Earlier this month  on Twitter, I wrote the following:

Some ppl are wholly one-sided. But some ppl who criticize Pals are said never to do so so they can be dismissed as "only criticizing Israel" https://t.co/YKQbSmz9zl

— David Schraub (@schraubd) December 4, 2016

That is the rub. The right's problem with J Street isn't that their criticisms are illegitimate. The right's problem with J Street is that's its criticisms are, by and large, entirely fair play. And thus they sting. And to alleviate that sting it is easier to project them into a different class of critic -- one that does exist! -- who only levels ridiculous, outrageous, one-sided attacks on Israel and does nothing else, than it is to grapple with the hard, jarring, disorienting thought that they might well have a point that needs attending to.

In short, the real problem the right has with J Street is exactly what you think it is: They don't like that J Street makes them think difficult thoughts about Israel. Nothing more. Nothing less.

* Well, not the mommy issues part. That one's new.

Do You Think Many Jews are Nazi Collaborators? The Trump Admin's Got a Post For You!

Early in the Trump transition phase, it looked as if Mike Huckabee would be appointed Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee had recently accused Jews of plotting false flag hate crime hoaxes to frame Donald Trump supporters; he also has a bit of a history of tossing out casual Holocaust comparisons and then getting really angry when Jews cry foul.

But Huckabee will not be our Ambassador. Instead, Trump has tapped close adviser David Friedman for the role. Friedman has called Barack Obama an "anti-Semite" and contended that J Streeters are "far worse than Kapos." He also asserted, in the course of advocating "allegiance" standards for Israel's Muslim citizens, that "In the United States, advocating to overthrow the government by force or violence can get you life in prison" (No, it can't). And of course, he's an opponent of the two-state solution.

It's a little unnerving that the thing Trump looks for in an Israel Ambassador is a propensity to frivolously toss out Nazi comparisons. It's almost like he won't actually be a real friend in the White House. Imagine that.

So let's go back to that little bit where Friedman unfavorably compared a significant swath of the Jewish community to Nazi collaborators. Remember last week, when the Senate passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act 97-0 (it was really controversial)? The ASAA incorporates a definition of anti-Semitism which, among other things, considers Israel/Nazi comparisons anti-Semitic. Surely, the spirit of the law also includes other comparisons of Jewish institutions to Nazis or their collaborators, yes?

The ASAA does not contain an "unless you're a right-winger" carve out. Once again, there's an opportunity for Jewish organizations to demonstrate that they're unafraid to call out anti-Semitic rhetoric when it emerges from the right. One does not have to be a J Street member or even a fan to think that comparing them to "Kapos" is grotesque and marginalizing, and should be (what's the word I'm looking for? Help me out, ADL) disqualifying for any administration post -- much less one deeply symbolic for America's Jewish population.

In fact, I hereby pledge to donate to the first Senator who announces their opposition to Friedman by citing their vote for the ASAA. I am 100% serious. It does absolutely no good for the Senate to announce it takes anti-Semitism seriously, than immediately confirm someone who flouts the spirit of the standard they just articulated. Just as Democrats have an obligation to tackle anti-Semitism amongst their allies, it's time that Republicans take seriously anti-Semitism within their own ranks.

UPDATE: An adapted version of this post is now up at Ha'aretz.

Requiem for a Wolverine

One of the things my American Politics students recently learned was the importance of heuristics: cognitive shortcuts we use to come to political conclusions in absence of fully researching and thinking through the issue ourselves. Endorsements are a very prominent heuristic: if I'm a liberal, and I know that such-and-such policy is supported by Barack Obama, I can have some (not total) confidence that it's a policy I'd like. If I'm a conservative, the reverse is true; I'd be more keen on a Paul Ryan endorsement.

So everyone uses heuristics, and furthermore everyone has a tendency to fall in line with their "side". That said, a functioning democracy does require some measure of independent judgment. If we simply blindly follow our party leader d'jour in a complete inversion of our prior political positions, that doesn't speak well of our ideological principles. This goes double in cases where the relevant dispute is not particularly technical -- say, disliking autocratic strongmen who are significant rivals to American international power.

With that said: The change in Vladimir Putin's American favorability over the past few months is nothing short of incredible.



Let's just parse that for a moment. Democrats went from a net -54 favorability rating to a net -62 favorability rating. I think it's fair to attribute that drop to the Putin/Trump bromance and Russia's alleged involvement in the recent election -- aka, a heuristic. The net result was that Democrats went from overwhelmingly disliking Putin to somewhat more overwhelmingly disliking Putin.

Among Republicans, Putin went from a -66 point approval rating to -10 -- close to break-even. That is nothing short of shocking. An eight point move is not all that unreasonable taking the aforementioned heuristic effect into account. A fifty-six point swing suggests that there is nothing going on here but (a) pure partisan glee that foreign political interference benefited Republicans and (b) blind following of Trump.

It is a complete and utter abdication of any principles. Paul Mirengoff tries to put the best spin possible on this, but his ultimate conclusion is correct:

Party rank-and-file should take the views of their president, or president-elect, seriously. When they conflict with one’s own view, it isn’t wrong to take a second look.  

But one can look at Vladimir Putin twenty times and the view should be the same. He is a thug, a butcher, an aggressive, serial destabilizer, and an ally of Iran.

And he's also surging in popularity among the American right. This is a sickness, and it's a sickness the right will have to cure itself.

(Some background on the reference)

Indivisible: The Rise of the Constitutional Caucus

This document is "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda." It was coauthored by a friend of mine and some fellow ex-congressional staffers as a how-to for exerting leverage on your members of Congress during the Trump administration. It's drawn directly from the hard lessons they learned enduring the Tea Party wave in response to Obama's election. It's very good: exactly the sort of realistic, practical, no-nonsense advice progressives need right now.  Read it, digest it, circulate it, live it.

To repeat if I wasn't clear: I highly recommend it, and I highly recommend you distribute it. That all goes double for those of you in even vaguely (and "vaguely" here is defined as broad as possible) competitive states and districts. It is far more important that you read it than you read the short addendum I put out below.

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Okay, now my far less valuable two cents. The above document is focused particularly on how to interact with one's own Congressperson -- a very worthy aim. I have two minor additions of my own that are mostly beyond the scope of the document, but I think supplement its advice nicely.

First, the Tea Party was successful in large part because it really transformed Republican politics on the local level. That meant getting its people onto school boards, county councils, and state assembly seats. These sorts of low-information, low-turnout elections are precisely where a small group of motivated individuals can make an outsized impact. They offer the opportunity to acculturate people into voting Blue. And they build up a Democratic bench for later on.

Second, names matter -- and the Tea Party was a great one. One reason it was excellent is that it evoked a classic protest moment in American history. Another was because nominally, it was not affiliated with a particular party. Obviously, in practice it was -- it operated as a faction and arm of the Republican Party. But I think it would have been far less successful had its name including "Republican" in it -- they weren't the Republican Party, they were the Tea Party! Much of its appeal was precisely to persons who styled themselves as independents (even if that's mostly a special-snowflake syndrome) fed up with party politics but who thirsted for an alternative avenue to participate in politics. One certainly can see a similar instinct among liberals in the Sanders crowd -- many very much liked that he was not technically a "Democrat" but an "Independent". Particularly for persons who have a dim view of politics generally but are attracted to a strong populist message (like many Sanders voters were), not branding oneself as a "Democratic" organization probably is a good idea.

Like the Tea Party, it would be great if there was a national label identifying the resistance movement being generated here. The document authors are fond of the name "Indivisible", and while I like it too, it's a bit abstract to be used as a group descriptor ("We're the Indivisibles" is a little harder to grasp than "We're the Tea Party"). Like the Tea Party, one wants a name that evokes a unifying element of American history that also resonates with the values we are seeking to defend and which Donald Trump clearly places under threat.

So my working recommendation for a unifying name is the "Constitutional Caucus". We are Americans from across every corner of the nation, united in common cause to defend the values and principles of constitutional law and liberty that today are graver peril than they've been in my lifetime.

Welcome to the Caucus. There's work to be done.

Levy's Defense of Identity Politics

Jacob Levy has a truly phenomenal essay providing an old-school liberal defense of identity politics. I really cannot recommend it highly enough. He notes, accurately, that virtually all of the "identity politics are Why Trump Won" commentators are persons who hated identity politics before the election; making their current diagnoses more than a little suspect. He also notes that making sweeping judgments based on 80,000 votes in three rust belt swing states is a precarious thing. But his most important contribution is on offense. Here's a taste.

If you think—as I think any liberal who cares about liberty, whether classical, market, neo-, welfarist, Rawlsian, or whatever, must—that the combination of mass incarceration and aggressive policing amounts to a grave injustice, then you need to be able to think in race-conscious terms. What brought about this crisis? The war on drugs and police militarization, some readers will say. Okay, but what brought about the war on drugs and police militarization? The answer isn’t some simple intellectual mistake. The answer is deeply tied up in American racial politics.

The disproportionate impact of mass incarceration and aggressive policing on African-Americans isn’t some unfortunate side-effect of well-intentioned policies. The politics of drug prohibition, the war on drugs, and the subsequent expansions of police power and imprisonment were never racially innocent to begin with, and it is no accident that Nixon launched the War on Drugs when the ink was barely dry on the formal end of Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement.

As has so often happened in American history, state power expanded in order to persuade white voters that blacks were being kept under control. The appropriation of the language of freedom and anti-statism by those seeking to defend state-level racial tyrannies in the south fools more people than it should, but illiberal state power has far more often been caused by white racism than resisted by it. To think otherwise, one has to think that police and prisons don’t count as instances of state power at all.

Let’s return to [identity politics critic Mark] Lilla:

The moral energy surrounding identity has, of course, had many good effects. Affirmative action has reshaped and improved corporate life. Black Lives Matter has delivered a wake-up call to every American with a conscience. Hollywood’s efforts to normalize homosexuality in our popular culture helped to normalize it in American families and public life.

On the other side of the scale, he puts… the demands on college campuses to allow students to identify the gendered or non-gendered pronouns by which they wish to be addressed. Treating these as comparable in magnitude suggests a deep failure of perspective.

Black Lives Matter has provided the first truly large-scale political mobilization against police violence and mass incarceration since the War on Drugs began. It’s perfectly true that many liberal (very much including libertarian) scholars and analysts have been calling for reform of police practices, an end to police militarization and civil forfeiture abuse, respect for civil liberties, and drug decriminalization or legalization for a long time. It’s true that it’s possible to offer those analyses in a race-neutral way. But given that the policies aren’t race-neutral, it shouldn’t surprise us that opposition to them isn’t either, and that the real political energy for mobilizing against them would be race-conscious energy.

Again, read the whole thing.

La Foule, C'est Moi, Part II

Mob rule, 2015: A Tea Partying GOP Congressman, seeking to head off charges of RINO because he supported (of all people) Paul Ryan for Speaker, declares "I’m the guy with the pitchfork."

Mob rule, 2016: David Clarke, Sheriff of Milwaukee County and potential Trump pick for Secretary of Homeland Security, rallies a crowd against Trump/Pence opponents by asking "Do you have the pitchforks and torches ready?"

The mob is the state.

Needing a True Friend in the White House, Part II

In December of 2008, at the close of Obama's first year in office, I wrote on how he represented a true friend of Israel in the White House. Being a true friend is very different being a sycophant; as I put it then, "Part of being a good ally means knowing when to take your friend aside and tell them to chill."

Democrats have this relationship with Israel because Jews are a prominent and valued presence in the Party, and so our Party's Israel relationship develops out of genuine concern rather than empty rhetorical flourishes and grandiose symbolic posturing.

I was reflecting on this because I think Jewish pro-Israel conservatives are going to learn a hard lesson about what sort of "friend" they have in the White House right now. Because Republican policy towards Israel isn't based on any sort of organic care or concern. They don't care about Israel qua Israel, at most they care about it as a symbolic bulwark against dark Muslim hordes; at least they care about it simply as a domestic partisan wedge issue. And this means that Republican policy towards Israel is predictably skewed towards grand rhetorical pronouncements and against thought-out and considered policy agendas. More importantly, to the extent that Israel is purely a rhetorical concern of Republican leaders, it will always lose out to things they are concerned about on substance -- and Israel's Mideast rivals have a lot of substantive things to offer a fossil-fuel hungry Trump administration.

We're already seeing a little of this with the floating of Rex Tillerson -- deeply connected to Arab oil states and (of course) the Russian government -- as Secretary of State. Many right-wing Jewish groups are nervous -- persons with Tillerson's profile rarely are particularly fond of Israel, which they see as a barrier to increased friendly  relations with Gulf oil producers. There was also some pushback against James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, who complained of the "price" Americans paid in terms of their Middle East support for backing Israel and forthrightly acknowledged that if Israel does not find a way to disengage from the West Bank "Either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote — apartheid" (aside -- can you imagine if a prominent Democratic official said half as much? I bet Keith Ellison can.). In both cases, it's demonstrative of the deprioritization of even conservative pro-Israel politics in the Trump administrative. He'll pay good lip service, but it isn't actually an important concern for him.

What we can expect from Trump regarding Israel is simple: For the most part, he'll ignore them and let them run free. There will be no "telling them to chill," because for the most part Trump won't give two hoots about what Israel does. Some people will term this being an ally. Those people are simpletons.

In terms of actual policy, we'll see things that have high rhetorical impact (moving the Embassy to Jerusalem) but do little in the way of actual materially altering Israel's regional or international standing. And, most importantly, when genuine Israeli interests knock up against other American priorities -- like, say, Saudi oil -- they'll get kicked to the curb. Because Donald Trump isn't actually a friend of Israel. Friends care. And Donald Trump doesn't.

David's Multimedia Blitz Reviews

I've been consuming a variety of media over the past few weeks. Here are assorted thoughts on them(potentially mild spoilers).

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

• Entertaining -- not mindblowing, but I didn't expect it to be.
• Hard to keep track of all the different beasts, which seemed to enter and exit the story at will.
• Speaking of, what was up with the other son of the newspaper magnate? That storyline seemed to get dropped, hard.
• I know that "scrappy investigator is pushed aside by superiors, keeps up her work, is vindicated in the end" is a classic storyline. And I know that the "vindicated in the end" part is supposed to heal all wounds. But was it just me, or was the President of the American wizarding community kind of an unredeemed bitch throughout?

Civilization VI

• Definitely some improvements to the classic formula.
• Still ends up feeling mighty repetitive; a lot of turns of just hitting "enter" and waiting for everyone else to go.
• There is something undeniably delightful about declaring a colonial war on England, though.

Westworld

• A very good show that thinks it's great. That's less of an insult than it seems--maybe if it didn't aspire to be great, it wouldn't even be very good.
• I keep on saying "The Dollhouse vibe is obvious, but there's also a definitive streak of Portal 2." This, I fear, vastly overestimates the number of people who watched Dollhouse (though you should!).
• I know that we're supposed to view Felix and (by the end) Ford as the good guys, but in the midst of our fuzzies let's not forget they may have set off an extinction-level event for humanity.

Shameless

• Best season of this show in awhile (which I continue to think is one of the best on television, period).
• The show has always been pretty explicit about Lip's natural gifts. But it has more subtly been consistent about Fiona having a real knack for business and sales as well. She makes some bad self-sabotaging decisions, of course, but it's not out-of-nowhere that she has real skills too.
• I'm going to miss Svetlana as an integral part of the cast.

Timeless

• Getting too formulaic.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

• Getting too convoluted.

Rayman Legends

• Awesome side-scrolling platformers never go out of style.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

• Still the funniest show on television right now.
• Stephanie Beatriz could order me to kill a man and I'd probably do it if she smiled at me.

The Good Place

• Kristen Bell stars as a woman who was an asshole in life but accidentally makes it into "The Good Place" after death. I like to think of this as the direct sequel to House of Lies.
• D'Arcy Carden is a treasure as Janet. It even makes me forgive her name being "D'Arcy" (which would be bad enough if she was born with it, but no, she changed it from "Darcy". By all rights everyone should hate her).

Pre-Examinations Roundup

My Intro to American Politics students have their final exam tomorrow. They grow up so fast! Also, if you're thinking "what an interesting time to teach American Politics!" -- you're right.

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Great piece by MaNishtana on the reaction to Trump's election from Latino Jews.

Honestly, this profile on the ADL in Trump's America is pretty dreadful. Seeking reactions on the ADL's stern stance on Steve Bannon, it talks to the whole spectrum of the Jewish community, ranging from those who think the ADL is making an honest mistake to those who think it's making a regular mistake. Missing are those who think it can stand to show even sterner stuff in standing up to the resurgent right. Also: "Greenblatt’s outspokenness put him in something of an awkward position in a community where, after all, almost a third of Jews who voted cast a ballot for Trump." If by "almost a third" you mean "less than a quarter", then sure. And somehow, nobody thinks it's "awkward" when Wyoming's representatives actually profess the views held by most Wyoming denizens.

The headline is overwrought, but the fact that anyone thought it was a good idea to feature neo-Nazis in a Cadillac ad is worrisome.

A BDS backer ran for President of the UK's Union of Jewish Students. He got annihilated (article doesn't give the full vote breakdown, but he came in third with less than 10% of the vote). BDS isn't popular amongst millennial Jews either.

Sigal Samuel has a great contribution -- from a Mizrahi perspective -- on the great "are Jews White in Trump's America" debate.

Also on the Mizrahi beat, great to see Loolwa Khazzoom's name back in print.

I actually think there are a lot of good insights from Abe Foxman about where the American Jewish community is headed over the next few years. One thing I absolutely agree with is that -- fairly or not -- the greatest risk of rupture between the American Jewish community and Israel is if Israel keeps on showing contempt towards non-Orthodox Jewish streams.

Updates on the Ryerson University walkout to block a Holocaust Memorial resolution: Here is a Jewish student who attended the meeting, and here is a news story on some administrative reactions to the events.

Richard Jeffrey Newman on Jews, Whiteness, and Blackness

My friend Richard Jeffrey Newman has written an extraordinary meditation on anti-Semitism, Whiteness, and race. Titled "The Lines That Antisemitism and Racism Draw: Reflections on White Jewish Intersectionality",* it was first published on Unlikely Stories as a sort-of-but-not-quite entry on their #BlackArtMatters (the "sort of" bit is a story in itself, explained in the introduction).

It truly is an exceptional piece of work -- thoughtful, heart-felt, nuanced, provocative -- that I cannot recommend highly enough. And, rarer for me, I don't really have any parts that I can justly excerpt or even comment on in a way that adds to the original -- at least for the moment. I do expect that they will significantly inform my thinking on this cluster of issues going forward. For now, all I can say is read it.

* The above link has the letters on separate pages; this link provides all of them on one.

UPDATE: Richard gives some more background on the project here.

Free Speech and Discriminatory Motive

One of the more nettlesome problems in anti-discrimination law is how it intersects with free speech rules. Laws against harassment, for example, often target speech -- usually terrible, crass, bigoted speech, but speech all the same. Laws against discrimination likewise interfere with freedom of association -- grotesque, biased preferences regarding who to associate with, but association all the same. As a society, we've at least implicitly decided that anti-discrimination norms can -- at least in some circumstances -- trump free speech norms, and I'm totally okay with that. But our implicit agreement hasn't really cashed out into explicit acknowledgement of the tension, and that means that we don't always have a fully-thought-through sense of how speech and discrimination intersect.

These problems have come to a head with Congress considering the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, just recently (and swiftly) passed in the Senate and now moving to the House. The Act basically expands the definition of "anti-Semitism" under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (encompassing educational equality -- for our purposes, laying out the duties educational institutions have with respect to preserving an environment free of anti-Semitic harassment) to codify the definition "set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism of the Department of State in the Fact Sheet issued on June 8, 2010, as adapted from the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism of the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia." The significance of that definition is that it explicitly seeks to consider when and in what circumstances anti-Israel sentiment qualifies as anti-Semitism.

Several commentators, including ones I respect like Jesse Singal and the ACLU, have raised First Amendment alarm bells (the bill contains a savings clause  stating that "[n]othing in this Act, or an amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States", but critics worry those are empty words). After all, statements critical of Israel -- including statements vitriolically so -- are protected by the First Amendment. Even the original drafter of the definition the ASAA incorporates opposes encoding it into US law, arguing that its purposes was to serve as a monitoring device for tracking anti-Semitic incidents, and thus is by design broader than what can be validly proscribed by law.

I don't dismiss the validity of these concerns. But I think they're in many ways oddly situated. They either frame the problem incorrectly, or take a genuine problem that's endemic to anti-discrimination rules and act as if it's uniquely presented by the anti-Semitism case.

To see why, let's divide discrimination cases into two groups: "speech + conduct" and "pure speech." We'll start with the former.

Suppose you declare "I hate Jews!" That's protected speech. Suppose you punch a Jew in the face. That's battery, but it's not a hate crime or an incident of discrimination under Title VI unless its done because they're Jewish (if you punched a Jew in the face because they were a Dodgers fan, it would still be a crime, but it would not be a case of anti-Semitism).  Finally, suppose you punch a Jew in the face while declaring "I hate Jews!" That is very likely to be deemed an incident of anti-Semitism under Title VI, as the speech establishes the requisite motive (that your punch was thrown because the target was Jewish). Presumably, this manner of intersecting "speech" with discrimination law isn't controversial. Obviously, discrimination law looks into one's viewpoint in this respect -- it is entirely about differentiating conduct motivated by particular viewpoints (hating Jews, Blacks, women, Muslims, whomever) from conduct motivated by other concerns (sports fandom, parking disputes, general belligerency, etc.).

The most straightforward way of viewing what the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act does, given its First Amendment language, is to clarify what sorts of statements can establish an anti-Semitic motive when coupled with otherwise actionable conduct. The person who punches a Jew while stating "I hate Jews" is clearly anti-Semitic in a way a person who punches a Jew while stating "that was my parking space" may not be. But what of the person who punches a Jew while stating "Zionists are Nazis!"? Surely still a case of battery, but is it a case of anti-Semitism? The puncher will likely say no -- their actions were motivated by political hostility towards Israel, distinct from anti-Semitism. The victim will usually argue yes -- stating "Zionists are Nazis" is a form of anti-Semitism; if that was the motive for the punch, it was an anti-Semitic punch.

Consider the case of Paul Donnachie,* a student at St. Andrew's University who was convicted of grabbing a dormmate's Israeli flag, rubbing it against his pubic hair, while declaring that the student was a "terrorist", Israel was a "terrorist state", and the flag was a "terrorist symbol." Donnachie of course agreed that his actions were not "dignified", but contended that it was an act of "political expression" rather than anti-Semitism; the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign likewise complained that Donnachie's conviction and expulsion "conflate[d] legitimate political criticism of the State of Israel with racism."

In cases like these, the issue isn't whether the challenged action is "speech" or "conduct". Everyone agrees that defacing another person's property is the sort of thing that can be regulated. The question is whether the motive for that conduct falls within the set of malign motives covered by anti-discrimination law. Had Donnachie done what he did while saying "stupid Jew", there'd be no complaints that his free speech rights were violated (despite "stupid Jew" also being a protected viewpoint). In these cases, the ASAA is simply clarifying that statements which meet the State Department definition do establish the necessary motive. One can disagree with that decision, but it's hard to characterize it as a free speech objection without entirely dismantling the whole of anti-discrimination law. After all, if the problem is that our Jew-puncher is being punished in part for his viewpoint, that problem is equally manifest regardless of whether his views were "Zionists are Nazis" or "I hate Jews." Both are protected speech; both are treated differently from the view "Dodgers suck!"

I don't think that most of the free speech critics of the ASAA are worried about this set of cases. Rather, they're worried about a situation where "pure speech" -- simply saying "Zionists are Nazis", without any accompanying conduct -- could be investigated as a form of harassment.

Note again that this problem is not distinct from a policy saying "Jews are scum" can represent a form of harassment. Again, "Zionists are Nazis" and "Jews are scum" both are equally protected under the First Amendment. So as a free speech objection, this argument only works if one is willing to say that speech alone can never create a discrimination violation. That is a theoretically cogent position. It is not the status quo in civil rights law. Even absent any conduct acts -- touches, obstructions, vandalism, etc. -- "pure speech" can result in a harassment finding in the right circumstances, e.g., if it is severe and pervasive enough to materially interfere with a student's ability to access their educational institution's resources. Constant sexual harassment that never leaves the realm of words would be a classic example of such a case.

So to the extent the ASAA would apply in a "pure speech" case, it would presumably apply on the same terms as any other scenario where speech alone is alleged to create a hostile environment. In general, isolated acts of verbal harassment are rarely sufficient to support a Title VI claim; simply being exposed, occasionally, to persons yelling out racist or sexist or anti-Semitic things does not create legal liability. The case would have to be something like a Jewish student who everyday encounters picketers telling him he's "Zionist Nazi scum." Should a student have a remedy in such case? Maybe, maybe not, but the "Zionist" part of the equation doesn't strike me as relevant from a free speech perspective -- the same analysis would apply if it was a Muslim student perpetually being told she's "ISIS terrorist scum" or a female student told she's "a babymaker who should stay in the kitchen," or for that matter, a Jewish student simply being told she's "a greedy JAP." In all the cases, we are taking something that is -- in the broadest sense -- (terrible) political expression, and using it as the basis of a discrimination investigation. In all the cases, our limiting principle is not that these outlooks are "protected speech" (they all are), but rather requirements of severity and pervasiveness which are supposed to guard the line between protected speech and unlawful harassment.

Again, none of this is to say that there aren't valid free speech concerns here. There are! The point of this analysis is to show that those concerns are pervasive in our discrimination law; this bill doesn't raise novel problems so much as it illuminates the difficulties which already exist.

Hence, for those persons who are generally content with the discrimination law doctrine we have, the "free speech" objection to the ASAA is a masquerade for a more straightforward substantive objection: They don't think that calling Zionists Nazis should be deemed anti-Semitic at all. A defensible position, perhaps, but not one that has anything to do with free speech if the proponent is not willing to level a similar objection to the myriad other ways that discrimination law supervenes on one's political outlooks. It's simply an on-the-merits dispute over what counts as anti-Semitic discrimination.

Meanwhile, there is a perfectly valid argument to be made that discrimination law is not sufficiently attuned to the ways in which it can chill valid political speech. Perhaps the ASAA makes those perils especially clear. But if we're going to go down that route we should actually go down it, not deceive ourselves into believing it can be restricted into a Jew-only one-off. The structure of the free speech objection to the ASAA cannot restrict itself solely to that case.**

* I'm pretending for sake of argument that Scottish law and American law are identical in this arena. They're not, of course, but I don't think that alters the usefulness of the example.

** The reverse is true as well: persons who airily dismiss the free speech worries in the anti-Semitism case cannot throw hysterical fits over how harassment law "makes it impossible" to say the things they want to say in the race or gender arenas.

Breitbart-Approved Experts Continue to Agree: Breitbart is Full of Shit

Breitbart, the conspiratorial far-right website that starting in 2017 will more-or-less become the official media outlet of the Donald Trump administration, ran a story the other day crowing about supposedly plunging temperatures disproving global warming -- citing a video clip from the Weather Channel as proof. The Weather Channel itself was less than thrilled, and just posted this epic-quality smackdown titled "Note to Breitbart: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans."

As someone who also was once approvingly cited as an expert by Breitbart in an article which ludicrously butchered said area of expertise (critical race theory), I relate to this. Keep up the good work, Weather.com.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXII: Star Wars

"Star Wars: Rogue One" is coming out this month. Are you excited? I am (though if a certain Rebel X-Wing pilot isn't in it, I am going to be pissed)! The alt-right? Not so much.

White supremacists are calling for a boycott of the latest “Star Wars” movie as evidence of a Jewish plot to foist racial diversity on whites, even as some on the “alt-right” say they watch the film and root for the evil Empire.

“(((Star Wars))) Is Anti-White Social Engineering,” a Reddit user named GenFrancoPepe posted in a forum for the “alt-right,” a hard-line white nationalist movement. The triple parenthesis, known as an “echo,” is a way anti-Semites online call attention to Jewish names or perceived Jewish influence. 

The evidence: “Alt-right” writers point out the multiracial makeup of the stars in the new film, the female starring role, and that Jewish producers and writers were involved. Criticism of the film evokes one of the central tropes of modern anti-Semitism, envisioning a Jewish cabal promoting multiculturalism to suit its own nefarious goals — at the expense of an embattled “white civilization.”

Say what you will about the massive Jewish conspiracy to undermine White civilization, but it makes for some damn fine escapist cinema.

Equality as Normalcy: The Case of Leah Donnella

Next year, I have an article coming out in the Indiana Law Journal titled "Post-Racialism and the End of Strict Scrutiny." I won't go into the details of the article, but it does sketch out some of my thoughts on the end-goal of equality -- what one might term "equality as normalcy." We often think of the fight for equality as a fight for various heightened protections for marginalized outgroups -- things like anti-discrimination laws or affirmative action programs. But these are not the end-point of equality; they are palliatives we use to stanch the bleeding from persistent inequality. What marginalized group members want is to be able to practice the identities that matter to them without those identities being the sites of social conflict or threat -- in other words, for their identities to be normalized.

Under this view, we will have attained racial equality not when we've secured the highest possible barriers against racial discrimination, nor when people cease to think of race as a meaningful axis of social identification. Racial equality will occur when it becomes a "normal" identity, like being a Dodgers fan or a Methodist or a farmer -- something that matters to some people, and sometimes serves as a site of cultural or even political organization, but is not (under normal circumstances) taken to be something illicit or dangerous.

I was thinking about this while reading an interview with Leah Donnella, an NPR journalist and biracial Jew. Her comments on the difficulty of finding a synagogue that mirrors her youthful experience -- when she simply "was" Jewish and her Blackness didn't mark her off as exceptional -- struck me. Here are a few excerpts:

In terms of my day-to-day Jewish life, what I’d like is to go to a synagogue, walk in, and feel anonymous, not be noticed or given special attention. It’s tricky though. I get that folks sometimes walk up to people of color in an effort to make us feel included. But when it’s assumed that I need someone to explain the service to me, it reinforces my feeling of otherness. At the same time, I recognize that there’s a fine line between bringing someone in and making them feel welcome, and bringing them in and making them feel set apart and different....

All I want is to be able to go into a synagogue, sit down, and let a sense of quiet and calm wash over me so that I can pray in peace with other Jews. 

I think this explains her situation with charity and nuance  Donnella isn't a colorblindness advocate -- she writes on race for NPR. It is not (it seems to me) that Donnella wants people in her synagogue to "forget" she's Black, she wants her Blackness to not be thought of as strange or exceptional in the synagogue. It's a subtle distinction, but it matters.

Anyway, I found this interview to be quite thoughtful (though all too short). Well worth a read.

Sunday Fun Day Roundup

Getting donuts this afternoon with an old college friend (and her new baby!). A lot of the below links really deserve their own posts, but I just don't have the time or energy to give them the commentary they deserve.

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Rabbi Jeremy Wieder of Yeshiva University confronts racism among Orthodox Jewish students at his university. Really worth a read.

South Dakota gets a Chabad Rabbi -- the last state to not have one. Congratulations, Sioux Falls!

Jonathan Chait nails the "intellectual collapse of the center." Regarding David Brooks: "[O]ne of the most common genres of David Brooks column was a sad lament that neither party would endorse policies that in fact Obama had explicitly and publicly called for."

Yehuda Mirsky on the "The New Jewish Question" is perhaps the most thoughtful meditation on the place of Jews in the new, populist-right America (and world) that I've read so far. Another one that deserves your full attention.

I've never seen Last Tango in Paris, but it looks like an infamous rape scene in the movie actually involved raping the actress (she neither was informed in advance nor consented). That's really, truly sick.

Panic! At the ADL

Pictured: The ADL, piloting the right TIE fighter.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is running for DNC chair. The ADL has thoughts on this.

On November 22, Jonathan Greenblatt issued a very thoughtful, balanced statement:



There are concerns, but there's also much that's positive in Congressman Ellison's record. The concerns should be addressed, the positives should be acknowledged, and at all points the conversation should be open, fair, and free of race- or faith-based innuendos.

Not everyone likes thoughtful, balanced statements. ZOA had come out swinging against "Congressman Keith Ellison a/k/a Keith X. Ellison a/k/a Keith Hakim a/k/a Keith Ellison Muhammed."  They were not happy that the ADL refused to jump on the bandwagon, and weren't shy about claiming "double-standard" since the ADL had condemned Steve Bannon (my post on the matter explains why I think that's a bogus comparison). Three days later, feeling the pressure, Greenblatt backtracked a little.

Today, the Investigative Project on Terrorism released a short audio clip where Rep. Ellison says the following:

“The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people,” Ellison is heard saying. “A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes. Can I say that again?”

Now, we could say that the IPT -- last seen bringing us that ridiculous "Muslim no-go zones" bit on Fox -- might not be a source worth taking at face value. We could express skepticism of whether that bit provides the full context. Nonetheless, I think it is fair from that clip to express worries. These are, indeed, worrisome remarks. They are a reasonable addition to the inquiry that Jewish and pro-Israel groups might wish to make into Congressman Ellison's candidacy. He should be asked to address them, and address them seriously. And an unsatisfactory answer would be a cause for deep concern.

So the ADL issued another statement. It starts off fine. It recaps its previous analysis. It quotes the newly released material, which it says "raises serious concerns about whether Rep. Ellison faithfully could represent the Democratic Party’s traditional support for a strong and secure Israel." And then it says that

Rep. Ellison’s remarks are both deeply disturbing

Fine.

and disqualifying.

Oh for the love of....

See, this is what happens when mainline Jewish groups have become conditioned to flinch each time right-wing groups go "boo!" They trip over themselves to show they're not "soft", and end up getting trapped in ill-thought out, ill-advised, and uncompromising positions.

It would have been absolutely appropriate to raise these concerns, note that they raise serious questions, and then say "these comments demand a serious and thorough explanation from Congressman Ellison, which we will review very carefully" -- without flying straight into the "disqualifying" wall. Maybe Congressman Ellison would have a response that would assuage our justified concerns. Or maybe his response would be terrible, fully vindicating a conclusion that he cannot be supported in good conscience! Either way, notice how not locking oneself into a permanent position based on a brief audio-clip from six years ago leaked by a hatchet operation gives you a much nicer array of options.  Putting aside whether it was fair to Ellison or not, taking away your own leeway to respond to any further developments is the definition of amateur hour. To quote de Talleyrand: "It's worse than a crime, it's a blunder."

But no. The ADL panicked, and decided it was done without any consultation whatsoever. And now they're stuck. Fabulous work, guys -- this is why you're the professionals.

The really amazing thing is that Congressman Ellison's reply is far, far kinder than the ADL had any right to expect.


This would have been a great letter had the ADL not elected to do the bull-in-a-china-shop thing. That it was issued after the ADL did so is the sort of gift from God that I hope the ADL is privately thanking each and every lucky star for. If they're supremely lucky, they can restart this conversation the way it should have happened all along.

And yes, one element of that conversation should be to interrogate Congressman Ellison's statements. That's part of the tragedy here: the ADL's panic has deeply tainted the discussion we should have had. Ellison's comments were problematic. Perhaps context would mitigate their apparent meaning, perhaps not. Regardless, it would be worthwhile to explain, clearly and explicitly, why they were so troublesome, and see how he took that critique. I am not someone who will ever say that we should fail to call out anti-Semitism or troublesome tropes when we see them, and Keith Ellison is no exception to that rule.

But there's no rule that vigorous opposition to anti-Semitism requires that one be an idiot about it. Part of the job of combating anti-Semitism is getting people who have made problematic remarks to disavow them and return to the fold. Groups like ZOA make that harder, because they rather the Jewish state have enemies they hate than for it to have allies they detest, so their strongest efforts are to ensure that Israel and the Jewish community stays in a constant state of implacable warfare against anyone to the left of Naftali Bennett. It's bad for Israel, and it's bad for the Jews. Yet the institutional Jewish community has a reflexive instinct to coddle a tiny right flank whose volume is grotesquely out of proportion to its numbers. Until the ADL weans itself from this habit, it's going to keep making very basic mistakes that undermine its effectiveness as an organization and its credibility as a Jewish communal leader.

Fear and Trembling in American Jewish Institutions

Some Jewish organizations have been deafening in their silence on Steve Bannon and the clear links between the Trump administration and the alt-right. I have been ... rather public in my denunciations of their decision. I am in broad agreement that there is a building revolution in the American Jewish community, and those groups which purport to be communal representatives while refusing to actually represent our community will rapidly lose the authority to speak as Jewish voices.

But if a passable defense of at least the silent organizations (certainly not the ones, like ZOA, which have outright endorsed Bannon et al*) could be made, it is of the form taken by Shai Franklin in the Jerusalem Post.

Franklin's basic argument is that there is and should be a "distribution of labor" within the institutional Jewish community. Groups like the ADL, which take on the role as anti-bigotry watchdogs, can and should condemn Bannon. But groups like the JFNA, which are primarily policy lobbying organizations, need to play a more cautious hand. Responsible for securing millions of dollars in funding for critical aid programs -- those which feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and take care of the sick -- the JFNA cannot decide to simply cut ties with any administration, even one as repulsive as Trump's. It has to grit its teeth and work with him as best it can.

The bar for JFNA to condemn an action by the president – before he’s ever taken office, before he’s had the chance to issue a single executive order – must be very high. Condemning the president-elect’s choice for top policy official runs the risk of alienating him and his staff for the duration, squandering decades of cultivation and branding overnight.

One might think that appointing a man who has provided a massive platform for the most dangerous and influential American White nationalist movement of our generation would clear that bar. But put that aside, and note the more subtle assumption. Franklin's column takes the view that condemning Bannon is tantamount to "boycotting" the Trump administration outright, that it would entirely throw away any ability to have any influence over government policy whatsoever. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. But note how it diverges from how Jewish institutions treat Democratic administrations. We don't fear that by criticizing this appointment or that policy from the Obama administration, we are permanently cutting ourselves out of the political loop. We trust that Democrats can tolerate dissent and disagreement, and so we can articulate our views openly and honestly, secure in an ongoing positive relationship.

With Republicans, that assumption flies out the window: if we even verbally object to the appointment of prominent alt-righter, we assume they'll be done with us forever. This was the core of the argument I made in my column:

Last year (writing on “pro-Israel” disputes, not anti-Semitism specifically), I noted the sharp disjuncture in how the Jewish community reacts to problematic left versus right behavior. The left is met “with the full sound and fury for every toe out of line,” while the right “must engage in the most flamboyant provocation to elicit even a murmur of discontent.” The left is “policed to the letter,” while the right is “treated with kid gloves.” The reason—I implied then and will state explicitly now—is fear of right-wing anti-Semitism. “[I]t stems from a belief that conservatives, but not liberals, will turn on [us] entirely if they are not constantly treated with obsequious fawning.”

Unlike the mainstream Democratic Party, where Jews are deeply enmeshed and so can have difficult conversations without blowing up the entire relationship, the connection between Jews and the American right has been—at best—tenuous, contingent, and precarious. And so we’ve become accustomed to letting mainstream right-wing anti-Semitism slide, satisfied with the rote recitation “I am a great supporter of Israel” (surely, the right-wing variant on the leftist’s “I have always opposed all forms of bigotry…”). We’ve allowed ourselves to pretend that our fear of antagonizing these “allies” is a sign of the strength of our relationship, rather than its weakness.

So, whatever the tactical merits of Franklin's position, it should at least make clear the monster we're dealing with. Groups which respect Jews, respect Jewish criticism. If the assumption is that Donald Trump cannot tolerate Jews telling him we're not okay with him hiring a hate-peddler, then the assumption is that Donald Trump is no friend of Jews.

* The other question raised by Franklin's piece is what to do with the groups that have failed in the labor that is assigned to them? He includes, for example, the AJC as among the "watchdogs" that should be calling out Bannon. But the AJC has been almost defiant in its refusal to issue a statement, issuing bland platitudes about the importance of letting the President "organize his own team". What flows from this abdication of duty? What punishment is Franklin willing to endorse? If we're serious about the "distribution of labor", then these questions cannot go unaddressed.

This, of course, goes double for groups (like ZOA) which have outright praised Steve Bannon. It's one thing to tolerate strategic silence of a few institutionally-oriented actors. It's another to accept the open endorsement of the sort of vicious hatred Steve Bannon represents. If Franklin is to be taken seriously, then he needs to have a plan for either roping groups like ZOA back into line, or initiating their very clear and very public disaffiliation from the communal Jewish tent.

And Now Your Troubles Begin

I feel bad for Trump-critical congressional Republicans. Really, I do. They thought that their efforts would be over after election day. In a Hillary Clinton administration, never Trump Republicans could go back to being regular Republicans. They could be a normal opposition party. To be sure, had they done this I think they'd have missed the lesson of their own experience -- Donald Trump was the fruit of "regular" Republican activity over the past eight years -- but it would have been understandable. Their labors would have been done.

Instead, they have four years of Donald Trump. Four years where "opposition" no longer is just tongue-clucking in the New York Times, but actually will involve taking concrete action on the House and Senate floor. That's a very different animal.

I'm not asking that Republicans suddenly become NARAL backers just because Trump is in office. But basic good governance regulations (such as reigning in Trump's conflicts of interest)? Those can't be allowed to slide. And, with Democrats in a state of rout, it is up to the Republicans in Congress. They can't fob it off on others..

Unfortunately, many congressional Republicans are indicating they have no interest in rising to the occasion. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has miraculously lost all interest in investigating the President after promising two straight years of investigation into Hillary Clinton had she won the Oval Office. Other Republicans literally run for the elevators when asked to discuss Trump's unprecedented ethical conflicts. It is an unacceptable abdication of duty. And it unfortunately betrays, yet again, the fundamental unwillingness of the modern conservative movement to take responsibility for itself.

[M]any other Republicans downplayed the ethical concerns, noting Trump was still some two months from Inauguration Day. Many said they had faith in Trump and his family to make the right moves, and they insisted any problems that emerge would come out in the normal course of Washington’s checks-and-balances.

“The republic’s been around 240 years. We didn’t say George Washington couldn’t have any interest in the affairs of Mount Vernon,” said Oklahoma GOP Rep. Tom Cole said. “These are real problems but there are lots of ethics rules and regulation. And there’s lots of scrutiny, more scrutiny with the presidency of the United States than any other position in the world, from the media to your friends to your enemies.”

“Let’s give the guy a chance to work through this and set up some sort of system,” he added. “We’ll see if it works or not. I hope it does. I trust it will. But if it didn’t, he’ll pay a horrific political price.”

"Hope" and "trust" are not part of the checks-and-balances schema. Our system of government is not based on "trusting" people in power to do right. It's based on the different branches of government taking it upon themselves to actively check one another, exercising their oversight powers fairly but aggressively. Seriously, read Federalist #51.

In any event, while Democrats can do little things to hold Donald Trump accountable, it's ultimately up to the Republican Party to keep him in check -- or not. It won't be easy for them. It will involve constantly and aggressively tackling the leader of their own Party -- never a fun endeavor. Those GOP members who recognize how dangerous Donald Trump is may have thought they'd have earned a reprieve on Election Day. But in reality, their troubles -- like ours -- have only just begun.

The Train Has No Brakes: Ryerson University Edition

One of the main bases for my objections to the BDS movement is that the "train has no brakes." It might start with something facially defensible -- a targeted divestment from a firm that directly supplies occupation-supporting infrastructure, a narrow sanction directly attached to the settlements -- but almost never stays there. It keeps rolling, until it reaches flat bans on collaborating with Jews (Sydney, Australia), or open calls for the expulsion of all Jews (Durban University of Technology).

Ryerson University, Toronto, has been a center of BDS activity in Canada. Earlier this week, their student council was scheduled to vote on a resolution commemorating Holocaust Education Week. The resolution did not mention Israel. It was also never voted on. A walkout led Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association deprived the meeting of a quorum, preventing the voted from occurring.

“What starts with BDS does not end with BDS,” said Amanda Hohmann, national director of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights. “More often than not, BDS is simply a gateway drug to more blatant forms of anti-Semitism.”

And let's be clear: The reaction against commemorating the Holocaust is not isolated to Ryerson. It is part of a larger pattern whereby some see "the Holocaust not as a source of trauma but as a source of privilege, and an unjust privilege at that." When it comes to Jewish access to progressive discourses around equality and non-discrimination, the Holocaust "is the last firewall left standing; the last citadel the forces of Gentile Supremacy have not yet been able to overrun."

The train has no brakes. It doesn't stop at BDS, and it won't stop at a "mere" walkout protesting Holocaust commemoration either. Board at your -- or more accurately, my -- peril.

Personal Responsibility and the Infantilization of the American Right

If there was a single day that characterized the conservative movement's relationship to the Obama administration, it was September 28, 2016. That day, Congress overrode President Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. Congress had passed the law earlier that month, ignoring the President's warnings that it opened up a massive foreign relations can of worms and placed American servicemembers and diplomats at risk of being haled into hostile foreign courts. President Obama followed through on his promised veto on September 23rd, and Congress promptly overrode the veto.

Both the initial vote and the override were bipartisan affairs (the Senate and the House votes on both were overwhelming). But in the aftermath, once the issues President Obama identified now were encoded in law and presented a real and immediate threat, congressional Republicans took a very distinctive stance. They recognized the law had grave problems. But it wasn't their fault for voting for it. It wasn't their responsibility in drafting it. If anyone was to blame, it was none other than President Obama, who, they told us, was not sufficiently emphatic in communicating the bill's problems.

It would have been astonishing if it wasn't so sad. A Republican Congress passes a bill over the President's warnings, then overrides his public veto of the same bill, and then has the chutzpah to blame the President for not doing enough to stop them.

In reality, it was part of a pattern. The American right is fundamentally incapable of taking personal responsibility for its own decisions. Everything is someone else's fault. Everything can be blamed on someone else, usually Democrats or Democrat-leaning constituencies. It's never on them.

Consider the ever-popular parlor game of "who's responsible for Trump's victory?" The left is indulging in its own form of this game, with the predictable factions deciding between "it's the fault of Bernie Bros and Jill Stein for undermining Hillary Clinton", "it's the fault of the neoliberal hacks at the DNC for rigging the game for Hillary Clinton," and "it's the fault of everyone who cares what non-White, non-male, and non-straight people think." To that debate, my contribution has been simple: the people responsible for the election of Donald Trump are the people who voted for him. Full stop.

On the right side of the spectrum, though, this debate has taken a different hue. Much of the conservative movement has spent the last two years slowly transitioning from "it's an outrageous slander to say that a racist cartoon character like Donald Trump represents the conservative movement" to "it's an outrageous slander to say that the American conservative movement is 'racist' or 'cartoonish' just because it adopted Donald Trump as its representative." In between, the conservative movement treated Donald Trump as if he was some sort of inexplicable act of God, a deus ex machina whose surge to dominance in the conservative political movement defied all logic or rationality. He's a cipher, he's a reaction to Obama's own extremism, he's ... [hiss] really a Democrat. Whatever Donald Trump was, he wasn't their fault.

And so when conservatives talk about why Trump won, they play the game quite differently. Why did Trump win? It's because of safe spaces and trigger warnings, Katherine Timpf declares in the National Review; Trump was "a long-awaiting contrast to the infantilization and absurd demands for 'safe spaces' sweeping our society." Nay, says George Will, it was academia as a whole -- their books are full of "pretentious jargon" like "interrogated" and "problematized" and their courses have silly titles like "Jews in American Entertainment." Jonah Goldberg attributes Trump's rise to the media "crying wolf" -- how could anyone have known that Trump really was that terrible, given how untrustworthy our newspapers have been? None of these persons, from what I can tell, is a Donald Trump fan, which makes their commentary all the more striking. They recognize what a terrible choice Donald Trump is, but whirl about seeking to blame everyone but those who chose him.

This is pathological. Even if every critique the right had about, for example, liberal academia was entirely on target, is it really the case that a middle-income suburbanite in Dubuque decided to vote Trump because of how Wesleyan students want their classroom syllabi structured? It's implausible that it is true, and it'd be deeply pathetic if it was true. And to the extent that -- abstracted out to a broader commentary on "kids these days" and coastal elitism -- it is even part of the explanation, it's more pathetic still. "Just because the media says Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to American civic values doesn't mean he is one; and I don't feel the need to figure that out myself when I could be sending a message to those snot-nosed Ivy League teenagers who think they're so much better than me!" Who is patronizing who here?

This is the politics of a temper tantrum. There's certainly no notion of personal responsibility, that conservatives have duties to cause and country that exist independently of what media figures say or liberal youths do. Instead, conservatives are treated as creatures of instincts; minor children who are scarcely capable of independent reason. They lashed out, and now blame liberals for being inadequate babysitters. Republican voters, we're told, are helpless in the face of the grave insults they face from ... 19-year old bloggers living across the country. Minorities in cities they never visit. Professors at schools they don't attend. Nobody who has any real power over the conditions of their lives, mind you. No matter: they just had to respond. The backlash was inevitable. Certainly, they can't be expected to have independently come to the conclusion that Donald Trump is a menace. In these circumstances, nobody can reasonably hold them accountable for the decision they made in the ballot box.

The ur-form of this must be the very favorite explanation for why Trump won: That White Americans were sick of being criticized for racism, for sexism, for xenophobia, for not being perfect little egalitarians. Liberals insisted on holding Americans to account for these sins, and Americans deeply resented them for it. Eric Holder called us a "nation of cowards" around the subject of race, and White people railed against him even in the course of proving him absolutely right. And so, under this story, Trump won because he offered an alternative where Americans didn't have to feel guilty about any of these things: They could mock minorities, swap stories about assaulting women, demand an American free of non-Christians, and they'd be okay, even justified, in doing so.

There is a very literal form of emotional regression at work here. I was a pretty well-behaved kid growing up, but like anyone else I sometimes misbehaved. Sometimes I was inconsiderate or hurtful, or mocked or insulted people. And when I did do those things, my parents made me own up to it and apologize. I didn't get a ton of "this is what it means to be a man" type parenting, but if ever I got it, this was the context. Part of being a man means manning up and taking responsibility when what you're doing hurts other people.

Of course, as anyone who's gone through this knows, it's not fun. It made me feel bad, and the actual act of apologizing felt even worse. As a kid, just learning these lessons, you're very susceptible to being in denial about the whole thing. It wasn't really your fault, the other guy had it coming, they deserved it, I was right, they were wrong, my friends got away with it -- anything to avoid owning up to the mistake. How easy it would be to fall in with a pied piper who endorsed that entire line? The reason we have to teach children to take responsibility for their actions is because the alternative is very, very tempting.

We expect adults to know better. To the extent our nation has and continues to commit wrongs along the axis of race, of gender, of religion, of disability -- and we have, and we continue to -- we should have the maturity to look it in the eye and take responsibility for it. That doesn't mean always accepting blame. It does mean fairly taking one's share of it and -- more importantly, in the case of complex political issues -- being open to the difficult conversation such issues provoke.

Donald Trump's appeal was precisely in offering the opportunity to circumvent all of that. He held out a choice that would be understandably appealing to spoiled children, but should have been beneath the dignity of a mature democracy. Turns out, it wasn't (or turns out, we weren't one). And it's hard not to think that part of the reason why is the legion of commentators who have been eager to explain why those persons who did choose to align themselves with Trump -- a notorious racist, a flagrant misogynist, a man whose only qualification to lead our nation was that he was openly in contempt of half it -- could be excused for it. It's not their fault. It's not their responsibility.

You want to talk about infantilization in American culture, this is the place to start. American conservatives have gleefully regressed to a state of childhood. They spent years acting out and then wonder why someone else didn't protect them from the consequences of their own actions. At some point, America cannot move forward unless we collectively grow up. Part of that will involve conservatives -- especially conservatives who have recognized the perils of the Trump movement -- accepting responsibility for the choices their faction has made, and holding their colleagues to account.

Is that day coming? Now, of course, conservatives control both houses of Congress and the President-elect. They hold the levers of American government. And -- just as we saw over the last two years -- there are right-wing voices who do recognize serious fissures in our democratic fabric. Noah Rothman in Commentary frets about "the normalization of intemperance or even fanaticism" we have recently begun to witness. So, now that their fruit has fully bloomed, will conservatives finally take responsibility for it? What does Rothman say?

Alas: "[D]on’t blame Donald Trump or his voters for this condition. Blame the left."

Old habits die hard.