In the Middle of It All

Shaul Magid has a very interesting, provocative, and thoughtful essay in Religion Dispatches about the current state of affairs in Israel and Palestine -- where it came from, and where it is going. Magid is an author for whom my general orientation is that I rarely agree with everything he says, but always find him worth reading, and so it is here. But one point in particular that he makes that very much resonates is that Hamas' attack on Israel "is not the beginning, nor the end, but as with most things, somewhere in the horrifying middle."

Nothing in geopolitics comes on a fresh slate, and there will always be history trailing behind us (and laid out in front of us). It is not justification or excuse to observe the obvious truth that Hamas' attack did not emerge ex nihilo. The same, of course, goes for the responses to that attack, which also cannot be viewed as wholly discrete, isolated events that can be analyzed and approved of/condemned atomistically. But one thought I keep returning to, as I read both justifications for Israel's campaign against Hamas and calls for that campaign to end in a ceasefire, is that a lot of people seem to think that we're not in the middle, that we could be on the verge of (if we make the right moves, anyway) the end. And in doing so, I think they're skipping past some essential but difficult question about what comes after whatever comes next.

Start with Israel's backers, for whom the call of the day is that things cannot proceed as they did before vis-a-vis Hamas in Gaza. I agree. As I said in my very first post on these atrocities, they were (among other things) a catastrophic failure of Israeli security policy; a complete discrediting of what came before. But before we go into what might change, we need to correctly identify what it is that was "before".

For most of the time following Israel's disengagement from Gaza and Hamas' ensuing takeover of the territory, Israel's policy has been one colloquially dubbed "mowing the lawn." In this metaphor, "the lawn" is Hamas' military capacity and willingness to inflict violence against Israelis across the border. When that capacity/willingness gets too dangerous (the grass grows too high), Israel launches an attack that depletes Hamas' stockpiles of men and munitions (the grass is cut), forcing Hamas to recuperate and recover. As time passes, Hamas inevitably replenishes its stockpiles of weaponry and its willingness to use them (the grass starts growing again), and the cycle repeats itself.

Notice that this policy is not one even aimed at securing a durable peace. It presupposes an ongoing and essentially endless cycle of violence; albeit one controlled at levels that are presumptively tolerable (for Israelis, anyway). That each Israeli attack inevitably will be followed by another one however many months or years later is not a failing of the strategy, it is the point of the strategy (just as it is not a "failure" when mowing the lawn that you'll have to do it again in a few months).

This was the strategy that failed and was decisively discredited on October 7. It is a failure both in its view that an endless cycle of low-grade violence could be kept at "tolerable" levels indefinitely, and in its broader apathy towards actually pursuing something that looks like a just and durable peace.

So now we move to today. The call to "destroy Hamas" is presented as a change from the prior policy of mowing the lawn; it's no longer about temporarily depleting Hamas' capacity to inflict violence, it is a decisive resolution -- the end of the story.

But how is it different, really, from "mowing the lawn"? To be clear, I shed no tears for Hamas' destruction; they're an evil terrorist organization who've inflicted untold misery on Israelis and Palestinians alike. But it's hard to imagine what "destroying Hamas" means in practice. If we're just talking about degrading the actual, social-political-military organization's specific ability to conduct operations, then maybe it's feasible -- but only because another organization will rise to take its place (and if "Hamas" is in 2024 replaced by "Babas" which does all of the same things, what has actually been accomplished?). If the goal is to permanently obliterate the ability of any actor, under any name, in the Gaza Strip to engage in insurgent violence against Israel, then it's not feasible at all -- surely, at this point, we've discredited the notion that Gaza can be bombed into permanent acquiescent quietude vis-a-vis Israel.

Put differently, a call to "destroy Hamas", without more, is just another iteration of mowing the lawn -- cutting the grass shorter, perhaps, but otherwise a repetition of the same failed strategy. It is not an end, it is a middle, and if left to its own devices it will continue the endless immiseration of the Palestinian people in service of eventually leading to another repetition of the terror we saw on October 7. So anyone calling to "destroy Hamas" has to have some plan for what to do afterwards. Those who say "destroy Hamas" and then stop there are committing the fallacy of assuming that "destroying Hamas" is the end of the problem in Israel and Gaza, and that's just obviously untrue.

So what is the "more" I propose? Simple: massive aid and reconstruction for Gaza. I spoke a few days ago of the grimmest silver lining of terrible war sometimes finally yielding a comprehensive peace, and if the terrible war is already upon us, we might as well try to leverage it to get the lasting peace.  Call it realistic, call it an ego-salve, but exploit the opportunity to say "now that Hamas has been destroyed, we can do ...." X, where X is good, humanitarian, reconstructive policies that break the pattern of entrapment and immiseration that has characterized the Gaza Strip for decades. 

There will be plenty of people who resist this; who say "how can you propose giving billions to Gaza after what happened on October 7?" Worse, Hamas -- being a terrorist organization -- isn't as prone to being "destroyed" in the way that, say, a corporation or even a state government could be. It'd likely be impossible to fully obliterate them; there will always be someone with a gun and a commitment to Hamas' ideology running around somewhere.

But my mind returns to the Marshall Plan after World War II, which surely was one of the greatest foreign policy decisions in modern history. No doubt, one could say, no country deserved less in the way of repair and support than Germany after World War II. Yet there's little doubt, comparing the outcome of post WWII to post WWI, that the choice to invest in reconstruction and repair paid off in incalculable dividends. The decision to focus less on retribution ala the Treaty of Versailles -- or, perhaps more accurately, to let "retribution" be in the military defeat and in the Nuremburg Tribunals, not in the post-war occupation of Germany (on the western side, at least) -- and more on creating future conditions of prosperity and fraternity seems, in context, almost impossibly humanistic, and yet it paid off beyond I imagine even the wildest hopes of its architects. If we can do it for Germany in 1946, we can do it for Gaza in 2023. Otherwise, we're just going to relive the same cycle again and again. 

So that has to be the deal: if you're going to destroy Hamas, then once you've declared "mission accomplished" there has to be a commitment to reconstruction. And moreover, one cannot use the impossibility of fully, completely, and in toto destroying Hamas as an excuse to never declare "mission accomplished". There's no universe in which a commitment to reconstruction doesn't take some leap of faith, but that has to be part of the deal.

That's the short-sightedness I see on the pro-Israel side of things. But there's actually something similar happening from those calling for a "ceasefire". Now, ceasefire can mean many things, and at its most literal it can mean nothing more than an intentionally temporary and short-term reprieve of hostilities to permit humanitarian aid to enter and medical and civilian evacuations to proceed without danger. It also can be temporary in the sense of a hope that the objectives which parties might rightfully be able to pursue in war could also be achieved via peaceful negotiation, so we should at least try the latter before (if talks fail) resorting to the former. 

But my sense is that most people calling for a "ceasefire" want something more durable than a few days where aid trucks can go in and out of the territories unmolested. Nor are they, in any realistic sense, hoping that with a few days of conversation Israel will be able to achieve its valid security objectives through a process of negotiation, while recognizing that a military option remains validly on the table. They think that any Israeli military response is inherently unjust and must be opposed, under any circumstances. "Ceasefire" is in some ways a misnomer; the actual demand is something closer to "the international community's position should be a flat rule that Israel is not permitted to pursue any of its security objectives via projection of military power".

A few days ago I wrote about why the call for a cease-fire seemed so futile. The basic thrust of my argument was that (a) Israel existentially cannot allow Hamas to view October 7 as a net victory, and (b) nobody has yet come up with a credible alternative beyond a bruising military response that would prevent Hamas from seeing October 7 as a net victory. An "everyone, go back to your corners" ceasefire would, at this point in time, still be seen by Hamas as it coming out ahead. Horribly, this sense would be amplified, not diminished, the more "ceasefire" is conjoined with new momentum for aid to the Gaza Strip or alleviations of the Israeli blockade -- it would suggest that brutally and shockingly massacring Israeli civilians is the most effective strategy at convincing the international community to come to Palestine's aid. And internalizing that lesson, as I said, really would be an existential threat to Israel -- it's something that the state absolutely cannot allow to happen.

But what I've come to realize over the past few days is that, just as many of Israel's supporters thinking "destroying Hamas" will be the end, rather than the middle, of the story; many of its detractors also think that we could be close to the end. Anyone who went to Hebrew School is familiar with an old saw, repeated ad nauseum in certain circles, that goes "If the Palestinians laid down their weapons there would be no more war; if the Israelis laid down their weapons there would be no more Israel." And it occurs to me that many of the pro-ceasefire commentators genuinely believe this, but in the reverse. They really believe, with absolute, 100% confidence, that if Israel just stands down and turns the other cheek, and presumably does various other pro-Palestine actions (which might include anything from "end the blockade of Gaza" to "permit a right of return for descendants of refugees"), this whole thing will be over. In a sense, Israel has no valid security interests going forward because it always, at any point it chooses, has the immediate and unconditional capacity to end the situation of security threat at its sole discretion.

From that vantage point, proponents of a ceasefire don't have to come up with an "alternative" to military action that will prevent Hamas from viewing October 7 as a net victory, because the whole thing will be moot. It wouldn't matter if Hamas "internalized the message" that brutally and shockingly massacring Israeli civilians is the most effective strategy at convincing the international community to come to Palestine's aid, because they'd have already achieved all that they wanted, and wouldn't have need to resort to that tactic again. We'd be at the end of the story, not the middle.

Framed that way, the logic -- indeed, the moral imperative -- of a ceasefire becomes undeniable. But it all depends on believing, with 100% certainty, that all Hamas wants is whatever boons and succor would result from a ceasefire and any ensuing alleviation of Gaza's humanitarian conditions. That seems unrealistic on two levels. First, of course, a ceasefire could not realistically provide conditions that represent a permanent and durable end to the conflict. But second, it is based off a dogmatic and unsustainable believe that all Hamas wants and all Hamas is fighting for is justice. It fails to take seriously the seemingly undeniable reality that Hamas actually, genuinely wants unjust things vis-a-vis Israeli Jews, and will be inclined to keep fighting in order to attain these unjust ends. It's not all they want, but it is the height of naivete to think that Hamas will be satisfied -- that the story would end -- if only Israel agreed to the demands of justice as conceptualized by western peace activists. And again, that belief is essential to the project, because if we're still in the "horrifying middle", then we do have to think about the risks and consequences of enabling Hamas to view October 7 as a winning strategy, and we do have to figure out what alternative to a military campaign could prevent that being the moral of the story.

That last part is an earnest plea. War is awful in general, and will be especially awful here to innocent Palestinian civilians who are functionally trapped in a zone of active hostilities. Moreover, as alluded to above I'm dubious this war, for all the death and destruction it will ladle onto an already overflowing pile of human misery, will even achieve the (not-so-)modest objective of permanently degrading the ability of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to inflict violence on Israeli civilians. Nobody should be excited for this, nobody should think this is a good thing.

What's needed now is an off-ramp, something that can plausibly induce Israel to not go down a seemingly inexorable path without it being seen as giving Hamas a win. How do we, to alter the sardonic advice given to the U.S. as it found itself stuck in Vietnam, convince Israel to declare victory and then stay home? Keep in mind that, with respect to everything I just said about the strategic necessity of shifting the moral of the story, none of it at all alters the initial set of observations that an Israeli ground campaign in Gaza would be disastrous for Israel, to say nothing of Palestinians. The whole problem is that this terrible option still seems to be "better" than all the alternatives, and if that is to change it will only be if an alternative that successfully convinces Israel that Hamas didn't win and won't perceive itself as having won.

If someone can propose a genuine off-ramp that can credibly avert this calamity, they deserve a Nobel Peace Prize and everyone's support. And I'll say I'm not opposed to a ceasefire that's meant to hold the peace while that solution is generated. But to come up with an alternative, it's necessary to recognize that we're in the middle of the story, not the end. As much as we might like to, we cannot skip to the conclusion.

A Purely Federated U.S. "State" of Territoria?

This is one of those thoughts I had in the shower that might not go anywhere, but I wanted to run with it a bit.

As many of you know, one of my pet issues is statehood for all American territorial possessions. Not just DC statehood, but statehood for Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa -- the whole shebang. I'm actually a bit of a hardliner on this in that I don't think the territories should have the option of remaining territories -- either statehood or independence. There's no justification, in a modern democracy, for there to be territorial possessions permanently under the domain of a sovereign but lacking full democratic rights and representation in that sovereign.

One problem with my vision is that many of the territories in question are quite small -- much smaller than any current state. Leaving aside Puerto Rico, which is somewhat of a special case, the largest American territory by population is Guam, with a little over 150,000 residents. By comparison, the smallest U.S. state is Wyoming, with a population of approximately 578,000.

Now, in theory I have no problem with a little state-packing of territories with trivial populations (that's in part how we got two Dakotas). But it's also the case that if you add all the non-Puerto Rico U.S. territories together, the population totals close to 340,000 -- still considerably smaller than Wyoming, but not absurdly so. If the only objection to territorial statehood is population, I don't think that objection holds to the combined state of "Territoria".

Of course, it might seem absurd to combine into one state the U.S. Virgin Islands (in the Caribbean) with Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, and American Samoa (half a world away in the Pacific Ocean). Hell, even Guam and American Samoa, despite both being "Pacific Island Territories", are more than 3,600 miles apart. How would "state" government even work in that context?

But that made me wonder -- is there any problem with a "state" deciding to organize itself on a completely federated level -- total autonomy for each traditional "territory", with no or virtually no power in the "state" legislature? Could there be a "state" of Territoria which exists only to have a Representative and two Senators, but which otherwise is an empty shell comprising the actually active and empowered "local" governments of the constituent territories?

I don't claim this is a miracle drug solution. For starters, it would end the distinctive (albeit non-voting delegate) representation of each individual territory. Especially given that Guam would comprise almost 45% of the population of "Territoria" on its own, I can certainly imagine the other territories crying foul at that. And as I said, I don't actually have a problem with the "pure" state-packing play of giving the U.S. Virgin Islands and its 87,000 denizens full statehood on its own.

But it's an interesting thought, no -- the concept of a "state" that exists only as a vector for national representation, but otherwise makes no claims to be the governing body for its constituent territories? I at least find it a bit intriguing, if only as a thought experiment that might open other doors.

What Will the Moral of the Story Be?

Daniel Drezner has a good piece up on the futility of external "calls for a ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas, that helped crystallize some of my feelings on the subject. Many people, as Drezner observes, have written eloquently and persuasively about the disaster that would be sustained Israeli ground campaign in Gaza -- an operation that will endanger countless Israeli and Palestinian lives while simultaneously being unlikely to meaningfully alter Israel's long-term security posture and severely escalating the risk of regional conflagration. Drezner links to articles by Marc Lynch and Daniel Levy and Zaha Hassan as good examples. And like Drezner, I agree with this assessment. The prospect of more war and more killing and more devastation is sickening to me. It won't bring back the dead. It probably won't even permanently degrade Hamas' combat capacities. It just feels like meeting death with more death.

And yet, Drezner observes, few of these commentators have much in the way of practical suggestions for what Israel should be doing instead to respond to Hamas' attack. other than intoning the word "cease-fire". He continues:

Understand that Israel is going to respond because they see no other option after the loss of their deterrent power against Hamas. This is precisely what any other state in the international system would do if it possessed similar capabilities. The intentional attacks on Israeli civilians was heinous. No government could not retaliate, could not demonstrate the severe consequences of such an assault, and still remain a government. This is Politics of National Security 101.

[....] 

For example, I do not disagree with anything Lynch writes in his Foreign Affairs essay. What is less clear to me is what Marc is proposing as a suitable alternative. And this is what keeps nagging at me whenever I am asked if there is anything that can be done to reduce the loss of life. A ground invasion will be grueling in and of itself. It might widen the conflict to include the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran. But I cannot necessarily think of another policy option that produces a superior outcome for Israel.

Many people have made arguments of the form "no government could not retaliate" over the past few days, but I think Drezner is getting at an important clarification here. Arguments of this sort sometimes are made in emotional terms -- a country which faced such a terrible wound cannot be expected to turn the other cheek towards it. And against that position, those promoting a cease-fire often reply -- correctly -- that no amount of retaliation or bombing is going to bring back the Israeli dead. If the only argument for a military campaign was one of vengeance, of the inchoate sense that Israel has to do ... something to avenge those Hamas murdered, then I would agree that the calls for a cease-fire have purchase. As understandable as that boil for vengeance might be, it's not a good enough reason for the death and devastation that will inevitably follow a ground invasion of Gaza.

But there's more than a mere emotive desire to do "something" at work here. As a matter of pure, cold strategic logic, Israel cannot allow the moral of the story of Hamas' attack to be "this is a winning move." The attack itself was catastrophic on its own terms. If it is seen by Palestinian militant groups as winning strategy, that's more than catastrophic, that's an actual existential threat. The phrase "reestablish deterrence" may be overused (this post by Cheryl Rofer was a helpful corrective), but if it ever had resonance it does here. When faced with a situation like what Israel just went through, a state must demonstrate that the massacre of its civilians is a capital-letter Bad Idea for the massacrers. And so Israel's response, whatever it is, must in some way effectively communicate that message.

And the fact of the matter is, we're not there yet. Imagine that Israel tomorrow announced a suite of policy alterations towards the Gaza Strip that are the dream of all those signing cease-fire petitions: an end to the siege, a release of prisoners, a commitment to reconstruction, the works. What would be the result? It would be to suggest that, as terrible as Hamas' actions were, they were ultimately what shocked the Israeli government out of its torpor and forced it to the negotiating table. Anyone reading this blog probably can name a half-dozen people in their orbit who already have their "Power Cedes Nothing Without a Demand!" Instagram posts ready to roll. And while the prospect of celebratory postings by really annoying people also is not a good enough reason to blow things up (somewhere I had a post about how any Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement worth its salt is going to involve some people you can't stand being happy, and that can't be a reason to torpedo the agreement), the problem is they'd have a point, and a point that if internalized would be incredibly dangerous in any circumstance where the Israeli/Palestinian conflict doesn't end tomorrow. I'm not sure I agree with Ilya Somin that the Gilad Shalit deal laid the groundwork for Hamas' attack twelve years later, but the risk he's flagging isn't invented. Israel at some level needs to devastate Hamas because the alternative is that Hamas learns that operations like these are winning strategies that should be repeated as frequently as possible.

The fact is that, as much suffering as the people of Gaza have already endured, if an actual cease-fire was imposed today Hamas would almost certainly view its operation as a net win, and Israel cannot allow it to come to that conclusion. So the question for those promoting a cease-fire, as Drezner alludes to, is what pathway other than an overwhelming military response changes the moral of the story? What realistic and enforceable proposal would avoid the death and destruction of a military campaign while nonetheless making clear that operations such as the one Hamas just launched are a Bad Idea?

It's not clear what that alternative could be, and that's the problem that makes the military assault feel so inevitable. Maybe Hamas' leadership turning itself in to be prosecuted for war crimes at the Hague could qualify, but that's obviously not on offer (though I've seen some people suggest it be added to the various petitions floating around anyway -- after all, if they're not limiting themselves to things that might realistically come to pass ....). Some form of reparation (what would that look like?)? A long-sought after diplomatic boon (Saudi recognition)? I don't know. None of these seem plausible, let alone sufficient.

To be sure, this doesn't mean there isn't any space for any public or diplomatic discourse urging restraint on the part of Israel. The need to change the moral doesn't license any and all measures; not every possible Israeli action can be justified based on the need to prevent Hamas from claiming a win. The example I gave last week of saying no to starvation policies is one obvious example, as is opposing the flatly sadistic "bounce the rubble" position of militaristic zealots like Tom Cotton. Ensuring an actual, not just pro forma, opportunity for civilians to evacuate is another (that the initially reported "24 hour" deadline has long since come and gone without the ground campaign beginning suggests that something got through regarding the insufficiency of that timeline). And on the point of evacuation, it also is imperative that the United States extract ironclad assurances that evacuated civilians will be able to return to their homes at the conclusion of hostilities -- a requirement that is demanded by the provisions of international law that permit temporary evacuations of civilians from combat zones, but one can forgive Gaza civilians if they are more than a bit mistrustful of Israel's commitment to that principle). All of these are viable and salutary interventions, and Israel has no justification for opposing them, even if they do make its military endeavors more difficult. 

(It's also worth noting that Hamas must allow, and cannot obstruct, civilian evacuations. Hamas has openly urged Palestinians civilians not to leave the northern Gaza Strip, and there are reports it is actively impeding evacuation efforts).

But the terrible truth is that what's needed now probably isn't public calls for a cease-fire. What's needed now is an off-ramp, something that can plausibly induce Israel to not go down a seemingly inexorable path without it being seen as giving Hamas a win. How do we, to alter the sardonic advice given to the U.S. as it found itself stuck in Vietnam, convince Israel to declare victory and then stay home? Keep in mind that, with respect to everything I just said about the strategic necessity of shifting the moral of the story, none of it at all alters the initial set of observations that an Israeli ground campaign in Gaza would be disastrous for Israel, to say nothing of Palestinians. The whole problem is that this terrible option still seems to be "better" than all the alternatives, and if that is to change it will only be if an alternative that successfully convinces Israel that Hamas didn't win and won't perceive itself as having won. Simply intoning "ceasefire" is not, on its own, such an alternative. If you don't care about any of that and just want to express a message that war is bad, then go ahead and intone. But if you're actually serious about trying to effectuate a change of course, then these are the questions you need to consider.

It is a commentary on the twisted state of the world that the closest thought I have to something optimistic is also somehow among the grimmest. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a historic peace treaty. History is not monocausal, but one common narrative about the treaty notes how it came in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel's bloodiest conflict since independence. The key was that both parties viewed themselves as negotiating from a position of strength -- as having "won" something. Israel had successfully repulsed the invasion and had shown that it would not be dislodged from the region. Egypt, though, had -- in contrast to the humiliation of the Six Day War -- fought well and significantly bloodied the nose of their Israeli counterparts, showing they were a military force to be reckoned with. The most cynical way of putting it is that the Egyptians killed enough Israelis, and the Israelis killed enough Egyptians, that both sides could view the peace deal as something they had "won", something they'd extracted through strength, not ceded through capitulation.

So the grimmest silver lining would be to imagine that maybe, after Israel's sure-to-be cataclysmic operation in the Gaza Strip, maybe both sides will see themselves as having killed enough of the other so they can call it a victory. Israel can say it's lopped off Hamas' head and so now a true reconstruction can begin. Whatever Hamas-substitute inevitably rises to take its place can say that the Palestinian resistance forced the Zionists to come to heel. Both sides claim a terrible victory, and so can say that the ensuing peace is something they won rather than capitulated to.

It is, again, a twisted and grim "silver lining". The only thing worse would be for all that's happened to happen, and then for nothing to change at all.

Passing Solidarity's Acid Test

I am honored to have co-authored a piece in the Forward with Alan Solow, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, on how the Biden administration's national strategy for combatting antisemitism -- in particular, its focus on building solidarity among diverse groups in the fight against antisemitism -- is facing an early acid test in the aftermath of Hamas' horrific terrorist attack on southern Israel.

And my honest assessment is that the focus on solidarity is bearing fruit. Yes, there have been some high-profile incidents from certain segments of the left that have excused or even valorized antisemitism. We've all seen them, and I (along with many others) haven't hesitated to call them out. But these cases -- as large as they loom -- have objectively been drowned out by a much larger and unified chorus of condemnation. The grotesque behavior of a few is important to identify, but it should not obscure the larger pattern: 

Though vocal, the cadre of extremists who publicly cheer antisemitic terror finds itself increasingly isolated. Though shaken, the community of Jews and non-Jews who have committed to standing together in solidarity against terror have risen to the moment, forging a stronger and more vibrant bond with each passing day.

This doesn't mean that maintaining these bonds will be easy or can be left to autopilot. The events of the last week tested us in terrible ways, and the events of the coming weeks will no doubt continue to do so. But that is exactly why plans must be put in place before the moment of reckoning, and why a politics of isolation, ostracism, exclusion, and division constitutes a luxury we cannot afford. 

We're facing an acid test for solidarity, in circumstances more horrible than almost anyone could imagine. But we can, and we will, pass it.

Grief Over Dead Jews is not the Cause of Palestinian Suffering

At Dissent Magazine, Gabriel Winant has an essay arguing for why it is wrong to grieve murdered Israelis, in response to Joshua Leifer's call for a "humane left" that recognizes the atrocities inflicted upon the Israeli people even as it mobilizes to defend Palestinian rights (Leifer authors a searing response of his own here). 

Winant's argument against grieving dead Israelis is not exactly the one you're thinking of -- that the dead are "colonists" or "settlers" and so got what was coming to them. It's slightly more roundabout, though ultimately still rather straightforward. 

Israel, Winant says, is "a machine for the conversion of grief into power." In the context of Israel and Zionism, to grieve dead Jews is -- no matter the intentions of the bereft -- a means of providing fuel to the Israeli war machine, "an enormous grief machine, the best in the world, up and running, feeding on bodies and tears and turning them into bombs." Winant's argument is not, to be clear, the position that certain forms of grief and grieving lend themselves to the promotion and justification of future atrocities. It is that any type of grief, no matter how humanistic in spirit, is ultimately a choice to "participate in the ideological project of the Israeli state," and so all grief over dead Israelis should be interpreted as complicity in the deaths of Palestinians.

The Israeli government doesn’t care if you, a principled person, perform your equal grief for all victims: it will gobble up your grief for Jews and use it to make more victims of Palestinians, while your balancing grief for Palestinians will be washed away in the resulting din of violence and repression.

And so we are obligated to not grieve for massacred Israelis so to starve the apparatus of its fuel.

Winant is a historian, a discipline of the humanities. It is moments like this when I'm glad my own training is in the social sciences, where even as a political theorist I gained some capacity to look for causality before making causal claims. It is a curse of academia that it tempts us to make smart arguments for stupid things, or sometimes smart arguments for horrific things. Certainly, the seemingly unanswerable question Winant is trying to answer -- "Who can begrudge tears for those lost to violence?" -- is, in fact, exactly as obvious a moral (non-)dilemma as it first appears. But elegant pedigree and august publication venue aside, the mistake Winant is making is not a smart one. It is an error that anyone with even the slightest instinct towards causal inference would have spotted immediately.

The imperative to not grieve dead Jews, Winant argues, boils down to the following:

[I]n the several days that we spent arguing about whether the left was sufficiently decent about Hamas’s victims, Israel geared up its genocide machine—which it now is releasing. Presumably sometime next week, Western leaders will begin to express concerns, by which time it will be too late.

"By which time it will be too late." The argument, apparently, is that if only the world had hardened its heart towards dead Israelis last week, we could have averted the horrors set to befall Palestinians next week. As a causal claim, this is ludicrous to the point of farce -- to the point where I can't imagine Winant actually believes it. Does he truly believe that, if the collective global reaction to massacred Jews was a stoic shrug, that would have deterred an Israeli response? That it would have even ameliorated it? That it would have spouted greater humanism? It is absurd on face; even (maybe especially?) an anti-Zionist should realize the Israeli state would not be deterred so easily.

The brute fact is that the world electing to grieve, or not, over dead Israelis almost certainly made and will make no causal difference whatsoever in how Israel will respond to their deaths. And if grief over dead civilians is an impotent force with respect to the next round of deaths -- if it plays no role in making them more or less likely -- well, then one might as well be humane, be human, and grieve.

Once one identifies the absurd causal premise in Winant's argument, the entire thing falls apart. Grieving for dead Jews does not in fact sweat bombs and excrete bullets; boldly refusing to grieve would play absolutely no role in how many bombs are dropped and bullets are fired. The entire argument is a whirlwind of rhetoric and misdirection to try and obscure the obviousness of "Who can begrudge tears for those lost to violence?" And while I said the argument is not quite the obvious "Israelis are colonists and settlers and so got what's coming to them," I suspect the motive of the argument isn't all that far from that -- it is to give people who desperately don't want to accede to the overwhelming power of "Who can begrudge tears for those lost to violence?" an excuse, an apologia they can wield to begrudge, begrudge, begrudge.

If there is even the slightest truth in Winant's framework, it is not that Israel transmutes grief into power. It's that Israel transmutes grieving alone into power. The impetus behind Zionism -- I've been in enough of these conversations to speak confidently here -- is not (just) that bad, dreadful things happen to Jews. It's that bad, dreadful things happen to Jews and Jews are the only ones who will ever care. The only people who will grieve dead Jews are Jews; the only people who will rally to the defense of threatened Jews are Jews; the only people who will feel empathy (or anything at all, really) towards frightened or traumatized Jews are Jews; the only people who will erect fortresses to protect Jews are Jews; and so ultimately the only people who can be entrusted to protect and ensure the lives of Jews are Jews. It is not grief alone, but grief alone, that fuels these instincts.

Taken from that vantage point, the scenes of collective global grief over dead Jews represent what might be the closest thing Israelis can get to a non-violent catharsis for their trauma -- the knowledge that Jews aren't actually alone, that others do care when we are pricked and bleed. If you want something that might actually sap the machine of violence and vengeance of some of its forward momentum, that's by far your best bet -- not enforced loneliness, but unconditional embrace and empathy in the moments where it is needed most.

The last week or so hasn't had a lot of laughing moments with respect to the situation surrounding Israel and Palestine, but perhaps the only time I genuinely snickered was when Italy decided to express its solidarity by lighting up the Arch of Titus, of all places, with an Israeli flag. As far as historical ironies go, that one was hard to beat. But it also, in its ridiculous fashion, did illustrate the wheel of history turning in an important way. From celebrating dead Jews, to standing in public grief with dead Jews -- as symbolism goes, that's massive. And if that symbolic shift occurred everywhere, well, maybe Jewish history would be in a very different place than where it is today.

And so I wish I could take the final step of the argument, and say that maybe Winant has everything backwards -- that if the world had grieved hard enough and uniformly enough and passionately enough, it would have sapped the fuel of loneliness and isolation that makes Israel believe that nobody but itself can ever be entrusted to protect Jewish life, and could have knocked us off the seemingly inexorable course to the hell that is about to descend. 

But I'm enough of a social scientist that if I'm going to make a causal claim, I have to actually believe it, and I don't really believe this one. The wounds and fears that nurture Jews' feelings of abandonment run too deep to be dislodged in such a short period, even if it were possible to get everyone on board with the program (which it isn't). What I actually believe is what I said above, that how the world grieved, or didn't, over dead Israelis almost certainly made and will make no causal difference whatsoever in how Israel will respond to their deaths.

And given that absolute impotent immateriality, I also think it's clear that the basic, innocent, human impulse -- that one should grieve dead civilians -- is exactly as obvious and unanswerable as it appears at first blush. There is nothing impressive at coming up with smart (or not-so-smart) arguments to circumvent such an obvious truth.

The Epistemic Turn of the Week's Antisemitism

When I published my article on epistemic antisemitism last year, the very first paragraph carried an important disclaimer: epistemic antisemitism "is by no means the only form of antisemitism, nor (necessarily) the most important or foundational type." It is a type, one amongst many, and I wrote about it mostly because I didn't really see others writing about it.

Certainly this week, it is beyond evident that epistemic antisemitism is not the most important type. It pales in comparison to the violence, death, and dismemberment that has afflicted southern Israel, and the apologias for the same. Yet it still remains the case that epistemic antisemitism is a type, and one sees it, too, rearing its ugly head in the discourse that's surrounded the preceding week's events.

Epistemic injustice, as Miranda Fricker describes it, is the wronging of persons in the capacity as knowers. In its antisemitic dimension, it is the persistent presentation of Jewish claims and claimants as untrustworthy, deceptive, or plots -- never to be taken at face value, always in service of some higher game. Inevitable features of contested discourse -- disagreements, differing interpretations, misunderstandings, ambiguities in meaning, or even flat honest mistakes -- are all collapsed into a more sinister narrative of intentional manipulation. The result is that, even where Jews are speaking on matters central to our own experience, the default is to not take us seriously -- indeed, to assume anyone who does take us seriously, who treats us as making an earnest contribution, is a sucker or in on the agenda.

I'll give two examples from the past few days, one short, the other longer. 

First, one theme one has heard from many Jewish commentators -- some well to my left -- has been despair over witnessing others in their camp who've been at best indifferent, if not celebratory, towards murdered Jews. All of us have seen iterations of this (Eric Levitz collects some receipts, including from Students for Justice in Palestine). But the replies to such cries of despair are increasingly overrun by persons who insist that nothing of the sort is happening. "I've seen nobody praising the attacks". "Show me examples [no, the examples you just shared don't count]". And on and on.

The point is to present a wide-ranging Jewish testimonial experience as incredible and a sort of collective defamation of the left. What appears to be a repeated experience Jews have had in the past few days is actually a calculated initiative to spread falsehoods, gin up undeserved sympathy, and discredit ideological opponents (the last part is true even if the speakers are themselves part of the same broad ideological camp). Remember what Bruce Robbins said so many years ago: "The real issue here is anti-Semitism; that is, accusing people of it." When Jews say they see antisemitism, epistemic antisemites immediately see real issue as those victimized by an undoubtedly false allegation. There are clear analogue to how Jewish members of Labour who testified about antisemitism in the Corbyn era were maligned, and I feel like I've definitely seen some persons who I know were offenders in the Corbyn affair making similar moves today.

Second, there were reports that among the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during their assault there were instances of beheaded infants. These stories were shared and spread over social media, but initially they were not easy to confirm. Sheera Frankel of the New York Times has a great account regarding how the claim emerged and how responsible journalists tried to confirm it or otherwise figure out its provenance. The summary of the timeline goes, more or less, something like this:

• There was an initial report of beheadings of babies from an Israeli news source; this appears to be what kicked off the story.
• Further investigation suggested that these reports might have been based off a misinterpretation of a soldier's first-hand testimony. Other sources who were contacted were unable to provide first-hand confirmation of the "beheading" claim.
• Some of the reporters who had initially repeated the allegation accordingly began to pull back, leading still other commentators to claim that the initial story had been "debunked".
• As time passed, more reports did begin to flow in with additional first-hand testimony claiming to have seen beheaded infants, leading to the story reappearing on reputable media websites.

We may never know exactly all of the details. The Israeli government has reportedly said that it will not investigate the matter further -- the eyewitness testimony it has received is evidence enough, and whatever evidentiary gains might emerge from meticulously documenting the exact state of dismemberment of each infant corpse were negligible when weighed against the additional pain and agony such an investigation would impose on the victims' families. This forbearance, unsurprisingly, has been viewed with extreme suspicion by those who found the initial claim to lack credibility and who continue to believe that the reports are untrue. For my part, I think that right now the balance of evidence suggests -- sickeningly -- that it likely is true that there were some children with beheaded corpses found amongst the bodies in Israel.

But my point is actually not about how one assesses the current state of the evidence. Rather, it is to emphasize that -- specific depraved details aside -- a sequence like this should not feel especially abnormal. We had a fast-moving, chaotic, uncontrolled event that was chock full of incidents and abuses that 24 hours earlier would have been impossible to imagine. Even if social media sites like X/Twitter hadn't completely imploded into engines of greater misinformation, moments like these are the furthest thing from a healthy informational ecosystem. There will be rumors, and uncertainties, and panic, and hearsay. Some of it will be fully borne out, some of it will carry a grain of truth but be misshapen in some way, some of it will be entirely bogus. In the immediate chaotic froth of the event, that's to be expected.

Yet -- and this is the epistemic antisemitism link -- that was not how things were portrayed. Some social media commentators, recognizing that the situation was in flux and early reports could not be confirmed, urged caution in the face of sensational allegations. That is entirely in the right. But some social media commentators raced as fast as possible to the position that any reports of "beheadings" were pure propaganda, an intentional trick to discredit Hamas (as if they needed the help!), and those who shared them were either unwitting pawns or willing participants in a Zionist conspiracy. The most plausible explanation consistent with the claim being untrue -- that this was the sort of rumor and hearsay that one would fully expect to see bouncing about in the chaotic first moments following a surprise attack -- was blown past in favor of an explanation predicated on the most malicious possible inferences. That move -- not, to reiterate, any professional insistence on needing more confirmation before resharing the allegations -- seems to me directly linked to holding a default position of skepticism if not antipathy towards Jewish claim-makers (which is why, even though now we are seeing multiple different direct eyewitness accounts confirming the story, plenty still are holding fast to the notion that they can't be trusted).

In either case, the thrust of this branch of discourse -- and lest I be clear, it is only a branch, the vast majority of people have not indulged in this depravity -- is laser-focused on ensuring that nobody be too ready to take Jews seriously. The goal is to present Jewish testimony as presumptively suspect -- not just the baseline "skepticism" that might greet any claim before proof is supplied, but a specific insistence that Jewish testimony in particular is probably part of a plot. As I wrote in my article, the epistemic antisemite -- in addition to whatever other negative beliefs they have about Jews, tends to carry

 a concurrent belief that Jews can’t be trusted, that they’re always plotting something or working the angles, that all of their public action is in service of a deeper game. A person who believes such things about Jews may be considerably less likely to take Jewish claims made to the public seriously. Even if she does not reject them out of hand, she may be extra-alert for a hidden agenda or secret meaning, and may be unwilling to credit Jewish testimony (even—or especially—on matters where Jews might be thought to possess first-hand knowledge) to the same degree she does other actors.

This -- on top of everything else -- is something Jews are facing right now. The rapid assumption that any reporting of atrocities out of Israel is Zionist propaganda until ironclad-proven otherwise is one form of it. The dismissive derision towards Jewish testimony regarding apologism for Hamas atrocities is another. It's not on par with violence, or even verbal justifications for violence. But it is still something, and something terrible, and it is a regular feature of Jewish life in the world.

What Will You Say "No" To?

We are still processing the fallout of the past week's brutal assault by Hamas on southern Israel, a vicious attack whose only tactical objection was the infliction of terror and death on a civilian population. At the moment, it appears that Israel has reestablished control over most if not all of its territory, but the situation remains fluid and the military and government response remains shockingly disorganized. We also don't know yet exactly how Israel plans to respond to Hamas' attack, but few seem to harbor hopes for anything that could be remotely characterized as positive.

Right now, it seems, we sit in the relative calm before -- or more accurately, between -- the storm. And so right now, those of us who rightfully are aghast at Hamas' wanton murder of Israeli civilians, and who've pledged to stand with Israel as a result, must force ourselves to think through a very difficult thought:

What will we say "no" to?

What form of Israeli retaliation or response to Hamas' sadistic campaign of slaughter we will commit to saying we won't support? This is not a roundabout way of saying Israel is not entitled to respond at all; a military response here is warranted and justified. But warranted and justified military responses still carry limits, and it's important to be clear about what those limits are even in the wake of an unimaginable atrocity.

Indeed, I say to those standing with Israel that we need to think about this right now because we just witnessed in real-time a catastrophic failure to grapple seriously with this question on the part of those who've pledge to stand with Palestinians and Palestine. Suddenly forced to decide whether, in the wake of occupation and besiegement, a Palestinian response of "a systemic campaign of house-to-house kidnappings, rapes, and executions" is a valid one, we saw far, far too many individuals unable to say "no" (or at least, say it with any level of decisiveness). This failure stems directly from the tempting broth that assures us that, if the provocation is severe enough and the injury severe enough, no amount of "response" could ever be disproportionate. And so we see that, if you refuse to let yourself think that anything could be "too far", there's no end to the depths of hell you may find yourself apologizing for.

For example, today the Israeli defense minister announced that one response Israel was committing to vis-a-vis Hamas was a "complete siege" upon the Gaza Strip, including a blockade on the delivery of food. Starvation of civilian populations is expressly forbidden as a violation of the laws of war. We can  consequently expect to hear, very shortly, calls from a variety of sources -- perhaps even the U.S. government -- that contravene Israel's announced policy of "complete siege", and insist that Israel cannot be permitted to block the entry of food, water, and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip. And we already know exactly one form of response that will be leveled at such calls: 

"How dare you tell Israel how it can respond to the unspeakable atrocity Hamas just committed? Hamas should have thought about food security in Gaza before it decided to slaughter Israeli civilians en masse! It's up to Hamas to free the hostages and submit to justice for their crimes; until they do that, any civilian deaths brought upon by Israel's blockade are on their heads, not ours."

There will, in short, be immeasurable pressure brought to bear to silence anyone who says "this is too much"; the waving of the bloody shirt of countless dead, dismembered, and abducted Israeli children and daring anyone to stare that bloodshed in the face and say "this is too much" in response.

Which is why it is so important to commit in advance to what we'll say in the thick of that inevitable discourse. If the Biden administration does step out and try to say "this choice -- not every choice, but this choice -- is too far", what will we say in the face of the inevitable backlash? How will navigate the hue and cry of those who are furious -- furious -- that anyone could have the temerity of telling Israel it is going too far? But the truth is that if your answer is to say "I'm sorry, but in this moment, at this time, in this situation, I cannot bring myself to tell Israel what it can and cannot do" -- then you've committed yourself to the same catastrophic failure we saw just days ago of those who could not, in the midst of sickening massacres, bring themselves to tell Palestinians what they could and could not do. It is the same failure of those who could not bring themselves to oppose Japanese internment after Pearl Harbor; the same as those who could not stand up for the rights of Muslims to build Mosques in New York after 9/11. No matter what flag you fly or how you think of yourself, you are cut from identical cloth.

The picture above is of Jacob Argamani. His daughter, Noa, was among those abducted by Hamas militants. Her kidnapping was broadcast, and even the description of it is sickening beyond words. These are the words Jacob spoke the other day, as her daughter's whereabouts remain unknown:

Let us make peace with our neighbors, in any way possible. I want there to be peace; I want my daughter to come back. Enough with the wars. They too have casualties, they too have captives, and they have mothers who weep. We are two peoples to one Father. Let’s make real peace.

If he can say it, then we can say it. But we have to commit to it now.

Ghouls, Failures, Fatalism and Responsibility

I doubt I need to inform you of the horrific news coming out of Israel, where a large-scale Hamas attack -- perhaps the single largest military incursion Israel has experienced in my lifetime -- has resulted in hundreds of Israeli deaths, thousands wounded, and an untold number of abductions. Terrifying reports of house-to-house executions and kidnappings are emerging on the ground, and even as we speak, Israeli forces still have reportedly not retaken all of towns and outposts that were overrun by Hamas militants.

I don't have much that's novel to say, in part because so much of what I could say seems so obvious. 

First, this is a brutal, criminal act. Full stop. The fact that people on the internet are celebrating it is unsurprising to anyone who has been on the internet -- the murdered Israelis are dying politically, with all the normal consequences that follow -- but that doesn't make it any less ghastly. The same goes for those people on the internet calling for genocidal violence in Gaza in "retaliation". Those people are in the exact same moral category as the murderers who slaughtered civilians today, they only fly a different flag. It's not a material distinction.

And on that note: you are under no obligation to not think of the people celebrating murders as anything other than ghouls. You don't have to twist yourself into knots to tell yourself why they may have a point or they're not adopting the right tone but... or any other apologia of the sort. You can, and should, just recognize that there are ghouls out there, and figure out how to assimilate that reality without sacrificing one's own broader commitment to humanism and justice for Israelis and Palestinians.

Second, this is a complete and abject failure of the Israeli government at every level.

Zoom in, and it's a massive intelligence and operational failure the likes of which Israel's security services have never seen in my lifetime. An operation of this size should not have been able to be launched without something being tipped; and once it was launched the IDF should not have been caught so flat-footed. 

At the middle, the above failings, in turn, can be directly attributed to Bibi and the current Israeli government's single-minded obsession about ripping the country's national fabric to pieces. In service of this mania they (among other things) placed incapable lickspittles in key security posts whose only "qualification" was that they were even more aggressively fascistic than Bibi is. Said fascists, in turn, spent all their time gleefully egging on settler violence in the West Bank, forcing the IDF to expend disproportionate resources putting out forest fires price taggers set on behalf of settler expansionism, and diverting their attention from goings-on in Gaza. It is no exaggeration to say, as one of my Facebook friends commented, that the reason nobody in the IDF was there to respond to cries for help in Israel's south was that they were too busy doing settlers' bidding in the north.

And if you zoom out, Hamas' operation represents an explosive repudiation of the notion that Gaza and Hamas could be besieged into obedience. The right-wing fantasy-nightmare that Israelis could (only) be kept safe through ever-greater oppression of Palestinians has been finally and completely falsified. From an Israel security standpoint, the rightwing playbook has only accomplished an unprecedented endangerment of Israeli lives in service of the furthest right-wing fringe. At what point do we say these policies are leading to nowhere but universal damnation? 

Finally, there is almost no chance that the fallout from this assault has any consequence other than catastrophe for innocent Israelis and Palestinians alike. And yet, we must resist the sort of fatalism about that seeming inevitability that leads to an abdication of responsibility. Too many voices I've seen today have, in one way or another, expressed sentiments to the effect that the events of today and/or those to come are the inevitable consequence of history's weave. How could you expect Hamas wouldn't seize an opportunity to massacre Israeli civilians en masse? How could you expect Israel won't respond with zero regard for Palestinian life?

No. There is agency here. The word of the day I'm already growing to hate is "(un)provoked", as in an emergent discourse which wants to be absolutely sure we all know that whatever hideous crime Hamas just committed or whatever overwhelming military incursion Israel may be about to launch, there is a reason behind it -- it didn't just happen out of air. Which -- no kidding. In the context of a conflict that's resulted in a half dozen international wars in the space of less than century, nothing is ever "unprovoked". But that doesn't absolve anyone of agency. Hamas made a choice to launch this attack -- a brutal, violent, targeted assault on a civilian population whose only tactical objective was the sowing of terror. They are not the passive receptacles of historical forces beyond their ken. And Israel's choices too (both those that preceded today's events and those that will follow) are choices -- they are not the inevitable consequence of some immutable historical arc.

I don't mean to downplay the real difficulties here. There is purchase in the armchair activist complaint "well, what is the right way for Palestinians to resist the occupation", even as it reaches a parodic pinnacle when it takes the form of "if Palestinian terror cells can't go house-to-house kidnapping and executing Israeli families, why, you might as well say Palestinians can't do anything at all!" And likewise, Israel's security needs absolutely require a robust military response to Hamas' attack for reasons that are by no means reducible to mere vengeance or bloodlust, even as too many commentators use the reality of the former as a preemptive apologia for the latter. But all of that emphasizes the need to acknowledge agency, it doesn't obviate it. Decisions taken in tough times are still decisions.

That's a lot of words, but I continue to think that the principles here are quite simple. Hamas is responsible for this murderous assault, and we should view it as nothing other than a murderous assault. Israel's policy choices in the orbit of these events have been demonstrated to be catastrophic failures at every level -- the sort of disaster that should permanently wreck the political careers of every functionary in power who let authoritarian thuggery and anti-democratic hate blind them to emergent danger. And ultimately, the most essential line to be drawn is not between "Israel" and "Palestine". It is between all those horrified by the kidnapping and butchering of civilians and all those, of any political stripe, who are excited at the prospect of dead civilians. No matter what flag they fly, all those in the latter camp are fundamentally on the same side. And in the final analysis, they are together -- not as opponents but as fundamental allies -- the truest enemy of all those who dream of justice, peace, democracy, and self-determination for Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, alike.

Who Are The ADL's Donors?

The big news flying about the Jewish blogosphere this week was the announcement by the ADL that they were going to resume buying ads on the-website-formerly-known-as-Twitter. This came in the wake of a cavalcade of antisemitic attacks and conspiracy theories, egged on by Elon Musk, that had the ADL as its target.

A lot of people are calling this a "betrayal", which I get, though it's hard for me to associate that word with such a limp and pathetic decision. It'd be like if Liz Cheney announced tomorrow that she was joining the DeSantis campaign -- sure, it'd repudiate what she had staked her reputation on for the past few years, but ultimately she'd be attaching herself to an abject failure for no discernible gain, so it'd be hard to get into too much of a lather about it.

But don't let my glibness detract from the obvious point that the ADL's decision is both stupid and terrible, and yet another instance of Jonathan Greenblatt's infirm leadership scoring completely unforced own-goals at the expense of the ADL's reputation. The, shall we say, inconsistent principles whereby the ADL refuses to take money from an antisemite like Kyrie Irving, but goes out of its way to give money to an antisemite like Elon Musk, is evidence of a ship gone rudderless. And that at this point my reactions are less that of "anger" and more of the "eyeroll" sort is not a sterling argument in favor of the ADL's current direction.

The constant missteps do raise the question of "why"? What is causing the ADL to blunder so regularly? One prospect, raised by Marisa Kabas in MSNBC, is that Greenblatt is trying to appease its "fervently Zionist donors who support Benjamin Netanyahu’s government" at the expense of the broader Jewish community it is tasked with defending. And that explanation got me to thinking -- in all earnestness -- "who are the ADL's donors"?

I'm asking genuinely, because I'm not sure. Certainly, the "rich donors are perverting our leaders' mission to suit their particular interests" is a popular sort of explanation that could explain why the ADL under Greenblatt's watch keeps on doing boneheaded things. But the explanation depends on the actual identity of the ADL's donors (are they "fervent Zionists who support Netanyahu's government"), and that made me realize that I don't have a strong sense about who the ADL's donor base is. Different possibilities render Kabas' explanation more or less plausible. So let's run through some candidates:

(1) No base. It's possible the ADL doesn't have a donor base. Now, to be clear, obviously the ADL gets a lot of money from donors. But it could be that the money is sufficiently distributed across a wide enough range of (relatively) small dollar contributors that there is no single cluster that looms large enough to constitute a "base". Alternatively, even if there are a relatively small number of mega-givers, if that group is itself ideologically diverse enough, then they would seemingly not form a sufficiently cohesive faction to induce the ADL to make political moves in one direction or another. Either way, such a financial set up would make it unlikely that the ADL's policies are largely being driven by the desire to appease a particular donor contingent.

(2) "Fervently right-wing Zionists". Perhaps the ADL's big donors come from the aggressive Zionist right. Obviously, that's a popular explanation for those who've long thought that the ADL is in the tank for right-wing Israeli policies. And certainly, the right-wing Zionist cadre are very much comprised of folks that tend to adore Elon Musk and are indifferent to if not elated by his attacks on the (wrong sort of) Jews. But the problem is that these sorts of donors tend to hate the ADL; they're the sorts who think the ADL has gone off the rails into the realm of "woke" leftism. Even if we imagine the sort of donor who only cares about bolstering support for right-wing Israel policy uber alles, there are other organizations (like ZOA) that are more natural fits.

(3) The corporate world. It's possible that most of the ADL's funding these days comes from various corporate actors -- some perhaps atoning for this or that discrimination disaster, others who see the ADL as a safe place to make a charitable gesture towards justice. Certainly, it seems that the ADL is a sizeable fish in that ecosystem. But if corporate donors are the driving force behind ADL decisionmaking, I don't see the throughline that gets us to "Greenblatt sticks his neck out to help Elon Musk." Corporate America is currently running away from Musk, not towards him, and I'm not seeing much evidence that they have any especial interest in forestalling Twitter withering on the vine.

(4) Middle America. As the quintessential "mainstream" civil rights organization, perhaps the ADL's donor base sits roughly at the midpoint of American political opinion. Two problems here: (1) given ideological polarization (which leads to a bimodal distribution of ideological views), it's not clear there is a large donor base of politically engaged actors sitting right in the middle of American political opinion; and (2) even if there is, it's again far from clear to me that "bailing out Elon Musk" is high on their priority list.

(5) The median Jew. Maybe the bulk of the ADL's donors sit, not at the center of American political opinion, but at the center of Jewish political opinion (a "center" which, of course, rests well to the left of American political opinion writ large, albeit falling more in the territory of "mainstream Democrat" than "raging socialist"). It certainly seems as if some of the anti-ADL antipathy reflects the fact that the ADL adopts views that are broadly popular with the median American Jew as opposed to, say, Mondoweiss. But I also don't see much in the way of evidence that the ADL is responsive to middle-ground American Jewish opinion. And this explanation, even more than "middle America", seems to point away from intervening to save Elon Musk.

(6) PEPpy sorts. "PEP" stands for "progressive except on Palestine", and while I'm not the biggest fan of the term, I'm thinking of groups like DMFI that are generally favorable towards the sort of mainline liberalism the ADL espouses on the domestic front while also being disposed towards defending hawkish Israeli policies towards Palestinians (or at least, ensuring that Israel faces no tangible blowback for implementing them). This seems like the strongest candidate for roughly tracking Kabas' explanation, since unlike the actual "fervent right-wing Zionists" this group is probably positively disposed towards the ADL. That said, leaving aside the evidentiary question of whether this group actually does comprise the ADL's donor base, I'm not convinced that this cadre (particularly right now, in the midst of the democracy protests) actually is all that enamored with the Netanyahu government specifically; nor am I convinced that they harbor any especial love for Elon Musk. So once again, it seems like they make for a poor explainer for why the ADL is behaving as it is.

Ultimately, I don't know who the ADL's main donor base is. But my confusion, and the fact that none of the above possibilities really seems to fit the ADL's recent behavior and place in the political ecosystem, actually makes me feel more confident that the entire premise we're discussing is wrong. The ADL's repeated, colossal errors of judgment -- most recently in crawling back into Elon Musk's bank account -- are not, I think, primarily donor-driven. I don't think these are externally-imposed failures. I think they represent an internal failure of leadership, and one that falls squarely on Jonathan Greenblatt's head. I can't speak to the precise internal dynamics or culture practices that might have gotten the ADL to this point, or whether a change in leadership will suffice to resolve them. But it seems clear right now that the ADL will not right ship unless Jonathan Greenblatt steps down from the helm.

[Image above from Deadline]

You Do Not "Stand Up For Jews" By Involuntarily Roping Us Into Your Islamophobia

A true all-time classic moment in "allyship" this week from London's mayoral race, pitting Conservative Susan Hall against the Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan:

The British Conservative Party’s candidate for London mayor said that Sadiq Khan, who currently holds the post, is “divisive” and has therefore “frightened” some of Britain’s Jewish community.

“I will ask for as much help as I can get in London because we need to defeat him,” Susan Hall said Monday night at a Conservative Friends of Israel event in Manchester that was part of the Tory party’s annual conference. “Particularly for our Jewish community.”

Those of you who only follow British politics in passing may not know this, but the British Jewish community has historically had an outstanding relationship with Khan. Even in the depths of Corbyn era, Khan was seen as a Labour party member who genuinely had the backs of the Jewish community, including calling out his own party for failing to treat antisemitism with requisite seriousness. The allegation that Jews are "frightened" by Khan has no basis in fact and is clearly just a sideswipe at the fact that he is Muslim.

Hence, the response from British Jewish leaders was not at all surprising: 

British Jewish groups quickly issued statements condemning Hall and defending Khan, who is London’s first Muslim mayor and has Pakistani ancestry. The Board of Deputies of British Jews said that Khan has always treated the Jewish community “with friendship and respect.” Longtime Jewish Labour parliament member Margaret Hodge called Hall’s comments “dog-whistle politics” and said “Khan has always called out antisemitism, wherever it has reared.”

But it's Hall's response to Jews saying her comments were out of order that is truly transcendent:

When asked by Sky News if she would apologize for her comments in the wake of the criticism she has received, Hall said: “I will never apologize for standing up for our Jewish community.”

You tell 'em, Hall! You're not going to let some dirty Jews tell you how to stand up for the Jewish community! It's called allyship -- look it up! 

A Speech on Love

 

I spent this past weekend in rural Vermont, attending the wedding of one of my best friends from college. While I don't fully approve of the location (almost two hours from the nearest major airport and with no cell reception), I absolutely approve of the coupledom.

One of the "events" at the wedding was, interestingly enough, a speech competition (the groom is a speech and debate coach at the high school he teaches at). The assigned topic was on "love". Here is the speech I gave which -- brag alert -- won the competition. You can feel free to steal it in your own wedding toast:

* * *

When [the groom] told me that we would have a speech competition on the topic of "love", I was confused. Why love? It's the most boring part of a tennis match! It literally means "nothing"!

But then I realized that obviously, a speech and debate coach wouldn't create a competition around an easy topic. He wanted us to work in rougher grass and harder clay. The true challenge would be to take something as mundane and meaningless as "love" -- the part of a tennis match when nothing has happened yet -- and see if we could nonetheless create a speech that was moving and meaningful and impactful.

So this is my attempt to craft a meaningful, moving speech about love, the part of a tennis match where nobody has scored and nothing has happened yet.  

Love is expectation. 

Love is anticipation.

It is the tingle on the edge of your seat as you await what is to come.

Love can be disappointing, when only one player still has it and the other has moved far beyond. And love can be sad, when the match is over and there is no more love to be had.

But love can also be thrilling. Some of history's greatest rallies have occurred over love -- service and return, athletic lunges and beautiful shots -- the moments that make us feel alive and remind us why we play the game.

And ultimately, love is a constant. No matter what happens, after every game, set, match, we return back to love. Love is the beginning. It is the part where nothing has happened, yet. And so it means that you have everything still in front of you.

Marriage is a great beginning, and so it is only fitting that it starts at love-love. So here's to love-love, and the great match that's been made, and the great match that will continue to be played forward, grounded and returning to that basic and elemental feature -- of a tennis match -- of love.

Striking(ish) Findings About Zionism Amongst Portland Jews

The other day, I came across a study conducted by the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland that surveyed the various attitudes and characteristics of the local Jewish community (full study here; executive summary here). I initially read it because I was naturally curious about the Jewish attributes of my new hometown. 

But inside the study, I found the kernel of something very interesting, because the Portland JFed actually asked some questions about Jews' affiliation with "Zionism". This, I can tell you, is actually quite rare -- most surveys of Jews do not expressly ask about "Zionism". Instead, most discourse about Jewish attitudes towards Zionism takes more general questions (like "do you support Israel's right to exist") and then uses that to draw inferences about Zionism. A study which expressly asks its respondents "do you identify as a Zionist" is extremely rare. So while admittedly a survey of Portland Jews, specifically, only tells us so much (more on that in a second), it is a droplet of liquid in a parched data desert -- and I do think the findings are worthy of remark. Specifically: 

Twenty-six percent of Jewish adults in Greater Portland self-identify as Zionists. Fifty-two percent do not identify as Zionists, and the remaining 22% either are not sure how they identify or prefer not to say.

That is a striking topline finding. Now, it can and should be complicated quite a bit, and I'll talk through that in a moment. But just on its own -- yeah, that's a potentially startling finding.

Before I go further, though, we should take stock of the limits. Obviously, Portland Jews are not necessarily a microcosm of American Jews. That said, the Portland Jewish population is approximately 56,000 individuals, against a metro population of approximately 2.51 million. That translates to the Portland area being a little over 2% Jewish, which is in line with the national average and what I'd expect to see from a mid-sized urban area that isn't especially known as a Jewish center. In short, we're not New York, Los Angeles, or D.C. -- but we're not Boise either. There's a real, sizeable Jewish community here. And generally perusing the data, our overall responses don't seem massively far off from national Jewish averages -- maybe a bit more liberal, but not massively so; maybe a bit more Israel-skeptical, but not massively so. For example, 46% of Portland Jewish adults report feeling "somewhat" or "very" attached to Israel, which is less than the national average (58%), but not by a massive margin. 77% of Portland Jews describe themselves as liberal or very liberal, against 10% who identify as conservative -- again, definitely more liberal than the Jewish population writ large, but not by a giant margin.

In other words, if you want to make a mental adjustment for Portland being Portland, you can -- but it's not enough to explain a nearly thirty point advantage for "not-Zionists" over "Zionists".*

So what do we make of the data?

To a large extent, the findings here resonate with the essay I wrote a few weeks ago for Third Narrative questioning the continued utility of the term "Zionism". It means so many things, to so many people, that it's hard to nail down what exactly people mean when they say they are, or are not Zionist. Indeed, if we look at the questions which track those typically used to infer someone is a "Zionist", the Portland picture looks very different. For example, 87% of respondents agree that "I consider it important for Israel to exist as a refuge for the Jewish people, now and in the future." 65% agree that "I consider it important for Israel to be a Jewish state." Hell, even a 57% majority agreed that "caring about Israel is an essential part of being Jewish"! Many people would say -- I might say! -- that those are the views that mark one out as a Zionist. Yet it seems there is a sizeable chunk of Jews who think it's important for Israel to exist as a refuge for the Jews and to remain a Jewish state, but who do not identify as Zionist. Indeed, it seems probable that most of those Jews who do not identify as "Zionist" still are agreeing with at least some of these archetypical "Zionist" sentiments.

Presumably, then, those Jews (unlike me) do not take "Zionism" to mean someone who believes in Israel as a Jewish democratic** state. Perhaps they instead see "Zionism" as meaning support for right-wing anti-Palestinian policies,*** or perhaps they think it means a personal loyalty to the state of Israel as their primary political affiliation. Or perhaps it's something else entirely. I won't get into the descriptivist vs. prescriptivist debate about whether they are "wrong" in their understanding. I will say that the fact that a majority of participants say they do not identify as Zionist, rather than marking that they are "unsure", suggests that the respondents have a reasonably clear idea of what Zionism is in their own heads -- albeit a definition that might differ from that used by Jewish community professionals or academics. And surely, at the very least, if there is this much muddling about the contours of Zionism amongst Jews, we can forgive similar or greater confusion amongst non-Jews.

In short, this little glimpse of data is one that cries out for follow-up. On the one hand, the top line figures give sustenance to those who cry again and again that we ought not conflate "Zionism" and "Judaism", that the attempt to posit an identity between the two is a bogus political maneuver. I'm a bit surprised I didn't see some of the usual suspects blasting out a headline "Survey: Majority of Jews 'Explicitly' Reject Zionism", with a lot of crowing about how this proves how out-of-touch the various communal institutions are and demonstrates that the true Jewish rank-and-file want nothing to do with the oppressive Zionist entity.

On the other hand, the answers to the more specific questions strongly suggest that, for Jews, not identifying as "Zionist" is not generally reflective of the sorts of positions associated with movement anti-Zionism. If anything, their answers confirm that the term "Zionism" isn't being used in a uniform way, making it very dangerous to make assumptions just based off affinity (or not) with the word. All of this, to me, is further evidence that "Zionism" as a term may be doing more to confuse than to clarify, and might be better off dropping it. But at the very least, it suggests a desperate need for more research.

* Indeed, the partisan divide here, while present, isn't as meaningful as one might suspect. 25% of "very liberal" respondents identify as Zionist, while 36% of conservatives do (the bigger divide is on the other end -- most of the very liberals who don't identify as Zionist explicitly say they don't identify as Zionist, while most of the conservatives who do not identify as Zionist simply say they "don't know"). The only political cadre for whom identifying as a Zionist carries a plurality is the moderates, at 44%.

** 97% of respondents "consider it important for Israel to be a democratic state," a figure which unsurprisingly blows the doors off all the other questions asked. For all intents and purposes, we can assume the virtually all the respondents who think Israel should be a Jewish state also think it should be a democratic state.

*** Just 43% of respondents agreed that "Israel lives up to its values with respect to human rights", against 58% who disagree. Aside from "American Jews have the right to criticize Israel’s government", this was effectively the only statement where the "pro-Israel" side did not carry a majority.

The Wrong Skills at the Wrong Time

Kathleen Parker is getting pilloried on social media for this column on John Fetterman's relaxed Senate dress codes, and particularly for this passage:

As little as I have loved Republicans the past few years, coinciding with the rise of our own little autocrat, at least Donald Trump knows how to dress. I can’t imagine that even he would demean his office or his country by dressing down, as is now the “code” for senators.

"Democracy dies in darkness" indeed. 

I do have a twinge -- just a twinge -- of sympathy for Parker, however.  Sometime recently (I can't find it), I wrote a post about the misfortune when a given person's particular skills or virtues are not suited to the historical era they live through. At some times we might need the bold charge-ahead fearlessness of a martial warrior; at others, the crafty prudence of a backroom negotiator. It's unfortunate for the person who has all the virtues necessary for the former situation if it turns out they are living in an epoch where the latter is called upon, and vice versa. It's a cosmic unfairness, but not an actual one: history does not owe it to us to bend itself to our talents. But that doesn't mean we can't sympathize with the people caught on the wrong side of history's weave.

With respect to Parker, the heat she's taking -- and rightfully so -- is about the profound silliness and tone-deafness to focus on this now. The juxtaposition of a failure to maintain a certain sartorial standard against "our own little autocrat" underscores its own ridiculousness.

The thing is, perhaps there was a time when this sort of commentary would be appropriate and make sense. I don't agree with Parker on the merits anyway, but maybe if it were the 1990s there would be valid space for this sort of fashion-commentary to be a part of our political discourse. Or perhaps not. I was pretty contemptuous of the journalists salivating over taking a piece out of "earth-tone" Al Gore, and Jonathan Chait ten years ago delivered the fatal knockout punch to Sally Quinn's dewy reminiscence about the days of Georgetown Dinner Parties solving our all political crises. Maybe politics is always too serious for this sort of commentary to be anything but a juvenile distraction.

But if things aren't always too serious, well, they're too serious now. And that means that, sadly for Parker, the skills she brings to the table are just not suited for the moment we're living in. It's unfortunate for her, and again, I do feel for her a little bit. But history is not going to bend to accommodate her on this.

ACS Oversights and the Unconstrained Court

In the Atlantic, Caroline Frederickson, until recently head of the American Constitution Society, proffers a "mea culpa" for the ACS generally not during her tenure focusing on economic issues. Over at PrawfsBlawg, Paul Horwitz ventures several guesses as to what caused this longstanding oversight in the ACS' prioritization.

Without challenging any of Horwitz's explanations, all of which are plausible, I'll offer one more: the ACS, like most liberal legal institutions of its era, focused on issue areas where the judiciary would intervene to stop bad actions by other branches of government. On gay marriage, for example, the liberal focus was on judges striking down legislative prohibitions on same-sex marriage. On policing the goal was for judges to hold accountable instances of officer brutality and abuse. On gerrymandering the idea was for judges to invalidate imbalanced or unfair maps. In all of these cases, courts are in an antagonistic posture to other facets of the government and intervene to in some thwart or ameliorate some policy or practice implemented by another branch.

From this vantage, "economic issues" would not have been seen as a natural fit for an organization like ACS. From a template of judicial intervention against other branches, liberals still labor under the ghost of Lochner which holds that judicial overrides of democratic decision-making in the economic realm, in particular, is the sine qua non of illegitimate judicial activism.

Of course, in many cases the liberal desire out of judges in these economic realms (like competition policy and anti-trust) is for judges to stay out of the way and let the democratic or administrative branches do their thing. But here a different bias or blindspot of groups like the ACS emerges: the assumption that liberals don't need to urge the courts towards judicial restraint. Even as the conservative takeover of the judiciary marched along, liberals tended to react to it with dismay that courts might not intervene in areas where liberals believed they should. They wouldn't strike down gay marriage bans, they wouldn't curb abuses of post-9/11 surveillance, they wouldn't combat partisan gerrymandering. Some of these concerns proved prescient, others didn't pan out. But the framing was still in terms of seeking judicial intervention. Restraint was taken for granted.

It took a long time for liberals to fully grok the threat of judicial conservatism not manifesting as too much restraint, but of a complete lack of restraint -- a counter-activism. There were plenty of warning signs that liberals should be worried. But old habits die hard. For example, surely one of the most important liberal legal victories of the past two decades was the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare. Yet Frederickson did not say, and I think most legal liberals still would not say, that one of ACS' priorities either is or should have been "health care". In terms of judicial intervention, health care is seen as an inappropriate, Lochner-esque subject. And in terms of judicial restraint, well, liberals took judicial restraint for granted.

Now, finally, this ingrained presumption is cracking. We are in an era where the conservative judiciary's primary sin is not at all taking restraint too far, but its indulgence in wild interventionist non-constraint. In this epoch, where Chevron and the entire administrative state are under siege, where First Amendment Lochner-ism is roaring back to life, it becomes absolutely essential for liberals to reassert boundaries on judicial arrogance. And so now there is a lot of room for a group like ACS to make economic policy a priority. Today, efforts to shore up the vitality of administrative bodies seeking to police the economic realm isn't a redundancy, but a dire necessity.

When I first started teaching constitutional law, I spent a lot of time trying to pour some cold water on my liberal students' Warren Court idealism and have them consider the risks of judicial activism and the virtues of democratic deference. This was not so much because I was especially inclined towards judicial restraint or minimalism, but rather because the entire concept that courts shouldn't be vanguards of social change was effectively alien to the average student such that the only way I could give them anything new was by trying to at least partially counterbalance the narrative. In 2023, it has become less necessary for me to explain the perils of unconstrained judicial intervention and the dangers of an activist court; now, to some extent, the counterintuitive pitch I have to make sometimes is to explain why and how courts can still be useful forces for good in the world.* But the point is that the conventional wisdom amongst liberals is finally stopped viewing restraint and democratic deference as something they are entitled to on demand. In a world of rampant conservative judicial activism, there is a lot more space for legal liberals to pay attention to the economic realm. 

* Though I will say that I'm surprised, in a world where Brett Kavanaugh is the median SCOTUS vote, just how resilient my students' faith in judicial interventionism remains.

Shana Tova, Jewish Traitors!

As part of his holiday greetings, Donald Trump wishes a happy new year to, and I quote, the "liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel".

Again, that is a direct quote:

Former U.S. president Donald Trump launched his latest broadside against liberal Jews — while wishing them a happy Rosh Hashanah.

“Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives!” read the text of the image Trump posted Sunday night, near the end of the holiday marking the Jewish new year. “Let’s hope you learned from your mistakes and make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

This man is an antisemitic menace. 

Image above taken from this Times of Israel article, captioned "‘No way’ six-point star in Trump tweet was sheriff’s badge, white supremacist says."

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXVIII: Thunderstorms in Tunisia

 

Today's entry will not be the first in the "Jews control the weather" subseries. It is only the latest. Tunisia's president, Kais Saied, has blamed the damage caused by a recent storm on a Zionist conspiracy. The proof? Well, "Daniel" is such a Jew-y name:

Tunisia's president on Tuesday blamed the destruction wreaked by the deadly storm which devastated North Africa in early September on Zionist infiltration and "attack on the mind and thought” as evidenced, he claimed, by the fact that it was named after the “Hebrew prophet” Daniel.

The president, in a sort of a "greatest hits" compilation, also has played an adaptation of the "migrant caravans"/"great replacement" charge,

Saied also made statements reminiscent of the antisemitic conspiracy “great replacement theory.” Speaking to his National Security Council on February 21, Saied claimed that “there is a criminal arrangement that has been prepared since the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia … There are parties that received huge sums of money after 2011 in order to settle irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia.”

The goal of the project, he said, after changing the demographic structure of Tunisia, was to continue on, infiltrating Europe and making it Black.

How nice to see that particular trope crossing international borders. (Cut to Mort Klein sweating furiously as he tries to decide whether Saied is an antisemite or his new best friend).