Conveying Another Message to the Jews of South Africa

The Western Cape branch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is threatening a widescale boycott of the Jewish community -- and urges them to leave South Africa outright:

If the Jewish Board of Deputies wants to advance a Zionist agenda, they should leave South Africa and go advance their agenda elsewhere. To let these funders of a war against a defenceless people act with impunity in South Africa, is against South Africa’s commitment to the people of Palestine. The Jewish Board of Deputies must be advised in no uncertain terms that if they are not part of the solution then they are part of the problem.

The Jewish Board of Deputies are given until the 07 August 2014 to stop their Zionist propaganda in Cape Town, failing which we will boycott and call strikes at all of their member – and supporting companies and organisations. The Jewish Board of Deputies should know that just because Premier Zille supports them, it does not mean that they can act with impunity against the will of the majority of South Africans.

This is reminiscent of another COSATU official, Bongani Masuku, who stated he wished

to convey a message to the Jews in SA that our 1.9-million workers who are affiliated to COSATU are fully behind the people of Palestine… Any business owned by Israel supporters will be a target of workers in South Africa.

He later rumbled that "none of those who tolerate Israeli apartheid and racism should ever imagine it [South Africa] to be their home." In terms of what it meant to cease support for Zionism, Mr. Masuku was clear that it would not be enough to be "silently consenting or grumbling under tables." For this, Masuku was found to have engaged in hate speech.

Incidentally, Western Cape is also the province where an ANC official posted on Facebook that Hitler "was right". The ANC and COSATU are two of the three members of the "Tripartite Alliance" that has been the dominant political player in South Africa since emerging from apartheid in 1994.

Corporate Governance

Much of the liberal dismay over Hobby Lobby (and before that the campaign finance cases) has centered around the question of "corporate personhood" -- whether a company, like an individual, has the various rights protected by the Constitution. I've always thought this was the wrong question. I think everyone agrees that corporations should not have the right to vote, on the one hand. And on the other hand, I think everyone does agree they have the right to the freedom of the press -- shutting down the New York Times and justifying it because "it's a corporation" wouldn't fly with anyone.

So really the question isn't "do corporations have 'individual' rights", it's "what rights do corporations have." But even that, I think, doesn't get at the dismay so many felt over Hobby Lobby. I don't think the problem is necessarily even that Hobby Lobby asserted a freedom of religion claim. There are corporate-religion claims that I can imagine many people finding plausible and worth endorsing -- a kosher butcher suing over state restrictions on meat slaughtering. Another would be the efforts of Jewish-owned businesses to be exempt from Sunday closing laws (efforts that were almost entirely unsuccessful, at least in the courts).

The problem is that Hobby Lobby's decision feels less like "respecting an individual's choice of conscience" and more like "government imposing its religious beliefs onto me." And here's the important point: from the vantage point of its employees, Hobby Lobby bears a much closer resemblance to government than to a fellow citizen.

As a private citizen I might be able to request a religious exemption to, say, wear a beard at work or have Saturdays instead of Sundays off. This has at best an incidental effect on people-not-me. By contrast, if I assert that an entire highway needs to be moved to accommodate my religious sensibility, affecting thousands of other people, I'm going to encounter far more skepticism. We tolerate religious accommodations where they are primarily private matters that have an at most incidental impact on other members of the polity (which I support -- why not?). But Hobby Lobby's decision is hardly private; the primary effect of its decision is felt by its workers. In its ability to seriously and materially impact the lives of thousands of other people, Hobby Lobby is approximating a government far more than a person.

The broader point is that for most people, most of the time, the entity that "governs" their daily lives and conduct is not Congress, its their employer. Your boss largely decides how much you're paid, what benefits you are entitled to, when you can come and go, even what you must wear. There are differences, of course. A business relationship is contractual; I can leave for a new job. But then again, in the formal sense I can move to a new state or country. And in this economy, it is hardly a given that (practically speaking) people can willy-nilly move about jobs or countries. Ultimately, the ability to exit is somewhat more robust in the corporate context. But there are other areas where government has the advantage. I have many routes to influence my government, including voting, campaigning, writing letters, and protesting -- in fact, I have a right to submit grievances. There is typically no functional analogue in the corporate context, and many of the above options are a quick route to being canned for insubordination. Advantage: government.

In any event, the point is not to say whether government or corporations on net do or can deprive us of more liberty. Functionally speaking, most of us most of the time are subjected to corporate, not congressional, governance. That the company plays this role in our lives means people are -- justifiably -- going to mentally slot it in as a ruler rather than a peer when it starts making decisions that impact us. Fundamentally, it's a rejection of the libertarian conceit that economic relations are the free interaction of coequals. Rather, we're talking about what powers "government" -- defined functionally rather than formally -- has over individuals. And when the government tries to say "we're going to obstruct your access to contraception because we find it religiously immoral", people are going to have the same reaction as if an old-school government made the same decision.

The Pros and Cons of Being Pro

Or "anti" for that matter. Paul Waldman has an incisive post critiquing the concept of being "pro-" or "anti-" Israel. That's a slight over-simplification -- Waldman argues that "pro-Israel" should be limited to the narrow question of whether "Israel ought to exist." This is no longer a debate in mainstream western circles (so Waldman asserts, anyway), and beyond that the terminology distracts us from specific policy questions like, e.g., should Israel withdraw to 1967 borders, should Israel engage in military operations against Hamas, should Israel maintain its blockade of Gaza, and so on and so forth. One can take a variety of a positions on these questions while still believing that "Israel ought to exist", so what good does the label do us?

I think there is a lot to Waldman's argument. It tracks Phoebe Maltz Bovy's narrow definition of Zionism, that the creation of Israel was a good idea and it shoudl stick around. Of course, I think Waldman might understate the contemporary salience of the "Israel should not exist position." In the west this depends on what one considers "mainstream", but of course the world does not consist of only the west. Both regionally and internationally, the debate over Israel still very much encompasses the question of whether it should be there at all. And because that debate does, in fact, remain very live, it is understandable that even on policy questions where people on both sides genuinely believe that Israel ought to exist; coming to the right conclusion (or at least not getting it catastrophically wrong) has real impacts on whether Israel will in fact be around as a Jewish democratic state in 20, 50, or 100 years.

But none of that diminishes the important point, which is to not think of Israel in terms of bare-bones "solidarity" politics. Caring about something means having opinions about it. If you care about Israel, as many people do, you should have opinions about it, and it is highly unlikely that those opinions will perfectly track those of any particular governing coalition.

Trains and Their Alternatives

By far, my favorite species of libertarian writing is the article which attacks a government spending project by articulating all the other spending projects -- also opposed by libertarians -- that could instead receive the money. This Reason article making fun of a new light rail project in downtown Detroit is a great example of the genre.

I don't know enough about the particulars of Detroit to know if the project makes sense or not. I do note that reviving urban cores via densification around light rail hubs has a very strong record of success and plays into the increasingly car-less preferences of the millennial generation. Given that this is pretty much the trend in urban revitalization, you'd think the article might mention it somewhere, but alas. Indeed, the article seems peculiarly attached to the thesis that "downtown" is a doomed concept which fell apart in 1967 and will never rise again -- a theory that seems to my ears to be, what, a decade out of date? At least? The trend in the United States has been towards restoring the central nature of "downtown" areas, as young professionals like being able to walk (or take a quick hop on public transportation) to their jobs, their favorite restaurants, or their after-work hangouts. So the idea that Detroit would benefit from following this path is hardly some sort of absurdist boondoggle.

The real joy though, comes in all the caveats that are snuck in throughout the article, much as a parent might hide vegetables under the mashed potatoes. "Detroit's light rail line could be written off as a typical government pork fest, if only a large share of the construction funds weren't coming from private sources." Uh-oh -- sometimes private benefactors make choices with their money that don't perfectly align with Reason's read on Rational Choice Theory? Say it ain't so! What about convenience? Well, obviously, the best way to think about that is their absurd hypothetical where a local business magnate uses his god-given right as a Free Market Maker issues some sort of decree to "mandate that his employees utilize the new light rail line in their daily commutes after it opens in 2016." The idea behind these light rail projects typically is that people move close to the train stations and don't drive anywhere, but that really basic concept is again nowhere to be seen.

And what about the "26 percent of Detroit households that don’t own cars"? Here, Reason suggests that further investment in the city's bus lines would be a better use of the money. And maybe so -- there are a lot of reasons to favor rapid-bus transit over train lines, greater flexibility being among the most prominent! But of course, if that was on the table it would be another government spending atrocity Reason would oppose on principled libertarian grounds. And even if Reason was remotely likely to offer its full-throated support to massive government subsidies to local bus lines -- which I don't think we'll see in any form except as a hypothetical counterplan to actual proposed projects -- the fact is one of these projects is on the table (thanks to private money, no less), and one isn't.

So yes, color me skeptical that their problem with the rail project stems either from Reason's deep understanding of contemporary urban redevelopment policy or their heartfelt commitment to bus service.

Religious Mantras

The former editor-in-chief of Newton, Iowa (pop. 15,254) was fired after he wrote comments describing his fight against the "Gaystapo". Now he's claiming religious discrimination and filing suit. Here's his statement:

On April 28, 2014, I penned a theologically based article stating my sincerely held religious beliefs about efforts by some to criticize and remold my faith through what I believe is false teaching. In my article, I quoted at length from a variety of sources, most prominently, from the Holy Bible.

That blog post described my sincerely held religious beliefs regarding Holy Scripture and the definition of marriage. My comments on my blog were personal in nature and reflective of my sincerely held religious beliefs. Furthermore, I felt compelled by my sincerely held religious beliefs to share my Biblical view with the few folks who read my blog.

I'm probably reading too much into this, but the way he's repeating "sincerely held religious beliefs" after Hobby Lobby reminds me a lot of shooters after Trayvon Martin who kept saying "I'm standing my ground" right before blowing some "threatening" kid away. It's interesting to watch legal doctrine percolate down into the public consciousness and how they are understood (and misunderstood) by average people. I am quite skeptical that a religious discrimination claim will go anywhere based on these facts; "sincerely-held" beliefs notwithstanding.

Bonus fun fact: The man is being represented by the Liberty Institute -- formerly known as the "Free Market Foundation". Because when I think "conservative ideals about the free market", I think "judicial intervention to stop private businesses from voluntarily deciding who they employ as their Editors".

I Will Never Yield in My Commitment to Compromise My Principles

A new poll asks what sort of people Americans wish had a greater presence in Congress. There's some interesting findings, but the one that immediately struck me was this:

Gallup finds that by a margin of 63% to 30%, Americans believe the country would be better (as opposed to worse) governed if in political office there were more “people who think it is more important to compromise to get things done than to hold firm to their principles.” Okay. But by a margin of 56% to 38%, they believe life would be better if there were in political office more “people who think it is more important to hold firm to their principles than to compromise to get things done.” These would appear to be diametrically opposed and exclusive propositions, unless “Americans” are saying they want more highly conflicted people in office, or just want more of everything.

I really, really, really wish I could get into the head of the people who prefer both the pro- and anti-compromise positions.

One-Liner

A Palestinian defendant -- facing deportation after being accused of covering up her convictions and subsequent prison sentences for two Jerusalem bombings -- wants her Jewish judge off the case because of his alleged ties to the "pro-Israel" community (the motion is here). While I don't doubt that the Judge is "pro-Israel" in some broad sense of the word, I say "alleged" because some of the supposed "ties" are really just connections to the Jewish community that, if we're charitable, are simply being misunderstood. The label "Builder of Israel", for example, given by the Judge's synagogue for his charitable donations to the community, is a reference to the Book of Ruth that does not necessarily reflect anything about Israel qua Israel.

In any event, we've seen arguments like this before -- a Catholic Judge asked to recuse himself due to his ties to Ave Maria College; the effort to get Judge Walker to recuse himself in the gay marriage cases. Were it up to me, I'd dispose of the motion in a single sentence:

The motion to recuse is denied. See Pennsylvania v. Local Union 542, Int'l Union of Operating Eng'rs, 388 F.Supp. 155 (E.D. Pa. 1974).

But I'm cheeky.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XI: Shooting Down the Malaysian Airlines Jet

Here's a shocker -- of course the attack on the Malaysian Airlines jet that was shot down over Ukraine would be blamed on the Jews [http://theunhivedmind.com/UHM/new-venice-zionists-shoot-down-malaysian-airlines-mh17-to-ignite-confrontation-with-brics-head-russia/]:

NEW VENICE ZIONISTS SHOOT DOWN MALAYSIAN AIRLINES MH17 TO IGNITE CONFRONTATION WITH BRICS HEAD RUSSIA
[...]
Just this week the Ukrainian Army were given numerous BUK-M1 weaponry which were deployed right next to the Donetsk region and in Kharkiv by Wednesday all just one day prior to this event and all ready to take down any enemy combatants. So one outcome of this event may well be Israel soon getting commercial airline orders for all civilian aircraft to be fitted out with Multi-Spectral Infrared Countermeasure and Directional InfraRed CounterMeasure systems from Elbit. This today will also aid Israel by allowing their zionist media networks to cover-up the Gaza war crimes as interest all lies back on President Putin and Russia rather than on the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip happening on the very same day.
[...]
Expect a lot more plane events like this using Boeing aircraft but most aircraft run the same type of system today so they are all basically drones you should never use. So in truth the U.S could just fly this aircraft into the ground and claim on their media networks (MI6, MI5, CIA, Mossad) that the plane had been fired upon even if it had not and the herd would believe such lies thanks to Serco OOOI interventions. This MH17 flight was supposedly followed by two Ukrainian jets just prior to the downing of the aircraft. I could believe that these Zionists may even go to the length of painting up an aircraft as Ukrainian and firing on this airliner to wind up Pro-Russians but usually they will do this in the enemies colors but if they use Ukrainian colors then Putin might just step in and confront the Ukraine as he has threatened over the recent shelling from Ukraine into Russia killing an innocent Russian citizen.

And I think we have our mole -- "One Israeli Dies in Malaysia Airlines Shoot-Down Over Ukraine. Smoking gun! Let's learn all about this dastardly Mossad agent who no doubt orchestrated this heinous act:

Itamar Avnon, Convert to Christianity....

Whoops -- let me revise. Let's learn all about this dastardly Mossad agent who no doubt orchestrated this heinous act brave martyr murdered by the Elders of Zion for his heresy.

That's how you conspiracize, people. I know this is breaking news and all, but I shouldn't have to clean up afterwards like this.

Fireable Offenses

In case you were wondering whether the ANC official who said Hitler was right would be terminated or even disciplined by the party, the answer is no. No, he will not.

Indeed, in an interview with theSouth African Jewish Report, ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe refused to even distance himself or his organization from the apparently now controversial subject of whether global Jewry should be slaughtered en masse.

But remember -- the real injustice is when Jews have sufficient political influence that policymakers feel they must be attention to their concerns.

I Smell Another Hate Speech Case

Remember that time that a top COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) official announced he wished to "convey a message to the Jews" of South Africa -- specifically, that he and his union would make their lives "hell" if they supported Israel? It led to a hate speech conviction by the South African Human Rights Commission -- a ruling COSATU was not exactly chagrined by. But less we feel too bad, it did not stop the BDS advocates in the British University and College Union from inviting him to give a talk.

Oh, those were the days. It was almost like that time a major South African government official said "Jewish money" controlled America.

But I digress. Today, an official with African National Congress (South Africa's ruling party) decided to join the "Hitler was right" brigade on Facebook:

The post by Rene Smit, who works at ANC Western Cape, displayed an image of Hitler with the title "Yes man, you were right..." followed by the line: "I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to let you know why I was killing them." At the bottom of the image was the message, "Share this picture to tell the truth a whole world."

Something tells me that this could head right back to the SAHRC. And something tells me that, if and when he is found to have engaged in hate speech, the same "Palestinian solidarity activists" will come out of the woodwork to defend him.

"Ism" Claims and Rule 12(b)(6)

A twitter conversation I had today made me think, oddly enough, of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

Rule 12(b)(6) enables a plaintiff's case to be dismissed for "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted," prior to there being any discovery or fact-finding. It can be invoked when the plaintiff's claims, on their face, don't make out a legal violation. The most obvious example would be a lawsuit accusing the defendant of "being a jerk". "Being a jerk" is not against the law, so there's no point in allowing discovery or fact-finding to figure out what "really" happened (or even what the parties' respectively say happened) -- even if everything the plaintiff alleges to have occurred was believed by a jury, the plaintiff still could not win.

A more recent (and subtle) variation is when the plaintiff superficially claims a real legal violation, but it is implausible that the facts she alleges actually would prove the claim. For example, suppose a plaintiff claims two companies conspired to violate anti-trust laws, and her evidence was "I saw them eating lunch together once". Conspiracy to violate anti-trust laws is a real legal breach, and it's possible that it occurred here (maybe the topic of the lunch conversation was "how to best form a cartel"), but it is exceptionally implausible that those alleged facts would actually get any reasonable jury to find for the plaintiffs.

Of course, the plaintiff will cry, he can't demonstrate facts that prove the law was violated unless he has the opportunity for discovery to determine what the facts are. And so 12(b)(6) dismissals, at least outside first outlined scenario where on face no legal violation is plead, tread delicate ground. On the one hand, denying them means forcing defendants (and the judiciary) to go through time-consuming litigation on claims that may well be frivolous and in which the plaintiff can't win even if he finds what he putatively seeks. On the other hand, allowing them means blocking off potentially valid claims based on a judges -- as opposed to a jury's -- sense of what's "plausible", uninformed by any sort of comprehensive factual record.

What does all of this have to do with the above conversation? Well, Mr. Black's initial assertion was that "No matter how hard you try to smear, being anti-Israel is NOT being anti-semitic." And I answered back with my typical rejoinder, that whether a particular stance on Israel is or isn't anti-Semitic is context-dependent; it's not something one can declare one way or another in a vacuum. And Mr. Black agreed that "I'm sure anti-semites are also anti-Israel," but argued it's "still total bullshit to smear someone opposing Israel as anti-S[emitic without] proof."

This, to me, is somewhat of a strange reply given the position I had laid out. An "anti-Israel" position may or may not be anti-Semitic; to determine which requires a careful and sensitive inquiry into the totality of the surrounding circumstances. It's not something that we can usually state with definitiveness one way or another simply by looking at the face of things -- certainly not at the level of generality that "being anti-Israel" implies. Anti-Semitism requires inquiry -- it can neither be proven affirmatively true or categorically denied without a hard look into motives, consequences, and other like considerations.

Juxtapose that with Mr. Black's response: "still total bullshit to smear someone opposing Israel as anti-Semitic without proof." Arguably, this takes aim only at people who definitively declare (prior to engaging in any analysis) that their anti-Israel interlocutor is anti-Semitic. But if so, that's a substantial retreat from his initial statement: that, flatly, "being anti-Israel is NOT being anti-semitic." Mr. Black instead seems to be aggrieved by the initial allegation of anti-Semitism. He does not seem to think that the claim of anti-Semitism is something that requires thorough consideration of detailed facts. He thinks that the claim is implausible on its face. In essence, he wants to dismiss the charge without having to go through the discursive equivalent of discovery -- of digging through the facts and context to determine whether the claim has validity. While he concedes that there could be a case where an anti-Israel position was anti-Semitic, he thinks that in general the juxtaposition of anti-Semitism alongside an anti-Israel position is so implausible as to not require any further thought.

This is, in essence, a request for Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal. It stems from the belief that such charges are so unfair, so manifestly implausible on their face, that they should be dismissed without any further analysis. As I observed last year, there is a perceived entitlement to be free from the vicinity of an anti-Semitism discussion:

Well let's approach it from the opposite angle. Why would it be a bad thing? The answer, it seems to be, is that it is generally unfair to be accused of anti-Semitism (or forwarding an anti-Semitic position, or being insufficiently attentive of anti-Semitism). There is a perceived entitlement of people to not have to deal with it unless the case is exceptionally egregious. . . .

I honestly do not understand the foundation for this entitlement. Why is this something that people are owed? Why is there any right to be free from the vicinity of an anti-Semitism claim? At best, one could say that it stems from an obligation of presumed good faith -- we should not assume our interlocutors' positions stem from evil motives. There are three problems with this argument, though: (1) It's internally contradictory, since the objection to being called anti-Semitic inevitably takes the form of claiming the accuser made the charge in bad faith, (2) It isn't altogether clear why Jews should be forced to assume good faith of non-Jews with respect to matters of Jewish equality, given that historically such trust has not exactly been earned, and (3) It relies on a particular (and particularly narrow) conception of anti-Semitism wherein it only exists if it is the product of conscious and overt antipathy towards Jews. This definition of anti-Semitism is debatable at best, and in the context of the instant discussion seems to serve more as a way of shielding a wider-ranging discussion of the subject by transforming it from a systematic discussion of what Jews are owed as equal global citizens into an investigation of the personal character of the individual.

Consequently, I reject the notion that there is any special entitlement to not have anti-Semitism raised as an issue when Israel is discussed.

Of course, this isn't to say that there could never be a claim of anti-Semitism that was so implausible on its face we could wave it aside -- a charge based on the statement "I can't stand lox and bagels", for example, or (to use my preferred Israel-related example), "the traffic in Tel Aviv is awful". But the 12(b)(6) style averments seem to extend much beyond that -- basically innocent until proven Nazi. There's simply no reason to agree to such a broad shield against full and honest inquiry into how anti-Semitism may or may not intersect with particular positions vis-a-vis Israel.

Fitness Tests

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, commenting on the brutal kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, stated that "a culture that too often openly celebrates martyrdom and murder is not fit for statehood." This column came across my Facebook feed last night, and I immediately noted its resonance with the neo-colonialist position of Daniel Doron. The nickel version is simply this: self-determination is not a cookie that we give to reward the good boys and girls. One's right to self-determination is unconditional -- one has it regardless of whether as "a culture" (to inevitably overgeneralize) one is good or bad. We deal with bad states all the time. And bad states with bad policies and bad worldviews and bad human rights records should be dealt with. But the solution is not "deprive their constituent populations of their right to vote."

There is a name for putting a people under the occupation and political control of an external sovereign, of whom they are not citizens and have limited political, social, and legal rights, until such time as they are deemed enlightened enough to be worthy of self-governance. Its name is colonialism, and its track record is not good.

Hold that thought.

Early today it was discovered that a Palestinian teenager was abducted and murdered in Jerusalem. This grisly discover occurred contemporaneously with a vicious campaign amongst some segments of the Israeli population calling for violent revenge and mass expulsions of Israeli Arabs. These were not all fringe figures: the General Secretary of Bnei Akiva, the world's largest Religious Zionist youth movement, put up a post calling for Israel to slaughter 300 Arab youth and take their foreskins as prizes (apparently he did not realize that Muslims, like Jews, circumcise their children).

The point of this post is not to say that Israeli culture celebrates death or anything of that nature. Just as President Abbas condemned the kidnapping of the Israeli teenagers, Prime Minister Netanyahu was firm in his condemnation of the "revenge" killing. There are enough people who seem to take comfort that their adversaries truly are an indistinguishable mass of monsters; I do not join them.

The point is that we play dangerous games when we start talking making sweeping statements about "cultures" and whether they "deserve" basic human rights. Anyone who is active in Zionist circles is, or should be, familiar with the favored tactics of Israel's adversaries, which begin from the fact that Israel's inception was not an idealized deliberative process as John Rawls would have envisioned and draw the conclusion that therefore Jews clearly don't "deserve" a state of their own. It's a reprehensible game, the terms of which act to openly encourage racist and anti-Semitic generalizations. Ultimately, it reinforces the very elements -- and they are elements, which are neither trivial nor stand-ins for the whole -- that view murder, mayhem, and incitement as positive goods.

Those, like Bret Stephens, who are up in arms about the barbarity not of the kidnappers themselves but entire swaths of Palestinian society are notably quiet when it comes to the brutalism of the Price Tag movement or calls by Jewish mobs for revenge on Arabs writ large. And vice versa -- those who view the most vicious and irredentist portions of Israeli society as emblematic of the whole are typically the first to excuse violent terrorism and genocidal impulses by Palestinians as legitimate resistance.

We play dangerous games in a land that does not need more danger.

The Openness of the Presbyterian Church

The Presbyterian Church has released an open letter to its "American Jewish Interfaith Partners." It contains a lovely series of platitudes, but not much else. Seriously, please tell me if you see anything in there that is remotely substantive. I've read it three times and I've got nothing. "Nor does this [resolution] indicate any desire for the PC(USA) to walk away from our deeply held, multilateral Jewish-Christian relationships." I have no doubt that's true, but that does not tell us whether these "deeply held" relationships will yield any productive fruit. "The assembly's action came about through much prayer and discernment." I don't know what "discernment" means in this context, but suffice to say deep thoughts can still be wrong thoughts. I'd wager that much of the Church's history has been spent taking action regarding Jews that is the product of "much prayer and discernment"; the products of said action have an exceptionally ugly history.

For me, at least, what is missing here is any sense of introspection by the Church -- any sense that the products of continued interfaith engagement with the Jewish community may require the Church to act differently than it would like to if left to its own devices. The Church, to borrow from a Christian theologian, desires "cheap grace" -- it wants absolution from Jews without having to give up anything in return. But why should I give them such dispensation? As best I can tell, the offer on the table is that the Church wants to communicate with Jews, so long as the results of that communication do not require the Church to take any action it would not have otherwise done in the absence of the Jewish voice. That means nothing to me. It does address the root of the harm and it does not acknowledge the nature of the sin.

I've thought quite a bit about what it would take to bring the Church "back into Communion", if you will, assuming that they don't rescind the resolution (which they won't). The answer for me has actually been rather straightforward: Condemn "Zionism Unsettled" as an anti-Semitic document. Don't just "disavow" it as not an "official" Church document -- "Hop on Pop" is not an official Church document. "Zionism Unsettled" is representative of a particular Christian worldview vis-a-vis Jews that is deeply oppressive and problematic, and one that (though not always expressed so starkly) has a deep influence on how Christians understand the Jewish experience. The critical question is whether Christians acknowledge that the Jewish vantage point may require painful reassessments of some deeply held commitments. There is no reason that Christians should expect or are entitled to a reconciliation with Jews that is "self-bestowed":

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man’ will gladly go and self all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Christian reckoning with "Zionism Unsettled" requires that they acknowledge the reality of anti-Semitism in their own community and how that inevitably colors their instincts when they elect to speak on Jewish affairs. Recall that the divestment resolution passed by 7 votes. The resolution disavowing (which is to say, stating that the document "does not represent the views" of the PCUSA) "Zionism Unsettled" received eight negative votes in Committee. In a very real sense, it is the people who do believe in the validity of "Zionism Unsettled" and do believe it should reflect Church policy, that gave this resolution its margin of victory. Will they "pluck out the eye which causes [them] to stumble"? Plucking out eyes hurts, or so I imagine. It is not fun, to be sure. It is costly. Grace, in contexts such as the historical oppression of Jews by Christian, should be costly.

As noted in my last post, a (if not the) key question regarding the entire Presbyterian participation in this debate is why anyone -- Jewish or Christian -- should believe that the voice of institutional Christianity is a credible contributor on questions of normative values in general and Jewish experience in particular. Historically speaking, there is no reason to believe they are and will continue to be anything but terrible at this, in large part because the warp and woof of institutional Christianity thought and practice has been suffused with anti-Semitic ideology from top to bottom. Deconstructing (unsettling?) those foundations is a critical step in demonstrating that the Church recognizes there may be something internal to themselves that requires a change. In order for me, at least, to find talking to the PCUSA valuable, I need to know that they recognize these basic facts about themselves, their history, and their relationship to the Jewish people -- a legacy of prejudice and oppression that renders them deeply suspect (to say the least) as partners.

The Church wants cheap grace. It will not get it. If it wants to speak to Jews, it needs to first reckon with itself.

UPDATE: This op-ed by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor of the World Union for Progressive Judaism really puts an exclamation point on the above. I'm not exactly one to put a ton of stock in musty position papers sitting in a drawer, but I admit I assumed the PCUSA had one somewhere. That it, apparently alone amongst major Christian denominations, has never undertaken a formalized inquiry into their relationship with Judaism and how their own ideologies may be implicated by historical and theological Christian anti-Semitism is amazing. That really should have been Step 0 before undertaking a move like this.

Not The Historical Problem

Spotted amongst the arguments for Presbyterian divestment:

At the General Assembly itself, a shocked Presbyterian blogger reported that during prayers, Virginia Sheets, the vice moderator of the Middle East issues committee, “suggested that Jesus wasn’t afraid to tell the Jews when they were wrong.”

My first instinct, upon reading this, was to vomit.

But after the initial wave of nausea passed, I had two different thoughts. The first was to observe that, among the many characteristics one might use to describe institutional Christianity across history, "unwillingness to tell Jews how they ought behave" is not really on the chalkboard. One might even say it is the unifying feature of the Christian tradition -- starting with Jesus, perhaps, but continuing all the way down. Exhorting Christians to be less passive about criticizing Jews is like telling Mississippi to stop bending to the NAACP, or France to let the Germans win for once. And one might further add that this particular Christian fetish might be not just the single thing they're worst at, but (at least in terms of duration) the single most-worst thing ever. It is quite possible that no single entity has ever been as consistently bad at something over a longer period of time than Christians have been at making normative judgments about Jews -- a multi-millennia run of failure, often punctuated by violence, invariably associated with oppression, that characterized Christians never-ending self-assurance that they understand the Jewish situation better than Jews do. But be not afraid, Presbyterians! This time, it will be different I'm sure.

Thought number two goes to this idea of fear. Rev. Sheets' fellow Christians should not be "afraid" to tell them Jews what's what. One hears this refrain a lot -- how deeply frightening it is to stand up to the dreaded Jewish Lobby. Christians, of course, have rarely been particularly "afraid" to take Jews down a peg -- mostly because the scariest thing about criticizing Jews is the prospect that the Jews will say something that makes you feel temporarily bad about yourself (before reminding yourself that They're Just Playing the Anti-Semitism Card -- always a quick pick-me-up). Jews, on the other hand, have historically had to be genuinely fearful of telling Christians they're wrong, or refusing to heed Christian "criticisms" of Jewish behavior. To do so often quite literally was to render one's life forfeit. At best, it runs the risk of a massive backlash that threatens hard-won and precariously-preserved political and social rights. And so Jews have historically stepped quite lightly around Christian sensibilities; mouthing meek assertions about how maybe tones could be tempered and aren't we all brothers here and I know you mean well, but ....

It is a unique feature of the past 60 or so years that this situation has changed a little bit. Not that Christians now have to fear Jews, though there appears to be no power on earth that could convince the most powerful social organization the earth has ever seen that it is not being victimized by The Other. But it is the case that sometimes, in some contexts, Jews can criticize Christians without the automatic specter of a massacre looming. Or -- and this I suspect is worse than Jewish criticism -- Jews can sometimes ignore Christian criticism without immediate and obvious consequence. For people who view their power over Jews as an entitlement, this I think is what really rankles: there is an entity, that is Jewish, that Christians criticize, that sometimes does not listen.

Power, as Carol Gilligan once wrote, means you can "opt not to listen. And you can do so with impunity." Like most things, this is a double-edged sword. Of course being in position where can "opt not to listen" means one can safely ignore voices at the margins, and thus comfortably maintain a privileged state. But being able to not listen is also a predicate to autonomy. For historically marginalized groups, such as Jews, having the option not to listen is a break from thousands of years of imperial domination where our fates, our rights, and our lives were governed by the whims of others whose words we were bound to respect. Part of liberationist politics is respecting the reality that the formerly dominated group will make its own decisions and, sometimes, stand by those decisions even when their former rulers passionately disagree.

It's a lesson Virginia Sheets, and the Presbyterian Church, might want to learn.

Oh Give Me a Home

Colorado Presbyterian Reverand Larry Grimm has a plea for Israeli Jews.

America is the Promised Land. We all know this. Come to the land of opportunity. Quit feeling guilt about what you are doing in Palestine, Jewish friends. Stop it. Come home to America!

To borrow from another commentator, maybe they should "come home" to America as soon as Grimm returns to Scotland.

But in all seriousness: is there any metric -- any metric at all -- under which a Jew living in Colorado is not further implicated in colonialism than a Jew living in Tel Aviv? Because I can tell you that Jews (and Presbyterians, for that matter) do not have a multi-millennium connection to Fort Collins. But leave it to a Christian minister to use a speck to urge Jews to jam a log through their own eye sockets.

Year Ten

Today is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of this blog! Pretty incredible, when you think about it.

I know it's been slow going over the past few years, but I'm hopeful that certain soon-to-be-announced developments may help rectify that. Stay tuned ... and whether you've been here only a few weeks, or been reading since day one, thank you.

A Voter's Saga

Did you know the Virginia congressional primaries were today? I didn't -- at least, not until this morning. But I think it's important to vote. America is a democracy, and voting is how we preserve it. It's hardly some big imposition on my life to do my civic duty, is it?

This is my story:

6:20 PM: Step off the metro at courthouse and walk to the Arlington County building, where I cast my ballot for the gubernatorial race this past fall. Realizing that I have no idea what races are being contested, let alone who is running, I check my phone for information.

6:30 PM: I've discovered I'm in Virginia's 8th district, where Rep. Jim Moran (D) is retiring. Never liked him anyway. A whole slew of Democrats are running to replace him, but the Washington Post indicates that there is a pretty clear frontrunner in Don Beyer who seems decent enough. Also discover that the polls close at 7 PM. This does not seem to be a big deal -- I'm already here, after all.

6:35 PM Ask for directions to the polling place. Am told that the government building only handles in-person absentee balloting, but if I go to third floor they can direct me to my polling place.

6:40 PM: Am informed my polling place is at the local elementary school. It's a short walk from the government building, and I know exactly where it is. Plenty of time.

6:48 PM: Reach the polling place. Do I have a Virginia ID? No, I do not -- I actually tried to get a Virginia driver's license, but was stymied due to my mistaken belief that my social security card would establish my identity. Since I never drive, I never tried again. Utility bill? Voter registration card? Alas, I do not carry any with me while at work. Remember kids -- if voter ID requirements can stop an upper-class white man from voting, it can happen to anyone.

6:51 PM: Walking back to my apartment. Remind myself that I've always opposed voter ID requirements, so fulminating over my current predicament is not opportunistic. The circa 553% humidity is not helping my mood, and I'm soaking my dress shirt.

6:54 PM: Reach my apartment. Decide that if I can find my voter registration card on the first pass, I can make it back in time to vote.

6:56 PM: Miraculously, I find my voter registration card right away (miraculous both because I'm incredibly disorganized, and because my guess of "buried under a pile of papers in my second desk drawer" was right on target). Now the race is on. Literally -- I'll have to run back to the elementary school if I want to make it.

6:59 PM: After running the half-mile to the elementary school, I burst through the doors waving my registration card. Poll workers recognize me and give me a round of applause.

7:00 PM: Cast my vote for Beyer. Get sticker. Walk home drenched but satisfied.

10:49 PM: Write this post. Check results, Beyer won the race by 27 points. Totally worth it.

So Far The Count Remains One

The Forward has this article up about an anti-Semitic mural put up by a Cleveland gas station:

The mural appears on the side wall of Biggie's Foodmart and gas station in Cleveland. Written above the graphic image of are the words: "Talmudic Priests in Church: Sex With Minors Permited [sic]."

It apparently depicts the metzitzah b’peh ritual, the controversial practice in which a mohel sucks the blood from an infant’s penis after circumcision.

The local Jewish community is of course quite upset. But the article continues to say that the "gas station doesn't just take aim at Jews.

On the adjacent wall is another, similarly drawn image with the title “The Faces Of.... Jesus.” Having alluded to Jesus' importance in Christianity and Islam, the first line of the graphic reads: "To Jews he's a bastard, who's in hell." Curiously, underneath the image’s third depiction of Jesus are the words “Palestinian Born,” in smaller letters.

Perhaps they're explaining poorly (or perhaps I'm bad at reading), but that to me sounds like he's still taking aim at Jews.

The Roberts Court Votes on Brown

Norm Ornstein, writing in The Atlantic, argues that had it been the Roberts Court sitting in 1954

[t]he decision would have been 5-4 the other way, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race"—leaving separate but equal as the standard.

Ilys Somin cries foul. And I think Somin has the better of the argument, but it's a more interesting question than he lets on.

Somin observes, quite correctly, that the "colorblind constitution" advocated by Chief Justice Roberts and others makes easy work of the de jure racial classification at issue in Brown. But I don't think the point of the hypothetical is to transport the doctrines and particular legal and policy beliefs of the Roberts Court back to 1954. After all, these doctrines and policies derive from particular historical roots, of which Brown of course looms large. But in 1954, the "colorblind constitution" was hardly so entrenched -- its jurisprudential provenance was a solo dissent in an 1896 decision that the Court had, to that point, been extremely careful not to disturb. And the "separate but equal" doctrine that prevailed instead was, on face, perfectly egalitarian. It has "equal" right in the name!

Somin contends, though, that irrespective of this superficial equality "a Supreme Court justice who believes that the government should “stop discriminating on the basis of race” would have no trouble striking down school segregation laws, regardless of whether the separate schools were 'equal' or not. Jim Crow segregation laws were nothing if not blatantly obvious examples of discrimination on the basis of race."

But was it so "blatantly obvious" back then? Of course, in many cases there were material differences between the separate accommodations, and that is indeed an easy case. The Court had begun tackling these facial violations of "separate but equal" in cases like Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents, and I have no doubt that Roberts and company would have followed those precedents. But making the jump to the colorblind constitution requires more -- it requires a theory for why formal equality isn't enough. It is notable that this debate played on Plessy, and the terms of the debate were the social meaning of racial separation. The majority adamantly ignored these social conventions:

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.

But does anyone seriously have confidence in the Roberts Court to develop a new rule on race based on the social effects of a formally equal legal rule? This, to put it mildly, is not their standard operating procedure.

Nonetheless. maybe these cultural conventions really were so "blatantly obvious" that the Roberts Court would craft a brightline rule addressing them. This is buttressed, ironically, by the fact that in my estimation the Roberts Court's identification with a "colorblind constitution" doesn't derive from any cognizable legal foundation (originalism, textualism, etc.), but really represents a deeply-felt policy preference. And while that normally is not praiseworthy, it does mean that the conservative Justices would be more inclined to craft this rule even where it did not have a clear link to prior precedent or a prevailing legal theory.

The really interesting question, though, is how the Roberts Court would have decided Brown II (and the subsequent "remedial" jurisprudence line). Ornstein did not raise this issue, so I don't fault Somin for not responding to it. But recall the context: after Brown the District of South Carolina on remand took away from the cases the following principle:

The Constitution, in other words, does not require integration. It merely forbids discrimination. It does not forbid such segregation as occurs as the result of voluntary action. It merely forbids the use of governmental power to enforce segregation.

To the extent Brown II allowed or even required the use of affirmative race-conscious steps to integrate schools, would the Roberts Court have followed along? Or would it have endorsed the position of the District of South Carolina that the start and end of "desegregation" was erasing government statutes mandating racial separation?

To be sure, the Roberts Court today recognizes (barely) that the use of race to remedy de jure racial discrimination is constitutional. But their acceptance of this principle is much more tenuous than that of the colorblind constitution, and derives almost entirely for the legal and emotional precedential force of the Court's civil rights era desegregation jurisprudence. Starting from scratch, would they have announced a similar rule? I think not.

In short, I think Chief Justice Roberts would have signed onto Brown. But I think that's as far as he would have gone. When it comes to remedies, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." The judgment of the District of South Carolina on remand would be affirmed.

Easy Does It

A.J. Delgado in the National Review (2014):

Now, the term “rape” or “sexual assault” is thrown around almost effortlessly, accusations easily made and lives easily ruined.

And Sir Matthew Hale, Pleas of the Crown (1680):

[Rape] is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.

In conclusion, that Delgado's thesis is identical to how rape was viewed in the late 17th century in no way implies that her assessment likely derives from a similar view of women and female autonomy.

See also my 2011 post On Bad Critiques of Rape Prevelance Studies (Part II). The idea that "crying rape" (that's literally the title of Delgado's article) is some sort of pervasive phenomenon, as if going through a rape investigation is the epitome of a fun girl's night out, continues to astonish me.