Klein's Conceit

My friend Julie (c/p Alas) says that this Naomi Klein article finally brought her around to the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) campaign against Israel. She says Klein "responded very effectively to almost every concern that I had."

Hmmm. Maybe we just have different concerns, but to my ears Klein's responses were almost laughably weak. Yet I'm not laughing, because the construction of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict she is trying to impress upon the rest of us is, I believe, lethal towards efforts which will actually bring an end to the conflict and instead promise more antagonism, more anger, more hostility, and more extremism.

I devoted a rather long comment explaining why the linchpin of Klein's argument for Why Israel is basically that "Israel is small and weak, and doesn't require any substantial sacrifices out of the boycotters," so I won't rehash that. I'll also briefly point out that Klein is pretty clearly resting her justification for treating Israel in this fashion on utilitarian, not retributive grounds -- that is, because she thinks this sort of punitive action will lead to positive results, not because Israel necessarily "deserves" it more than the countries she is ignoring. I wrote about the differences between utilitarian and retributive models here; suffice to say, there are advantages and pitfalls to both, and it is way beyond the scope of this post to argue in favor of one or the other. But if one has particularly strong retributivist (or utilitarian) inclinations, it is something to keep in mind.

From that light, the biggest implication to draw from Klein's position is that if it could be shown that, say, Operation Cast Lead was a critical step towards peace, Klein would be obliged to support that to, regardless of whether Palestinians "deserved" it. Utilitarians aren't about achieving cosmic justice. It is all about the bottom line. To be slightly less confrontational, it means that Klein's argument has to be defended purely on its instrumental value -- concerns about the relative goodness or badness of Israelis or Palestinians is off the table. One can't say, in other words, that you have to support the boycott because it is the only way to effectively punish Israel for its misdeeds, and we have an obligation to pursue justice. And Klein would have to respond to alternative, constructive endeavors not by saying that they aren't sufficiently attuned to Palestinian suffering, but solely on the question of whether they will work better or worse than her program.

But anyway. I want to focus on Klein's other two points, which are, to be as kind as possible, inane. But I want to take them in reverse order, because I think the first one is the most important.

Klein's latter point is in response to the claim that "Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less." She responds "with a personal story," which is another way of saying "my response is pathetic but maybe if I flail my arms you won't notice." She talks about how when she published her book in Israel, she selected an anti-occupation press and directed that all the profits go to them. First, I'm not sure how donating your proceeds to an Israeli company rather than keeping them (i.e., putting more money into the Israeli economy) adheres either to the letter or spirit of a boycott. Second, it is at best ambivalently cross-applicable to other economic interactions -- she uses this "personal story" because she knows there is no way to replicate it across a broader spectrum. Third, given that the her BDS campaign apparently also targets Israeli academics and artists, it is difficult to take seriously the claim that it boycotts the economy but not the people. And in general, I think that if someone said "You are so vile that I refuse to buy any of your products. Dialogue about it?", the most likely response is a hearty "Fuck off!" Here, incidentally, I want to raise the question about whether a BDS campaign that is targeted as broadly as Klein seems to want might violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (forbidding "discrimination on the ground of ... national origin"). I know, for example, that the British proponents of an academic boycott of Israel were informed that such an act could violate parallel provisions of British law.

In any event, Klein is essentially dismissive about the dialogic project, saying that "We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us." Well, as much as a I love a good rant, perhaps some of us don't consider "rant" and "dialogue" to be the same thing. By using the language of "rant", Klein indicates quite strongly that she doesn't think dialogue will go anywhere -- it will inevitably result in people simply screaming at each other. Buy into that model if you want, but be explicit about it. Elsewhere, she implies that the dialogic problems aren't real because a boycott will spark conversation amongst the boycotters. I didn't realize they weren't on speaking terms with each other to begin with; but regardless, sparking conversation between folks who already agree isn't really the point of using discourse to solve problems.

This goes to Klein's other point, which tries to convince us that niceties like moral suasion and diplomatic engagement are futile. This comes in response to the claim that BDS would alienate Israelis. She concedes it, but says that "The world has tried what used to be called 'constructive engagement.' It has failed utterly." I read this, and my first thought was "who was doing constructive engagement in the last eight years"? The Bush administration's policy towards Israel was self-consciously hands off -- it publicly cast itself against the Clinton program of actively intervening in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to try and push a solution. Trade alone is not "constructive engagement". Constructive engagement is showing through word and deed that we are your friend, and then using that position to try and impress the need to make necessary changes. Step two is pretty important in that maneuver.

After that, I hearkened back to a comments conversation I had with Kevin Andre Elliot (it was how we "met", actually) on civility. Kevin argued that civility had proven itself not to work in terms of overcoming American racism. I retorted that "saying something 'hasn't worked' with regards to civil rights is redundant. If it had worked, we wouldn't be having the conversation." But that was equally true about "incivility" -- it's not like Louis Farrakhan shocked White America out of its apathy. One could indict basically anything we've "tried" over the past 100 years we've lived in a racial hierarchy -- from "civility" to "incivility" to "having a civil rights movement" to America itself, on the grounds that they have "failed utterly". It's a meaningless point -- superficially persuasive when isolated from context, but utterly without critical bite when examined with the slightest scrutiny.

In all truthfulness, any longstanding conflict will have had a cocktail of tactics and strategies tried, many of them contradictory to each other. Picking any one of them out of a hat and saying "this one has failed" is a pretty arbitrary endeavor. Israel has faced a BDS movement from its inception -- from the Arab states that to this day have no diplomatic relations with it, no trade with it, and often make it a criminal offense to even interact with it. Klein takes that history and says "we haven't boycotted hard enough!" But maybe that's the policy that's been an utter failure. A significant chunk of Israel's policies are justified based on the threat it feels from its hostile neighbors, combined with the belief that they will never recognize Israel or treat it as an equal no matter what actions it takes. What would be the result if that was immediately and unconditionally taken off the table? I don't know -- it might work, and it might not. Unlike Klein (and definitely unlike Ampersand, who devotes nearly all of his comments to the proposition that it is utterly inconceivable that anything bad could possibly happen to Israel), given the complex array of factors, interest, tactics, strategies, and events in play here, I don't pretend omniscience about the true causal links or clairvoyance about how any given shift will play out. But BDS is at least as plausible a target for "failed policies" as engagement is.

I think it is worth noting that Klein's history, which purportedly shows that BDS is the only way forward, is more than contrived, it is almost entirely at odds with the actual facts. None of the major Israeli steps towards peaceful coexistence -- Camp David, the peace accords with Jordan, Madrid, Oslo, Camp David II -- came in the wake of anything as antagonistic and hostile as a Western BDS movement. They all flowed from what Klein dismisses as "constructive engagement." Klein starts her timeline in 2006, which is convenient in that it ignores Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and Lebanon in 2000 (and covers only Bush years -- an administration which as noted above specifically declined to engage the conflict). There is simply no reason to believe Israel is non-responsive to anything but a movement like BDS, and Klein is disingenuous when she implies otherwise.

In the Alas comments, Amp justifies supporting BDS on the grounds that it is "the only prominent non-violent international civilian movement to oppose Israeli violence against Palestinians." Radicals love to create these false binaries, where any choice that's less confrontational doesn't count, and anyone who doesn't buy into the favored program is a collaborationist (at the moment, he tells me my position is "[in]compatible with a serious commitment to the idea that the lives and human rights of Palestinians have value."). But here, it is simply a lie, and I honestly don't know where Amp gets off trying to pretend that it isn't.

This really gets at the heart of the matter, which is Klein trying to take constructive engagement off the table. Because at the end of the day, we are faced with a choice: We can choose to support constructive and diplomatic efforts at ending the conflict, focused on building bridges, fostering connectedness and reminding Israelis and Palestinians that at the end of the day, "us and them" have to work together. Or we can choose hostile and antagonistic ones, which focus on re-entrenching divisions and promoting an attitude of "us versus them" and the glorious struggle. The simplest way I can describe the split here is that Klein wants to intensify the conflict (hoping that this extra push can end it once and for all), whereas I want to relieve the pressure -- trying to walk both sides off the precipice. I simply don't believe that the problem with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that the respective partisans have been too timid. Fundamentally, I think the last thing this conflict needs is the opening of yet another front.

There are constructive endeavors which don't reinscribe the language and mentality of conflict. OneVoice is a prominent example. TULIP -- Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine -- is another (it amazes me how much labor-oriented progressives seem hell-bent on torching links between Israeli and Palestinian unions). I doubt that a BDS campaign is compatible with support for OneVoice; I know that it is akin to throwing a Molotov cocktail at TULIP. You can align yourself with PACBI or TULIP, but not both. Don't pretend your hands are tied -- a don't pretend you can straddle the line. It's a choice.

There's More To It

I did want to link to this Jerusalem Post broadside against Naomi Klein, specifically, her recent Ha'aretz interview. Now, I've already made my thoughts abundently clear on the matter, but I focused nearly exclusively on her apparent belief that protesting anti-Semitism is more "disturbing" than anti-Semitism itself. But there was a lot more to find despicable than that, and Noam Schimmel digs into it.

The claim that "[some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card," which is utterly risible, titles the article. But, related to my post, Schimmel also notes how Klein sloppily groups Jews together as a collective -- at Durban, "the Jewish students". Now, I stand by my claim that if Klein was seriously that distressed by the sight of protesters in clown outfits, she either has a severe undiagnosed case of coulrophobia or she needs a spine transplant, fast. But Schimmel accurately points out that, even if we do think she was justified in getting the vapors over protesters who had the temerity not dress in suits and ties, certainly not all the Jewish students wore the clown outfits, rendering her indiscriminate targeting of "the Jewish students" particularly hostile and bigoted (admittedly, she was just following the lead of the conference organizers). [further investigation seems to show that all the Jewish organizations kicked out were done so for cause -- i.e., for protesting. Klein's bigotry thus did not follow the UN, but was sui generis. I apologize to the UN for grouping them in with her.]

Naomi Klein is a servant of bigotry. I don't know what is in her own heart; whether she truly believes that she is treating the Jewish community in a fair and egalitarian manner, or whether she has convinced herself the ends justify the means. It doesn't matter. Either way, she is acting under the auspices of hate, and I will call her out on it until the day comes when she a) recants or b) is rendered totally irrelevant in her fanaticism.

Shocking Doctrine

Naomi Klein, backbone of the leaders of the movement to boycott Israel, was in Israel launching her new book (with her largely incoherent message of boycotting the state, not the people). Ha'aretz got to interview her, and got her unique perspective on civil rights, which seems to boil down to "it's the Jews fault if they're in the privileged position, and it's the Jews fault when they're in the marginal position." Why do I say that? Because of her answers to questions on Durban II:

Last April Klein attended on assignment for a magazine the Durban 2 conference in Geneva, which Israel and a number of Western countries boycotted because of the invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She is still upset by her experiences there.

I was sure, at this stage, she was going to remark on the horrifying anti-Semitism that was present at the event, which included an Iranian delegate calling Elie Wiesel a "Zio-Nazi". It's such a gimme, right?

"The most disturbing feeling," she explains, "was the Jewish students' lack of respect for the representatives from Africa and Asia who came to speak about issues like compensation for slavery and the rise of racism around the world. In their midst, Jewish students from France ran around in clown costumes and plastic noses to say 'Durban is a joke.' This was pure sabotage, which contributes to the tensions between Jews and blacks."

"Durban wasn't just about Israel: The Durban Declaration acknowledged for the first time that the trans-Atlantic trade is a crime against humanity and that opened the way to compensation. The boycott of the conference created a vacuum that was filled, on the one hand, by Jewish students who wanted to sabotage the conference, and on the other, by Ahmadinejad both of them were truly awful."

Ah, such delightful moral equivalency. Ahmadinejad spewed racist garbage, which is bad. Jews didn't feel like lying back and taking it -- equally bad. Indeed, worse -- it was "the most disturbing" thing! The most disturbing thing about Durban II, for Klein, was peaceful protests against anti-Semitism. Think about that for a moment. Think about what that says about her and her worldview. Cleansing power of anti-Zionism, anyone?

Do you think it was necessary to allow Ahmadinejad to speak out so prominently at a conference against racism when he is calling for Israel's destruction and denying the Holocaust?

"I think that silencing the Palestinians was a big part of the reason he got so much attention. He is the only one who acknowledged what happened this year more Palestinians were killed in 2008 than in 1948. The boycott seems to me to have been an irresponsible decision the Jewish community unifies in an attempt to shut down a discussion of racism when there is a shocking rise in racism on the right in places like Austria, Italy, Switzerland, in the midst of an economic crisis, in conditions close to those in which fascism spread in all of Europe."

Yes, we all know that the UN's biggest problem is that it silences the Palestinians. Seriously, this is victim-blaming at its most blatant. Klein admits that Ahmadinejad's speech was racist, but still faults Jewish groups for opposing the conference that gave him an open mic. Because we refuse to be abused, we're committing sabotage at an anti-racism conference. Here's a thought -- maybe if putative anti-racists like Klein would step up and refuse to tolerate anti-Semitism, then Jewish students wouldn't need to dress up like clowns to draw attention to it.

Alice Walker once wrote that "No person is your friend who demands your silence." In the face of growing anti-Semitism -- a rise in racism that has occurred on both the left and right, in Europe and worldwide -- Klein's demand of Jews is that they shut up and let the real people talk. No dice. Klein's antics reveal her true colors -- as an ally of hate, of the fury and bigotry that threatens to consume us all.

Maybe Klein, playing the age-old role of the "good Jew" will be spared, and maybe she won't. But she has no right to demand my silence at a time like this, and certainly no right to appropriate the good name of progressivism to her fanaticism. And the people who call themselves her allies ought to know with whom they stand. Her apologias for hate should render her beyond the pale of good company.

UPDATE: Rebecca Lesses, writing from Israel this summer, overheard an interview with Klein on Israeli radio and offers her own thoughts.

My Letter to Andrew

I just sent this email to Andrew Sullivan, regarding his defense of Professor Mearsheimer's recent division of the American Jewish community into its good and bad Jews

Andrew,

Regarding your defense of Professor Mearsheimer's division of the public American Jewish community into the righteous and the profane: You focus your attention on the folks Mearsheimer lumps into his list of "new Afrikaners" -- a group that ranges from Mort Klein (a despicable right-wing thug if there ever was one) to David Harris (whose organization, the AJC, vociferously denounced the Israeli government's announcement of new settlements during Vice President Biden's visit). But more interesting to me are the folks Mearsheimer lists as "righteous Jews", and how their own outlooks track what Mearsehimer claims to be his and their position on the optimal solution to the conflict.

The way I understand Mearsheimer's argument is that the first-best solution to the conflict is a two-state solution based on 1967 borders. However, he claims, this may be becoming impossible, forcing us to move to a decidedly second-best (to put it mildly) outcome -- the so-called "one state solution", whereby Israel is dissolved into a single (perhaps bi-national) state with Palestine. My understanding of your own position is that you agree that this would be a bad thing, but perhaps it is rapidly becoming the inevitable thing as the best solution grows ever-more distant (and agree with Mearsheimer as far as that goes).

The reason I find Mearsheimer's list of "righteous Jews" odd, then, is that far fewer of them would agree with the above paragraph than the names on the "new Afrikaners" list. While I admit I don't know the positions of all the folks on both lists, the only person I could say with confidence would disagree that the two-state based on '67 borders solution is the best outcome is Mort Klein. By contrast, several of the "righteous Jews" are either indifferent or outspokenly opposed to that position. To be sure, there are folks on Mearsheimer's list of righteous Jews that do agree with you and I that a two-state solution is the preferable one; that if we do enter a world where a single state was the only viable outcome, that would constitute a tragedy, not a triumph. And some of these folks are people I'm proud to associate myself with, like J Street (interestingly, the only group amongst the "righteous" that Mearsheimer equivocates on -- who, I wonder, does he think amongst the J Streeters is flying a false flag?). But opponents of this vision are well represented. Norman Finkelstein is indifferent but thinks a two-state approach is more practically feasible in the near-term. Tony Karon prefers a unitary state but also thinks two states are acceptable if that is easier to attain. Philip Weiss prefers one state. Tony Judt calls the idea of a separate Jewish state an "anachronism", he too thinks one state is the first-best outcome. Naomi Klein is indifferent between the two.

Mearsheimer also groups the entire list -- "righteous" and "Afrikaner" -- under the broader label of "American Jews who care deeply about Israel." This is the fulcrum of your defense of his delineation -- that Mearsheimer's objection to the "New Afrikaners" is that, within the broader class of people who care about Israel, their political prescriptions are deeply misplaced; the "righteous Jews" are the ones who truly care and know best. But again, to characterize them as folks who "care deeply about Israel" is simply not an accurate description of several of his "righteous Jews". I mean that in an entirely value-neutral way -- not that their politics are inconsistent with a deep concern for Israel (though I think in many cases they are), but simply that they wouldn't characterize themselves as folks who "care deeply about Israel". Finkelstein and Weiss, I imagine, simply think that Israel is responsible for a significant amount of evil in the world, and are working to try and rectify it -- there is no sentimentality behind it, anymore than efforts to end North Korean brutality are motivated by deep caring about North Korea. Naomi Klein got her start in this whole field by proclaiming herself to be a "Jew against Israel".

Put simply, by their own admission a goodly portion of Mearsheimer's "righteous Jews" are not folks who "deeply care" about Israel and are committed to achieving a two-state solution for as long as it is a plausible goal. Their commitments and desires lie elsewhere. They are not our friends. They are not our allies.

But allies do exist. J Street, and its new European cousin J Call are two. TULIP -- Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine -- is another. Engage and OneVoice are two more. They are the real deal. And now, more than ever, they need our help, and cannot afford that the folks who are true friends of Israel, who recognize the current path is unsustainable, dissipate their energy by affiliating with charlatans.

Sincerely,

David Schraub
The University of Chicago Law School '11
Articles Editor, the University of Chicago Law Review
The Debate Link: http://dsadevil.blogspot.com

Boycott Outcomes

So we've been talking about Naomi Klein's push to boycott Israel. And specifically, the possible results. But of course, there are several possible results, and nobody really knows which one of them will come true (though some seem far more likely than others). So I thought I'd run through several of the scenarios I see and their likely upshots. I'll reiterate that, as per Klein own argument, I'm only measuring from a consequentialist standpoint: "Will it work?" Other factors, like "it makes me feel like I'm making a difference" don't really play into this analysis.

Scenario 1: Klein's proposal doesn't get much traction it. It stays limited to the usual relatively-fringe suspects, and doesn't rise to a level that really captures the attention of the Israeli government or populace. But obviously, it still gets hotly debated in the blogosphere. For the most part, this is a pretty neutral outcome, but not entirely: It's a waste of energies that better could be directed elsewhere -- from the boycott promoters, but also from the bodies dedicated to opposing the boycott. Engage, I'm sure, would be far happier if it could devote its time to proactive pro-peace organizing, rather than playing defense against Klein and Co.. This is probably the most likely outcome.

Scenario 2: Klein's campaign gains enough traction to get on the Israeli radar and make them take notice, but not enough to actual coerce them into making any particular changes. Israelis respond with anger and mistrust -- foregrounding their fears that the entire world is against them and they can only rely on themselves. They disengage from negotiations and discount world opinion to an even greater degree than before. This, obviously, further enflames the boycotters, who feel vindicated in believing that Israel is unapproachable and that coercion is the only viable response. Seeing that BDS didn't have the desired effects, they boycotters may align with more radical elements still, but even if they don't, there is still a dramatic net increase in polarization and mistrust. The cycle of conflict is entrenched even deeper. I think this is the second most likely outcome.

Scenario 3: Klein's campaign gains serious momentum and forces the Israeli government to make tough choices. Once it becomes clear that the BDS campaign isn't a fad, the brief surge in right-wing sentiment collapses in favor of a consensus to negotiate. The negotiations rapidly lead to a two-state solution based around 1967 borders, with maybe a few adjustments, and a consensus over Jerusalem, territorial congruity, security agreements, and mutual recognition. Refugees are paid compensation and resettled in the new Palestine. Israel's neighbors make good on their commitments and quickly sign peace treaties. Everyone congratulates each other and goes home, problem solved. This is the ideal that Klein is presumably hoping for.

Scenario 4: Klein's campaign gains serious momentum and forces the Israeli government to make tough choices. A weakened Israeli government tries to negotiate, but the Hamas-led Palestinian government seizes the opportunity to up their demands to include resettlement of refugees in Israel proper, recognition of Israel as a fundamental part of the Muslim world, and the holding of Ahmadinejad's "regional referendum" to decide the ultimate resolution of the conflict. Israel refuses, believing that the result of the referendum is likely "no Israel", and negotiations stall. The BDS movement fractures as its supporters squabble over whether Hamas pushed too far, and the upshot is essentially the same as Scenario 2, if not worse.

Scenario 5: Starts like S3 -- Israel begins negotiations with a Fatah-led Palestinian government and comes out with an agreement largely along the lines outlined in S3. However, more radical elements in the Palestinian government refuse to accept it, making demands more akin to S4 (I don't mean to discount the possibility that such an agreement would be vitriolically opposed by certain Israeli elements too, but there isn't a history of civil war over governmental decisions in Israel, and there is in Palestine). Armed skirmishes continue, and Israel argues that either Palestinians weren't negotiating in good faith, or can't deliver on their promises. Depending on how the timeline plays out, this might still result in the creation of a Palestinian state -- just one in an extremely tense relationship with Israel -- and that may well be characterized as a net benefit compared to a non-independent Palestine which is in an extremely tense relationship with Israel. Or it might come before the state is established, and we're back to square one. The BDS campaign has its own debate as to who is at fault for the collapse of the deal, and whether or not the "radical" demands are worthy of their own support -- it is quite possible that they continue to support the boycott and throw their support behind more radical alternatives.

Scenario 6 (or 5b): Also starts like S3. Like in S5, a large chunk of Palestinian society continues to assert more radical demands, and a significant sector of the BDS movement agrees. The BDS mandate expands beyond ending the occupation to more radical critiques of Israeli society. They demand an abandonment of Israel's "racist" character as a Jewish state, full "right of return" for Palestinian refugees, and a unitary "one state" solution. Though a portion of the campaign peels off, refusing to endorse the extension, folks like Klein discover that they are minorities in their own campaign, that they can't put the monster back in its cage, and in fact the new "radical" demands are accepted by the majority of their own movement. Already weakened by past concessions, and faced with a newly invigorated anti-Israel movement with broad popular support attained through the popularity of the original BDS sensing ultimate victory, Israel accedes to a unitary solution and its Jewish character is "democratically" dissolved. I should write that while I consider this a "bad" outcome on face, there are some particular risks to this outcome -- e.g., massive retaliatory political violence, an Islamist government repatriates the (European?) Jews back to Europe, or even just the establishment of Islamic theocratic law (of varying degrees of orthodoxy) upon the Jewish now-minority.

There are obviously more permutations then those I've written, and you can blend many of the elements of the various scenarios I've separated. I'll just make two general observations. First, I'll note that I see only two positive outcomes: S3 and arguably S5. S3 is clearly what I gather BDS supporters are banking on. It is what I have described as a "nothing but net" shot -- everybody has to play their roles perfectly for it to work out. The BDS movement has to attain critical mass -- but without relying in any significant way upon those who wouldn't be satisfied with merely an end to the Occupation. The Palestinian government must likewise be willing and able to refrain from seizing the initiative and trying to extract additional concessions on issues like refugee right of return. The movement can't spark the development of greater "strong" anti-Israel sentiment (i.e., "Israel shouldn't exist at all"). This is possible -- but it is hardly guaranteed, and involves nailing a bunch of die rolls in a row.

S5 might be a net positive over the status quo, depending on how it specifically plays out, but it comes with major credibility costs of its own. Even if I could be guaranteed that S5 was the way BDS would play out, my intuition is that alternative paths towards peace, such as those pursued by J Street or Engage, are likely to provide superior benefits, and thus I would be disinclined to render my support.

Second, I'll reiterate that I think that Scenarios 1 and 2 are considerably more likely than any of the alternatives, and neither holds an appetizing result (1 being merely unproductive, 2 being actively destructive). This a reasonable assumption, if for no other reason that it is hard to build massive global social movements, and all else being equal it is more likely than not that the movement will fail to get off the ground or fail to achieve critical mass. So proponents of Klein's BDS have to either (a) demonstrate conclusively that they'll pass the threshold so that the debate is between Scenarios 3-6, or (b) explain why a BDS movement that does not reach that critical mass won't result in the outcomes I predict. A "failed" attempt at a BDS comes with costs too, possibly severe costs, so our debate on whether or not to support it can't fiat success. So while we can debate the relative likelihoods of our four "success" scenarios, at some level it is akin to debating which lottery game comes with the best odds. As it happens, I think even the "success" scenarios are more likely to result in negative outcomes (if I was to rank them in order of likelihood, I'd say 5,4,3,6 -- and I think it is very likely that a sizable chunk of a large-scale BDS movement would throw itself behind Palestinian demands significantly more radical than "end the occupation"), but that ranks pretty low on what I hope the takeaway of this post is.

Mearsheimer Lists His Good Jews

The Jerusalem Fund recently invited University of Chicago Professor and Israel Lobby author John Mearsheimer to lecture on the subject of "Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners". In other words, good Jews versus bad Jews -- a subject I've already given my thoughts on (Hussein Ibish has a more broad-scale dissection of the talk). So dispense with what's been said. More evocative to me is who Mearsheimer groups into each camp:

American Jews who care deeply about Israel can be divided into three broad categories. The first two are what I call “righteous Jews” and the “new Afrikaners,” which are clearly definable groups that think about Israel and where it is headed in fundamentally different ways. The third and largest group is comprised of those Jews who care a lot about Israel, but do not have clear-cut views on how to think about Greater Israel and apartheid. Let us call this group the “great ambivalent middle.”

Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values…..To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

On the other side we have the new Afrikaners, who will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state…..I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby’s major organizations as new Afrikaners. That list would include Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, just to name some of the more prominent ones. I would also include businessmen like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman as well as media personalities like Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Martin Peretz of the New Republic. It would be easy to add more names to this list.

These lists are ... well, they're bizarre. I think grouping Abe Foxman with Mort Klein is a little difficult to swing; and grouping David Harris with either is also hard to swallow as representing anything real.

On the side of the "righteous Jews", things get even hairier. Norman Finkelstein and Phillip Weiss "care deeply about Israel"? In what respect? Have they ever said anything to that effect? My understanding is that both Finkelstein and Weiss are quite vocal in wishing for the end of Israel as a Jewish state. It seems baffling also to group committed boycott supporters like Klein, with avid and outspoken opponents like the folks at J Street (who have correctly noted the BDS movement's fundamental incompatibility with the pursuit of peace and justice). Indeed, this conflation seems to be part of the broader attempt to sabotage J Street by associating it with names, ideas, and ideologies it has quite clearly repudiated and finds abhorrent.

Beyond picking at who is grouped with who, there are some deeper problems. As might be apparent, these broad lumpings really don't get at the heterogeneity of views in the Jewish community; they serve less to demarcate good and bad actors as they serve as proxies for Mearsheimer's political priors. I should be clear that there are bad people who are Jews -- Mort Klein being an obvious example -- but I don't see it as emblematic of some broader Jewish pathology the way that Mearsheimer does. The move here is to flatten distinctions amongst the Jewish community, then label huge swaths of it as either infected or moral cowards. Sweeping generalizations are not becoming.

Finally, of course, I recoil at the notion that Norman Finkelstein be considered a righteous anything, let alone a righteous Jew who is somehow a deep friend of Israel. For the most part, Mearsheimer's good Jews are a rather horrible bunch, whose commitment not just to Israel, but to basic norms of democratic equality and peaceful co-existence is questionable to say the least. It is notably that the one group he is ambivalent about (J Street) is also the one most firmly committed to an actual, concrete peace policy aimed at securing justice for both Jews and Palestinians. The list, in other words, reveals more about what Mearsheimer's moral ideals are than they do about whose policies we should seek to emulate.

Rush Limbaugh Reads Naomi Klein!

Rush Limbaugh raises the specter of boycotting GM because it is now owned by the government (and thus, the Obama administration). Not being a fan of boycotts in general, I'm not a fan of this one specifically, though I am curious why a boycott of American government-owned corporations would be less justified than a boycott of Israel (obviously Limbaugh's reasons aren't particularly strong, but would a similar boycott with more left-friendly motives pass muster?).

But let's put that aside, and instead parse this bit:

Limbaugh reassures any GM workers who might be listening that the boycotters aren't angry at them. "They don't want to patronize Obama. They don't want to do anything to make Obama's policies work!" he explains. "This is an untold story, by the way. Of course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life."

Klein, of course, likewise claimed that her boycott was targeted at the policies, not the people, which presumably is supposed to shield her from their ire and insure it is instead directed at the proper source. Now, raise your hand if you doubt GM workers are really going to care one flying fig that Limbaugh says he doesn't harbor any ill-will towards them, when it is their jobs that will be lost and their families who will suffer, and blame the Obama administration instead. Okay great. Now, anybody who thinks Israeli families will think differently, lower your hands. Everybody's hands should still be up.

Via Balloon Juice

One Camp, Two Camps, Three Camps, Four Camps

Two events, nearly back to back, have recently gotten me to thinking about the fissures, real and imagined, within the Jewish community regarding Israel. The first is CUNY's nixing of an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner, based on his views regarding Israel (that decision may be reversed). The instigating trustee accused the Palestinians of being "not human", and his accusations regarding Kushner were of dubious accuracy (and defended by the bizarre logic that Norman Finkelstein affirmed them -- apparently Finkelstein is the epitome of a credible source now?). Needless to say, Kushner and I do not see eye-to-eye on Israel -- not even close (it's also needless to say that Kushner was being honored for accomplishments utterly unrelated to his views on Israel) -- but the actions of CUNY were cowardly, misrepresentative, and not in keeping with the spirit of academic freedom.

The second is a benefit concert headlined by Gilad Atzmon to support another Gaza flotilla. Atzmon is someone who has described himself as a "self-hating Jew", among various other outrageously racist comments (the list is literally too long to recount and manages to run past virtually every anti-Semitic theme of the past century, from blaming Jews for the Holocaust to accusing them of schemes of world domination to asserting that Judaism is an inherently "supremacist" ideology). It isn't clear whether the flotilla organizers have officially sanctioned the concert (being hosted by a Methodist Church, incidentally); needless to say, accepting a check from Gilad Atzmon should be seen as accepting one from David Duke (who has praised Atzmon in the past).

What connects these two events in my mind is not that they represent the battlelines of the "debate" in the Jewish community over Israel, but rather the fact that they don't. Most Jews, regardless of political predilection, recognize Atzmon for the despicable thug that he is. And with the CUNY controversy, it has been noteworthy to watch Jews of all different political orientations lambaste the decision. It ain't just, or even primarily, folks known as particularly left-wing -- Ed Koch was way out in front on this, and Jeffrey Goldberg was quick to offer his condemnation as well.

Until very recently, there have been three major "camps" of American Jewish thought with respect to Israel. There is a hard left that never really liked Israel much to begin with, finds Jewish particularism embarrassing (if not immoral), is perpetually playing footsie with various anti-Semitic ideologies and social movements to prove that they're "Good Jews", and would rather see Israel go away or absorbed into its neighbors. There is a hard right that is suffused in anti-Arab racism, never saw the Palestinians as truly human, doesn't really care about liberal or democratic values, and is content to live out a biblical/nationalist (take your pick) fantasy whereby a Jewish state permanently occupies all the land "from the river to the sea", with its Palestinian inhabitants either driven out or permanently disenfranchised (it also seems to be in a constant state of furious disbelief that Jews don't vote Republican). Both of these two perspectives have been relatively marginal compared to the third camp -- the one in which most American Jews reside, and most American Jewish institutions reside. These Jews think Israel was and is a good idea, think it is perfectly appropriate that Jews have a national homeland to call their own, and also think that a two-state solution with an Israel and a Palestine living side-by-side is a critical part of that dream. Like Jews themselves, this camp is left-of-center.

The much discussed crack-up within the Jewish community should, by all rights, be described as being internal to this third camp. All the major participants -- from Peter Beinart and J Street, to the AJC and AIPAC, do agree on the broad sweeps I've laid out as crucial to it. All support Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. All support a two-state solution. AIPAC does not prefer an endless occupation, and J Street does not desire an Israel demolished at the feet of Hezbollah. What they do have is a difference in emphasis. And arguably, what we are seeing is a shift from from three camps into four, with the original "third camp" dividing with respect to how aggressively the US and the Jewish community should force Israel's hand with respect to things like settlement policy.

But the first two camps -- the hard right and the hard left -- have smelled an opportunity. They both have a vested interest in portraying the playing field as consisting, not of four camps, but of two. Either you're a member of ZOA, or you support BDS. Obviously, amongst the broad middle band of Jews, there are those who lean left and those who lean right, and each side calculates that -- by playing on the revulsion many feel towards National Union or JVP, they can win new converts. After all, if the only way to support Israel is to be a far-right nationalist, then people who find that doctrine appalling may see no other choice but to join hands with the far left. And vice versa -- if the whole space of (sometimes) critics of Israel is owned wholesale by IJAN, then people who find those activists to be supremely deluded may think themselves homeless except for their hard right peers.

This is a problem. Ameinu and the AJC might have their differences, but there is no reason -- none -- why an Ameinu supporter should think of themselves as closer to the JVP than to the AJC, and no reason why an AJCer should think of themselves as closer to the ZOA than to Ameinu. The difference within the (former) third camp are ones of strategy and of focus, the differences between us and the first and second are ones of ideology and principle.

I am a progressive who supports Israel. I will not cede the "supporting Israel" to Mort Klein, and I will not cede the "progressive" to Naomi Klein. From my vantage point, this is not a particularly difficult ground to hold, but for the loathsome groups on the far-right and far-left who are doing their best to convince everyone it doesn't exist.

It does exist. It exists in TULIP and Engage, Ameinu, and OneVoice. It exists in people like Hussein Ibish, and Peter Beinart, and Jon Chait, and Jeffrey Goldberg, and Harry's Place. These people and groups don't agree on everything, and I don't agree with them on everything. They've been wrong (and I'm sure I've been wrong). But they are part of a center that is still holding, and still has to hold. Because, as painful as the recent divides have been -- and they have been -- a world in which there is conflict amongst persons committed to a just, peaceful solution to the conflict placing a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel, next to a secure, independent, nation of Palestinians, is infinitely preferable to one in which our only choices are between warring camps of racists who differ only in who they wish to see dominating.

I Can't Fathom Why They Were Shut Out in the First Place

The Forward has a piece up on Jewish Voice for Peace (an organization which, I have to admit, I thought was much older than its 2001 birthdate) and its effort gain "a seat at the [Jewish] communal table." The controversy is that the JVP either endorses or plays footsy with a number of radical positions -- from a one-state solution to the global BDS -- that the broader Jewish community considers well beyond the pale.

And in their latest gambit that's sure to demonstrate their mainstream-i-ness, JVP's executive director, Rebecca Vilkomerson, is endorsing the new Move Over AIPAC group, which is heading to DC during AIPAC's conference in order to reveal "the extraordinary influence AIPAC has on U.S. policy and how to strengthen an alternative that respects the rights of all people in the region."

And what better way to kick that project off than by honoring Helen Thomas, who infamously declared that the Jewish people in the region should "get the hell out". Now that's respecting rights (as the Judeosphere put it in response to Mondoweiss' astounding defense of Thomas -- that expelling Jews from the Middle East would be a good thing because it might reinvigorate Polish Jewish culture: "I'm deeply touched by this gesture of philanthropic ethnic cleansing.").

Other "luminaries" endorsing the event include Alice Walker and Naomi Klein. Yeah, I don't expect to see JVP at any communal seder tables in the near future.

Actually, you know who the JVP and its buddies are really emulating? Herman Cain. As Adam Serwer notes, Cain's statements are self-evidently not calculated to heighten the appeal of GOP policies to the African-American community. If anything, they're gratuitously alienating to Blacks. What Cain does do is nakedly appeal to the prejudices of White conservatives, who eat it up extra-hungrily because its coming from a Black man. Ditto the JVP -- if their goal is to "gain a seat" at the Jewish communal table, well, yer' doin' it wrong. But if their goal is to gain a seat at a table of folks who never really were big fans of Jewish communal expression and autonomy to begin with, but don't like to think of themselves as anti-Semitic -- well, they're doing it absolutely right. And for the same reason that I don't expect to see Cain keynoting the NAACP convention, I don't see the JVP's exile being lifted anytime soon.

UPDATE: Thomas has withdrawn from the event, saying she didn't want to "distract" from the group's message.

Holiday Round-Up

We're closing in on the Fourth Third of July -- a celebrated holiday in Chicago. Roundups for everyone!

***

Russian sportsmen are hunting the most dangerous game of all: Pirates!

An Indian court has decriminalized sodomy. Supporters lauded the reversal of a law enacted by British colonial authorities. Opponents blasted the decision as importing Western norms. See also Ruth Robson.

The military has historically been one of the strongest supporters of affirmative action. But one professor at the Naval Academy is alleging it is lowering the standards at Annapolis.

Alan Dershowitz, one of the many Jews falsely alleged to possess an inability to countenance criticism of Israel, shoots down the idea that Obama has turned against Israel.

A Palestinian teenager was killed in Gaza, either by an Israeli tank shell or a Palestinian mortar (depending, obviously, on whose account you believe).

Anti-German Translation has a good post up on Naomi Klein, and I'm not just saying that because it links to mine.

Sigh...bloggin' just ain't what it used to be.

Gershom Gorenberg on why a one-state solution remains a lousy idea.

***

Jill and I are going to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, and then having folks over for Chili on Saturday. If I don't write tomorrow, have a great weekend and a happy Third (and Fourth)!

What Do (EU) Jews Actually Consider To Be Anti-Semitic?

One of the lodestones of progressive understandings of discrimination and inequality is that marginalized groups are in a privileged position to "name their oppression." At the extreme this can be expressed as an unassailable authority to define what their oppression is (a position I can't endorse). But more modestly, the idea that we should give a pretty healthy presumption to how marginalized groups understand their own experience -- and that certainly, their views are relevant and important (indeed, essential) inputs into how we work through these issues -- strikes me as exactly right.

In that vein, I've just come across some really interesting survey data from the EU which asks Jews about (among other things) what they consider to be anti-Semitic.

.@AbuKedem The consensus of Jews should determine the def'n of antisemitism: @ibn_ezra @WarpedMirrorPMB @adamlevick pic.twitter.com/NCphO81MN9

— Nurit Baytch (@NuritBaytch) January 10, 2016

If you click through you can see the charts more clearly. The results clarify certain intuitions while falsifying other stereotypes. To begin, as one would expect most Jews do not, in fact, view "criticism of Israel" by a non-Jew as anti-Semitic. Only 34% take that view, which, to provide some context, is also roughly the same percentage of Idaho voters who cast their ballot for Barack Obama in 2012. So the next time you hear people talking about "Jews think any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic," replace in your mind "Idahoans are strong backers of Barack Obama" and reflect on how silly that sounds.

Widespread rejection of the generic formulation that criticism of Israel equals anti-Semitism, of course, doesn't mean that no specific criticisms can be so labeled (The Nation, take note). 72% of Jews think that a boycott of Israeli goods or products is anti-Semitic. Likewise, 81% think that saying Israelis behave "like Nazis" to Palestinians is definitely or probably anti-Semitic, and 90% believe that saying "Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood" at least probably qualifies as anti-Semitic (Naomi Klein, take note).

These are striking figures. To be sure, as noted at the outset, they do not end the discussion over what is anti-Semitism. But they do provide an important beginning. Talking about anti-Semitism, first and foremost, must start from talking about how Jews perceive anti-Semitism. Most Jews are well-aware of the obvious truth that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic simply by virtue of that fact; and the equally obvious truth that particular criticisms in particular contexts made in particular ways may well be. Now it's time for the rest of the world to catch up.

When The Mask Comes Off ... What's Beneath Doesn't Look All That Different

The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, explains why he is "glad" to be called an antisemite.

“There is one race that cannot be criticized. If you are anti-Semitic, it seems almost as if you are a criminal,” Mohamad said in an interview with the Associated Press on Monday, denying that he disliked Jews, as such. “Anti-Semitic is a term that is invented to prevent people from criticizing the Jews for doing wrong things.”

“When somebody does wrong, I don’t care how big they are. They may be powerful countries but if they do something wrong, I exercise my right of free speech. They criticize me, why can’t I criticize them?”

Mohamad, an avowed anti-Semite, was sworn in as prime minister in May, nearly two decades after he last held office. He is well known for his anti-Semitic rhetoric, writing on his personal blog in 2012 that “Jews rule this world by proxy.”

He has also said, “I am glad to be labeled anti-Semitic […] How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies.”

This, of course, is rather naked. It speaks of Jews (although the de rigueur conflation with Israel is present), and it does not shy away from (indeed it actively embraces) the idea of antisemitism. In that sense, it is almost too easy of a case. And this is not remotely out of character for Mohamad either.

But where these passages may be of some use is in highlighting how certain antisemitic tropes work in a context where they are freely and openly attached to an antisemitic ideology, the better to spot them when they appear without such an overt gloss. Basically everything Mohamad is saying is something that, dressed up (a little) more nicely, is a common feature of discourse about Jews in global society today.

First, there is the claim that the real victims of antisemitism are those accused of it -- antisemitism is not (or is not primarily) a genuine form of oppression for Jews, but rather is a perk Jews enjoy to shield ourselves from critical review. Compare here Bruce Robbins "The real issue here is anti-Semitism; that is, accusing people of it" or Naomi Klein suggesting that some Jews "think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card."

Second, there is the argument that in taking on the Jews, he is taking on someone or something "big". Here he really dips between referring to "Jews" generally and "Israel" specifically (For the record, Malaysia has four times the population of Israel across a territory almost sixteen times its size). Of course, the perception of Jews as inherently "big" -- domineering, cabalistic, pulling the strings -- has deep pride of place in antisemitic rhetoric. Mohamad is appealing to a notion whereby antisemitism always is a form of "punching up", "a movement of the little people against an intangible, global form of domination".  This perspective has come to occupy a critical role in the narrative Corbyn supporters tell of Jewish outrage -- both in the view that Corbyn, in antagonizing the Jews, is tackling the powerful, and in the view that the Jewish backlash is itself attributable to some nefarious conspiracy

Next, there is the invocation of "free speech". Of course, this particular ploy should by now be familiar to anyone forced to endure alt-right trolling of college campuses -- when they choose to be racist, it's just free speech! And if you call it racist, you're suppressing their free speech! But this device makes its appearance regarding antisemitism too, and has done so for a very long time. Jewish Voice for Peace's old blog was titled "MuzzleWatch", and one of the major fringe groups backing the Corbynistas and opposing Jewish efforts to raise awareness of antisemitism in the UK is named "Free Speech on Israel". Glenn Greenwald has likewise dismissed the widespread adoption of the IHRA antisemitism definition as part of a "global campaign to outlaw criticisms of Israel as bigotry".

Then there's the comparison of "Jews" (represented through Israel) to Nazis -- we're all familiar with that play, and I'm glad to see it here if only for completion's sake.

But we'll conclude with the most striking bit, and the one that perhaps seems least applicable to more workaday antisemitic cases: where Mohamad says he is "glad" to be called antisemitic. Here one might say I'm actually being a touch unfair to Mohamad, for what I suspect he means is something more like "while antisemitism -- appropriately (and narrowly) defined -- is terrible; what is called antisemitic in public discourse are actually good, noble, and virtuous positions that one should be proud to hold." This is buttressed by the caveat Mohamad gave at the beginning, where he denies that he "dislikes Jews, as such."

Once again, this has parallels. Steve Bannon notoriously said that being called racist is a "badge of honor"; Steven Salaita's contention that antisemitism has become "honorable" thanks to Zionism plays on the same turf. In all cases, the claim actually isn't "it is good to hate outgroups"; it's something more like "what outgroups claim is hateful, actually is good". Now, to be clear -- that's still a BS response, partially because it is too clever by half, partially because it depends on an epistemic injustice directed against the outgroups whereby their assessments of their own experience of inequality is so unreliable that one should be "honored" if they feel threatened by you. But at least formally, it reduces down to a claim that "one can and should dislike X group insofar as they act in A B C bad ways, or support D E F bad policies."

Which actually circles back, strangely enough, to my Tablet Magazine article on Open Hillel's intervention in the SFSU antisemitism debate. In that article, I cited Bernard Williams for the proposition that virtually no form of racism holds itself out as being a product of raw, unadorned antipathy. It always comes attached to claims that are at least on-face about something that qualifies as a candidate for a reasonable position. Wrote Williams:

Few can be found who will explain their practice merely by saying, 'But they're black: and it is my moral principle to treat black men differently from others'. If any reasons are given at all, they will be reasons that seek to correlate the fact of blackness with certain other considerations which are at least candidates for relevance to the question of how a man should be treated: such as insensitivity, brute stupidity, ineducable irresponsibility, etc. Now these reasons are very often rationalizations, and the correlations claimed are either not really believed, or quite irrationally believed, by those who claim them. But this is a different point; the argument concerns what counts as a moral reason, and the rationalizer broadly agrees with others about what counts as such -- the trouble with him is that his reasons are dictated by his politics, and not conversely. The Nazis' 'anthropologists' who tried to construct theories of Aryanism were paying, in very poor coin, the homage of irrationality to reason.

So too here. I quoted Mohamad's words extensively because to my mind they represent an unquestionable case of antisemitism. But his caveat that he does not dislike Jews "as such" is one that Open Hillel's standard of antisemitism has great trouble grappling with. If Mohamad's point is that he doesn't dislike Jews-qua-Jews, only the bloodthirsty ones, the Zionist ones, the Nazi-like ones, the ones who are "big" and the ones who censor his free speech -- is that antisemitism? Cast in that light, Mohamad isn't actually all that different from the peers I've been comparing him to; perhaps just a little rougher around the edges.

And that, ultimately, is the real point here. One might think that Mahathir Mohamad represents what happens when the screen of respectability comes down and an antisemite simply says what he thinks. But it turns out that, when that happens, what one sees doesn't look all that different from what one sees when the mask stays on. Mohamad uses tropes and claims and devices that are common in discourse about Jews by people who have far more claim to respectability than Mohamad does. One would like to think that's an indictment of the respectable. But it just as easily can become a defense of what we otherwise would think of as undeniable antisemitism.

Thinking Critically About "Uncritical"

One hears the refrain thrown out repeatedly, even casually -- the great mass of Jews (or perhaps most Americans, but mainly Jews) who are "uncritical supporters of Israel." Often times it comes from Jews who claim to have been blind before they learned to see. Here's Antony Lowenstein:

Although support for the Jewish state has been an unofficial second religion for Jews for decades – in my own family it was simply expected that Israel would be uncritically backed in times of war and peace, with Palestinians demonised as unreasonable and violent – times are changing.

And here's Bonnie Honig: "Too many of us are too committed to being uncritical of Israel."

It comes in academic tomes -- Laurence Silberstein's chapter on "American Jewry's Identification with Israel" uses variations on the word "uncritical" (or synonyms) four times in its first page. It comes in pleas that I might generally support, such as in this letter from Israelis for a Sustainable Future: "The belief that being “pro-Israel” means uncritically supporting the actions of the Israeli government and military does not help the Israeli people."

And so it is that Gil Troy, responding to (natch) Joseph Palermo calling him "an uncritical booster of Israel", writes the following:

Calling me “an uncritical booster” suggests I am more propagandist than analyst, more cheerleader than thinker. It plays into stereotypes of pro-Israel types as monolithic and blind to any Israeli faults – an absurdity considering the many passionate debates constantly roiling the Zionist community. It legitimizes the delegitimization of Israel through a perverse reverse projection. While escalating every Israeli imperfection into proof that Israel should not exist, delegitimizers project their absolutist all-or-nothing attitudes onto Israel’s supporters. Underlying this is an unfair singling out of Israel as a country on probation, acceptable only if it behaves well. The charge also reflects an anti-Zionist prejudice assuming that thinking people can only support Israel by bypassing logic.

Contrary to Palermo’s caricature, I have publicly criticized Prime Minister Bibi Netanhyau for failing to lead boldly, charging him with acting like a Chicago ward heeler rather than a statesman. I have said that Israeli leaders should be driving the peace train rather than Barack Obama or John Kerry, tapping Israel’s world-famous creativity to find solutions. I criticized anti-Arab violence long before the horrific revenge killing last month. I have criticized the chief rabbinate for being too rigid.

In short, just like a patriotic American criticizes the United States – while still loving it; just like a devoted wife criticizes her husband while still loving him; I criticize Israel – without questioning Israel’s right to exist. To support Israel one need not mortgage one’s soul or override one’s critical faculties. In fact, democratic Israel invites thoughtful supporters, loving critics, ardent advocates for different solutions to the country’s various problems.

He's right of course. But there's something deeply pathetic about this laundry list of times he's criticized Israel -- as if this will at all alter the refrain; as if proof that Jews (and not just the Naomi Klein fans of the bunch) criticize Israel on a regular basis is even relevant to the belief in question.

Because on face, the idea that there is any significant subset of Jews who are "uncritical supporters of Israel" is not just untrue; it's transparently ludicrous. Anybody who's had an opinion on Israel is critical of it, at least some of the time -- the odds that multi-million person sovereign nation would always in all cases map on precisely to anyone's idiosyncratic policy preferences (much less somehow managing to unite the entire Jewish community writ large in "uncritical" support) is obviously absurd.

"Israel critic" is an incredibly broad term that probably encompasses every single person who has ever had an opinion on the subject -- including Israel's defenders. I am a defender of Israel, I am also a critic of Israel. Caring about something means having opinions about it, it would be a remarkable coincidence if my opinions about Israel (or any other country, or institution, or person) perfectly tracked Israel's actions. ZOA is a critic of Israel, as it has every right to be. The point being, first and foremost, that those who adopt the mantle "critic of Israel" are in reality a narrow and provincial subset of the class, who should not be allowed to insist that the vast majority of Jews are mindless zombies "incapable of criticism of Israel."

When they say "uncritical of Israel", they mean "not criticizing the things I want criticized, in the manner I want to see them criticized." But that Jews reject particular forms of criticism does not make them "uncritical", that's an exercise of critical faculties.

Simply put, I'm sick of hearing about this mythical sector of uncritical Israel supporters. It doesn't exist. But the people who partake in the refrain are people who seemingly can't make the, dare I say critical, distinction between disagreeing with a specific criticism and being incapable of criticism.

The Goldstone Investigation

Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist currently investigating alleged human rights violations in the Gaza Strip during the war several months ago, has reiterated his pledge that his report will be "balanced" and will deal with the abduction of Gilad Shalit as well as Hamas rocket fire into Israel. The question of whether Palestinian violations of human rights are up for investigation has been very murky, but regardless of what the body that appointed him thinks of the matter, Goldstone certainly seems to interpret his mandate as requiring that he look into both sides.

I certainly understand why the Israeli government has refused to cooperate in the probe -- the UNHRC has proven itself time and again to be an absolute joke (come and get me, Naomi Klein) that literally sees no evil but in Israel -- but I can't help but think they're missing an opportunity here. By all accounts Goldstone has taken his obligations to be impartial and fair to all parties quite seriously. When is the next time we'll get that from a UN investigation? This is a rare chance for Israel's story to get fair play in the international legal arena, and I can't help but think they're chucking it overboard.

Is It Too Much To Ask That Middle East Correspondents Not Be Fans of Folks Who Want Me Dead?

CNN's Senior Editor on Mideast Affairs, Octavia Nasr, has stepped down after writing about her "respect" for Sayyed Fadlallah, a top Hezbollah spiritual leader.

Ms. Nasr explained that her respect did not mean a whole-hearted endorsement of everything Mr. Fadlallah stood for -- including his claims that the Holocaust was exaggerated and his desire to exterminate the Jewish state. Rather, she believed that Mr. Fadlallah had, with regards to women's rights, been forwarded a more moderate vision of Shi'ite Islam that condemned "honor killings" and abuse against women. To call him "progressive" on women's rights would be a gross exaggeration, but he was perhaps notably less retrogressive, and grading on a curve I guess that counts for something. And I don't doubt that Ms. Nasr is being totally honest in stating that her feelings of respect stemmed from these issues.

But it doesn't obviate the tiny detail that the organization he was affiliated with, you know, wants Israel to be annihilated (and possibly wants me, personally, dead as well*). As Ms. Nasr admits, Mr. Fadlallah was marginalized in Hezbollah because he was too aggressive in demanding that Hezbollah focus solely on destroying Israel. Given that, I'm frankly stunned by the reaction in some liberal quarters to the news -- essentially alleging that this was kowtowing to a requirement in the media that all figures by biased in favor of Israel. "Bias", here, means a requirement that one not praise folks actively wishing for Israel to be obliterated. That alone demonstrates just how far the plaintive whine about how "the Israel Lobby" suppresses all dissent has extended itself. Why, you can't even praise folks who want to see Israel completely destroyed, and who think its completely okay to murder Israeli civilians (and possibly Jews worldwide), without facing their wrath. Oh, the muzzling! Oh, spare me.

Hezbollah generally, and Sayyed Fadlallah particularly, promote a radical anti-Semitic and anti-Israel agenda which is quite well-known. It is not whitewashed just because Fadlallah supports some progressive less retrogressive reforms inside Shi'ite Islam. I'm reminded of Naomi Klein's hideous reaction to the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Durban II speech, which conceded that it was anti-Semitic, but nonetheless that Jews dared protest it because it distracted from other progressive goals of the conference. Progressivism, here, simply means Jews have to take it in the teeth, because paying attention to our concerns might distract from those of real human beings.

And yes, it's pretty clear that CNN (and other media giants) have a bevvy of rather appalling figures on their payrolls. It's obviously a blot on CNN that it hired someone who referred to a Supreme Court Justice as a "goat f@$king child molester", but I hardly think a universal reduction in standards is the way to solve the issue. I likewise think anyone who thinks Palestine should not exist does not deserve a place on CNN, and certainly not in a senior position in CNN's Mideast desk. If such people are currently working in such a position at CNN, they should step down as well (make me a list -- I'll sign a petition). But it isn't right to ask Jews to play the sacrificial pawn in your media wars. If your progressivism means ignoring equal Jewish rights, it ain't progressivism to me.

* From the New Yorker article:

On the killing of Israeli civilians, Fadlallah said, "In a state of war, it is permissible for Palestinians to kill Jews. When there is peace, this is not permissible." He does not believe in a peaceful settlement between two states, one Palestinian, the other Israeli; rather, he favors the disappearance of Israel.
[...]
"We are against the killing of Jews outside Palestine," Fadlallah said. "Unless they transfer the war outside Palestine." When I asked if they had, Fadlallah raised an eyebrow, and let the question go unanswered.

On the Other Hand ...

Really, Reuters?

A bomb planted in a bag exploded near a bus stop in a Jewish district of Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing a woman and injuring at least 30 people, in an attack police blamed on Palestinian militants.
[...]
Police said it was a "terrorist attack" -- Israel's term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.

Mmm ... I don't think that it's just an Israeli idiosyncrasy that labels putting a bomb in a public bus station a "terrorist attack". It might, however, be a Reuters idiosyncrasy that such an attack is only open to multiple labels when its victims are Israelis. Just sayin'.

Via Goldblog.

Meanwhile, my coblogger Kathy Kattenberg and BooMan try to "contextualize" Reuters statement by arguing that it comes in the wake of growing global discontent towards Israel and its settlement project which renders people unsympathetic to their victims. BM asks

that Israel's defenders focus less on how they've been delegitimized and more on why they've been delegitimized. Israel is building settlements on Palestinian land, not as a bargaining chip, but with every intention of keeping the land in perpetuity. That's what is killing Israel's legitimacy. Nothing else.

Kathy, for her part, asks where the outrage was at the media's inability to call CIA torture "torture". Which is ironic, because that's exactly where my thoughts turned. I called the NYT's refusal to call waterboarding "torture" only when the US did it "cowardice in the face of ginned-up controversy." Torture is torture even when "the good guys" are doing it; similarly, terrorism is terrorism even when the victims are people Kathy -- or even large swaths of the world -- hold in contempt.

Returning to BM, though. As a descriptive matter -- that Israel's delegitimization stems from "nothing else" but its settlement campaign -- it's clearly wrong. Israel's defenders would assert that the settlements are naught but a spurious variable -- after all, there was a time in Israel's history when it possessed no settlements and it was hardly basking in regional legitimation at the time. More to the point, there currently is an important section of Palestinian territory that is entirely settlement-free, and its relationship with Israel badly deteriorated in the years following Israel's pullout. BT asks what Palestinians are supposed to think if their adoption of nonviolence gets them nothing (I think BT is once again descriptively inaccurate here -- the situation in the West Bank has improved for Palestinians in the since 2001, while the situation in Gaza has gotten far worse -- but certainly one could say that relative nonviolence hasn't gotten them enough, fast enough). But of course, Israelis are asking the same question -- withdrawing from Gaza got them rockets, withdrawing from Lebanon got them a war with Hezbollah, and neither action seemed to exert much influence on the pace or even rhetoric of "delegitimization." Hell, I've heard many folks assert Gaza is still occupied -- a position which seems legally untenable (occupation requires effective control of the territory in question, and, as one international law scholar wryly put it, at least one threshold for "effective control" is that the occupier "does not have to fight his way in") and motivated by little more than a refusal to give Israel credit for anything that could be called an improvement.

But that's a little rantish. What's more disheartening about these two posts is their profound moral laziness. Deeply entrenched conflicts are morally complicated, and often require us to balance several important commitments which are not firmly lashed together. Lord knows the Israeli/Palestinian conflict meets that description. But, as often as it's been where I've felt like I've had to do a delicate balancing act between competing moral commitments with respect to this conflict -- this case wasn't one of them. Balancing the need to condemn the settlement project as immoral, counterproductive, and severely damaging to the peace process is easy to reconcile with calling a bus bombing "terrorism". It's just not hard to pull off. Balancing nationalism with liberalism is difficult, security with free movement is difficult, when a security measure's effectiveness is a reason to perpetuate it or declare "mission accomplished" is difficult. This is not difficult. Which raises the question why Kathy and BM, and Reuters and the "global community" whom Reuters is supposedly reflecting, are finding it so difficult. If it was settlements alone that were doing all the work, this wouldn't be causing so much consternation.

BM claims that Reuters' reticence to call a bus bombing "terrorism" stems from its connotation of "illegitimacy". But, he asserts, many people don't think that indiscriminate bombings of Israeli civilians are illegitimate at all -- legitimate struggle against a more powerful enemy. And so, he says, there is no "reflexive" (I hate the way "reflexive" is used in these discussions -- as if immediate sympathy for people blown to pieces is a sort of cognitive defect) sympathy for Israeli victims. My feeling is that if your fury over settlement activity burns so hot that you don't really care if a random Israeli bus passenger is bombed, then maybe you're the one who needs to do some introspection -- both about your sense of prioritization, but also about whether "settlements" really capture everything, whether there is "nothing else" playing a role in your thought process.

The "legitimacy" point goes to our belief that terrorism is only done by bad people (and thus the hedge is traceable to increased sympathy for the Palestinians, but it also implicates our belief that terrorism is only done to good people (and thus is traceable to increased demonization of Israelis qua Israelis). This is Naomi Klein and Alice Walkerism -- a writing out of Israelis as real people, the sorts of human beings who even are candidates to be terrorist victims, even candidates to be objects of our sympathies. I think BM is actually probably right that Israelis are rapidly being so written out, but that's the sort of profound moral abdication that Reuters should be challenging, not magnifying.

BM wonders why Israel's defenders aren't inquiring as to the "why" Israel's being delegitimized, focusing instead on the "how". The answer, I think, lies within BM's post itself -- for it demonstrates that the supposed "why" and the actual "how" are so weakly connected so as to raise the question as to whether there is any meaningful link whatsoever. It will be hard to get Israel to disengage from its settlements in any circumstance, but surely it's much more difficult to the extent that Israelis doubt it will actually have any positive effect on their moral standing. What BM and Kathy demonstrate is that the delegitimizers -- whether they think themselves motivated by the settlement project alone or not -- cannot arrest their own train. They can't stop themselves from bleeding over into far more serious assertions -- delegitimizing Israelis as human beings, delegitimizing Israel as a legitimate state, delegitimizing Jews as legitimate speakers about their own experiences.

Israelis should abandon the settlements because they're bad policy, are a (not the) barrier to peace, and are profoundly unfair to Palestinians under the best of circumstances (and, when they're built on private Palestinian land, simple theft). Whether or not it arrests the state's "delegitimatization", I don't know. Maybe it will, and that will be nice. But it would hardly be inconsistent with past practice if it doesn't.

Building settlements may be a serious bar to a final resolution of the conflict, but so is the refusal to call terror victims "terror victims". The sort of dehumanizing mentality that renders that sort of logic comprehensible has become part-and-parcel of the "delegitimization" campaign, whether they admit or not, and it is incompatible with a future resolution to the conflict where Israelis and Palestinians view each other as friends and neighbors. The first step for everyone is remembering that we are dealing with human beings, not monsters. And that's why I think the delegitimizers fundamentally are problem-creating rather than problem-solving. Everybody has some introspection to do -- it's not just Israel with blindspots.

Have Another Thought

Maya Rosen and Joshua Leifer, two Jewish Princeton students who head the campus chapter of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives and supported the failed divestment vote at the University, have penned a column with their thoughts on the matter and their demands of the Jewish community.

There is a lot here that is frustrating -- try to follow their shifting logic on the role "consensus" should play in these sorts of debates -- but what is perhaps most aggravating is their disdain-verging-on-contempt for anyone who disagrees with divestment as a tactic. I've remarked before on the shared incentive the far-left and far-right have to portray Israel debates as being amongst two camps: If you don't support ZOA, you're an anti-Zionist monster. Or, if you don't support BDS, you're in the bag for the most irredentist wing of Likud. This column is a sterling example of the latter -- it goes so far as to say that the failure of Jews to support divestment hinders efforts to "decouple Judaism from right-wing Israeli policies", blaming Jews for ongoing anti-Semitic attitudes on campuses nationwide.

Of course, there are many reasons one could oppose divestment that have nothing to do with favoring right-wing Israeli policies, and are indeed endorsed by sharp critics of those policies. One might be concerned about the association with the global BDS movement, a train which seems to have no brakes. The BDS campaign at its best is cavalier about the validity of Jewish self-determination and liberation, and has often bled into blatant anti-Semitism (in the link above, BDS was the frame for urging the expulsion of all Jewish students from a South African university). Certainly, the tropes put forward in this column -- whereby Jews who oppose BDS are said to be beholden to a "conservative establishment" which insists that "all Jews support [all?] Israeli policies" -- don't exactly inspire confidence that this is a movement that actually respects that polyphonic character of the Jewish community. Or one might recognize that the same capacities which enable Israel to continue its occupation of the West Bank are those which enable it to protect itself from suicide bombers, and that the divestment campaign's studied refusal to recognize the entanglement suggests that they don't think Israel has any valid claim on security at all. Or perhaps they are just sick of the persistent demand to view Israel/Palestine as a quest to find bad guys to scold, and would rather a politics that sought to identify good guys and empower them to do more good.

The divestment advocates say that the debate demonstrated widespread desire amongst Princetonians to take a more proactive stand on this issue; that students hunger to do something to prod the situation in the Middle East closer to justice. And I bet that's true! The 53% which voted no may have various reasons why divestment is off the table, but that doesn't mean there is no proposal that wouldn't garner their support. And of the 47% that voted yes, I'm doubtful that all of them are "BDS or bust." They might have supported that resolution, but it's not the only resolution they'd support.

What we do know is that a majority of Princeton students oppose divestment, and that there is no likely scenario where divestment could be anything but bitterly divisive. So my question them is simple: What's your next thought? Are you seriously trying to say that a divestment resolution is the only arrow in your quiver? Even if you genuinely believe it "is the best way", even if you're absolutely certain that "political and economic pressure are our most effective nonviolent means" for effectuating change (maybe you can take a break and demand reinstatement of our Cuba sanctions), are they really your only thoughts on the matter? Is your only move, when Princetonians reject this particular strategy, to go back to the same well once more?

If divestment is a non-starter, what are some other thoughts we might have? The obvious answer is investment. Instead of cutting ties with the putative bad guys, try to forge new ones with the good guys. Instead of looking for bridges to burn, search for places where bridges are worth building. In Israel and Palestine right now, there are a great many civil society organizations who are committed to creating the conditions for Jewish and Palestinian freedom and self-determination. By far the best of these is OneVoice, a parallel Israeli and Palestinian project "that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected representatives toward the two-state solution." It's based on the notion that the most important players and most powerful agents of change are the people of Israel and Palestine, the everyday folks who have no interest in dominating or subjugating the other, but just want to live in harmony with their neighbor and work together for a better future. What if Princeton partnered with OneVoice and lent its prestige and brainpower to the cause of democratic empowerment as a means of change (some of us have a sentimental preference for that sort of work over economic coercion).

Or what about TULIP -- Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine? TULIP's goal is to forge connections between Israeli and Palestinians unions as a means of building political momentum towards two states. There was a time when building solidarity amongst labor unions and the working class would have been the first thought of a group with a name like the "Alliance of Jewish Progressives". Alas, we live in different times, and so I guess now it takes some prodding. But again, call me sentimental, but I am a fan of the power of workers to unite around a common interest in economic empowerment, and recognizing that spending precious lives and resources on a fruitless conflict is antithetical to that cause.

What if Ms. Rosen and Mr. Leifer proposed a resolution centered on those parameters: identifying groups in Israel and Palestine that are working to change conditions on the ground such that both sides respect the legitimate national aspirations of the other, suggesting that Princeton should take official steps to partner with and otherwise support these groups, and urging that Princeton take greater steps to invite persons affiliated with those groups to the Princeton campus so that Princetonians could gain a first-hand perspective on their struggle and how they could help? How much of the vote do you think that resolution would get? 65%? 75%? It wouldn't be unanimous -- there are people who really do support right-wing Israeli policies, after all. And there are people who genuinely are "BDS or bust", because their end goal isn't a two-state solution or any solution at all that respects Jewish equality -- they're in the field to annihilate Israel outright.

But I don't think those sort of people are the majority of either the 53% or the 47%. A resolution like this could unify the Princeton campus around a strategy that breaks free from the tired "punish the evildoer" mold. It wouldn't be consistent with BDS fundamentalism -- no strategy which acknowledges that both Israelis and Palestinians have an indispensable contribution to a just resolution of the conflict would be -- but Ms. Rosen and Mr. Leifer claim not to be fundamentalists.

Whether they are or aren't is not something I pretend to know. I do know that Naomi Klein once claimed that BDS was "a tactic, not a dogma," and that this has proven to be one of her less-than-stunningly accurate pronouncements of the past decade. Everything we've seen from the BDS movement indicates that it cannot contemplate other strategies other than BDS; even amongst those adherents who don't sign on to the more maximalist parts of the agenda. BDS squeezes out any and all alternative strategies, but it is especially hostile to those which ask how we can help Israelis and Palestinians work together. For some reason, once people board this particular train, it does not even occur to them that there might be other routes to their goal.

I'm not asking Ms. Rosen or Mr. Leifer to denounce BDS (though of course I'd be happy if they did). All I'm asking is that they think one step further -- that they have another thought after divestment. Rather than assuming that Jews and non-Jews who oppose divestment are denouncing any measure that might further a just two-state solution, they should think a little harder about what other steps they might take that would unify their community and the Princeton community around a salutary goal. To that end, a resolution which specifically endorses organizations like OneVoice and urges Princeton to take additional steps to provide them with institutional support would be an easy winner that would build on the dialogue the first resolution sparked and unite proponents and opponents alike under a positive and constructive banner.

Anyway, it's a thought.