Josh Shapiro Would Make a Fine VP and Probably Shouldn't Be Picked

There's a job opening for the position of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, and a list of possibilities is beginning to emerge. The main names I've seen floated are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

As far as I'm concerned, all of these are fine choices. None of them are blue dog quasi-GOPers. None of them are DSA-adjacent fire breathers. They're all solid, mainline Democrats with a lot to offer. Anecdotally, the name that seems to get the most enthusiasm in my circles is Senator Kelly; a poll of DNC delegates gave a plurality to Shapiro (albeit lagging significantly behind "undecided").

With respect to Shapiro, the case in favor is pretty obvious. He stomped to victory in the keystone key swing state of Pennsylvania in 2022, and remains quite popular in what is still a battleground state. He's generally done a good job a governor, and his out-and-proud Jewishness not only helps dissipates bad faith GOP grandstanding about protecting the Jews, it has also provoked plenty of "show us how you really feel" antisemitism on the part of Republicans whose love for "Jews" is matched only by their hatred for (actual, real-life) Jews. Plus, he provides a model of liberal religiosity which helps challenge the monopoly right-wing conservative Christians have sought to claim over the mantle of faith. It will not surprise you that I like Shapiro a lot, and his was the first name that came to mind for me when I thought of my preferred VP choice.

Unfortunately, Shapiro also seems to be getting the most amount of pushback of any VP contender from the single-issue (anti-)Israel voter crowd, who have tagged Shapiro has having an especially problematic pro-Israel outlook.

The entire dynamic surrounding the Biden-to-Harris switch and how it relates to the burbling pro-Palestinian sentiment amongst many younger Democrats is interesting. Over the past few months we saw quite a few people loudly aver they could never bring themselves to vote for "genocide Joe" because of the way in which he and his administration have enabled Israel's assault in Gaza. The closer we got to election day, the higher stakes this game of chicken became -- will they blink or will they actually usher in Trump 2.0 -- but now that Biden is off the ballot many of these persons seem to be happy to return to the Democratic column. Now, objectively speaking, Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration and, minor rhetorical gestures aside, has not meaningfully separated herself from Biden's Israel policy -- if you genuinely believe that the Biden administration's policy regarding Israel is monstrous and unforgivable, Harris, as the second-highest ranking official in that administration, should be tainted too. Practically speaking, though, not having Biden be the name on the ballot has offered people who had perhaps overindulged in self-righteous chest thumping and consequently talked themselves into a corner a face-saving offramp. If they were fully genuine in what they say they believe about the Biden administration's choices being "unforgivable",* they'd be equally indignant about voting for Harris. That they're not suggests there was no small measure of performance going on, but for my part, I'm happy not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome back.

But while this cadre may be willing to let bygones be bygones with Harris, many of them have seemingly decided that Shapiro is going to be the stand-in for the type of pro-Israel Democrat they cannot stand. Part of me recoils at this. Shapiro's positions actually don't seem that far off-line from those of his peers (he enforced an anti-BDS law that also exists in 37 other states?!?), and the effort to try and draw distinctions from how he has spoken of, e.g., antisemitism at pro-Palestine protests compared to how other analogous Democrats have spoken about it feels very thin. To be honest, the congealing anti-Shapiro backlash smacks of a very predictable and unlovely hyperpolicing of Jews-qua-Jews on Israel, whose every jot and tittle on the matter will be pored over with exacting and unforgiving scrutiny in a manner that just isn't imposed upon non-Jews. Non-Jews can have unacceptable positions on Israel, but only Jews become unacceptable for things like "her book has an Israeli in it." Shapiro is getting heightened scrutiny here not because his positions on Israel are significantly different from those of Kelly or Beshear or Cooper, but because he's a very visibly Jewish politician and so is presumed to need greater scrutiny.

That's not good. But even though it's not good, I think that for better or for worse it does give a good reason not to pick Shapiro as Harris' VP. Under circumstances where there are many good choices for the VP candidate, the fact that one in particular runs the risk of cheesing off a substantial contingent of wavering Democratic voters is reason enough not to choose him, regardless of whether the reason he runs that risk is "fair" or not. It'd be different if we were in a situation where there was a dearth of good options, or Shapiro was somehow the obvious best choice, or if the "anti-Shapiro" cadre was declaring itself ready to fight to the death over every remotely plausible mainstream Democratic choice or trying to sabotage any potential VP who wasn't all in on BDS. But we're not in that situation. The other Democratic alternatives to Shapiro are also good. Their positions on Israel are probably not that meaningfully distinct from Shapiro's. If I'm happy with a lot of people, and some people whose votes matter are particularly unhappy with one person, there's little reason not to pick someone that makes us all happy.

Throughout this electoral cycle, people in my position have insisted to fellow progressives that the importance of winning in 2024 is too important to take one's ball and go home the instant things don't go your way. That applies here too, but what it means right now -- when no VP has been picked -- is that it'd be unreasonable for me to die on the hill of picking Josh Shapiro for VP, even if I think he'd be a good pick, and even if I think the rationale upon which people are anti-Shapiro is wrongheaded or even pernicious. I may well be right. But winning in 2024 is more important than vindicating my correctness is. If Shapiro gets picked, I'll happily rally behind him and I hope everyone else does too. But there's no shame in Kamala Harris picking someone else if she thinks they will do a better job uniting the progressive community towards the goal of winning this November.

* On that note, I'll give, if not credit, then at least points for consistency to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is one of the few Democrats who self-consciously declined to endorse Harris following Biden's withdrawal. Agree with it or not, her position was not a performance.

The Israeli Right Wants to End America's Israel Bipartisanship

Bibi spoke before Congress today, giving his usual bluster in the face of growing Democratic discontent over his hard-right governance and naked disregard for Palestinian life and rights. Well over a hundred congressional Democrats boycotted his speech, and even some who attended gave scathing reviews (my favorite comment came from Rep. Jerry Nadler, who bluntly described Netanyahu as "the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago.").

One comment I've heard many times is that Bibi has been recklessly pissing away the historic bipartisan support Israel has enjoyed in Congress to tie himself ever closer to the GOP. This has been occurring since at least the Obama administration and only seems to be accelerating. Why is he taking this step? At the bad place, Abe Silberstein hypothesizes that this is a "calculated" decision, predicated on the notion that Democrats will eventually abandon Israel anyway. I agree it is calculated (which doesn't mean it isn't reckless), but I actually might make an even more controversial point -- Bibi wants to drive Democrats away. The breakdown of the consensus is, for him, a positive good.

The rationale is straightforward. Certainly, in an "ideal" world, both American political parties would support Israel in whatever it does, all the time. But in reality, a bipartisan "consensus" around Israel is going to be inherently moderating -- Democrats prevent it from drifting too far to the right, and Republicans from it drifting too far to the left. It's no accident that in the early 2000s (the apex of the consensus), Democrats and Republicans alike generally coalesced around things like support for two states, veneration of Oslo, and so on. There was, certainly, a lot less in the way of Democratic support for sharp and harsh Israel critique, but you were also less likely to see Republicans openly come out in favor of occupation forever. It was the epitome of a mushy middle.

The problem is that Bibi is not part of the mushy middle, and it is affirmatively bad for him if American politics on Israel sit on moderate, middle ground. A theme I've hit on repeatedly in my writing is that polarization actively benefits extremists, and will be pursued by them, even if it reduces overall levels of popular support for their broadly-defined "camp". Polarization gives more space for extremists to flourish, and Bibi is nothing if not a right-wing extremist.

Imagine you're Bibi and you have a choice between two worlds: one where 8 out of 10 Americans support Israel, but they're evenly divided between "left" and "right", and another where only 5 out of 10 Americans are pro-Israel, but 4 of them are conservative. He's going to pick the latter, because in the latter universe the pro-Israel faction is dominated by conservatives, and so will be a far more hospitable environment to his brand of unabashed and unapologetic conservatism. In the first world, the parameters of pro-Israel are set via a balance of liberal and conservative interests. In the second, they're set solely by conservatives -- even as the median position of Americans shifts away from support for Israel, the median position of self-described pro-Israel Americans shifts sharply to the right. 

For that reason, it should not surprise to see Bibi and his allies seemingly doing everything they can to alienate American Democrats even in the face of stalwart support from Joe Biden. Are they spitting in his eye? Yes, and intentionally so. For them, having Democrats as part of the "pro-Israel" camp is more constraining than it is enabling. They'd much rather the parameters of pro-Israel be set solely by the right -- the better to consolidate their own power.

Harris '24

To be honest, I didn't have strong feelings about whether Biden should or shouldn't drop out of the race. But his decision to step down should be seen as an incredible act of selflessness and statesmanship. Joe Biden has had an amazing array of accomplishments as President. But this step was entirely about ensuring that the fascist maniac atop the cult of personality that's become the GOP does not return to the White House in January, and he deserves great praise for that.

The media, it seems clear, is not ready for the circus to leave town. It is bombarding us with calls for an open convention or speed primary or some nonsense about picking Mitt Romney -- anything to maintain the frenzy of Democrats in chaos. But overwhelmingly, the reaction I'm seeing from most Democrats is relief: relief that we have a resolution, and relief that we're in good hands with Harris. Whereas the drumbeat to get Biden out the race, while partially media generated, did reflect at some level of genuine concern from actual Democrats of note following the debate disaster, right now it's going to be very hard to maintain a narrative of Dems in Disarray given the rapidity with which the party coalesced behind Harris. Indeed, virtually all the chatter I've seen about the need to Avoid A Coronation!!! comes from the usual pundit has-beens -- I'm seeing essentially no appetite from any Democrat of note to offer themselves up as an alternative to Harris, and she's rapidly securing endorsements from every sector of the party. Kamala Harris is going to be the nominee, Democrats seem very happy that Harris is going to be the nominee, and I'm excited to rally behind her and return her to the White House.

The next few months won't be easy. For example, we can expect the media's interest in the age of candidates to disappear as rapidly as its interest in classified document security. But Harris is a good woman, a good leader, and a good politician. We can do this. Let's get to it.

The Settlements Gave Us the ICJ Decision

The International Court of Justice has released a long-anticipated advisory opinion regarding the status of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. You can read all of the opinions here, but the top-line conclusion is that the occupation is at this point unlawful, because Israel's actions have made clear that it is not acting in the context of a military occupation at all -- it is acting as if to acquire the underlying territory as part of its own domain. And my overall conclusion is that, while the opinion sprawls and has wide implications, ultimately the vast majority of its conclusions can be laid at the feet of the settlement project. That's what gives the opinion its analytical force, the subject of the main "remedy", and that's what makes it not ultimately a matter of Israel's genuine self-defense and security interests.

To be sure, there is more to the opinion than just an indictment of the settlement project, or even the occupation-qua-occupation. Another aspect sure to get much commentary is the gesture at characterizing Israel's conduct in the West Bank as potentially apartheid -- the opinion was (it seems almost certainly intentionally) ambiguous on this point, and amongst the concurrences one sees both "yes, that's absolutely what it's saying" and "no, we're definitely not saying that". There's also the question of how to apply the ruling to the Gaza Strip -- while nominally covering all of the Palestinian territories, the opinion is primarily focused on the situation in the West Bank, recognizing that Gaza is a different and more complex circumstance for a host of reasons, ranging from Israel's withdrawal in 2005 to the current ongoing war. For the most part, the opinion largely accepts that different analysis will need to be applied there, and so it's fair to bracket that off.

Still, even "just" talking about the illegality of the occupation of the West Bank, the ruling is bombshell enough. Ultimately, the opinion reflects an essential and oft-misunderstood attribute of Israel's relationship with the Palestinian territories: while pro-Israel commentators often treat the language of "occupation" as delegitimizing Israel's activities (cf. Bibi's response to the ruling: "The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land"), in reality occupation is the most plausible justification for Israel's activities in the Palestinian territories. When one is in the midst of military hostilities with another power, one is allowed to have a military presence on their territory, and one is allowed to impose not infinite but substantial restrictions on the local civilian population to account for security necessities, and one is certainly not required to give the civilian nationals of the opposing power citizenship in your country.

But those prerogatives are predicated on the occupation not being permanent; it is not a claim of permanent jurisdictional right over the underlying territory, it is a temporary state of affairs tied to ongoing hostilities with another power. The ruling of the ICJ can be summarized as a conclusion that Israel is no longer acting as if that was the case. The settlement enterprise, in particular, is the smoking gun evidence here: it is not only clearly impermissible under the law of occupation, but it has nothing to do with effectuating military security in the context of an ongoing state of belligerency and everything to do with acting as if the territories in question are part of Israel's normal domestic territory -- the settlers are, in most every respect, treated identically as if they were Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv. Through the settlements, Israel is taking actions that are fundamentally at odds with it treating the West Bank as being under a temporary occupation, and so it cannot claim the protections international law accords to occupying powers to take actions that otherwise would be obvious breaches of principles of sovereignty and Palestinian self-determination.

For my part, I've only had the opportunity to quickly skim the various opinions, and I'm not an international law expert. There were a cluster of judges who sought to distinguish in various ways between the illegality of Israel's conduct in the West Bank (which they find conclusively established) and the inherent illegality of Israel's presence in the West Bank (which they would not reach), and on my quick read they make a valid distinction. The idea, in essence, is that while it is clear enough that what Israel is actually doing in the West Bank cannot be justified via the security framework of a belligerent occupation (indeed, it openly defies this framework) -- the settlement enterprise being the obvious example -- this doesn't mean that it's impossible in concept for Israel to do things in the Palestinian territories that would be consistent with a genuine military occupation. Israel and Palestine are still in a state of belligerency, and in such a context there likely will be causes where actions could be justified under the framework of a (genuine) military occupation. This probably has more salience in Gaza than in the West Bank, and it further ratifies a point I've made earlier -- that as horrible as the happenings are in Gaza, the West Bank if anything represents an easier case of Israeli injustice: the former at least nominally can be fitted into the framework of a military confrontation subject to a national right of self-defense, the latter appears to be a pure unadulterated land grab.

But it's worth emphasizing how little this matters. Several judges chastised the majority for not paying due heed to Israel's genuine security concerns. It's a fair shot, but the payoff is that even being attentive to these concerns would not actually change much (as evidenced by the fact that even the aforementioned "cluster" of judges ended up agreeing with the majority on all or nearly all substantive points). One can wholeheartedly agree that Israel has valid self-defense rights that are operative in the Palestinian territories, and nonetheless conclude "but there are a host of Israeli actions in the West Bank that have nothing to do with security; it's about taking over territory" (indeed, the fact that recognizing the security concerns would have been more or less "free" does, arguably, validate the Israeli suspicion that the ICJ majority genuinely doesn't care about them -- they do not downplay Israel's security needs as a necessary component of their legal analysis, but rather wholly gratuitously).

Once again, the settlements are central to the point: one can wholeheartedly acknowledge that Israel has a raft of genuine security concerns vis-a-vis the Palestinian territories, and still easily come to the conclusion that the settlements evidence an orientation towards those territories that is acquisitive in character. After all, does anyone truly believe that the settlements are a security measure, as opposed to what they manifestly appear to be on face: an effort to establish Israeli civilian control over new swaths of territory? Once in a blue moon one hears the argument (something about setting a "buffer"), but any jurist would be fully justified in dismissing it as specious; and in any event it is a tactic decisively forbidden by the international legal framework that recognizes many other ways in which an occupying power can entrench its security (just not via the transfer of its civilian population into the occupied territory).

Over and over again, we return to the same point: it's all about the settlements. It is the settlements that show Israel doesn't view its occupation as temporary; it is the settlements that demonstrate the unequal treatment of the two civilian populations that reside in the Palestinian territories; it is the settlements that falsify the notion that the deprivation of Palestine's self-determination rights is solely attributable to the regrettable necessities of ongoing military belligerency. The settlements are the problem. Saying that doesn't make figuring out what to do about them any clearer -- if anything, the deep ties the settlement enterprise has to the "regular" Israeli state only accentuates the magnitude of the crisis -- but nonetheless: the settlements are what makes this entire machine run. I don't know what the Israeli/Palestinian conflict would look like if there were no settlements, but it would look different and would and should be treated differently under international law.

There are many facets of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which are "complicated", which raise difficult questions of security versus self-determination, where compelling but seemingly irreconcilable national narratives stand at an impasse. But the settlements are simple. They are not annexes of a military occupation, justified by an ongoing state of belligerency. They are an attempt by Israel to exercise permanent control over territories it acquired by force, in defiance of clear international legal rules that prohibit exactly that. One can quibble around the edges of bits and pieces of the ICJ's ruling. But the core conclusion that the settlement project is not part of a military belligerency but an effort by Israel to establish indefinite control over Palestinian territories under a separate and unequal legal regime is to my mind impossible to gainsay.

The ICJ's decision is a bitter pill for many friends of Israel to swallow. But if there is one bit of solace they can take, it lies once again in recognizing the true significance of occupation -- it presupposes two states, both of which have unquestionable legitimacy and a right to exist in their own sphere, neither of which has the right to displace the other. Israel has no right to settlements in Palestinian territories, but Israel in its pre-1967 borders is neither a settlement nor a colony: it is a validated member of the community of nations, whose existence is exactly as sacrosanct as any other country, Palestine included. In his separate opinion, ICJ President Nawaf Salam observed this reciprocity: the entirety of the international legal framework which governs this opinion, including the notion that Palestine is being unlawfully occupied by Israel, is based on the original UN partition resolution in 1948 which "provided for the creation of two independent states on the territory of Palestine, one Arab and the other Jewish."

It was on the basis of [this] resolution ... that both Israel and Palestine proclaimed their existence.... This resolution forms a whole, whose terms must be read together and inseparably. In other words, neither Israel nor Palestine can claim to derive rights from the resolution while rejecting or ignoring the rights of the other party enshrined in the same text.

Emphasis added. The same commitment to self-determination that validated the creation of a Jewish state in Israel demands acknowledgment of the Palestinians' right to their own state. And vice versa. Those who indulge in nightmarish fantasies of the expulsion and extirpation of Israel-qua-Israel, who see the entirety of Israel as an "occupation" and the entirety of the land as Palestinian by right, are not implementing today's decision, they are flouting it.

The ICJ's opinion is a historic victory for the cause of Palestinian independence. But -- or, in my preference, and -- it continues to insist that the legal grounding for both Palestinian and Israeli liberation depends on, and cannot be separated from, parallel recognition of the other. In this critical -- albeit sure to be overlooked point -- the ICJ's decision is emphatic and unimpeachable in holding that freeing Palestine not only need not, but must not, take the form of replacing, displacing, or otherwise eliminating the state of Israel.

Giving In to Fascism

"We have to fight the impatience with the pace of change that makes us look nostalgically on the days of the Empire. Yes, there might have been a bit more food available. Yes, power outages might have been fewer. Yes, you might have been insulated from the misery of others--but at what cost? The security you thought you had froze into an icy lump of fear in your gut whenever you saw stormtroopers walking in your direction. With the liberation of Coruscant that fear can melt, but if you forget it once existed and decide things were not so bad under the Emperor, you'll be well on your way to inviting it back."

-- Wedge Antilles, "X-Wing: The Krytos Trap" 

I've been reflecting on why it is that so many Americans are so willing to just accept the return of the thuggish brand of fascist authoritarianism embodied by Donald Trump. Of course, the answer for some is "because they're excited about it!" But a substantial portion of persons who are considering voting for Trump, or are going to sit out voting against him, don't seem enthusiastic about it. They bemoan the "incivility", they look askance on the targeting of minorities, they wish politicians would focus on "solving problems" rather than political stunts. They really, truly, don't seem to like the political world Donald Trump has wrought and promises to further entrench. And yet, they seem resigned to, if not accommodating towards, a man who epitomizes crass bluster, chauvinistic bigotry, and theatrical grandstanding. Why?

I always thought the Wedge Antilles quote above (like everything about Wedge) was helpful (though it actually gives Trumpism too much credit -- we don't have less food, or more power outages, or any thing of the sort, under Biden compared to Trump. Overwhelmingly, life is better on most tangible metrics for most regular Americans under Biden than Trump!). With even a little distance, the terribleness of living under Trump fades -- everyone reading this, by definition, survived it -- while the stresses of the present loom larger. Eventually, it all starts blending together: yeah, things weren't great then, but on the other hand, things aren't great now either. What's the difference? Why stress? This, incidentally, is why I deeply and fervently believe that all "both parties are the same!" caterwauling is inherently a handmaiden of fascism. Arendt's core insight that the origins of totalitarianism lie not in people believing lies, but becoming indifferent towards lying (because after all, don't all politicians lie?), looms large here. The two parties are not the same, and pretending like they are is a huge part of the permission structure that lets people accommodate themselves to the likes of Donald Trump.

Another part of the answer is exhaustion. Trumpism requires responsible citizens to be "on" far more frequently than many are used to, locked in a pitched struggle of the highest stakes. As a polity, we literally fought off an insurrection attempt, and by a narrower margin than any would care to admit -- the inability to impose any tangible consequences on the ringleaders, and the soaring political fortunes of the cheerleaders -- bodes exceptionally poorly for the inevitable next attempt. And just a few years after we barely managed to scrape by hanging on to the most basic feature of American democracy -- the winner of the election taking office -- we're faced with having to do that pitched battle all over again? People are tired. They need a break, and Trumpism refuses to give them one. In this context, it is easy -- even, at some level, understandable -- that some would rather just surrender and take their chances. The specter of the loss of democracy feels terrifying, but it's a lot more terrifying if you care about democracy. If you just decide ... not to care anymore -- to resign yourself to the possibility that we'll devolve into a semi-authoritarian quasi-democracy, and preemptively agree that it isn't great but also not the worst thing in the world -- well, isn't that soothing? Isn't that, in its way, a coping mechanism?

One of the mantras of the anti-authoritarian playbook is "don't obey in advance," and while this isn't exactly what's being referred to, it's related. The looming vision of authoritarianism feels so awful, and so terrifying, that we mentally accommodate it in advance -- figure out how we're going to be okay and okay with it. And doing that necessarily and by design eases the path to giving in -- what once may have seemed awful and terrifying, now is merged into the ordinary bumps and travails that afflict all of us in life. It's not that it's good, it's that it's a regular bad, of a kind and category of the bads we're experiencing now, so why subject ourselves to all this extra stress?

And on that note, it has to be said -- and this will be controversial -- that for many of us, life under authoritarianism will go on roughly as normal. This is another point many have harped on: that even under conditions most of us would recognize as dictatorial, people still go to work, have babies, take vacations, hang out with friends, make memories, and so on. Ordinary people live ordinary lives. They may feel that so long as they keep their heads down and don't make waves, they'll be largely left alone -- and more often than not, they'll be right. Even in the most repressive authoritarian states, most people aren't imprisoned, most people aren't executed, most people aren't blacklisted. Most people live a life. The image of the 1984 hellscape does a lot more harm than good.

Now certainly, not everyone fits under the "many" -- there are plenty of people who are most certainly not part of the herrenvolk, who know full well that "keeping their heads down" won't be enough. They are the open and explicit targets of the ascendant authoritarian impulse, and don't have the luxury to play make-believe. For those of us who are not in that category, the question is whether we care enough about our friends and neighbors who are to say "it doesn't matter that I might be able to 'chance it', because democracy is a collective project and they matter to me too."

Yet even for those who do seem to be squarely in the realm of the targets, I would bet that there is more denialism than one might expect. I suspect that many German Jews in the early 1930s, while certainly not thrilled at the rise of Hitler, assumed that "he isn't talking about us." He's looking for the rabble-rousers, the radicals, the resistance. We're just regular people; we're not troubling anyone. And so long as we don't trouble anyone, why would anyone trouble us? Once again, there's that notion that we can just make ourselves "fine" by just deciding that we will be fine. It's a lie -- the security we thought we had turns into an icy lump of fear in our gut the moment that the newly-empowered fascist state turns its eye in our direction -- but pretending it's true lets us temporarily paper over the gnawing anxiety of the present.

So this is part of what we're fighting against -- the notion that it's exhausting and scary and immiserating to fight, and if we just give in and stop resisting we can stop feeling this way, is intoxicating. It'd be so easy to just give up. How do we turn back that tide? I'm not sure. But it needs to happen.

"Us Too-ism" Turns Off the Normies

You may have heard that a group of Columbia University administrators were sacked after someone posted screenshots of text messages where they were snarking at a panel on campus antisemitism they were in the audience for.

When that story broke, I was (and largely remain) of two minds on this. On the one hand, all of us have snarky texts that ripped out of context probably look pretty bad -- this sort of policing really doesn't end well for anyone. On the other hand, university administrators have a pretty grim reputation right now of treating antisemitism claims as trivial annoyances by bad faith actors, and these messages fit into that paradigm. There's a fundamental trust problem: many Jews do not trust that Columbia administrators are interested in seriously tackling antisemitism, and see these texts as verifying that disdainful dismissal; many academics do not trust Columbia's leadership to respond to antisemitism complaints with anything but reflexive brute force, and see this response as yet more kowtowing to an unappeasable media feeding frenzy. Both camps, in all honesty, have reasons for their mistrust.

But that's not what I what to concentrate on here, exactly. Rather, I want to take stock of one response in particular -- that of Kevin Drum. I'm a longtime fan of Drum's writing, which I think is a good exemplar of reasonably thoughtful and well-informed center-left "normie" politics. Seeing how he was responding to Israel's Gaza campaign was a good barometer of what people not in the hothouse of terminally-online left politics were thinking; in particular, it suggested that the belief that the current Israeli government is a fundamentally bad actor is not one confined to the "usual suspects" on the far-left.

In any event, one component of the Columbia controversy was the claim that the administrators themselves indulged in an antisemitic "trope" -- the suggestion that the panelists were hyping up instances of antisemitism as a "fundraising" opportunity allegedly feeding into claims about Jewish greed and/or perfidy. To this, Drum gave the textual equivalent of a giant eyeroll. He explained that he's long been suspicious of the word "tropes", which he said "in practice [is] used exclusively to imply someone has said something vaguely offensive without having the receipts." And this case, for him, fell squarely into that category:

I took a look at these text messages a couple of weeks ago and came away believing there wasn't much there. Since then the entire text conversation has been released, but it doesn't change things. During a panel discussion about antisemitism, the three deans in question shared private texts that you could fairly describe as snarky or irreverent. But that's about it.

To the Columbia administration, however, which was under siege from outraged alumni demanding that the three deans (plus a fourth) be fired immediately, the texts conveyed "a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community."

This is precisely backward. What the deans did was fail to show unconditional earnestness and obeisance toward every last grievance lodged by a particular community, no matter how ridiculous or overstated. This is apparently the price of admission to progressive society these days.

This whole thing is bonkers. The grievances of specific communities deserve to be given fair consideration, but they don't automatically demand absolute deference. In this case, the deans privately exhibited moderate skepticism toward a few of the claims from the panelists, some of it expressed a little bit caustically. None of it could reasonably be called antisemitic, and at most they deserve a verbal reprimand. Instead they're all out of jobs.

Drum thinks that antisemitism allegations here are thin gruel. Maybe you disagree. But one argument I've often heard, as against the claim that Columbia is overreacting here, is to say in essence "maybe so, but that ship has sailed -- every other group gets this sort of response when they claim to be the victims of discrimination, so it's only right that we the Jews do too." It's a version of what I've termed "us too-ism", and I've already outlined many of its pitfalls, not the least of which is the fact that the perception of what "every other group gets" is often not matched by reality. 

But Drum's reaction illuminates yet another problem: for many of the people who do perceive that this is what colleges "normally" do, they don't view that as a good thing. They view it as a bad, toxic practice they at best generally roll their eyes at. Indeed, I suspect most of the "normie" center-leftish Jewish commentators take that general perspective: when we're not talking about antisemitism, they view this sort of heavy-handed administrative response as indicative of wokeness gone wild, which is why when we are talking about antisemitism they defend similar behavior not on its own merits but rather via the us-too bank shot of "well, it's what everyone else gets." The problem is that when non-Jewish normies see this happening, they don't think "aha -- now the chickens have come home to roost, for the Jews also get to claim this bounty!" They think "oh great, yet another instance of overzealous activists peddling a grievance scoring one for cancel culture," and just slot Jews and anti-antisemitism politics into their mental category of "minorities who face some genuine discrimination but are taking things too far."

Again, all of this is aside from whether Drum is right "on the merits" to dismiss the antisemitism angle here. The point, rather, is to emphasize yet another problem with the "us too" argument -- more often than not, its reception outside the Jewish community is not going to be "well, fair is fair"; it's going to be to associate Jews with whatever malformed and exaggerated perception of identity politics gone wild already prevails within the broader public. It still might be a hit worth taking if one genuinely can defend the practices and arguments in question on their own merits, without relying on the crutch of what other groups are imagined to get. But if one's main basis for trying to draw blood is simply the "us too" entitlement, then it's definitely a fool's errand.

The Corbynification of the GOP Continues

Just before the 2022 midterms, I wrote a column in Haaretz about the Corbynification of the U.S. Republican Party. For all the harping and wailing about the imminent rise of Corbyn-style politics amongst Democrats, it really was the GOP that displayed all of the worst qualities of Corbynism. In fact, I had been drawing Trump/Corbyn parallels as early as 2015! But seriously -- check out the overlap:

• Penchant for conspiracism? Check.
• Motivated by an endless abyss of grievance politics? Check.
• Base comprised of extremely online bigoted trolls? Check.
• Blind adoration of the One True Leader? Check.
• Major antisemitism problem? Check.

With the one unfortunate divergence that the American GOP is capable of winning elections, the commonalities are astounding.

Anyway, today's Labour Party has ousted Corbyn and is poised to absolutely curb-stomp the Conservative Party into oblivion, a result that could not fill me with more ecstatic delight. Meanwhile, a sitting Republican Congressman -- Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) -- just posted and deleted an antisemitic image ... one of the very same ones that Corbyn promoted and became a keynote example of his antisemitic bent.

Nothing like watching history's rhyming rhythm. Though the little trading places thing we're doing with the UK -- they get sensible center-left government, we get resurgent mainstream antisemitism and rule by the divine right of kings -- isn't exactly making for the greatest of July 4th celebrations.