Nikki Haley, Heroic Figure!

Now that she's back in private life, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is showing that principled advocacy and public dignity that set her apart from other Trump administration apparatchiks.

Here she is trying to act like complying with simple anti-corruption measures prohibiting public officials from using the office to gain private benefit was a deliberate Obama-led plot to target her and her Twitter feed.

And here she is, on her newly relaunched Twitter platform, giving fulsome praise to newly inaugurated Brazilian President Jair "I'm pro-torture" Bolsonaro. His first acts as President, unsurprisingly, were sweeping attacks on Brazil's gay community (he famously said he'd prefer his son die in a car accident than be gay) and indigenous populations. Human rights!

In conclusion, Nikki Haley is a fair-minded, principled advocate for the dignity of the least among us worldwide and one of the rare bright spots to come out of the Trump Administration.

Peer Review Stinks Roundup

Well, I've just had my ritual instance of early-academic peer review hazing. Grouch grouch grouch etc.. A roundup of things on my browser.

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Foreign Policy has an interesting story about how affirmative action programs work in Brazil. The story is primarily about the concept of "fraudulent" claims of blackness in a country where, on the one hand, most people identify as mixed-race, but on the other hand discrimination is less about "one-drop" ancestry and more focused on phenotype.

Israel appoints its first female Muslim diplomat. She will serve in Turkey.

The Atlanta Jewish Times writes on the racialized Jewish experience of Jews of color.

Lots of interesting data in this new ADL poll, including the perhaps surprising finding that a majority of American Muslims have positive views about Israel. Most Americans also think Donald Trump harbors racist, anti-Latino, and anti-Muslim views (only a minority think he holds antisemitic views), and while a bare majority of Americans are currently concerned about violence in the U.S. against Jews, over three-quarters of Americans are concerned about violence in the U.S. against Muslims.

The Trump administration's Syria policy has been pinballing wildly over the past few days. As I've stressed before, Syria is a complicated issue -- there is no obvious right move. But the fact that the Trump administration seems to just be lurching to and fro virtually at random is not reassuring.

Dayan Train(wreck) Pulls into New York

I've periodically commented on the saga of Dani Dayan, settler leader and vocal opponent of a two-state solution, whom we last saw as Bibi's nominee for ambassador to Brazil. The Brazilians were less than thrilled, viewing the appointment as a slap in the face to their own anti-settlement, pro-two state policies, and refused to accept the appointment. But, since the purpose of diplomats is to solve problems, not to create them, Bibi graciously agreed to withdraw Dayan's nomination dragged out the process for months and did potentially irreversible damage to Israel's standing in Latin America's largest country.

It seems we've finally gotten a resolution, with Dayan accepting a position as Israel's Consul-General in New York. Fortunately, his diplomatic instincts were on full display following the announcement:

Those who did not want me in Brasilia, capital of Brazil, will get me in New York, the capital of the world,

Classy. Fortunately, he followed that statement up with a promise to engage and dialogue with the full range of Jewish organizations and perspectives one can find in America's largest city. Unfortunately, he followed that up by calling J Street "Un-Jewish" and "anti-Israel,"  drawing immediate condemnation not just from J Street but also Ameinu. Such a fine start he's off to!

I still consider this probably a less damaging spot for Dayan than the Brasilia posting, but still -- thanks a lot Bibi. This is going to go great.

Bibi Narrowly Avoids Mature Response to Brazilian Diplomatic Imbroglio

A few months ago, I noted a brewing foreign policy disaster for Israel stemming from Bibi's selection of a prominent settler leader, Dani Dayon, to be Ambassador to Brazil. Brazil indicated that it would not accept the appointment, and as of the start of the year it looked like Israel had gotten the message and was withdrawing Dayon's nomination. It was seemingly the only mature response to yet another ridiculous unforced error by the Netanyahu administration, which has spent the last few years playing demolition derby with Israel's already-fragile standing in the global community.

Which makes it only appropriate to find out that this aforementioned mature response has apparently now been reversed. Instead, Bibi has reportedly informed Brazil that if they don't accept Dayon, they won't get an ambassador -- a de facto downgrading of relations with South America's largest nation. Who does this help? No one. Who does it hurt? Israel (Brazil will survive mostly unscathed, one suspects). What's the point of this? To protect the Israeli right's fragile ego? To bluster and fulminate and show that Israel won't be pushed around? Or just to demonstrate that Bibi has taken up the mantle of how Abba Eban once described Israel's Arab adversaries: he "never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Maybe He Just Likes a Challenge

Whatever one can say about his policy preferences (and I have nothing good to say about them), it's hard to argue that Bibi Netanyahu's foreign policy instincts are anything short of disastrous. Put aside entirely his catastrophic handling of the Iran nuclear deal debate (where he watched an international consensus against a nuclear Iran emerge and promptly enraged every single member of it). Let's just take the latest report out of South America, where Brazil is less than thrilled about who Bibi selected as their new Ambassador:

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has expressed discomfort with the appointment of a former settler leader as Israel’s ambassador to her country.

Rousseff sent a backchannel message to Israel with her concerns that accepting Dani Dayan will signal “support for the settlement enterprise,” the Hebrew-language news website Ynet reported Sunday.

An official Brazilian refusal to accept the appointment could spark a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, according to Ynet. The rejection of an ambassador is rare.

What on earth was he thinking? "Hey, South America is an important area of engagement for Israel as it seeks to solidify its international standing. But it's clear that South American countries are sharply anti-occupation -- Brazil, for example, recognized Palestine in 2010. Who is best suited to manage this critical yet delicate situation? I know -- a high-profile leader of a settlement enterprise loathed by the people he's reaching out to!"

It's almost as if, with Avigdor Lieberman no longer in charge of the foreign ministry Bibi decided that someone had to jump in the role of completely unaware self-sabatoeur.

NAACP v. Alabama Comes to Brazil

Citing a freedom of information request by local pro-Palestinian groups, a Brazilian dean is seeking to compile a list of all Israelis on his campus. His distributed flyer seeks "urgent dispatch of information on the possible presence of Israeli students or teachers". Jewish groups on campus have condemned the request as "a clearly discriminatory measure, done by a high-ranking official in the federal education system, and it should be dealt with the severity it merits." They contend it was incitement to illegal racial, ethnic, and/or national origin discrimination. My immediate thought was that, if the Dean gets in his list, will he wave it dramatically while declaring how "he has in his hand ...."?

That said, I have, obviously, no knowledge regarding the scope of Brazil's freedom of information rules or its relevant understanding of anti-discrimination law. I am struck nonetheless by its similarity to the landmark American case of NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958). That case involved the state of Alabama, in the course of a legal dispute with the NAACP, seeking to compel the latter to produce its membership lists inside the state. The NAACP refused, claiming that the request would hamper its freedom of association rights.

NAACP was a scenario where abstract principles foundered on the reef of a concrete case. In the abstract, disclosure of information doesn't seem to be particularly scary (for example, much of campaign finance reform centers around requiring various groups and candidates to disclose their donors). But everyone knows why Alabama in 1958 wanted a list of local NAACP members, and those reasons were not salutary. The disclosure demand was part and parcel of a larger campaign of intimidation and suppression, and often violence, directed against civil rights activists in the state. And so the Court wrote:

It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as the forms of governmental action in the cases above were thought likely to produce upon the particular constitutional rights there involved. This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations. When referring to the varied forms of governmental action which might interfere with freedom of assembly, it said in American Communications Assn. v. Douds: "A requirement that adherents of particular religious faiths or political parties wear identifying arm-bands, for example, is obviously of this nature." Compelled disclosure of membership in an organization engaged in advocacy of particular beliefs is of the same order. Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.

The Court also addressed the counterargument that any violence or intimidation that ensued from its order would not be on their heads, but rather on the "private" citizens whose behavior obviously could not be attributed to the state:

It is not sufficient to answer, as the State does here, that whatever repressive effect compulsory disclosure of names of petitioner's members may have upon participation by Alabama citizens in petitioner's activities follows not from state action but from private community pressures. The crucial factor is the interplay of governmental and private action, for it is only after the initial exertion of state power represented by the production order that private action takes hold.

This is essentially the same case wherein public and private action intersect in pursuit of intimidation. "Freedom of information" is a laudable goal, but in this context it is incompatible with associational rights of marginalized minorities at significant risk of public and private harassment -- which, like in NAACP, everybody knows is the real goal of the request.