Nonnegotiables

A new group of Michigan Jews has released what they call a list of "nonnegotiables" they're demanding out of Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed before they'll give him their support. This is nominally a different and unrelated group from those who are actively urging a vote for El-Sayed's Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, though to my mind the difference seems thin. In general, I think the absolute nicest thing one can say the people making these demands is that they are comparable to Muslim and Arab voters who either refused to vote for, or dragged their feet on supporting, Biden/Harris over Donald Trump because of their concerns about Israel/Palestine, and if you're like me that's not a very nice comparison at all.

Anyway, the letter's "nonnegotiables" are listed as follows:

• “Jewish safety — including for Zionist Jews — in Michigan and across America”; 
• “Our right to define our own Jewish identities”; 
• “Jewish sovereignty in Israel”; 
• “Welcoming our full participation in American political life”; and 
• “An affirmative vision for a better future in the Middle East.” 

One could do a line-by-line parsing of what these demands actually mean, but I think the best way to think about it is to envision what would happen if Abdul El-Sayed paired acceptance of these premises with a companion list of additional "nonnegotiables" which also must be accepted:

• “Palestinian safety — including for anti-Zionist Palestinians — in Michigan and across America”; 
• “Our right to define our own Palestinian identities”; 
• “Palestinian sovereignty in Palestine”; 
• “Welcoming our full participation in American political life”; and 
• “An affirmative vision for a better future in the Middle East.”

Now, to be clear, I am not suggesting that the El-Sayed campaign respond to this petition with this companion list. Such a response would undoubtedly be viewed as inflammatory and a provocation. But that itself is revealing -- why would this be viewed as a provocation? More broadly, what can we learn from the likely response to this hypothetical initiative?

Well, for one, the last bullet point is vague to the point of meaninglessness. If it is meant to be a palette cleanser demonstrating that this is not just about punching left, it doesn't work. And most of the other bullet points lie in that interstitial space where either they're banal and obviously accepted by any mainstream Democrat (of course nobody should be subjected to violence due to their identity) or are trying to smuggle in considerable more controversial premises under the guise of the aforementioned banality (e.g., presenting certain forms of speech or political advocacy -- particularly condemnations of Israeli or Palestinian actors deemed overly harsh -- as a safety threat).

This is most obvious in the third bullet point. I have no doubt that a "nonnegotiable" demand to recognize "Palestinian sovereignty in Palestine" would be viewed as extraordinarily provocative by the signatories of this letter, because it at the very least raises the question "what counts as 'Palestine'?" Are we demanding one state from the river to the sea, the entirety of which must be under Palestinian rule? Or is this a two-state solution, with Palestine comprised of the West Bank and Gaza and existing alongside Israel -- in which case stating that the the former should have "Palestinian sovereignty" is perhaps simply a vindication of Palestinian's equal rights to national self-determination? But the thing is, that same ambiguity exists in "Jewish sovereignty in Israel", which also does not clearly delineate if we're talking about a Jewish majority in pre-67 Israel or also a right to rule over the West Bank and Gaza. The former is something that sits well within the norms of contemporary nation-states, the latter is a demand for formalized apartheid. That's a rather large gap, and so one can understand those who are skittish about issuing an unqualified endorsement without having certainty of what exactly is being endorsed. On this point, it is especially notable that while the letter stresses sovereignty as a "nonnegotiable", it does not speak of democracy at all; the only substantive mention of democracy is when it calls the vision of "'one democratic state' between the river and the sea, with 'equal rights for everyone'" a smokescreen for the destruction of Israel.

The reality is that, if these Jews can understand why they might hesitate before unequivocally signing on to supporting "Palestinian sovereignty in Palestine" as "nonnegotiable" -- even if they truly have no quarrel with a sovereign Palestinian state that sits side-by-side with Israel -- they should understand why an El-Sayed might insist on a bit more clarity regarding "Jewish sovereignty in Israel." I agree that there is nothing intrinsically objectionable that there exists a state with a Jewish majority and that one should not demand such a state's dismantlement simply because one thinks the exercise of Jewish self-determination is inherently illiberal. I also agree that there is something very objectionable about a state that may or may not have a Jewish majority permanently subjugating its Palestinian residents because it determines that granting them equal citizenship and voting rights would mean that Jews no longer would exercise "sovereignty." And while it's true that the former position viewing the very existence of a Jewish-majority state in any context as abominable has very real supporters, it's also true that the latter position asserting an entitlement to permanently subjugate and dispossess Palestinians if necessary to vindicate "Jewish sovereignty" ("from the river to the sea") has no small share of backers in the current Israeli government, to say nothing of those abroad. So what, exactly, are we talking about?

In concept, I think El-Sayed's stated opposition to "ethnostates" is a perfectly valid way of parsing the difference: there is nothing wrong with there being an Israel so long as it adheres to the basic demands of liberal democratic equality -- which certainly does not necessarily impugn the existence of a nation with a Jewish majority or even a Jewish national identity, but does impose a set of basic commitments regarding equal voting and citizenship rights -- and this is the same standard we should assess any other nation by (not objecting to Japan or Ireland or Egypt having a particular national identity, but very much objecting if they permanently withhold full voting rights from certain ethnic groups in order to maintain that identity). But unfortunately, this is an area where the letter writers seem determined not to take "yes" for an answer, lashing out at "cleverly worded arguments" on the subject of "Jewish sovereignty", which here seems to be an elbow thrown precisely against people who validly ask the "what exactly are we talking about" question.

So that's my ultimate read. Is this letter being issued in good faith? My answer to that is to ask whether the letter-writers would endorse without qualification the parallel list of "nonnegotiables" I listed above. If they would, then I think these demands are valid ones. If not (and again, not because they necessarily "oppose" the demand, but because they think there are areas of ambiguity or blurriness that need clarification) then I think that same grace should be extended here -- but the tenor of "nonnegotiable" strongly suggests that such grace will not be forthcoming, and that asking for said grace and clarification would instead be dismissed as another "cleverly worded argument" meant to disguise one's bigotry.

Chicken Soup for the Zionist Infiltrator Soul, Part II

The left-wing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a major ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has unveiled a plan to combat hate and keep Jews and other minorities safe that doesn't rely on policing or traditional securitization measures. This is a project a long time in development by JFREJ, of course, flows from and follows on a larger philosophical skepticism many leftists have towards the police -- arguing that the reliance on guns and fortresses and policing is both ethically suspect and discriminatory against other groups (including Jews of color) for whom the police are not a force for safety but for threat).

The report has quite a few layers, but the basic idea behind it is familiar enough -- invest in cross-community engagement projects that undermine hate at its roots.

The report calls for investment in “intergroup collaborative projects” that would foster connections across lines of difference, overseen by district-based or community-based program managers. 

“From renovating a playground, to operating a soup kitchen, to tenant organizing, to planning a street fair, we should look at many local activities as potential sites of intergroup relationship building,” the report reads.

I'm not hostile to this approach. I think these interventions are, by and large, welcome. I will repeat a point I've made before, which is that in the short-term these proposals cannot replace but must coexist with more traditional securitization measures. Even at their most optimistic, programs like this stop antisemitic violence by shriveling antisemitic attitudes. But they have little to offer in terms of actually materially obstructing someone who does commit to make an attack. Had Temple Israel in Michigan adopted JFREJ's preferred approach a week before the attempted attack on its preschool, the result would have been a lot more dead Jewish preschoolers. (By contrast, the Colleyville case was an example of "all of the above" -- the synagogue both credited "traditional" police collaborations as directly saving lives when it came under attack, and credited its entrenched history of cross-community engagement for redounding in genuine solidarity and support in the attack's aftermath). Where proposals like this are framed as immediate replacements for the police, or worse, are presented as justifications for blaming Jews who do still think more traditional policing measures are necessary, they have the potential to do immense harm rather than good.

But the larger point I want to make is this: if JFREJ is serious about this as the preferred approach for undermining hate, then it has to take aim at "anti-normalization" politics. The latter is a direct threat to the former. One cannot simultaneously talk up the importance of "intergroup relationship building" as a means of undermining hate and then turn around and justify kicking the Israeli vendor out of the food festival because it's colonialist and thievery and an attempt to whitewash Zionist crimes. "Anti-normalization" campaigns are nothing other efforts to strangle potential nodes of cross-community engagement and collaboration, precisely because permitting them to go forward risks muddying up attitudes of uncompromising antagonism and humanizing the enemy population. Indeed, the very example JFREJ offers of collaborating on a soup kitchen together -- that was used by prominent anti-Zionist (and antisemitic) activist David Miller as an example of perfidious Zionist infiltration that must be opposed at all costs!

Of course Israel have sent people in to target that, to deal with that. Particularly through interfaith work … pretending Jews and Muslims working together will be an apolitical way of countering racism. No, it’s a Trojan horse for normalising Zionism in the Muslim community. We saw it in East London Mosque for example, where East London Mosque unknowingly held this project of making chicken soup with Jewish and Muslim communities coming together. This is an Israel-backed project for normalising Zionism in the Muslim communities.

Again, this isn't to say JFREJ's proposal is bad. It is to say there is an active political movement that actively opposes programs like this from the left. They present these "collaborative projects" as collaborationism; they focus their energy not on extending solidarity but on compulsory abandonment. To the extent these groups still mouth the words of solidarity, it is solidarity not as an offer but as a threat: "'safety through solidarity' -- or else."

My read on JFREJ is that they are not among the anti-normalizers, but also that they are reluctant to present the anti-normalizers as antagonists. They'd rather not talk about anti-normalizers at all; they vastly prefer their enemies to be among the traditional establishment. But to be honest -- that's a them-problem. Not every element of a campaign to combat hate will be as fun for JFREJ as explaining why the police suck. If this proposal is going to be taken seriously, then its proponents have to demonstrate that they're seriously committed to it even when it means calling out problematic figures on their own side of the fence. Does JFREJ have the stones to do that? I'm not sure. We'll see. I think there's a decent chance they get evasive and try to weasel out of taking a stand. But I hope I'm wrong about that, because I do think that their proposal is serious enough that it deserves serious advocates in turn.

Solidarity Shouldn't Look Like This

Like many of you, I woke up this morning to the horrible news of a mass shooting at a Channukah celebration in Sydney, Australia.

Like many of you, I also quickly saw footage of a man who threw himself at one of the gunmen and successfully disarmed him, saving countless lives.

I've seen countless posts lauding this man, Ahmed al Ahmed, as a hero and a model for what solidarity should look like between Jews and Muslims or Arabs.

Ahmed is absolutely a hero. But he is most certainly not my model for what solidarity should look like.

Solidarity should not look like men throwing themselves at active shooters.

Solidarity should not look like people putting their bodies in front of government thugs trying to impose a racist ban on a minority religion or ethnicity.

Solidarity should not look like synagogues and mosques swapping strategies regarding how to "harden the target".

Solidarity should not look like a taxi driver evacuating terrified survivors from the scene of an ongoing massacre.

Solidarity should not look like desperately working the phones to try and rescue a family buried under the rubble of their own house after it was hit by a tank shell.

Solidarity shouldn't look like that, because none of those things should happen.

You want to know what my model of solidarity is?

It's a new arrival in town asking where they can find Halal food, and being pointed to the excellent Kosher market down the street.

It's two neighbors snickering over the well-meaning lady next door who somehow gives a different wrong pronunciation of both of their names, every time.

It's the synagogue and the mosque sharing a parking lot.

It's bonding over the common elements of shared cuisine, and bonding over trying unfamiliar elements of different cuisine.

I understand why, in the wake of unfathomable tragedy, a story like Ahmed's provides a flicker of hope in a dark time. And make no mistake - he is a hero. But I don't want more Ahmed al Ahmeds because I don't want more situations where that sort of heroism is required. It is a tragedy that our vision of solidarity -- of ideal solidarity -- is tempered through atrocities that never should happen in the first place. That should be a depressing thought. The subtext -- elevating Ahmed's story and the narrative of solidarity as a hedge against those who wish to inspire an Islamophobic and racist backlash -- is also depressing. I'm not saying it isn't necessary or it's wrong -- I'm saying it's depressing, and our model of solidarity should envision something that is greater precisely because it is more mundane.

The solidarity we should aspire to is not the extraordinary work of extraordinary individuals in times of crisis. It is rather the ordinary, everyday work of making friends, creating love, building connections, being neighborly. No crisis, just communities enmeshed in bonds of caring.

That's what solidarity should look like.

"... But They're Doing Great" at UW

The University of Washington has just released a joint task force report on antisemitism and Islamophobia on its campus. I haven't read it cover-to-cover, but I have looked it over, and it seems to be an excellent and thoughtful report on an obviously touchy subject, for which the authors deserve kudos.*

There's a lot of interesting data to sift through, but there was one chart in particular that stood out to me, and not in a good way.

For those who can't read the chart, it asks a set of affected campus constituencies (e.g., Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims) how they assess the campus climate for themselves and all the other groups. The results were basically that each group said "things are awful for us and ours, but they're doing great!" So, for instance, when Israelis were asked this question, they overwhelmingly reported a hostile campus climate for Israelis and Jews, but generally reported that the campus was comfortable for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims, and Palestinians. Palestinian respondents reported the opposite -- they thought the campus climate was swell for Israelis and Jews, and terrible for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims and Palestinians.

I'll leave aside the first half of the equation ("things are awful for us") for now, though it's bad enough. One could I guess try to contest it if one wanted to, but I see little reason to doubt that the relevant communities are accurately reporting their own experiences in what has almost universally been characterized as a very rough year. But for the latter half of the finding ("... they're doing great") the polarization in responses is especially disturbing. 

The best case explanation I can think of is a failure of empathic imagination. Over many years, I've observed variations of this phenomenon where one's own lived experience of hurt and marginalization is paired with a decided conviction that everybody else is getting life fed to them on a silver platter. This certainly is part of my story around "Us Too-ism" -- everybody else supposedly can get a hostile speaker canceled at the first sign of discomfort, so why not us too? -- but it long predates it. Eight years ago I was writing about circumstances at Oberlin where both Jewish and Black students contrasted tepid community responses to discrimination targeting them with what they saw as "hypervigilant" reactions enjoyed by the other. That post in turn referenced a post almost ten years before that about the "pane of glass" which is obvious to someone standing in one position and invisible to their neighbor looking from a different vantage. We're all able to see the pane of glass standing as an obstacle in front of us, while blind to the pane of glass similarly blocking our neighbor.

And so, perhaps, at UW. The Jewish and Israeli students feel lonely and isolated. They look over at the encampments and the teach-ins and the flag-wavings and think "how lucky they have it -- clearly, the community has their backs when they cry out." The Muslim and Arab and Palestinians students, meanwhile, feel hyperscrutinized and overpoliced. They observe the congressional hearings and the discipline meted out to protesters and think "how lucky they have it -- look how responsive the powers-that-be are to them when they claim injury!" Both groups feel as if they're walking on eggshells, both feel that the tremendous stress and strain they are under is being ignored. In concept, this shared vulnerability could be a vector for solidarity and compassion -- these feelings are commonalities, not distinctions. But the problem is this shared vulnerability isn't perceived as shared at all, but rather unique, and that further entrenches the feeling of loneliness.

And this, as I said, is what I'd consider the best case scenario. Another explanation for the polarized responses is that we're seeing, not a failure of imagination, but a motivated refusal to acknowledge the vulnerability of the "other side", in favor of a constructed image where their power can be contrasted with our weakness. I would not be the first to observe that there is a strand of contemporary politics that aggressively valorizes weakness and vulnerability as its own justification for political solidarity. Though sometimes identified with the identity politics left, there's actually no intrinsic political cadence to this -- the right makes this move all the time. Who can forget when Breitbart, playing off investigations into "Big Oil" or "Big Pharma", created an entire subsection of his website dedicated to resisting the overawing power of "Big Peace"(!)? And of course, the contemporary right contains no shortage of claims that it stands against the elites, the powerful, the globalist cabal -- all attempts to claim the mantle of weakness against the evils of strength.

The true cynic would point to this politics to explain why each group is so emphatic about its own vulnerability -- it wants to stay on the right side of the empathy line. As I said, I don't think one needs to go that far -- I think it is more than likely that each group is accurately recounting its own experiences about itself. The point is, though, that where vulnerability (or at least the perception thereof) is a political resource, it can become a strategic imperative to deny it to one's competitors. Acknowledging that a given community -- Jews and Israelis, or Palestinians and Muslims -- are in a vulnerable state means acknowledging them as valid subjects of empathic concern and legitimating some flow of solidaristic political resources in that direction. Denying that acknowledgment can obstruct that flow, and better maintain an asymmetry in who is worthy of care and concern. Even in circumstances where antagonism isn't that overt, where resources of care and concern are assumed to be scarce, there still will be the temptation to withhold that acknowledgment and try to direct the flow to oneself.

The reason why this is worse that the first explanation is that it isn't something that can be resolved just by expanded imaginative capacities. Again, it speaks to a motivated refusal to recognize the aforementioned joint vulnerability. It's not just ignorance, there are reasons behind it. The work of overcoming this refusal to extend empathy means, in a very real sense, insisting on sharing a political resource that feels very much in short supply with a group that may in important respects feel like a rival. That is not an easy task, least of all in present climates.

Which is the true explanation? To be honest, I suspect there's a little of column A and a little of column B. That does give me a little hope, because I still believe -- justifiably or not -- that there are enough people who won't run away from their expanded empathic imagination such that, once they're peeled away from their more fundamentalist fellows, a new core of solidarity can emerge. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. But I don't see much of an alternative.

* I also read a critique of the report issued by a small group of Jewish UW stakeholders (I actually read the critique before the original document). I'm not a member of the UW community myself, and so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But to be perfectly honest I found the critique to be churlish, even petty, clearly partisan in its motivation, and ultimately not at all compelling. 

The overall theme of the critique was a contention that the report was intentionally suppressive of anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian Jewish viewpoints and so generated skewed conclusions. That contention was extremely weakly supported -- it seemed to me that the critics came in spoiling for a fight and made a series of tendentious or stretched inferences to justify picking one. For example, a single passing mention of the IHRA antisemitism definition (which the report said it "took into consideration along with other definitions", and then never mentioned again) inspired a veritable temper tantrum by the critics and a demand that the university instead adopt the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism as its preferred definition (ironic, since JDA at its inception insisted that it should not be used as a definition of antisemitism in official proceedings!). It also lambastes the report for "attacks" on DEI work, but there is no such attack -- the report actually recommends incorporating antisemitism education and training into existing DEI structures. One can contest the mechanisms through which that incorporation would occur, but this is not an "attack" in any sense -- so where on earth is this defensiveness coming from other than preloaded beliefs that reports such as this are presumptively part of an anti-DEI crusade?

Perhaps the most serious allegation contained in the critique is its speculation that the report authors skewed their focus groups toward pro-Israel identifying students. This is a very grave charge, but the critics give absolutely no concrete evidence to support it. Literally their only basis for making this claim was that "one focus group was held at UW Hillel (an organization with standards of partnership that explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel)." That and that alone was sufficient for the critics to assert with confidence that "We know" (we know!) "that whatever steps were taken were not sufficient" to ensure proper representational diversity.

This is absurd on a multitude of levels. First, the critic's position apparently is that an attempt to connect with the UW Jewish community should have a blanket policy of refusal to work with Hillel (again, their complaint is that one focus group was held there), which is an absolutely wild claim to make and utterly incompatible with actually trying to get a deep cross-section of the UW Jewish community. Second, it's simply false to say Hillel's partnership standards "explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel." The partnership standards aren't directed at students qua students to begin with, and they are a fair flight more specific than targeting those who are merely "critical of the state of Israel" -- an especially important distinction because the UW report is actually very good about recognizing the heterogeneity of Jewish views on Israel and expressly disaggregating those who are "critical of Israel" from those who are outright "anti-Israel" (in the sense of wanting Israel to cease its existence). At most, only the latter would find Hillel an exclusionary space, but the numbers suggest that this cadre is a small (though not non-existent) minority amongst Jewish students. 

Finally, and most damningly, the report clearly did speak to and incorporate the views of the anti-Israel minority. How do we know? Because the report (to its credit!) specifically delved into and devoted an entire section to experiences of marginalization by anti-Zionist Jews -- something one does not see every time one of these reports emerges but is absolutely appropriate given the subject matter. The report even says it included comments from "self-identified anti Zionist/anti-Israel Jews in proportion to their representation in the random sample of quotes provided to the task force co-chairs (18%)" -- that 18% figure is either equal to or if anything higher than (the report was fuzzy on this) the proportion of anti-Israel Jews in the UW Jewish community. Despite all of this effort, none of it is given any mention whatsoever in the critics' document. Perhaps they missed it. But it I think decisively belies the unsupported assertion that the report deliberately ignored the diversity of Jewish views on Israel at UW.

Ultimately, as someone who periodically does consulting work with university leaders on issues of antisemitism, I found this critique tremendously disheartening and frustrating. The report seemed unusually attentive to the diversity of views amongst Jews on matters relating to Israel, and seemed like a good faith attempt to accurately communicate the sentiments of the Jewish community as a whole. That even an effort like this was met with a response like that -- the near-reflexive at this point fuming about Zionist hegemony and suppression of dissident voices etc. etc. is, to be honest, a substantial deterrent in continuing that work forward. There's just no pleasing some people.

Announcing You're Going to Discriminate + Discriminating = Liability for Discrimination

When the Trump administration's Muslim ban was moving through the courts, there was the weird debate people were having about whether it was fair to use Donald Trump's explicit statements announcing a discriminatory motive for the ban as evidence that the ban was discriminatory. The debate was weird because in any other circumstance the answer is obvious -- of course it's evidence. It's close to dispositive evidence. That's how anti-discrimination law works.

For example, this past week the Eleventh Circuit decided the case of McCarthy v. City of Cordele. Here are the relevant facts:

Joshua Deriso campaigned for election as chairman of the City Commission of Cordele, Georgia, by publicly stating his intent to “replace Caucasian employees with African Americans”; to lead “an entirely African American” City Commission; and to replace Roland McCarthy, the white City Manager, with a black City Manager. On social media, Deriso declared, “Structure needs to change . . . More Blacks!!!”; “The new City Manager should be Black”; and “it is time for African Americans to run our city.” Deriso won the election. The same day he and fellow commissioners took their oaths of office, the Commission voted on racial lines to fire McCarthy and to replace him with a black City Manager.

"The question," the court continued, "is whether those allegations permit the inference that the City Commission fired McCarthy because he is white." They quite reasonably answered "yes". When you publicly campaign on "I am going to racially discriminate", and then you do exactly what you promised to do, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that what you've done is engage in racial discrimination. And that inference is valid notwithstanding the fact that under normal circumstances the city council has wide discretion in hiring or terminating its city manager. This is not hard.

There's no pay off here other than to reemphasize the lawless anomaly that was Trump v. Hawaii. The pass it gave to blatant, undisguised discrimination is completely at odds with the doctrine both before and after the case. Judges fully understand how senseless Trump's rule is in other cases (especially, one must observe, in cases of "reverse discrimination"). Indeed, while Trump v. Hawaii was under consideration I observed that in any remotely analogous circumstance involving "Smallsville, Anystate" the case is an absolute dunker as a clear and obvious legal violation. It is only Donald Trump who received and continues to receive these ridiculous one-offs as the Supreme Court's special favorite.

The Uncommitted Story

Last night, Joe Biden won the Michigan primary with approximately 81% of the vote. Donald Trump also won with 68% of the vote (you wouldn't necessarily clock that Trump did comparatively worse than Biden given the coverage, but that's hardly a surprise anymore). But while the foregone conclusion outcome isn't super interesting, many people have been keeping an eye on the relative performance of "uncommitted" in the Democratic column. 

For those of you who don't know, a campaign largely emanating from Michigan's substantial Arab and Muslim community urged Democratic primary voters to cast a ballot for "uncommitted" as a means of signaling discontent with President Biden's support for Israel in the war in Gaza. A few days ago, I registered my genuine curiosity regarding how "uncommitted" would play out in the Michigan Democratic primary. On the one hand, I said, I absolutely could see it "capturing genuine frustration amongst [Democratic] partisans (so getting substantial support)." On the other, I also could see it "mostly an online/activisty thing (so being a nothing burger come the actual vote tallies)." Since both hypotheses seemed plausible, I was genuinely interested to see what the reality would be.

Towards the start of the evening (with, as I recall, approximately 20% of the votes tallied), I wrote the following:

If “uncommitted” typically gets 10% and it holds at 16% (which it may not, in either direction), I’d say that’s not a huge performance (6% over baseline) but still meaningful given how tight MI will be. It’s not something that should be ignored; but neither is it “popular groundswell of rebellion”.

The "10%" baseline is based on the last analogous election where an incumbent Democrat was running -- Barack Obama in 2012. Ten percent (10.7%, to be precise) of Democratic voters then voted "uncommitted" despite there not being (to my knowledge) any significant organized campaign pushing for the vote, suggesting that this is baseline level of support for "uncommitted" that isn't attributable to anything more than inchoate background status quo discontent. Given that, my assessment was that getting an additional six percentage points of support is not trivial, but also isn't proof of some broad-based sentiments of frustration and opposition.

As I said, though, the tally was early and things might change in either direction over the course of the evening. I saw some people suggest that they expected the number to rise as the night went on, on the theory that "bluer" jurisdictions like cities were going to report later and the assumption that "uncommitted" voters would be more prevalent in those areas. But what ended up happening is that "uncommitted" faded over the course of the evening, finally settling at 13.2% -- about 2.5% over the baseline expectation (it's also below the 15% threshold necessary to pick up statewide delegates at the DNC, though it did get two delegates due to strong local performances).

From my vantage point, this really can't be said to be that impressive of a performance. It still matters in the sense that Michigan will likely be close and so every little bit counts. But ultimately, a well-organized campaign, with the support of some significant local Democratic figures (albeit opposition from many others) managing to overperform doing nothing by 2.5% really doesn't demonstrate much in the way of serious political muscle. I don't want to say the frustration that the "uncommitted" campaign is tapping into isn't real. But objectively speaking, it doesn't seem to be translating into significant alterations in Democratic voter behavior -- to that extent, it may be a largely cloistered thing. If I'm the Biden campaign, I'm certainly not ignoring this issue (for a variety of reasons, not the least being that its salience to activist, elite, and media cadres clearly punches above its weight, and then also because one wants to do the right thing and have a good policy that takes into account the views of all relevant stakeholders). But I think we've dispensed with the need for incipient panic.

That said, the "uncommitted" campaign did a wonderful job of setting expectations. The nice thing about a symbolic play like this is that since an objective win is obviously off the table (and not the realistic goal) pretty much anything can be sold as a victory. If you lose an actual election, you have to (well, I guess we've learned you don't have to) concede defeat. If you're not actually running to win but instead are just trying to trumpet your existence as a voting bloc, however, there's essentially no outcome where one has to "concede defeat". You will never see organizers release a statement to the effect of:

Our goal was to demonstrate that the people of Michigan care about X issue and that our values cannot be ignored. But given our anemic performance, the voters today have made clear that Michigan voters don't care about X at all and that we completely overestimated our influence. Thanks to everyone for taking part in this civic experiment, and we'll adjust our priors accordingly.

Here, the uncommitted organizers really basically set their bar on the floor -- they said their goal was to get 10,000 votes for "uncommitted", and they are celebrating for blowing past that tally. On the one hand, 10,000 is not a completely made-up figure -- it was roughly Donald Trump's margin of victory in 2016. On the other hand, in this primary 10,000 votes would have been barely over 1% of the total tally -- less than half of Dean Phillips' tally and a tenth of the Obama 2012 baseline. It is true that turnout is up considerably since 2012 (10.7% then was a little less than 21,000 votes; 13.2% in 2024 is over 100,000 votes) -- but it's hard to view that as bad news for Democrats.

The other observation I want to make relates to that prediction I saw that the "uncommitted" tally would rise as bluer, urban jurisdictions came in, when the reality was that "uncommitted" faded over the course of the evening. I wasn't following the returns closely enough to confirm whether the bluer areas were in fact reporting later. Assuming that they did, though, I think this is a good time to correct another common and understandable misapprehension: that the most partisan Democratic areas of a state are also necessarily the most progressive.

It's an understandable inference. In a two-party system, we might imagine that a voter who is only slightly left-of-center would regularly be at least tempted to vote GOP (given the "right" candidates), a voter who is more decisively liberal would be less likely to crossover, and the most liberal voter would also be the least likely to be tempted away to the other party. From that, we would infer that the most partisan Democratic voters (those least likely to ever vote Republican) are also the most progressive voters (there preferences are furthest away from those of Republicans).

But it isn't necessarily true. At one level, it's falsified by the presence of "both parties are the same" uber-leftists -- such persons may or may not be tempted to vote GOP, but they're obviously not Democratic partisans. The most partisan Democratic clusters are persons who are probably progressive enough not to be tempted by the GOP, but also not so left-wing that they find arguments like that appealing. But beyond that, there's more that goes into committed Democratic Party loyalty than ideological alignment. We know, for instance, that African-American voters are the most committed Democrats and that African-American Democrats are more likely to identify as moderate or conservative compared to White Democrats. There are other factors beyond ideology that are significantly responsible for why Black voters are Democratic loyalists. Likewise, the post 9/11 trend whereby Muslim voters overwhelmingly voted Democratic also was not primarily a feature of deep-seated ideological leftism -- it stemmed from "other factors" (i.e., rampant GOP Islamophobia) which superseded still-extant ideological moderation or even conservatism.

All of this is to say that the assumption that Black voters, because they are steadfast Democratic voters, also must sit on the left edge of the party on an ideological level, is a mistaken apprehension, and consequently the sorts of issues that are motivating the ideological left-edge of the party are not necessarily the same ones that motivate the base of the party. This isn't to say that the Democratic base is actually conservative; it's still probably true that it is relatively to the left of the average person who votes Democrat in any given November. It's just not all the way at the left-most edge of the party. That mistake, I suspect, is a large part of what generated the wrong assumption that "uncommitted" would perform substantially better in those locales.

For what it's worth, on a very quick gaze there doesn't seem to be much correlation between the Black vote and "uncommitted"; if anything, it seems to have underperformed. The overall Black population of Michigan is approximately 14%, and there are four counties which have proportionally larger Black populations than that: Wayne County (Detroit and Dearborn), Genesee County (Flint), Saginaw County (Saginaw), and Berrien County (St. Joseph) (Oakland County, north of Detroit, is exactly 14% Black).

Wayne County saw "uncommitted" get 16% -- but that's almost certainly more a product of Dearborn than Detroit (disaggregating those figures would be very interesting, but the fact that "uncommitted" outright won in Dearborn and Hamtramck, both of which are approximately half Arab-American, mathematically suggests it did much weaker numbers elsewhere in the county). By contrast, Genesee County, which contains Flint, saw "uncommitted" have one of its worst performances -- 9.5%. Saginaw County saw "uncommitted" get 10.2%, Berrien County 9.6%, and Oakland County 12.5%.

Plot "uncommitted" based on the most Democratic parts of the state (based on 2020 Democratic vote share), and things similarly look blurry at best. Joe Biden only won 11 counties in Michigan last time around. He won all of the above-mentioned counties except Berrien, plus Washtenaw (Ann Arbor), Ingham (Lansing), Kalamazoo (Kalamazoo), Kent (Grand Rapids), Muskegon (Muskegon), Leelanau (Traverse Bay), and Marquette (Marquette, on the upper peninsula). "Uncommitted" had possibly its best performance in the entire state in Washtenaw County, at 17.2% -- certainly a product of the University of Michigan community. And it did slightly better than its statewide average in Kent County (13.8%). But in every other county Joe Biden won, "uncommitted" underperformed its statewide average -- from 13.1% in Ingham to 9.1% in Saginaw. That said, the two counties "uncommitted" performed best in (Wayne and Washtenaw) are two of the heaviest Democratic hitters (along with Oakland) in terms of raw Democratic vote margins; the other counties listed, while won by Democrats, tend to be either smaller or closer (or both). 

So I'd say these results are mixed, and again, my advice to Biden isn't to just ignore this issue outright. Rather, it's to observe that the coalitional politics that drove the "uncommitted" movement are distinct from "the base" (and, in particular, Black voters). That's an important thing -- democracy is about appealing to diverse constituencies who have an array of distinct and differentiated interests, and this issue certainly had strong salience amongst Michigan's Arab and Muslim community, plus a fair amount of weight in the collegiate environs of Ann Arbor -- but it's not necessarily the same thing as it's been presented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let That Be a Lesson For You, Part II

Way back in 2009, I wrote about a case in the Netherlands where an Arab NGO was prosecuted for hate speech after publishing an article insinuating the Holocaust was exaggerated. The thing was, the NGO did not actually think the Holocaust was exaggerated -- rather, it was trying to draw attention a claimed double-standard after Dutch authorities had dropped hate speech charges against right-wing Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders for a film critics claimed insulted Muhammad. 

Drawing on entry #45 of advice for evil overlords ("I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say 'And here is the price for failure,' then suddenly turn and kill some random underling."), I observed that when a non-Jewish far-right extremist engages in hateful speech towards Muslims, the proper response -- even if one believes in tit-for-tat -- is not to turn and attack some random other minority group (here, Jews).

In the files of "all that's old is new again", a similar situation appears to be brewing in Sweden, where a Egyptian writer has postponed (but not cancelled) a planned "protest" of burning a Torah scroll in front of the Israeli embassy. Why is he burning a Torah scroll in front of the Israeli embassy? Because a far-right Danish journalist and politician (who is not Jewish) recently burned a Koran in front of the Turkish embassy. A hateful and despicable act, to be sure -- but why is the response to awful behavior by a right-wing, non-Jewish Dane to attack the Jewish community in front of the Israeli embassy? Burning a Christian Bible in front of the Danish embassy would not be justified, but at least it would have symmetry. But for some reason Jews are always the random bystander executed in situations like this.

I also want to emphasize that local Jewish community leaders credit the prevention of the Torah burning to Muslim leaders in Sweden speaking out against it. This "protester" is a hateful schmuck whose hate happens to illustrate a particular form of pathology I wanted to highlight. Fortunately, he's a hateful schmuck in the course of being repudiated, and that's a good thing.

Who's Defending Hamline?

By now, you've probably heard of the flare-up at Hamline University in Minnesota, where an adjunct professor of art history was dismissed following student complaints after she showed a historic painting that depicted the prophet Muhammad. Every account I've seen suggests that the professor presented the painting (which was created in Persia by a Muslim artist in the 14th century) in a respectful and sensitive fashion, including notifying students that it would be depicted in her syllabus and again before the start of the relevant class (and told students they were free to opt out of attending that session). Nonetheless, the college not only declined to renew her contract, they expressly accused her of "Islamophobia" and indicated that "academic freedom" should not have protected her ability to "harm" her student.

The decision to terminate the professor has been met with a firestorm of criticism (e.g.: FIRE, PEN America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Academic Freedom Alliance). I personally found this post by Jill Filipovic to be especially thoughtful. So far, though, the college has been emphatic in defending its decision.

On that note, however, one thing I've yet to see is any prominent figure defending Hamline. The closest I've seen is a local CAIR official who (at a university-sponsored forum) said that the lesson had "absolutely no benefit" and compared alternative Muslim perspectives on portraying Muhammad as akin to the existence of people who think "Hitler was good." I've also heard hearsay that some academic professional organizations have privately declined to speak out because many officers and/or members feel uncomfortable. But as far as public discourse goes, I've seen essentially nothing but wall-to-wall condemnation.

Indeed, the universality of the "Hamline got it wrong" position in some ways renders it impressive the degree to which the Hamline administration is sticking to its guns here. It is one thing to abandon principles of academic freedom under intense external pressure demanding censorship; it's another thing to abandon principles of academic freedom in the face of intense external pressure to abide by them. It does make me wonder if there are any unknown cross-currents of pressure that the college is responding to. It's not out of character for a university to make terrible, craven decisions, of course -- but it's a little out of character for a university to make terrible, brave decisions, which makes me think that there must be some point of leverage on the administration that they are succumbing to. Again, the prospect that these cross-currents exist doesn't at all excuse the college's actions here. If, for example, the decision to terminate the professor was widely popular amongst Hamline students (or groups that Hamline hopes to recruit students from), it would still be the case that the college had an obligation to stand up for the right principles. But at least that would be a normal, explicable failing.

But maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe the Hamline administrators are that ideologically committed to being thoughtlessly censorial. Or maybe there's a line of Hamline defenders I haven't seen. But as far as I can tell, virtually everyone (left right and center) is onboard with the view that Hamline fouled up. The last people to agree, it turns out, are the Hamline administrators.

AMP Presents: Chicken Soup for the Zionist Infiltrator Soul

Some of you are familiar with the name David Miller, a British academic widely denounced for antisemitic conspiracy mongering from his erstwhile perch at the University of Bristol. Perhaps the most notorious, if also darkly hilarious, entry into his antisemitism portfolio was when he denounced Jews and Muslims making chicken soup together as a "Trojan horse for normalizing Zionism."

Of course Israel have sent people in to target that, to deal with that. Particularly through interfaith work … pretending Jews and Muslims working together will be an apolitical way of countering racism. No, it’s a Trojan horse for normalising Zionism in the Muslim community. We saw it in East London Mosque for example, where East London Mosque unknowingly held this project of making chicken soup with Jewish and Muslim communities coming together. This is an Israel-backed project for normalising Zionism in the Muslim communities.

More than perhaps anything else, this subjected Miller to well-deserved mockery and scorn -- the poster child for "anti-Zionist" antisemitism taken to its fanatical extreme.

Now, the organization American Muslims for Palestine put out a position paper on when it is appropriate for Muslims to collaborate with Jews that pretty much crystallizes the Miller view into a policy document.

The title of the paper is "AMP's Report on Working with Zionist Organizations", but they are otherwise quite clear that this is actually a series of litmus tests for Jewish groups, specifically -- the opening line of the document is "This memo is intended to provide the American-Muslim community with a set of criteria by which to determine whether or not to work with various Jewish organizations." 

On that question, of whether Muslims should or should not work with Jewish organizations, the answer AMP gives can be summarized as "virtually never, with virtually none of them". It concludes with a literal good Jew/bad Jew list where the former includes JVP, IfNotNow, and a couple of organizations whose memberships effectively overlap entirely with JVP/IfNotNow, and the latter includes ... well, basically everyone else -- including the ADL, AJC, Hillel, local JCRCs, and local Jewish Federations. Also sitting in the "bad" category are most local synagogues, which the report characterizes as sitting in a "gray area" -- the vast majority should probably be avoided or at most handled with a Hazmat suit, but AMP does do the favor of linking to a helpful list of JVP-approved acceptable synagogues which are "safe" to collaborate with. The list numbers about two dozen. In total. In the entire United States. Thanks, guys.

Much could be written about this document, along many dimensions. I did have to smile when I saw that they intentionally were modeling their call for exclusion on Hillel's "standards of partnership" -- well-played (and yes, this position paper does serve if nothing else as an indictment of the more fundamentalist interpretations of those guidelines). Less amusing was the insinuation -- echoing Miller -- that the "American Jewish establishment" is actually comprised of "front groups" run out of the Israeli foreign affairs ministry, an especially egregious form of antisemitism that even the JDA denounces (B.7). Finally, it was noteworthy to see AMP expressly characterize these "standards of partnership" as emanating out of and required by the BDS movement -- no longer limited to Israel itself, or members of Israeli society, now BDS guidelines surrounding "complicity" in Israeli wrongdoing serve to demand extirpation of Jewish groups in America too. Again, it was always obvious that the train has no brakes -- this was always the final destination of that particular ride.

But perhaps the most interesting part was when AMP tries to answer the question of "if these organizations are so sinister, why is it that they reach out to the Muslim community in the first place?" Here AMP really channels its internal David Miller:

There are a few reasons for [Jewish organizations'] continued attempt at collaboration--all of which involve using the Muslim community to further their own political agendas. [emphasis added]

One of the core reasons that Zionist organizations continue to engage the Muslim community is that it provides these organizations with cover for their bigotry. When accused of Islamophobia for example, they can point to previous work with the Muslim community as evidence against those claims....

In addition to providing themselves with cover, Zionist organizations use these opportunities to infiltrate the Muslim community. Doing so serves several purposes. Firstly, it allows them to pursue a policy of “containment through other means.” By having to engage with these organizations, the Muslim community’s time and resources are deployed away from more serious efforts and from the real issues, in turn preventing the community from achieving its real priorities. Additionally, by generating a conversation around topics such as Israel’s right to exist or terrorism, they’re generating a conversation that was otherwise not present and infusing the community with an agenda item that was not there in the first place--further dividing and redistributing precious resources and muddling the narrative.

[Finally], infiltration of the Muslim community gives bad actors the opportunity to work towards defusing American Muslim commitment to Palestine....

It is notable that AMP explicitly commits to the notion that these efforts at engagement are always taken to be in bad faith, done for sinister agendas and ulterior motives masked by an insincere desire for dialogue or community-building. There are no good faith initiatives that falter in the face of an allegedly incommensurable value conflict; rather, it's you know the Jews -- they're only after that one thing. It is one thing, after all, to accurately observe that persons or groups accused of bigotry will often point to prior good acts they've done vis-à-vis the harmed group as apologia or mitigation. It is quite another to suggest that Jews cynically try to stockpile a resume of good deeds as a preemptive strike to justify future wrongdoing, and that warding function is the actual motivation.

If AMP really had the courage of its convictions here, they could accommodate the prospect that many if not most of these Jewish organizations have perfectly sincere desires to develop relationships; to listen, teach, and learn from one another. The argument would be that, while these motives are themselves noble and salutary, the importance of this issue is such that redlines have to be drawn even if the result is ostracizing people who really do seem nice enough -- an unfortunate consequence of an essential political program. But AMP cannot resist the temptation to speak in terms of monsters and ogres -- a crusade against evil that establishes by definition that anyone skewered must be an evildoer, and now we do return fully to Miller's "Zionist chicken soup" outlook on life -- shrieking to anyone who will listen that the most innocent of things masks terrible, nefarious purposes. One has to think here they might have self-sabotaged: the sort of person who is inclined to believe this histrionic accounting of what the Jews are after probably wasn't racing to collaborate with Jewish organizations to begin with; the presumed target audience (of Muslims who have been working with, or are considering working with, Jewish organizations) may be less likely to find this ghoulish description resonant. 

Of course, one ambition of a paper like this is to head off the sorts of intercommunal engagements that would conclusively demonstrate the presuppositions of this paper are absurd. It is easier to justify "don't talk to the Jews" if one believes the Jews only talk to infiltrate and manipulate, and it's easier to believe Jews only talk to infiltrate and manipulate if one doesn't talk to the Jews. Conveniently self-insulating, that. In fairness, it may be that certain sorts of positions (on Israel or Palestine or Jews or whomever) may become more difficult to hold after engagement. But my view has always been that, while there is no obligation to simply agree with members of outgroups on any given issue, a position that is so fragile that it cannot even survive an encounter with Palestinians or Israelis, or Jews or Muslims, is probably not a position worth defending to begin with.

It seems clear that one thing AMP is trying to do here is mirror (what it takes to be) the Jewish model on policing Israel discourse inside the community -- closing ranks around a unified voice that is tightly bordered around anti-Zionist norms, with dissidents tarred as threats to communal unity at best, sellouts at worst. Again, the reference to Hillel's standards of partnership is not just a rhetorical gotcha. That said, the paper stands out for its extreme, uncompromising approach to relations with the Jewish community -- one shot through with antisemitic stereotyping and ultimately, if it were successfully enforced, incompatible with just and equitable relationships between our communities. If AMP is replicating anyone here, it is not even Hillel, it's ZOA.

But we should ask: is AMP's attempt to freeze out coordination and cooperation between Muslims and (nearly all) Jews is a reflection of newfound power, or is a reflection of newfound weakness? That is, is the AMP paper the result of an emboldened pro-Palestine movement that now sees the realistic opportunity to go for broke and establish new rules and norms entrenching its influence and locking out opposition? Or is it reflective of anxiety over a corroding position, a rear-guard initiative to try and hold the line on norms of belief and conduct that they see collapsing?

I can see the case for either story. The "emboldened" story would hold that the positions on Israel and Palestine AMP wants to hold are, if not predominant, then are at least now mainstream enough such that one can present and defend them in unadulterated, uncompromising form. Elements of pro-Palestinian activism which for years were simply complete non-starters -- things like BDS, advocating dissolution of Israel outright, presenting all Israelis are illegitimate colonizers -- now are slowly transitioning out of the activist hardcore and into "regular" journals, political debates, and campaigns. Whereas in years past the groups like AMP were not strong enough to be able to credibly threaten dissidents and defectors with punishment (What would the threat be? Ostracism from a fringe organization with no significant political sway?), now there is both sufficient internal unity and sufficient external influence to be able to extract actual costs, and the AMP position paper is a formal attempt at declaring that these penalties will be paid. AMP's paper is, under this view, a sign of a movement coming into its own and transitioning from fringe to at least semi-mainstream, with a new ability and desire to flex its muscles (and, perhaps, a desire to turnabout what it sees as its own unjust exclusion and marginalization for many years at the hands of the American Jewish community).

The "anxiety" story, by contrast, suggests that AMP is responding to a perceived decay in norms of unity and uniformity around revanchist anti-Zionism that they are trying to shore up. Developments like the Abraham Accords are fostering increased curiosity amongst Muslims to engage and interact with Israel on a basis that, while certainly not uncritical, is perhaps less overtly antagonistic than AMP would like. A Muslim woman was the national head of J Street U; the Muslim Leadership Initiative continues apace. Even the Lara Alqasem case, while mostly presented (correctly) as an example of attempted Israeli state repression, was also a case where the former head of a campus SJP chapter decided to enroll in a graduate program at an Israeli university (BDS supporters, while not passing up the opportunity the denounce Israeli malfeasance, also were clear in their dismay at Alqasam's flouting of BDS mandates). Much of the rhetoric in the AMP paper -- appeals to unity, concerns about losing a united front, fretting of being distracted or taken into infighting -- is the language of a group which feels like it is losing rather than gaining ground. Under these circumstances, AMP's position can be seen as a response to threat -- an attempt to retrench weakening norms which no longer were deterring "bad behavior" (much in the same way Hillel's partnership guidelines were themselves responsive to a perceived deterioration in what was previously seen as uniform Jewish student support for Zionism). 

Although these two stories seem competitive with one another, there is a sense in which they both carry some truth. Attempts to impose ideological uniformity and crackdown on dissident voices are most common in periods of transition, as old orders and understandings fizzle but new ones have not yet been fully developed. While it is true that some mechanisms for squelching dissent requires some amount of power, it also is the case that groups on the fringe can often afford to maintain ideological conformity precisely because there are no opportunity costs to doing so. One cannot give up opportunities for power or influence that weren't available to begin with, and one cannot fracture a movement that is too small to develop significant cleavages. Any small group that starts to rise in influence experiences these growing pains; there is a freedom in being tiny and insignificant which contracts rapidly once true pluralism emerges (and you can play for true stakes on the table).

Social movements, I've long argued, "moderate as they mainstream". This is a tendency that immensely frustrates the original hard core of the movement which views this moderation as a form of selling out. It is simultaneously the case that the success of the pro-Palestine movement is why we'll see more folks like Jamaal Bowman in Congress sharply criticizing Israeli policy and floating conditioning foreign aid to Israel, and the case that, when people with Jamaal Bowman's views enter in Congress, they're more likely to do things like visit Israel or vote for Iron Dome right alongside sharply criticizing policy and floating conditioning aid. As we're seeing right now with Rep. Bowman, trying to resist the pairing of the former with the latter is why one sees such aggressive efforts to slam the door and draw the redline. But again, this dynamic trades on both increased power and increased weakness: power in that one's views matter (politically speaking) to mainstream actors in a way that they didn't in years past; weakness in that playing in the mainstream pool means that one is subjected to influences and pressures and relationships that previously were purely hypothetical.

I do not know enough about AMP to venture whether it is even capable of successfully promulgating norms of engagement within the American Muslim community that are akin to the (real or imagined) norms that have long existed within the American Jewish community. But the broad strokes of the move here are familiar. This sort of uncompromising call for ideological conformity is neither wholly coming from a position of strength nor of weakness. It is in a very real sense more extreme than what one would publicly see articulated in years past, but partially that stems from a panic that this sort of extremism is unsustainable -- it is a myth, a "happy" fantasy, to think that the relationship of American Jews to American Muslims can be redirected so it flows only through JVP. Ultimately, just as Hillel was never going to be able to successfully clamp down on Jews thinking more critically on Israel and on Palestine (no matter what its high-level machers might want), I suspect that AMP also will not actually be able to stem the tide of Jews and Muslims working together, learning together, dialoguing together, and, perhaps, coming to a new and jointly resonant vision of justice about Israel and Palestine together.

Nobody Expects the Muslim Trump Supporter!

There's a fascinating tidbit in a newly released poll about various religious groups' political opinions: Muslims and Jews hold very similar views about the presidency of Donald Trump. Specifically, for both groups his approvals are in the low 30s (30% for Muslims, 34% for Jews).

The poll is a bit dated -- it was apparently conducted in March just before the coronavirus lockdown, so certainly politics have ... evolved since then -- but it still raises a fascinating question: why does one never hear about Muslim Trump supporters? Compared to Jewish Trump supporters, who seemingly have an outsized presence in the media and in the public eye, one virtually never sees Muslim Trump supporters interviewed in the press, or internal debates within the Muslim community about Trump vs. not-Trump aired. (And it's worth noting that, unlike Jews, Muslims have historically been a lean-conservative voting bloc -- it was only after 9/11 and the immense wave of Islamophobia that poured out of the GOP that they shifted to the Democratic camp).

Why the disparity? Here are some hypotheses, which are just spitballs at this point:

• Republicans are less likely to highlight Muslim support than Jewish support, which lowers the salience of their Muslim backing.
• Despite their historically (and consistent) progressive voting patterns, there is a strong narrative that Jews are a politically conservative group (wealthy, White, entrenched and invested in preserving the existing order) which makes people assume that Jews are more conservative than they are.
• The high-profile nature of Donald Trump's anti-Muslim actions (most notably the travel ban) makes it really hard for the media to imagine "Muslims for Trump" as a live phenomenon, whereas the high-profile nature of his (nominally, at least) "pro-Jewish" measures (e.g., the embassy move) makes it seem plausible that he'd garner a non-trivial proportion of Jewish support.
• The major Muslim political organizations are decisively anti-Trump in a way that the major Jewish political organizations are not. Jewish Trump supporters have far more prominent positions within the institutional Jewish community than do their Muslim counterparts.
• The media has less experience delving into the weeds of intra-Muslim communal splits, and so is less likely to pick up on smaller (but still extant) political factions.

Fortunately, I wrote a whole article on the distinctive political status of dissident minorities such as Muslim Trump backers (though I didn't address that example specifically). I'm not saying that it's good that such persons are completely ignored -- I'm curious as to what makes them tick! -- but I do think it's a good thing that our public dialogue does not treat them as if they're equally representative of the Muslim community when they're clearly not.

New Developments in the Right To Discriminate

A new survey measures people's attitudes towards businesses discriminating against various types of customers -- gays and lesbians, transgender individuals, atheists Muslims, Jews, and African-Americans. There are some really interesting takeaways.

• Republicans are -- across the board -- more likely to favor permitting discrimination than Democrats or Independents. This is true across all customer-identities.

• However, Republicans also exhibit considerably more variance across different groups -- tolerating discrimination against certain sorts far more than others. At the top end, circa 45% favor permitting discrimination against gay, lesbian, and trans individuals. At the bottom, only 18% favor it when it comes to African-Americans. Meanwhile, Democrats never stray out of a tight 14% - 19% band for any group -- suggesting a cadre that (perhaps for some libertarian freedom-of-contract reason) supports the "right to discriminate" on principle.

• Given the recent high-profile controversies about businesses serving gay customers and the extent to which GOP politicians have sought to make it into a culture war front (ex: Indiana, Masterpiece Cakeshop), I wonder if the commitment to the right to discriminate against LGBT individuals is having the effect of "dragging up" GOP support for a similar right as against other groups -- people believing that if they don't support a "right to discriminate" against Jews, then there can't be a right to discriminate against gays either. This hypothesis, however, clashes with the willingness of many Republicans (noted above) to just happily accept the double-standard.

• That said, again given the degree to which the GOP has sought to put the right to discriminate against LGBT customers into the news, I'm actually shocked that the figures here are so low. Again, we're talking (slightly) less than half of Republican voters, and less than a third of Americans total. There's actually a pretty strong bipartisan consensus against the position GOP politicians have been staking out.

• In the religion-bowl, Atheists are disliked more than Muslims are disliked more than Jews. The difference is very stark among Republicans (37% support a "right to discriminate" against Atheists, 32% against Muslims, 24% against Jews) but much narrower among the population writ large (24/22/19, respectively).

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LII: Extra Fizzy Drinks at Ramadan

Ramadan has begun, and with it a month of daytime fasting. Speaking as a Jew, that doesn't sound fun (I only fast for one day -- during Yom Kippur -- but we go for the full 24 hours). But at least at night you can eat and drunk what you want.

Just watch out for fizzy drinks, apparently:

A man speaking in Urdu talks about the importance of not having fizzy drinks to open your fast.

He goes on to say cold and fizzy drinks can have a negative effect on your long-term health and could even cause death.

But then a link is made to the fact that many of the major fizzy drinks companies are owned and run by Jews. The speaker also claims that according to the Quran, Muslims are not permitted to have relations or friendships with Jews in any way.

It further adds that during the month of Ramadan they have ‘purposely planned’ to increase the gas content in fizzy drinks so whoever consumes them will be affected.

I don't know much about the health effects of fizzy drinks -- though to the extent they're unhealthy I suspect it's the sugar more than the carbonation that's doing the work, so increasing the gas content seems like more of an annoyance than a devious plot.

But then again, I rarely consume fizzy drinks -- an admission which in the antisemitic imagination probably ranks right up there with saying that I skipped work in New York on 9/11. So take my advice with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if you're Muslim and fasting this month, I hope it is an easy one. And if you do like to break fast with a soda, I'm pretty sure you're in the clear.

A Very Jewish Week Roundup

I'm having a very Jewish week.

It started, mostly, with the column I published in Haaretz calling "bullshit" on the claim that the New York Times presents a greater antisemitism threat than contemporary mainstream conservatism.

That led to a completely out-of-the-blue call from none other than ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. Like, literally, I was sitting on my couch and the phone rang and it was him. We've never conversed or connected in any other way (I've bent the ear of the San Francisco ADL office more than a few times), and there didn't seem to be any other motive behind the call other than to say he liked the Haaretz piece.

Then today, I had another phone call with a different prominent Jewish public figure -- I won't say who, since the project she was asking my take on isn't yet public, but let's just say that if Greenblatt is part of the "establishment" wing of the Jewish community, this person is more on the "insurgent" side. Somehow, I seem to be bridging that gap -- at least a little bit.

Tomorrow, I have a conference call to discuss my participation on a panel at the Goethe-Institut on resurgent antisemitism and White nationalism. Then Friday, I'm meeting with a student who sought me out to discuss how one researches issues of antisemitism in contemporary academia.

Oh, and Jill and I went to Talmud study for the first time last night.

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Jews are the religious group most likely to view Muslims favorably. And wouldn't you know it -- but those positive sentiments are reflected right back at us -- Muslims also overwhelmingly view Jews favorably!

Very interesting new article in the Yale Law Journal experimentally measures whether people feel free to refuse intrusive search requests. Answer: they don't, which doesn't surprise. What might surprise a little is that even explicitly telling people "you're free to refuse this search" doesn't move the needle much.

Radical settler Rabbis caught on type expressing admiration for Hitler and racism. Nice.

Robert Farley thinks Team Living actually had decent military strategy in the Battle for Winterfell.

Trump pick Stephen Moore might not have the votes to get a Fed seat --  which is weird because, if he's a crank extremist too far gone to even get through this pliant GOP Senate, how did he occupy all these respectable conservative sinecures for all these years? Such a mystery.

Artist behind NYT's antisemitic cartoon denies it's an antisemitic cartoon, says controversy is a product of the "Jewish propaganda machine." Checks out!

Quebec Set To Ban Public Employees from Wearing Religious Garb

The ban would apply to, among other apparel, hijabs and kippot.

The frenzy of concern regarding various head-coverings -- going way beyond objecting to making them mandatory (as they are in some Muslim-majority states), and instead casting them as inherently antithetical to the values of the liberal state -- leads precisely to this. And it should surprise nobody with a sense of history that this sort of illiberalism-disguised-as-liberalism is taking Jews and Muslims down together.

Not My President's Day Roundup

Our apartment's water heater is being replaced tomorrow. That means my one true joy in life -- long, languid, hot showers -- will also have to go for the day. It will be terrible.

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China's crackdown on religious liberty threatens the tiny but ancient Kaifeng Jewish community.

One of the few Black mathematicians in American academia recounts the microaggressions and subtle racism which alienated him from his own discipline.

I think the tone of this column is a little off, but the broad point -- that leftist anti-Zionists have no friend more highly placed in Israel than Netanyahu himself -- is on the mark, and it's important that someone like Eric Yoffie is saying it.

Alabama newspaper editor urges the return of the KKK in order lynch Democrats (and insufficiently conservative Republicans). Yes, really.

Apparently, Louisiana has a bad habit of not releasing prisoners after they've finished serving their sentences.

"As a Jew, I’m either furious or eating. Sometimes both."

For all the talk of "creeping Sharia", the fact is that the American Muslim community is actually experiencing something very different: creeping liberalism. For a community that, for much of recent electoral history, at least leaned Republican (especially on social issues), the rapid embrace of feminism, gay equality, and sexual liberation among the younger generation is coming as a bit of a shock to the more conservative old-guard.

The Cruelty is the Point: SCOTUS Edition

In my roundup the other day, I included the case of an Muslim death row inmate in Alabama who had received a stay of execution by the 11th Circuit because the state was refusing to let his Imam be with him during his execution (the state would have allowed a Christian chaplain, who was a prison employee, in the room). I noted that Alabama appealing the stay -- but I almost didn't bother, since in my head I figured there was no chance the Supreme Court would get involved. Why would they? The stay was at most a minor inconvenience, the Establishment Clause problem seemed obvious and extreme, and there was no pressing issue here that demanded high court intervention to stop the case from proceeding at its own pace.

Shows what I know. In a 5-4 decision (over a brutal Kagan dissent), the Supreme Court vacated the stay and allowed the execution to proceed. The inmate had filed his challenge too late -- not that it was actually barred, mind you, the Court just decided of its own discretion that the inmate was dilatory and that therefore it wouldn't allow the 11th Circuit to hear the case (never mind that, based on the record available, it seems that the inmate filed his case in a perfectly timely fashion).

I have to confess, this rattled me -- more than I would have anticipated -- and I'm clearly not the only one. There are times when courts issue rulings I disagree with, and there are times that courts -- even the Supreme Court, with near-infinite discretion over its own docket -- are effectively compelled to step in and issue a decision in fraught circumstances where some people are going to be displeased with the outcome.

But this wasn't one of those cases. There was no need for the Court to step in here; indeed, it was a shockingly aggressive intervention in a case where the balance of equities seemed to run decisively in favor of the inmate. In this context, the Court's decision -- and the meager faux-technical rationale behind (that doesn't even seem to stand on its own weight) -- feels worse than wrong. It feels petty. It feels mean-spirited, and it feels cruel. And while there are many times where I disagree with this Court on important issues, it is rare that I've felt that they were cruel.

But that's what this decision was. I don't have a philosophical objection to the death penalty (though I have a welter of objections to how it is administered in practice). But I've always felt very strongly that it is important to treat even condemned inmates with respect and dignity -- that capital punishment does not license dehumanization. We're already locking them in a cage and then killing them, visiting further indignities upon them seems gratuitous. So whenever I see rabble-rousers start targeting "last meals", or a prisoner's few hours of "recreation time" because they're prisoners, they're the worst of the worst, I blanch. Such minor nods towards the continued humanity of the condemned are deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition; they are part of what separates a justice system from unchannelled and unconstrained vengeance.

It should be needless to say that allowing a man facing execution whatever comfort and support he might get from a pastor of his faith is also part of that tradition: it is cruel -- obviously and needlessly -- to deny him even that much. Indeed, the obviousness of this point is why Alabama has a (Christian)  chaplain on staff and available to begin with. So to deny that small comfort to an inmate because of his Muslim faith represents such a striking departure from tradition and practice that it is hard not to see it as motivated by religious animus -- that Muslims don't deserve whatever comfort and pastoral care they might receive from their false clerics. Particularly in the wake of the Muslim ban decision, one could forgive those who now seriously wonder if the basic human equality of the Muslim community is acknowledged at the highest court in our land.

This decision is not a "great" decision. It sets no sweeping precedent, it's (nominal) basis on the alleged "delay" in filing means it doesn't even constrain future cases brought under similar facts. But in a way, its insignificance makes it worse rather than better. This was not a great case. It was a petty case. And the Court's pettiness in interceding is, in its way, far more indicting of its character than many far more jurisprudentially consequential rulings.

Fraud Squad! Roundup

In a meeting, I got a phone call from my bank about potentially fraudulent transactions on my credit card. Had I recently ordered $50 worth of fast food pizza? No, I hadn't -- and so the account is frozen, and presumably the charges will be reversed.

An hour later, upon returning to my desk, I had the bizarre joy of seeing a confirmation from Domino's promising me that my "pizza is on the way [to Houston, Texas]!"

Anyway, long story short: I'm getting pizza for dinner tonight.

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Jenny Singer of the Forward interviews Young Gravy, a Black Jewish rapper (and GW student). It's a really interesting and worth your time (I'm saying that not just because I think I played a role in putting the interview together!).

I think I missed this when it came out, but a Texas court struck down the Indian Child Welfare Act's adoption rules this past fall, saying that act's preferences for Indian children to stay with Indian families was racially discriminatory against non-Indians. The Judge, incidentally, was Reed O'Connor -- the same guy who just struck down Obamacare. He's certainly setting himself up as the go-to-guy for tip-of-the-spear conservative judicial activism.

Alabama was all set to execute a Muslim inmate -- but refused to allow a Muslim chaplain to be present with him during the execution (they did offer a Christian chaplain, which unsurprisingly the inmate did not consider to be a satisfactory substitute). 11th Circuit stays the execution due to the "powerful Establishment Clause claim" (and plausible RLUIPA claim). Alabama is appealing to the Supreme Court.

A new poll finds that over half of Israeli Jews agree that the controversial "nation-state" law must be either abandoned outright or fixed to confirm the state's commitment to democratic equality for all citizens.

A Cameroonian official has apologized for threatening an ethnic minority group by comparing them to Jews in pre-WWII Germany, namely: "In Germany, there was a very rich community who wielded all economic power .... They (the Jews) were so arrogant that the German people were frustrated. Then one day, a certain Hitler came to power and put them in the gas chambers."

I have no takeaways from the Likud primaries except celebrating Oren Hazan's imminent departure from the Knesset. Goooood riddance.

Iraqi Jews commemorate family members who were "disappeared" by state secret police.