Germany Boycotting the World Cup?

There's chatter that Germany might boycott the World Cup, as a response to American aggression towards Greenland (among other sins).

I actually don't think this will go anywhere. Certainly, even the talk of it is an embarrassment for FIFA (and so soon after delivering Trump his knock-off Nobel too!). But then, FIFA may be the single most corrupt sports organization on the planet (the only competition I can think of is the International Boxing Association -- amateur boxing's oversight body -- whose leader is a mobbed-up Russian stooge. But they're obviously smaller potatoes than FIFA). They may not be capable of embarrassment.

As a rule, I'm opposed to sporting boycotts, at least as applied to teams. I don't find the argument that participation in international sporting events is some sort of PR coup for the flag-bearer to be especially compelling (the idea that the U.S. women's soccer team is acting to glorify Trump seems ... specious). And I think there is something nice about the countries of the world "coming together in one place for the primary and fundamental purpose of doing something fun and joyous." The norm is that we don't use international sport to pass commentary on a nation's politics or policy, however destructive it may be, and so I oppose sports boycotts for any nation -- the U.S., Iran, China, Israel, Russia, North Korea, you name it.

As for hosting an event, my opinion is the same -- with one substantial caveat. I don't think we should boycott hosts because of the host nation's politics, and I don't buy the notion that hosting represents some sort of glorification of the host. The exception-caveat is where there is credible reason to suspect that the host nation will be exclusionary towards, if not outright dangerous to, its visitors and guests -- the other teams, their coaches and staff, and their fans and spectators. The Trump administration's various visa bans -- now effecting potential qualifiers Iran, Haiti, Senegal and the Ivory Coast -- represent exactly that sort of threat. They are, for me, what make the boycott calls at least worthy of consideration -- not against Team USA as a team, but against the United States as a host.

Indeed, while I assume many will associate the boycott call to various efforts to exclude Israel from international sporting competitions, the closer analogy is actually to host nations which have sought to exclude Israelis from participating in international competitions within their borders. The basic duty of hosting an international sporting event is to be a host. A nation unwilling to do that -- for whatever reason -- is breaching its most essential compact as a host, and so justifies having the privilege of hosting taken away. It is embarrassing that America may now fall into that category. But there is a lot to be embarrassed about in this day and age.

Perceiving the Hierarchy

As you may have seen, there was antisemitic stabbing/car ramming attack on a UK synagogue on Yom Kippur yesterday. Two Jews were killed (one, apparently, by the police in the course of their response); the attacker was also killed on site.

In the wake of the attack, the New York Times quoted a recently-released report by the Runnymede Trust on the subject of antisemitism in the UK, making the case that the "current approaches designed to tackle the problem [of antisemitism] are not working." Specifically, the report critiques how "The significant funding given by governments to protect Jewish people specifically makes Jewish communities feel safer in the short term but has given rise to perceptions that there is a hierarchy of racisms in the U.K.."

[W]hen the state and political parties put significant energy into combating antisemitic ideas but fail to act with similar force against Islamophobia or structural racism, it confirms the perception of a hierarchy of racism. While this type of state-led opposition to antisemitism can make many Jewish people feel safer in the short-term, it gives life to a competitive victimhood that further pulls apart the horizontal alliances and broad political coalitions required to confront all racisms.

A couple things about this formulation that jumped out at me, but the main one is the acceptance of the narrative that Jews are "anti-discrimination" winners -- winning so much, and so hard, that it's generating understandable resentment that fractures the possibility of cross-group solidarity. The reason this "jumped out" is that one of my earliest public writings on antisemitism specifically addressed this phenomenon in the context of the UK, pointing out that the public perception of Jews being very well- (perhaps over-)protected by anti-discrimination law coexisted with a reality that Jews weren't actually receiving much protection at all.

I won't claim to be an expert on the UK. But the Runnymede report, as far as I can see, does not actually provide much evidence that Jews in reality receive enhanced material support for their security compared to other groups. The only concrete example they provide is the proliferation of Holocaust memorials in contrast to the lack of such memorials for other atrocities suffered by other groups (including ones that the UK is more directly implicated in, like the slave trade). 

I do think there is something to be said about making Holocaust remembrance the be-all-end-all of what "reckoning with past racism looks like". But this has little to do with funding initiatives meant to provide security for Jewish institutions from violent attack.

In the United States, at least, funds meant to bolster security at religious institutions have been made available to applicants of all faiths. Jewish organizations have received a large chunk of the funds (perhaps because Jews are by far the most common targets of religious-based hate crimes), but it would be wrong to say there is a "hierarchy" here. But that doesn't seem to change the fact that there is a perception of a hierarchy; and where perception is not matching reality we need to interrogate more deeply what's driving the perception.

Put simply: it is a common feature of antisemitism to present Jews as "the outgroup that's in" -- the paradigm of protection (perhaps over-protection) to the point where they are seen as hoarding the bounty of public sympathy from groups who need it more. This perception is itself inextricably linked to antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish hyperpower and influence (obviously, Jews can't really be marginalized when it's so clear that they control Congress/the media/the banks/the world), and it is I think a category mistake to assume that the perception is substantially related to an actual, objective assessment of how much protection Jews are or are not receiving. 

Just like with fears of "voter fraud" or anti-vaxx conspiracies, where the underlying complaints about Jews being over-protected are grounded not in rationality but in resentment, a "rational" response will never assuage and the conspiracists will never be accommodated. Eventually, the only "move" in this politics is for Jews to self-abnegate -- to performatively lose, over and over again, even in circumstances where they are being genuinely wronged and deserved genuine protection under well-established and universally-applied principles, so as to "reassure" their neighbors that they aren't winning too much and aren't being given special favors. This is not sustainable, and it is not actually a productive strategy for fighting antisemitism.

I absolutely agree that -- whether in the UK or the US -- the government and other social actors need to take all forms of racism and discrimination with the seriousness they deserve, and direct concrete and tangible resources and proposals to combatting it. But I do not think reinforcing the narrative of "hierarchy" is helpful in this respect. I will keep on tapping the sign: they'd say it about Jews, they'd say it about other groups too. It is not the case that "only the Jews receive such solicitude", it is not the case that "everyone but the Jews receives such solicitude." We should reassess both narratives that assert a clear "hierarchy of racism" that likely is not present and which is itself built upon unhelpful and unproductive resentments.

A Question About Extradition

Hypothetical question:

Suppose a U.S. citizen kills the citizen of another country on the high seas. Suppose further that the American judicial system refuses to impose legal liability on the citizen (e.g., because they conclude his actions weren't a crime, or they find some immunity doctrine bars the prosecution). The victim's country, by contrast, does want to prosecute.

Can the United States extradite the citizen to the other nation as a way of getting around the functional immunity provided by our own courts? (Does the "high seas" part of the hypothetical matter? What if the foreign national was killed or injured on U.S. soil?).

Purely a hypothetical question, of course.

Israel is How Europe Can Stick It To Trump

Over the past few days, we've seen a spate of hitherto solid Israel allies in Europe announce they'll be recognizing the state of Palestine. France kicked things off, and it was swiftly followed by the UK and Canada. (There also has been an interesting wave of Arab states calling on Hamas to demilitarize and relinquish power).

I'm not going to comment here on the substance of the decision. Briefly, it is obvious that Palestinians deserve self-determination in a recognized state, and I'm unpersuaded by those who are arguing the move will backfire against the Palestinians. As for those who claim that recognition "rewards Hamas", I say that, if we are to think of this decision in those terms, it's better to see this as not as rewarding Hamas for 10/7, but as punishing Israel for its conduct after 10/7.

But that's not what I want to focus on here. Rather, I want to explore a different question: Why now? What made these countries take this step now?

Obviously, there is not one single answer to that. But in addition to some of the obvious factors -- increased sympathy for the Palestinian cause and increased frustration with Israeli intransigence chief among them -- I suggest an additional cause is that stepping out on Israel is a comparatively cheap and insulated way to symbolically repudiate Trump and Trumpism.

The Trump administration's pivot away from our traditional allies and alliances has been met with a justified mixture of alarm and fury from those we've abandoned. From escalating trade wars to threats of annexation, Trump has done unprecedented damage to America's global standing. People want to see their leaders punch back. But many of the most obvious avenues for retaliation come with substantial risks of their own. As idiotic and self-destructive as tariffs are for the United States, it remains the case that European countries must be careful and adroit in their own trade negotiations. Symbolism has its place there, but it can't be the whole story; missteps can exact real and serious tangible damage on one's own people.

But sticking it to Israel offers much of that same symbolic flouting of Trump, at a much lower risk. Most of the "damage" there, if there is any, will be externalized, not internalized. To the extent some countries might have been reluctant to step out against Israel for fear of alienating the United States, that ship has sailed; today these countries are looking for opportunities to signal they're standing up to the American madman. And while the Trump administration might make noises about retaliation, I think they're fighting on too many fronts for protecting Israel diplomatically to be a serious priority -- and that's even if one believes that Trump's Israel policy is based on sincere ideological commitment, which I don't. If one thinks Trump is just using "Israel" as an excuse to enact various forms of domestic repression, the ultimate disinterest can be doubled. In essence, Europe recognizing Palestine (a) looks increasingly justified and sensible given recent Israeli conduct and (b) offers an opportunity to be seen as standing up to Trump, in a context where tangible blowback is likely to be minimal. No wonder it's looking more attractive!

None of this should be seen as warranting any sympathy for Israel of course. They've chosen their course -- lashing themselves to the most extreme and vicious iteration of global rightwing ultranationalism -- and they have to live with the consequences. That's the risk of hitching your wagon entirely to a single powerful but widely loathed patron -- if daddy gets distracted, you're on your own and you've made yourself an awfully tempting target. Once again, when the right is done finding Israel useful, it will leave it in the wreckage.

Back in the USA

If you're wondering why I've been silent around these parts over the past week, it's for a generally happy reason: I was in England, attending a conference at Oxford on "Religion, Speech, and Vulnerability." The whole family attended -- me, Jill, and Nathaniel, and my parents met us as well -- and so we stretched the trip into a family vacation spending time in both London and Oxford.

The trip was amazing -- first and foremost because Nathaniel was an absolute rockstar who had no trouble with the nine-hour flight and is apparently immune to jet lag (unlike his parents). Highlights of the trip include going to Tate Modern, doing a gallery walk in Mayfair, and seeing Operation Mincemeat in the West End. It really is the sort of trip that will be a lifelong memory.

But now that I'm back, I do want to temper that happiness with a bit of a dark cloud.

Before I left, I found myself thinking -- seriously -- about information security. Do I bring my normal cellphone? Do I bring my laptop? If so, do I delete any sensitive files, or refrain from posting controversial content while I'm away?

These thoughts, of course, were triggered by the high-profile stories of the USCBP's new MAGA marching orders, which have captured U.S. citizens in their draconian talons. Even among citizens, I certainly knew I wasn't the most likely target, but there were certainly elements of my profile (anti-Trump, academic, Jewish but averse to Trump's putative anti-antisemitism initiatives) that at least mildly elevated my risk factors.

Ultimately, I didn't do much differently -- packed my laptop in my checked bags, turned off my phone on arrival, and mostly refrained from social media posting while I was gone. And, unsurprisingly, my reentry into the U.S. was entirely unremarkable and smooth aside from an annoying long line -- no odd questions (to say nothing of detention).

But even still, I think I can fairly say that it is a bad thing I'm even thinking along those lines -- that my own government might snatch me away for no other reason than my political opinions and drop me off to fester in a lawless pit. And I can honestly say that this is a thought I've never had before in any prior administration, including Trump I (to say nothing of Biden, Obama, or Bush). Of course, there are those who have had these worries with far more grounded basis for far longer than I have; I'm not trying to minimize that. My point is only that we should identify the spread of these sentiments as a klaxon warning sign that the democratic freedoms we take for granted are fading. And even if you don't think of yourself as among the "usual" targets, your mundanity will not save you.

Even in fascist states, for the most part most people aren't being snatched off the street most of the time. When typifies the oppressive regime is not the experience of being snatched, but the constant ambient worry that it's a possibility. That worry is not one I have experienced until now -- indeed, not experiencing it is something I had taken for granted until now -- and it's not a good or healthy sign of the vitality of our democracy that I'm feeling it now.

Nothing Else Like It

In one sense, what we're going through in America is highly reminiscent of other countries which have recently gone through authoritarian regresses. Hungary, India, Israel, the Philippines, and Brazil, to name a few, all have seen liberal democratic institutions decay in the face of far-right populist demagogues.

I've found this weirdly comforting -- not because what's happened in those countries hasn't been awful, but because somehow knowing this sort of thing doesn't stand outside history is reassuring. It's not the end of time, it is a thing happening in time.

Yet even this reassurance is, I fear, somewhat misleading. Because while it may be true that Hungary, India, Israel, etc. have gone through this before; and even true that (some of) these countries have or will come out the other side, what we have not ever seen is a global hegemon going through this sort of regression. Without understating the havoc that a recklessly authoritarian India or Israel can wreak on a local or even regional scale, they're unlikely to take down the entire international order with them. An out-of-control America could tank the global economy, could cause anarchic chaos to break out all over the planet, could set off a literal World War III. There's literally been nothing like it.

And domestically, with the possible exception of the Redemption-era South, we haven't in American history seen as rapid an authoritarian rollback of democratic equality and rule of law as what the Trump administration has inaugurated in its first week(!) in office. Every aspect of our constitutional order feels like it under attack, all at once, and nobody really knows how to respond.

This uncertainty, unfortunately, is sometimes paired with a strangely confident certainty that purports to know exactly how to respond -- which is to say, "something not what we're doing now."

At one level, I understand where this frustration is coming from -- "what we're doing now" can't be the right response, because it's not stopping things that need to be stopped. At another level, it really does elide the brute reality that nobody knows exactly what the most effective response is to Trump's blitzkrieg fascism. For example, I saw a report that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was taking the stance that Democrats should ignore Trump's "flood the zone" tactics and focus, laser-like, on the economic damage he was wreaking. I also saw many panning this tactic as leaving many critical issues unaddressed while missing opportunities to make hay out of massively unpopular oversteps that weren't clearly economic. I certainly see the weight of this critique, but I also understand the other side -- that trying to cover everything will inevitably result in an unfocused, chaotic response that lacks a clear narrative and just reinforces a "Dems in disarray" sensibility. How do I resolve that tension? I'm not sure -- and to be blunt, I think most people are unsure too.

My best proposal is this: the important thing is to keep fighting. The where or when or how is far less important than that it happens at all. This means I do agree wholeheartedly with the stance that Democrats' job is to be the opposition party and not give any free inches to Republican policies. But beyond that, I'm not sure the best use of our energy is engaging in internal sniping regarding who is prioritizing what messaging or narrative point best.

Is that a possible line to hold? I don't know. Is it even the best line to hold? I don't know! We're in new territory here. There's been nothing else like it.

The Other Reason American Jews Are Distancing Themselves from Israel

The topic of American Jews and Israel growing apart is an omnipresent one in Jewish circles -- a fear I've seen raised for as long as I can remember. Obviously, we're hearing more about it now, particularly as younger Jewish voices become increasingly prominent in protests against Israel and Israel's war in Gaza. But the fear is not new, and there is a familiar rhythm to it.

But while the discussion about the growing gap between American and Israeli Jewry almost inevitably is framed against the backdrop of Gaza and the occupation and settlements, I want to make an entry to this discussion that has nothing to do with Palestine, but whose impact is I think very important and very underrated. Admittedly, given all that's happening in Palestine, that feels almost absurdly self-centered. All I can say to that is that the fraying connection between American Jews and Israel is an important topic, and this is an underdiscussed element of that topic. I offer it not to the exclusion of explanations that are premised on genuine moral or political sentiments about Palestine, but as a complement to them.

So, without further throat-clearing, here is my claim as to one reason American Jews are increasingly distancing themselves from Israel: 

The Israeli establishment is increasingly deeply, openly contemptuous of American Jews.

Again, we can bracket everything having to do with Palestine and Palestinians. There's plenty to talk about there, but I won't talk about it here. Whenever one talks about diaspora Jewish grievances against Israel, one is immediately met with the claim that the diaspora has no claim to speak on matters of "security" in a country they don't live in. There's plenty one could say to that, but fine, we'll leave "security" aside.

Instead, we'll start with a fact that has nothing to do with security: most American Jews are not Orthodox. We're Reform or Conservative (if affiliated at all). But these denominations of Judaism -- the denomination most American Jews identify with -- are not treated equally in Israel. Indeed, they are subject to heaps of contempt, scarcely recognized as Jews at all.

This has tangible consequences. We talk a lot about interfaith families, but there are many Jewish families whose status as Jews in Israel is in doubt. What happens when their matrilineal lineage might be traced back to a woman who had the temerity to convert under the oversight of the Jewish community most American Jews live in? Non-Orthodox conversions are barely recognized even for purposes of the law of return, and that begrudging acceptance doesn't extend to other aspects of Jewish personhood. How insulting, for American Jews to be told that the way we're Jewish isn't good enough to be fully recognized as Jewish in the eyes of Israel.

Insulting -- that's too mild. I can speak for myself here: my wife is Jewish. Her conversion was done under the auspices of the Jewish tradition through which I've lived my entire life. She lives a Jewish life. She celebrates Jewish holidays. She volunteers for Jewish non-profits. As far as I'm concerned, she's as Jewish as I am. To question her Judaism necessarily -- can only -- be based off a denigration of my Judaism. To hear that my Jewish wife, and through her our Jewish children, would not be treated as fully Jewish in a Jewish state is fury-inducing. Every time I think about it, I am filled with rage. How many of us are in similar circumstances? How many of us see our or our loved one's disrespected as Jews by the state that claims our fidelity on the basis of shared peoplehood?

There's more: half of all Jews are forbidden from praying as equals at one of our religion's holiest sites. Try to hold an important religious rite -- your child's Bar Mitzvah, say -- at the Western Wall, and you risk being attacked by an angry mob. It is very much in the realm of argument that the median American Jewish family would face more official, state-sponsored discrimination as Jews in Israel than they would in America.

And that doesn't get into the constant thumbs in the eye the Israeli government seemingly loves to give to the American Jewish people. Netanyahu's speech before Congress. Bragging that they prefer the support of Evangelical Christians over diaspora Jews. The constant ooze of contempt and disdain is impossible to ignore.

A few days ago, a college friend of mine wrote a post about the increasing gap between American Jewish sentiment and pro-Israel politics leaving Zionism with "nowhere to go". He has always been anti-Zionist, and so was of course delighted at the development. But one observation he made for why the trend seemed to be accelerating was that American Jews were increasingly discovering they simply had nothing in common with Israeli Jews. We're fundamentally two different peoples. There's no special bond between us, no particular reason to care more about them (or them us) beyond whatever general humanistic feeling we might have to any other group of people half the world away.

He said this with triumph. Many others will view it mournfully. And to some extent I think he necessarily overstates the case, if only because familial ties unite many (though not all) of us. Even for the rest of us, the severing of a sense of peoplehood is grave and painful, and won't be done easily. As much as some pretend otherwise, diaspora Jews disassociating themselves from Israel is not a free action. It hurts. The whole point of bonds like this is that they persist and endure through difficult and challenging times; they are not meant to be transitory expressions of instrumental alignment. But when a member of your family (literal or figurative) doesn't treat as if you are special, as if you are a member of a special circle of care and concern, that exerts a continual and powerful centrifugal force. Eventually, it will pull (some of? all of?) us apart.

And this problem is not one that can be resolved by the normal proposed solutions. It isn't a matter of young Jews lacking "education" on what's happening in the Middle East. It isn't caused by Jews lacking connection to their Jewish heritage (unless we buy into the notion that Reform and Conservative Jews Don't Count). It isn't attributable to a desire to "fit in" with the cool crowd or following the latest social media trend. It can't be laid at the feet of "Critical Race Theory" or "intersectionality" or whatever buzzword will be screamed across Algemeiner headlines next week. The brute truth is that American Jews are being hammered, again and again and again, with just how little the Israeli establishment thinks of us.

I'm not saying anything especially new here. Six years ago I wrote in the Forward that "Israel doesn't care what American Jews think." (the median social media response I got from Israelis to that column was "you're damn right we don't, and also, fuck you for saying so."). And again, I'm not trying to discount the degree to which Israel's unjust treatment of Palestinians under occupation genuinely, legitimately, and viscerally offends many Jews. 

But what I speak of here is a powerful negative force, and it is not getting better. And at any time, but perhaps especially under times of strain and stress, such a force will have its predictable effects.

How Do Conservatives Explain Negative American Exceptionalism?

Over at the Washington Monthly, Keith Humphreys put up a chart comparing various countries along the axes of homicide rates and incarcerations rates.

Ideally, you'd want to be a country that has low homicide rates and low incarceration rates (Norway, Germany). Countries that have low murder rates, but get there by locking everyone up, are despotic (Iran). Countries that have low incarceration rates but high homicide rates are lawless (Mexico). And the finally, countries which throw everyone into prison but still have high crime rates are "disastrous", and of course, the U.S. of A. falls decisively into this category.

(Kevin Drum thinks violent crime rates are more useful than homicide rates for this sort of illustrations, which reshuffles some of the countries, but not in a way relevant to our purposes since the United States remains a clear disaster.)

I've long been curious how conservatives explain this sort of American exceptionalism -- metrics where America just clearly and unambiguously is far worse than nearly any other peer nation. Why, under the conservative telling, are we so bad at this compared to other countries?

Liberals don't have too much trouble with this problem -- partially because we're less wedded to chest-thumping about "greatest nation on Earth", more saliently because we have an easy explanation (guns + racism) ready to roll. But of course conservatives aren't going to be fans of that explanation. So what do they go with? It can't be "soft on crime" -- again, we're clearly "tougher on crime" than most peer nations (perhaps some "reforms" in that direction could push us into the "despotic" quadrant alongside Iran -- what a cheery thought -- but it doesn't seem to work as an argument). And I can't say I'm drawing much when I try to think about how they purport to explain this phenomenon. Do they just sit in denial of it?

The New Holocaust Minimization from Europe to America

It is a common cliché to claim that 21st century American antisemitism will follow the trajectory of 21st century Europe's, lagging only by a couple of years. I hear it most often in claims that the Democratic Party will inevitably Corbynify (I never hear the follow-up of what is supposed to be the American iteration of "... and then Corbyn is trounced in the general and summarily tossed from his leadership post"). Far less frequently is attention paid to how the American right can and will follow in the footsteps of its European peers.

On that note, I want to put two stories in conversation with one another. The first is a right-wing party in Romania under attack for dismissing Holocaust education as a "minor topic". The second is a Republican legislator in Indiana, State Sen. Scott Baldwin, taking flak for insisting that, under his proposed "anti-CRT' law, educators must and should take a "neutral" stance on Nazism.

The Indiana incident is hardly the first of its kind. From the outset, the anti-CRT push has undercut Holocaust education initiatives -- an utterly predictable consequence that thus far has barely even registered an iota of worry amongst Republicans who just a few months ago were holding themselves as the last hope against an incipient tidal wave of antisemitism (then again, it was barely a year ago when Republicans were still holding themselves out as defenders of free speech in education -- who can keep up?).

But it is worth putting these developments in America in conversation with what's happening in Europe, and why it is exactly that they find the Holocaust to be so disposable. For the most part, it is not that I think that the legislators in Indiana or Texas are secret Hitler admirers. However, I do think they may possess, and be acting on, a sort of annoyed indifference to the Holocaust's preeminence. Much like Republican frustration over how all political scandals end in -gate, there is frustration over how the main "shared" exemplar of pure political evil is a right-wing phenomenon. Sometimes this frustration manifests in absurd attempts to pretend that Nazism was "actually" a left-wing ideology. But another play is to seek to undercut the Holocaust as "just another" historical event, one that shouldn't receive undue attention or be subject to special condemnation. Who cares about the Holocaust when somewhere, someone is reading a book on how to provide support to LGBT youth? It's not pro-Nazi so much as it's anti- expending any resources to fight Nazism or inculcate the view that Nazism is bad. 

On the European side, the new far-right parties are not (yet) outright praising Hitler, but they're very much taking the view that we obsess too much over Hitler. Nazism is a minor blemish, an inkblot, a footnote in an otherwise glorious White European history, and bringing it up is just an obnoxious distraction from the "real" threats posed by immigrants, Muslims, and multiculturalism. And of course, the American right is increasingly lining up with these parties -- Steve King was just a touch ahead of the curve, but the snuggling up to Viktor Orban in Hungary has long since passed into the GOP mainstream. Why should the view of the Holocaust resist the trend? Indeed, the Indiana and Texas cases already show the GOP is happily galloping along with it.

Is a Coup Coming?

I've read a fair number of pieces -- and I'd call them "alarmist", except I don't think they're wrong to raise the alarm -- that the Republican Party is laying the foundation to simply not accept a Democratic victory in 2024. "Stop the steal" becomes "steal it back", if you will. Certainly, the defenestration of Liz Cheney is part of this dynamic. The branches of the GOP which are even nominally supportive of democracy in America grow more brittle every day.

But meanwhile, Politico is observing goings-on amongst retired military officials, and there's some cause for concern there too:

A day after 124 retired generals and admirals released a letter spreading the lie that President Joe Biden stole the election, current and former military officers are speaking out, calling the missive a dangerous news sign of the military being dragged into the trenches of partisan warfare.

The open letter on Monday from a group calling itself Flag Officers 4 America advanced the false conspiracy theory that the presidential vote was rigged in Biden's favor and warned that the nation is "in deep peril" from "a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights."

The good news, such as it is, is that most of the flag officers are below three stars (and no four stars) -- not the heaviest hitters. The bad news, well, I'll kick it over to Peter Seaver (formerly on the NSC in the Clinton and Bush administrations) for the bad news:

Every military that coups or threatens to coup constructs a narrative in which the military is acting to save the country from something worse than military rule. Clearly the authors are attempting to write that narrative.

Not good. Not good at all.

Also, I'll just note that Thomas Sowell was flirting with supporting military coups to keep Democrats out of power since 2008. So this rot, while no doubt accelerated by Trump, did not begin with him. It has been percolating in conservative circles for awhile.

Packing Preparation

I continue to think that adding more states is more likely to occur during the next Democratic administration compared to adding more Supreme Court Justices. But it will be controversial, and, following Machiavelli, anything especially controversial should be done at the very outset of one's tenure as a ruler.* What that means is we want any new state admissions to be part of H.R. 1 (which most people already expect to be a voting rights bill). And in particular, we want the new states set to be added to be ready to go on inauguration day.

This is especially important if we want to extend statehood beyond the most obvious candidate, D.C.. Puerto Rico is a complicated case because statehood has been actively debated there and remains controversial. But there seems to be relatively little discussion of statehood for other American territories, such as Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands. Yet if those territories also were ready to announce, on day one of a Biden administration, that they were applying for statehood, it would be much easier to roll them into a larger bill than trying to mobilize them on the fly.

*  Machiavelli also suggests delegating the task to an underling and then, once it's complete, executing him in a high-profile fashion. Not all of his advice is applicable to the modern day.

You'll Miss It When It's Gone (Iran Deal Edition)

The UN Security Council today declined to extend an arms embargo against Iran, over furious protests by the United States, Israel, and Arab Gulf States. The main opponents of the arms embargo were, naturally, Russia and China. But several European nations -- France, Germany, and the UK -- expressed hesitation, claiming that the United States was no longer in a position to credibly push for sanctions on Iran after it withdrew from the JCPOA (aka "the Iran Deal").

Fancy that. And speaking of the JCPOA, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in its own statement denouncing the UNSC's vote, urged that Security Council consider implementing the JCPOA's "snapback" provisions as an alternative means of blocking Iran from advancing its nuclear weapons program. An interesting idea -- if only a certain country hadn't detonated the JCPOA framework! It's almost like the Iran Deal contained important leverage and hard-won commitments even from countries not otherwise inclined to care about Iranian aggression, and when the United States unilaterally abandoned the deal we lost a ton of international credibility that we can't easily earn back.

Many, many people warned against the reckless decision to back out of the JCPOA, precisely on the grounds that doing so would ruin the ability of the United States to credibly pursue any sort of robust diplomatic containment strategy against Iran going forward. And now we're seeing the real fruits of the Trump administration's decision. Way back when the Iran Deal was initially being debated, I noted that one of the most persuasive arguments I read in its favor was the experts who observed that every time we reject or abandon an "Iran deal", the one we're able to get two or three years later is far worse than the one we left behind. The common cycle is a deal is proposed, conservatives say "how dare you give everything away to the terrorist regime of Iran", we abandon the deal, and then next time around ... we're in an even worse negotiating posture than we were before and what once looked like "giving everything away" now is an unattainable fantasy.

We are, as always, apparently doomed to keep reliving history. Heckuva job, Trumpie.

Israel as Contagion

There's a narrative bubbling in certain areas of the left which seeks to tie American policing abuses to cross-training exchange programs some police departments do with Israeli counterparts. The narrative has its roots in Jewish Voice for Peace's "Deadly Exchange" campaign, which uses the claim as a means of further its campaign to see Israel isolated and ostracized in global society. As the issue of police violence surges to its place at the top of the public's deliberative agenda, the deadly exchange claim likewise attracted those eager for a anti-Israel or antisemitic hook. Just yesterday, new Labour leader Keir Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey -- a prominent Jeremy Corbyn ally and one-time rival for party leadership -- from her position in Labour's shadow cabinet after she approvingly shared an article where actress Maxine Peake claimed, without evidence, that "The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services."

This is not true. Many have cited an Amnesty International report where, they say, it is proven that Israeli police train their American counterparts in human rights violations. But Amnesty has since come out and said explicitly that "Allegations that US police were taught tactics of ‘neck kneeling’ by Israeli secret services is not something we’ve ever reported." This is not surprising, as the content of these exchange programs by all accounts rarely, if ever, focuses on what we might euphemistically call "interpersonal" or "tactical" elements of police activity (it generally concentrates on strategic questions regarding operational responses to mass atrocities -- a subject upon which Israeli security forces sadly carry much expertise).

So what is going on? The stock response from those objecting to the link is the simple but truthful observation that American police hardly need Israeli help on the subject of how to harass racial minorities. Some have argued that, because it is true that there are Israeli and American policing exchange programs (and apparently some Minneapolis officers had partaken), it is ipso facto fair to draw a connection between American abuses and those training seminars -- without any regard to what actually is or is not done in those programs. The argument, in effect, a contagion theory: anyone who associates with Israelis, we can assume, is at least partially corrupted by the contact. They're worse off coming out than coming in.

In apologizing for her comment, Peake said something very interesting: she said "I was inaccurate in my assumption of American police training and its sources." Assumption is the key word there: she had, presumably, read about Israeli and American police training together, and so she assumed that the bad American practices had Israeli roots. But the only evidence was the bare fact of contact -- that's what's driving the narrative. Hence: contagion.

This, I submit, is something antisemitism does. It allows such assumptions to become naturalized. They feel right. American police have done exchange training with counterparts in dozens of other countries, ranging from the UK to Germany to Mexico to Tanzania. Even those who take a dim view of, say, the Mexican police however would likely not jump from mere contacts to causality. If someone said "American police learned chokeholds from Tanzanian police," they'd ask for evidence. If the only evidence is "there are exchange programs between American and Tanzanian police", that likely wouldn't be sufficient. But antisemitism gives a smoother cognitive ride down -- it makes little connections look huge, and implausible leaps seem manageable. It is not accidental that the narrative is about Israeli police exchanges and not German or Mexican or Tanzanian ones.

This is an unorthodox but I think ultimately more accurate way of understanding what antisemitism does. We think of antisemitism often as a motive: because I hate Jews, I think or say or do this thing. But antisemitism is more often a force or process. We usually ask "did Burke or Long-Bailey say what they say because they hate Jews?" The answer to that may well be no. But that's not the right question. The right question is "did a particular way of thinking about Jews render what Burke or Long-Bailey said plausible or resonant in a way it otherwise would not have been?" And there I think it is quite clear that the answer is yes. It is because we think about Jews in a particular way that this contagion theory of Israeli culpability in American policing injustices -- a narrative which objectively stands on such a thin reed -- is plausible when it otherwise wouldn't be. That is the work of antisemitism.

What's the Difference Between Impeachment and Faithless Electors?

One of the first plot points on the TV series The Americans occurs in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of President Reagan, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig's famous declaration "I am in control here" while the President was in the hospital.

Among Americans, this statement was roundly mocked as Haig being overzealous and ill-informed. But -- while there certainly was anxiety around the assassination attempt regarding who was behind it, whether it was a military move, etc. -- there wasn't really any concern among the American public that Haig was actually launching a coup.

But (in the show, at least) the Russians don't know that. From their vantage point, a top government official had just seized on the chaos of the assassination attempt to declare himself head of state. Without a sort of deep enmeshment in American law, culture, and society, it could be hard to tell -- from afar -- why Haig's statement wouldn't be seen as really worrisome, and what distinguished it from a "real" coup attempt.

I was thinking about this with respect to two ways the ticket that wins the presidential election (as understood in the conventional sense) could nonetheless be blocked or removed from office. One way is, immediately after election day but before he is inaugurated, "faithless electors" deciding en masse to vote for someone else. So even though Trump and Pence won most electoral votes, they could just decide to vote for Nancy Pelosi and some other Vice President. The other way is, after the President Vice President are inaugurated and seated, Congress impeaches and removes them.

To any American observer, though, these are two very different things. Congress impeaching and convicting Donald Trump would be controversial, no doubt, and high profile. But it is still basically recognized as a valid "move"; it isn't an illicit seizure of power. By contrast, the faithless elector route would not be seen that way. It'd be seen as, more or less, a coup.

But why? Both are formally legal. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution allows for the President and Vice President's removal by impeachment (and, under the law, the next person in the Line of Succession is the Speaker of the House). And under the 12th Amendment Electors have the authority to vote for whomever they like for President (I leave aside the issue of "faithless elector" statutes and their applicability -- we can assume that all the faithless electors come from states which do not prohibit such acts).

And it's not a matter of some established tradition either. Sure, we've never had a case where faithless electors have altered the victor of an election. But we've also never impeached and removed a President (two Presidents -- Johnson and Clinton -- were impeached but not removed; Nixon resigned before he could be impeached).

So suppose Congress does impeach Trump and Pence. Your friend from abroad hears the news and worries -- has Nancy Pelosi just announced a coup? How do you explain that that isn't really an accurate description of what happened, in a way that distinguishes the "faithless elector" case?

(As you might imagine, what's really prompted this line of thinking is the "legal" arguments for Juan Guaido claiming the presidency in Venezuela. Even assuming he's obeying the letter of the law -- is this more like an impeachment, or more like a faithless elector? Of course, I think the actual answer is that the "legitimate" legal structures in Venezuela have decayed so severely that trying to think in terms of legitimated legal pathways is just a misfire completely -- we're talking about a country where the Supreme Court, stacked with Maduro loyalists, just outright dissolved the national assembly, after all)

Lessons from the UN's Failure to Condemn Hamas

A UN General Assembly resolution that would have condemned Hamas for terrorism and incitement was rejected today. The resolution received a majority of votes (87-57, with 36 abstentions), but did not pass after an earlier vote pushed by the Arab League successfully required the resolution to secure a two-third majority.

Some lessons to draw:

• Let's not get too excited about Israel's new "friendship" with Arab states. There's been a lot of talk about Israel's increasingly warm ties with Arab nations, and to be fair, it isn't entirely a mirage. But it hasn't progressed anywhere close to the point where an Arab state is willing to vote to condemn a Palestinian actor in an international forum. American diplomats had sought to pick off at least a few Arab League nations as aye votes -- not only did they not succeed, they didn't even convince these countries to adopt the potentially face-saving route of voting against the resolution while allowing it pass or fail on a majority vote. Push came to shove, and the Arab League continued to stand as a rock-solid wall against anything that looks like it might deviate away from the UN's extreme and reflexive anti-Israel slant.

• Nothing that is viewed as a "victory for Trump" is going to pass easy, particularly when it comes to the Middle East. As much as everyone likes to tout Nikki Haley, miracle-worker, the fact is that the Trump Administration's bull-in-a-china-shop orientation to foreign policy has severely circumscribed its negotiating leverage in international fora. This resolution, had it passed, would have been viewed as a major international triumph for the Trump administration. Nobody wants to give Donald Trump a major triumph in anything right now. In large respect, the failure of this resolution is the fruit of Trump's alienating unilateral recklessness in decisions like the embassy move. Trump-tactics come with a cost, and it's paid in the defeat of resolutions like this.

• Is criticizing Palestine the "last taboo" in international diplomacy? We hear so much about how it's "impossible" or "taboo" to criticize Israel. Clearly, nobody has ever told the UN that -- it criticizes Israel all the time (indeed, sometimes it seems like it literally spends all of its time criticizing Israel). But, as this resolution demonstrates, even a single solitary denunciation of Hamas (not even the Palestinian Authority -- just Hamas!) yields a knockdown, drag-out fight -- and a fight that few are surprised to see Hamas ultimately win. That's a testament to just how sacrosanct and untouchable the United Nation's anti-Israel orientation really is.

• Chile, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland (among many others) are weasel states. I mentioned before that the Arab League successfully moved to require that the anti-Hamas resolution require a two-third majority. That vote was extremely close -- it passed by a 75-72 margin, with 26 abstentions. Among the abstaining states were Chile, Norway, New Zealand, and Switzerland -- all of whom proceeded to vote in favor of the resolution they'd just ensured could not pass. Nice try. Even worse than them were states like Argentina, Japan, and the Bahamas, who outright voted in favor of the two-thirds requirement before voting to pass the resolution. Nobody is fooled by this play.

Republicans Don't Care About Democracy

I remember, after Trump won, but before he was inaugurated, reading some cockamamie plan for how Democrats could get Merrick Garland's nomination through the Senate. It had to do with when new Senators were sworn in and Joe Biden presiding over the Senate for the last time and basically meant slamming the nomination through during an extremely short period when the new Senate members hadn't officially taken office so the body was operating at just two-thirds of normal capacity -- with those two-thirds happening to have a Democratic majority.

I had no idea if it would actually work. And it's not as if I didn't understand the temptation. But I distinctly remember -- as despondent as I was over the election results, and as furious as I was about how Senate Republicans acted regarding Garland -- that this just wasn't fair play. It was an obvious abuse of form over substance, designed to subvert the outcome of a democratic election. There were, I thought, deeper dangers that lurked about when that sort of move became acceptable.

With what we're seeing in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, that is feeling more and more like a sucker's move.

As the 2016 election season closed, we all remember the alarms raised when Donald Trump indicated he wouldn't necessarily accept the results if he lost. That fear was mooted when he ended up winning -- though we got a taste of it in North Carolina -- but now two years later we're seeing these anti-democratic impulses surge back in full force.

What has become evident is that the principle of majority rule scarcely even has pull as a reason when it comes to the Republican Party. The blase attitude toward the fact that in four of the last five presidential elections their candidate has lost the majority vote is one thing, as is their unsurprising reverence for the massively anti-democratic effects of the Senate.

But couple it to the ruthless use of partisan gerrymandering, which has allowed for Republicans to retain massive legislative majorities even in states where they are in the electoral minority. Couple with it open use of voter suppression techniques, often tracking racial lines, usually done with the outright endorsement of conservative judges. Couple it with transparently partisan power grabs like those we're seeing this week. And couple it, of course, with the overwhelming popularity amongst Republicans of an undemocratic thug like Donald Trump occupying the Oval Office.

Put all those couplings together, and you have a Republican Party that at this point that cannot be said to value democracy. Indeed, given their conduct over the past few years, it's almost impossible to put together a good-faith case that Republicans do care about majority rule. That's not something we could say 20 years ago. But it poses an existential threat to the continued vitality of the American experiment.

So let's be clear: If the republic falters, it will be the Scott Walkers, the Robin Vos's, the Pat McCrorys, just as much as the Donald Trumps, who will deserve blame, and who will and should go down as villains in the American history books.

The Slowly Crumbling Arrogance of the Center-Right

Israeli Rabbi and pundit Daniel Gordis is not a liberal.

But he's not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative either.

He's a member of the center-right, which at this point means he basically believes in conservative policies while being committed in principle to the underlying liberal architecture of freedom of expression, democratic norms, fairness and factuality in politics, and respect for minorities.

And like many members of the center-right, he's starting to feel uneasy about the decay of this liberal architecture at the hands of his less "center" compatriots. Here's him writing on the recent spate of heavy-handed security actions Israel has taken at Netanyahu's behest against dissident voices (detentions at the border, expelling artists):

Although it is hard to know exactly who is issuing directives to the security services on this issue, the clumsiness leads one to suspect there is an unstated goal. It seems likely that Netanyahu has decided to stoke the embers of “Zionists versus Israel’s enemies” discourse, which will win him points with the right-wing factions of Israeli society he needs to win the next elections, scheduled for next year, but may be called early. 

The prime minister is playing with fire. More than half of Israel’s Jewish citizens are either immigrants from North Africa, Yemen, Iraq and Iran or their descendants. They come from societies where freedom of speech is not nearly as sacrosanct as it is in the U.S. Add in more than 1 million Russian immigrants, many of whom are comfortable with the sort of heavy-handedness President Vladimir Putin is displaying there. Israel needs a leader who can model devotion to the values of liberal societies, not undermine them for the sake of short-term political gains. Appealing to citizens comfortable with authoritarian-leaning regimes may earn Netanyahu short-term political gains, but could eventually yield a country which no one would call “one of the world’s most open democracies.”

The first paragraph can't be stressed enough. Netanyahu doesn't fear confrontation with BDS activists and strident Israel critics. He revels in it, because it allows him to pour gasoline on an "us-vs.-the-world" dynamic which both energizes the right-wing base and puts the squeeze on liberal Zionist voices. Israel's right and the global left exist in symbiosis with one another, and Bibi knows it.

The second paragraph, though, needs some unpacking, and brings us back to the title of this post.

The defining characteristic of the center-right over the past few decades has been confidence -- I'd say now revealed to be arrogance -- in the absolute stability of the basic liberal norms of Western society. Whether due to cultural chauvinism or something else, they were absolutely sure that the core liberal commitments weren't going anywhere.

This thread on Jonah Goldberg provides a good iteration of this issue in the American context -- Goldberg now is recognizing the danger of the decayed form of conservatism that now runs supreme on the right, but doesn't acknowledge how he was a key contributor to it. The reason is that, at the time, he probably thought his dalliances were harmless. A little rabble-rousing here, a little mob-baiting there -- what's the big deal? It's all in good fun, or the wink-and-nod of playing the democratic game to win. The institutions were durable, they'd hold up. The stability of the liberal order was taken for granted.

Now, we're finally seeing that confidence fade a little bit. It turns out that liberal and democratic values need work put into them; they don't defend themselves, and they do decay under constant pressure of xenophobia, chauvinism, conspiratorial thinking, and the like. Democracy, as my former professor Melvin Rogers (channeling John Dewey) wrote, is a habit -- and it needs to be practiced.

In Gordis' second paragraph you can see both the recognition of the danger but also the denial of it. He locates the danger to Israel's liberal democratic character in its Middle Eastern and Russian Jewish population -- they, you see, don't have the patrimony of liberalism that we otherwise could take for granted. The implication of the paragraph is that Bibi is playing a game, but alas the ostjuden might not realize he doesn't mean it.

But why assume Bibi is playing a game? Why assume he does, somewhere, deep down, care about or retain commitment to liberal ideals? It's a relic of the center-right arrogance that assumes the unshakable bond between its tribe and those liberal commitments. But if there's one lesson we've learned over the past few years, its that this connection is far frailer than we thought. Bibi may be playing with fire; but he might really be indifferent to that which gets burned. And since he's the one wielding the flame, it's more than a little arrogant to point to the Russians and the Mizrahim and say they're the real threat.

The fact of the matter is that in Israel, or America, or the UK or France or Greece or India or anywhere else that has been blessed even with a temporary and partial spark of the the liberal democratic ideal -- these things require work to survive. They do not persist on their own. The center-right assumed they would, and so did not see the danger that was boiling up in their own yard. And now that it has boiled over, the sobering truth is that there is no natural counterweight to it. The system will not readjust to a natural liberal equilibrium, there is no such equilibrium that exists. Liberal values need to be practiced and they need to be fought for, or they will disappear.

A Republic, If We Can Keep It

Ben Franklin was always my favorite founding father, at least since I played him in Burning Tree Elementary's Fifth Grade Play (the play was called Let George Do It, but my scene was actually a cut-in from 1776). It may even predate that -- I have to imagine I read Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by his Good Mouse Amos at an even earlier age (an excellent children's book, by the way -- all good children's books contain mice).

Among Dr. Franklin's most famous lines was his reported statement, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, that we had created "a Republic, if you can keep it."

The constitutional character of America is not something one can take for granted, and it is not something we claim by birthright. We must keep it, each and every day. It is an ongoing responsibility.

But some days are more salient than others. Election days are always among them, and this election day is more meaningful than most. This is the moment where we get to decide what sort of country we want to be. This is the moment where we get to prove that our homilies about law and liberty, equal justice and due process, free speech and free press, are more than just words.

Some of you (like myself) have already voted. If so, thank you. If you are waiting until election day, please make sure to go to the polls. And if you are still unsure of whether it's worth voting, or whether there's time, or whether it matters -- it is, there is, and it does.

America is not perfect, but it is a great Republic -- a haven for millions who have come to these shores seeking a better life, and a model for millions more inspired by our constitutional ideals. I never want America to stop being the sort of place people around the world look up to. I never want America to stop being the sort of place where people believe that they can achieve their dreams. I never want America to stop being the sort of place where people want to immigrate to.

America, is and has been all of these things. They define and demarcate our Republic.

Tomorrow, we will see if a majority of Americans find that Republic to be worth keeping.

The Trump Movement's Dark Reflective Equilibrium

All of us have certain broad principles of justice we claim to adhere to. All of us, equally, have a variety of individualized judgments we make on the particular moral cases and controversies we might consider on a daily basis. Needless to say, sometimes our broad principles and our particular judgments don't precisely line up. In such cases, we can either modify the principle to account for the particular judgment or modify our case-specific judgments so they match the principle. Neither move is inherently more or less legitimate than the other -- sometimes reference back to a broad principle can tell us that our assessment of an individual case is mistaken, other times the exigencies of a concrete scenario can illuminate a flaw or inadequacies in our principles. The process of moving back in forth between the general and the specific, trying to bring the two into alignment, is known as "reflective equilibrium".

The rise of Donald Trump -- openly racist, avowedly xenophobic, deeply misogynistic, contemptuous of the very idea of rule of law -- has made me rethink some very basic assumptions I had about the American polity. Most notably, it raised the question about whether racism really had just gone to ground -- people's views not so much changing from the 1960s as being covered up until the moment was right. Yet it remained difficult for me to accept the idea that nothing changed, that this was simply the people getting what they always wanted. Was it really the case that a good 45% or so of Americans had always been secretly thirsting for far-right autocracy, awaiting only the right standard-bearer? Did bedrock American values regarding rule of law, regarding basic temperament for office, regarding human rights and liberties, really have so little purchase?

As I've been thinking about it, I've wondered if we are witnessing folks go through the reflective equilibrium, darkly. Many Americans, it is clear, held some pretty brutal case-specific views regarding social outgroups -- including mass deportations of immigrants and religious tests on public office. And Trump stood before them and endorsed those views loud and clear, but also was unyielding in identifying the principles that such particularistic views were and were not compatible with. Even the time-worn platitudes about colorblindness wouldn't do. And people, as reflective equilibrium would predict, adjusted their principles accordingly. And in doing so, well, that made certain other, still more radical specific proposals seem a little less out-of-bounds. Maybe we should endorse violence against protesters. Maybe it's okay to lob Holocaust imagery at Jewish journalists. And back-and-forth we go, the boat rocking ever-steadily towards fascism.

When I fret about a Donald Trump presidency, the first thing that springs to my mind is not a particular policy -- as abhorrent as I'm sure I'd find most of them. It's a question of more fundamental principle: the very idea of "rule of law". If a court tells Donald Trump he can't do something, can anyone say with confidence he'll listen? Does he believe, in any meaningful sense, in limited authority when he's the authority? Does he believe he's constrained by the rules, orders, statutes, cases, precedents? This charge -- thrown with such reckless abandon at Hillary Clinton ("there’s no politician who has been at the center of so many scandals that have turned out to be worth so little") -- is a very real concern when it comes to Trump. This is not someone who will work the system in a way I'd cluck my tongue at. This is a guy who may well destroy the system if it doesn't bend to his every whim.

The scariest thing about the Trump movement, then, is not that its adherents don't see how their man flouts the conventions that keep America's constitutional system afloat. The scariest thing is the prospect that they do see it, and they're simply okay with it -- those values and principles aren't what guides them anymore. To support Trump and his specific policies would require tossing out significant swaths of what makes America recognizable as a constitutional democracy. And so, on reflection, they reached a new equilibrium.

Reflexive UN Votes

I often hear people complain about the United States "reflexively" voting against any UN resolution critical of Israel. I think such complaints are overstated -- at the very least, they should explain which part of the Negroponte Doctrine they object to -- but there is a certain abstract sense to them. There's no reason to think that every resolution that is critical of Israel is worth voting against.

But it is telling that there is no equal ire -- indeed, no commentary at all -- on the 150 countries or so who "reflexively" vote for any UN resolution critical of Israel, no matter how outrageous or even outlandish. Those decisions are just taken to be part of the diplomatic fabric of the universe, I suppose. Here's the latest one that got through a UNESCO committee:

 A UNESCO resolution does not recognize a Jewish connection to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount and calls Israel an “occupying power.”

[...] 

The resolution, which condemns Israeli actions in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, accuses Israel of being an “occupying power,” of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places,” according to Israeli newspaper reports.

It also criticizes Israel for its decision to build an egalitarian prayer area in the Western Wall Plaza and for “illegal measures against the freedom of worship” at the “Muslim holy site of worship.” The resolutions refers to the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem as solely Muslim, and raps Israeli control over the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb, both in Hebron.

Maybe the United States would be more inclined to favor an "even-handed" approach at the United Nations if "even-handedness" had even the most trivial constituency in its favor in Turtle Bay. But since it doesn't, it doesn't bother me too much that we have basically decided to write that august institution off when it comes to resolutions related to Israel.