Anti-Semitism as Structural and the Iran Deal Debate

Given that three of my last eight posts have been about the question of anti-Semitism as part of the Iran deal debate, it may surprise you that I've actually been reading even more articles which touch on the issue without comment. These include Jonathan Greenblatt (solid piece), Yair Rosenberg (thoughtful), Jon Chait (good except for the title), James Tarento (blech), Matt Duss and Todd Gitlin's rebuttal to that awful Tablet editorial (strong), and Lee Smith's rejoinder (predictably dreadful).

This has been a trying issue for me, since it puts to the teeth one of my lodestone political commitments: namely, that one folks make an "=ism" charge (be it anti-Semitism or anything else), we should take it seriously it not facially dismiss it as opportunistic or made in bad faith. Obviously, and as my previous posts make clear, I find the particular charges leveled here difficult to swallow. But since my aforementioned principle does not contain a "unless I, David Schraub, personally think the charges aren't going to hold water" exception, that's no object. And I will say that I've recognized this tension from moment one and tried to mold my posts according to said principles. While I've certainly been cutting in my responses to Smith in particular, I have endeavored to explain why his allegations are wrong on their substance, rather than simply dismiss them as part of some pattern or practice of opportunistic wolf-crying. There is a difference between rejecting a charge on its merits after engaging with it, and refusing to consider it in the first place, and I've done my best to stay within the former camp.

Take, for example, the "lobbying" question, which has been a core area of contention between myself and people like Smith. My litmus test for discussion here has always been broad by design: Is the challenged behavior plausibly anti-Semitic under a plausible theory of anti-Semitism? That standard is designed to allow for considerable breadth both in matters of theory (what do we think anti-Semitism is?) and interpretation (what is the best reading of the challenged statements?). And I think that "lobbying" does clear that preliminary hurdle for discussion: the practice of demonizing a nefarious Jewish lobby as fundamentally illegitimate and destructive of political discourse is sufficiently embedded in Western culture such that -- when the term is deployed on an issue where Jewish contributions to the debate have high salience -- it is worth at least investigating the possibility of anti-Semitism. Now, as I've made clear, I think the results of that investigation are wholly exonerative: the use of "lobbying" in this debate has been entirely indistinguishable from standard, boilerplate usages of the term across all manner of political discussions, making it infeasible to impute it to anti-Semitism here. But that's how one concludes a discussion, not how one initiates it, and I think it is worthwhile to maintain that discussion.

All that said, I've also realized that I've been baited into having a conversation about anti-Semitism on terms that don't really track how I think the issue should be addressed. All the talk about "dog whistles" (much less Tablet's explicit invocation of white power rallies) casts anti-Semitism in a particular mold: a matter of bad intentions and deliberate (if sometimes sotto voce) deployments. Such debates go to the state of mind of the relevant actor, and determining that is inherently a judgment call. If one thinks of the President as a miserly, underhanded figure who's long displayed hostility to Jewish causes, one will be inclined to impute bad motives. If one thinks of him as someone who has consistently enjoyed the support and friendship of the Jewish community and in turn proven himself time and again to be an ally, by contrast, that inference will sound ridiculous. There isn't much that can be done to resolve that debate.

I also don't think it's a particularly useful frame. While anti-Semitism certainly can take the form of explicit (or implicit) prejudicial attitudes, I think it is better to generally theorize it as a structural phenomenon -- exploring how the grooves of our social practice result in situations where Jewishness is problematized, leveraged against the Jews, or otherwise is blocked off from inclusion in democratic deliberation on full and equal terms. One question I've heard from some folks who, like me, are skeptical that the President is campaigning on anti-Semitism to drum up support for the Iran deal have asked "who is it supposed to appeal to? Who are the gentile fence-sitters who will come around to support the deal once they realize its an opportunity to stick it to those disloyal, warmongering Jews?" But even I, fellow-skeptic, can answer this one: The target of such a campaign isn't the goys, it's the Jews -- namely Jewish Democrats. The point (the argument goes) is to tell those politicians that if they vote against the deal they're among the bad Jews, the disloyal Jews, the one's at the beck and call of a foreign power. You don't want to be a bad Jew, do you? And that argument, which leverages the insecure position Jews have against them, would obviously be anti-Semitic.

Now, one thing we can say about the "bad Jews" argument is that it cuts both ways: for every person saying (explicitly or implicitly) "you're a bad Jew if you vote against the deal", there's someone else saying "you're a bad Jew if you vote for it. You're a Jew-in-name-only, you'll sacrifice your people out of blind loyalty to the Democratic Party, Evangelicals are better Jews than you, you Kapo, you who (in Huckabee's striking words) would lead your fellows straight to the oven doors." This argument is anti-Semitic in in the same way the above one is -- it leverages Jewishness against the Jews -- and to the extent it is being made by folks like Governor Huckabee it is equally condemnable to any Daily Kos cartoon attacking Schumer for dual loyalty. This is one of the great joys of the Jewish condition -- we're always taking it from all sides.

But the larger point is that the "bad Jews" argument doesn't need to be made, to be made. That's not a "dog whistle" argument: I did not write "doesn't need to be made loudly to be made". It doesn't need to be made at all. Even if the President finds this entire line of argument appalling, and has no intention (explicit or implicit) of leveraging it -- it's still there. The grooves of society still place Jews in this precarious position, and so we still feel the pressure to demonstrate that we're true patriots who don't vote on provincial lines (or, for that matter, that we're more than just liberals-with-surnames-containing-"Stein", we're Jews and our progressive politics are reflective, not betrayals, of that identity). That's the point of looking at structural phenomena -- it isn't about bad guys using either racist bullhorns or sneaky dog whistles. Structural anti-Semitism is like potential energy -- the fact that it is there, available to be harnessed at any time, is sufficient to effect the risk calculus and thereby alter behavior.

One important dimension of anti-Semitism is political -- specifically, the idea that Jews dominate politics and use their dominant position to oppress and exclude others. This isn't always a visible problem when Jews aren't advocating anything that steps on the toes of powerful interests, but it becomes a big issue when Jewish political advocacy becomes salient on a sharply divided issue (like the Iran deal). For all our supposed political clout, Jews are very uncomfortable when put in a situation where we're a noticed player in an ongoing and contentious issue, precisely because there is nothing worse for the Jews than being seen as ("being seen as", of course, being a matter of perception that need not match reality) the driving force for a policy that many people sharply oppose (or vice versa).

So it's not surprising at all that many Jews -- no matter their politics -- are uncomfortable with the progression of the Iran deal debate. This is a terrible issue for us, one where "Jewish-identified" issues are placed smack in the middle of a fraught and contentious debate, in a cultural context wherein Jews successfully defending their interests (however conceived) in a contested forum is considered to be proof of a political malfunction. But these problems aren't problems of dog whistles; they're problems of structure. The debate thus far has obscured that important truth, and caused many people to misdirect their fire.

It's Outrageous To Suggest Feeding Tablet Editors To Fire Ants

Tablet Magazine has a sternly-worded editorial which concludes as follows:

We do not accept the idea that Senator Schumer or anyone else is a fair target for racist incitement, anymore than we accept the idea that the basic norms of political discourse in this country do not apply to Jews. Whatever one feels about the merits of the Iran deal, sales techniques that call into question the patriotism of American Jews are examples of bigotry—no matter who does it. On this question, we should all stand in defense of Senator Schumer.

Alas, as has become the norm of Tablet columns in this ilk -- and it is depressing to see the flaw migrate from Lee Smith articles to the editorial board itself -- what's missing in the editorial is any evidence that anybody in the Obama administration (or that matter, anybody at all) has subjected Senator Schumer to "racist incitement". Certainly, the Obama administration has opposed Schumer's opposition -- surely that's not objectionable -- but there is nothing in their comments that is remotely outside the bounds of normal political discourse. Nothing about "dual loyalty" or lack of patriotism, or even the more benign bugaboo complaints about "lobbyists" (and, to reiterate, if complaining that one's opinions are being influenced by big money and lobbyists is an anti-Semitic dog whistle, then every political debate our country has seen in the past half-century has apparently been dominated by neo-Nazis). The absolute worst thing you can find is a tweet by a former Obama staffer "the base won’t support a leader who thought Obamacare was a mistake and wants War with Iran," The "War with Iran" bit might be a cheap shot, but just the normal kind. And aside from that, everything one hears is entirely unremarkable political jostling.

All together, it is remarkably thin gruel. Yet paucity of evidence did not stop Tablet from deploying an orgy of histrionic rhetoric to back up its non-case: "It's the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the United States", "the kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South," "This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives." It would be exceptionally lovely if any of these allegations were connected to anything the President actually had said, but it's hard to collect quotes whilst hyperventilating I suppose. "It’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it," but not so blatant that one can find a direct quote by the President to back up the case.

All that being said, I certainly do not disagree with the statement that Chuck Schumer should not be subjected to racist incitement of any sort stemming from his opposition to the Iran deal. Since the fact that this hasn't, you know, happened apparently is no bar, allow me to go on the record with a few other non-occurrences which all people of goodwill should sternly oppose:

• Mitch McConnell should not be beaten and left in a ditch.
• It would be grotesque for anyone to call for Nancy Pelosi to be buried neck deep in sand at the low-tide mark.
• Regardless of whether or not you like the Dallas Cowboys, it is uncalled for to demand cleansing the entire state of Texas with a holy fire.
• Jewish representatives who vote for the Iran deal should under no circumstances be forced to parade naked through King's Landing as a condition for entering their synagogues.
• Even if the United States men's boxing program fails yet again to medal at the 2016 Olympics, we absolutely should not reinstate the Roman policy of "decimation" as a punishment.
• No matter how he performs at the next debate, Donald Trump should not be hanged from a noose constructed from his own hair.

No matter what one's views are on the Iran deal, surely we can agree that none of these outrageous actions is tolerable in American society. I look forward to a Tablet editorial devoted to each of them over the coming weeks.

Professor Robert Burt Passes Away at Age 76

I am sad to report that Yale Law Professor Robert "Bo" Burt has passed away at age 76. I never met Bo personally, but we did get the chance to correspond about what turned out to be his final book, In the Whirlwind: God and Humanity in Conflict. We exchanged several emails about our competing interpretations of the Book of Job, and even though I was a mere law clerk at the time (and not a former student of his either), he responded to my perspective with a seriousness and respect that I was honored to receive. Later, when I published my review of the book in the Loyola University (Chicago) Law Journal, he was effusive with his praise while responding thoughtfully to our areas of (mild) disagreement.

When I was a law review editor, my single most important criteria for evaluating submissions was simple: does it cause me to think interesting thoughts? Burt's book triggered a welter of interesting thoughts, some of which I hopefully was able to transcribe into my review. But whether I was successful or not, I was grateful and humbled to have been treated as a colleague and a fellow in the process. That is something I will never forget, and if God-willing I ever achieve anything close to his eminence in academia, a model I hope to emulate.

May his memory be a blessing.

How Many Angels Can One Pinhead Support?

Conspiracy theories are a funny thing. They often start with a small mistake -- an implausible inference elevated to obvious truth, an unremarkable coincidence elevated to a dastardly plot, or just a simple mistake of fact -- and then build elaborate structures of belief upon that basic, but flawed, foundation. Done long enough, the core mistake can be buried under so much debris that it can be difficult to suss out again. But for those who were there from the beginning, it is an amazing thing to watch one tiny miscomprehension spiral into so much more.

A few weeks ago, I remarked on Lee Smith's astounding attempt to convert boilerplate rhetoric by the President against "Washington lobbyists" into an "anti-Semitic dogwhistle" regarding the Iran deal. Smith provided no reason why such generic, and commonplace, language should in this case be read as a sly attack on Jews, and I spotted none in my own analysis. The week following on Facebook, I tackled Smith's next layering of the charge. This time, in addition to bizarrely asserting that the release of Jonathan Pollard was an attempt to tar Jews with "dual loyalty" accusations, he misquoted Secretary of State John Kerry as saying Israel would be "to blame" for the failure of the Iran deal, when in reality he said Israel would be "blamed" for it. While I understand that grammar can be difficult, this is not a small distinction given that the former is dubious while the latter is unquestionably true to anyone who understands how anti-Semitism and Israel interact in international political discourse. But from the initial misplaced inference we now have a pattern for Smith, a pattern so obvious only a blind sheep could miss it.

And so we get to this week's entry, which contends that Obama is targeting three Jewish Democratic Senators -- Ben Cardin of Maryland, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Chuck Schumer of New York -- with "dual loyalty" accusations if they break with the administration on this issue. What's his evidence? A New York Times editorial entitled "Republican Hypocrisy on Iran" that does not ever refer to any of the three putative targets. This is a masterstroke of the genre: the proof that (a) the Obama administration is (b) targeting these three Jewish Senators is a column (a) not authored by the Obama administration that (b) doesn't even allude to the three Senators. Sprinkle in some unsupported talk of an Obama-backed primary challenge to any defectors, and the hysterical assertion that generic urgings that politicians evaluate the deal on its merits rather than be swayed by lobbyists (that word again!) is "'Jew-baiting' of the sort that one might associate with Father Coughlin back in the 1930s," and you've got a column worthy of a 9/11 troofer.

And yet no doubt for Smith each layer, enforces the others, until the whole thing carries an aura of invulnerability unbreachable by simply sniping at this or that element. Isn't it odd that the President would resort to anti-Semitic rhetoric in pursuit of a policy most Jews support? Not odd, says Smith, just even more "perverse". Is it weird that a President supposedly so hostile to Jewish influence would engage so directly with the Jewish community on this issue? Nay, it is merely so he can elevate his "good Jews" (which, to reiterate, is apparently "most of us"). From such tiny scraps such grand conclusions drawn. It's awe-inspiring, in its way. But it's not serious political analysis.

...And if they did fail to investigate, they were insane

There's an old joke amongst lawyers about the "perfect defense argument". It's a series of "in the alternative" responses that seeks to derail the plaintiff's case (usually styled as something simple like "your client broke my vase") at every turn. "You don't have a vase. If you have a vase, my client has never seen it. If he saw it, he never touched it. If he touched it, it did not fall...." and so on. The last line in the litany is that if, after all that, the man can indisputably have been shown to have broken the vase ... well, "he was insane."

It's a joke because, of course, such a strategy is not "perfect", it reeks of desperation and wouldn't be received well by any jury at all. It also smacks of how some folks are responding to Yesh Din statistics showing that a mere 7.4%  of cases of Jewish civilians committing crimes against Palestinians are cleared (which came up in the discussion over my post on the recent "price tag" murder of a Palestinian child). Here is an edited version of the fusillade of responses I've gotten to that figure on Twitter:

• Where did that figure comes from? [Answer: Yesh Din]
• How was it calculated? [Out of 996 complaints with investigation files opened and processed, only 7.4% resulted in any charges being filed.]
• "Charges filed"? Why that metric? [That's basically what's known as the "clearance rate": the ratio of complaints made to arrests and charges made.]
• Who's to say 7.4% is low? Maybe in the US it's even lower. There are plenty of cases where a crime report is filed and nobody is caught. [True, but 7.4% is still really low. The American clearance rates, by comparison, are 47% for violent crimes and 18% for property crimes] 
• What happens if charges are dropped? Maybe the police are investigating the claims but the prosecutors are electing not to file?  [A case where charges are filed and later dropped still counts as "cleared". Since it's a measure of police efficacy, not prosecutorial talent, it stops measuring once the case is out of the police's hands.]
• It includes dropped charges? Then those numbers are squishy; the police could goose the numbers just by arresting and charging random strangers! [There's no evidence that happens over a large scale. This is a very widely used metric of police efficiency.]
• Bah! Your numbers are useless if they don't include convictions [Fine. The percentage of claims which result in a conviction is 3.3% (33/996). The conviction rate (how many charged cases lead to at least one conviction) is 58%]
• Who's to say 3.3% is low? Maybe in the US it's even lower! [This again? Highly unlikely. Even if we assumed every crime was a property crime, the conviction rate would have to be an appalling 18% for the ratio of complaints to convictions to catch up.]
• Maybe the US conviction rate is that low? [It's not. It's 66%.]
• Well, maybe the police aren't charging people because it turns out the complaints are unfounded? [Overwhelmingly, the files are closed because the investigation fails -- no suspect or insufficient evidence to bring a case -- not because the claim is deemed unfounded.]
• Maybe they're not finding enough evidence because no crime occurred! [Perhaps, sometimes. And perhaps sometimes the police gave it their all and just couldn't catch the perpetrator. That's why we use aggregate statistics and used the U.S. as a baseline comparison. Neither explanation is likely to account for 93% of cases.]
• Bah again! I bet almost all claims of "price tag" attacks are lies. Ever heard of Pallywood? [I have. Again, if you think it accounts for 93% of cases, you're delusional.]
• Also, these statistics come from Yesh Din, and they're one of those EU-funded Israeli groups that can't be trusted. [Then by all means provide contrary data from a source you like better. I'm happy to look at it.]
• [Needless to say, actually providing contrary data, or countervailing evidence of any sort, has been met with utter silence].

You'll note that all of these responses are attempts to pot-shot at the data. They don't provide any positive evidence -- empirical or otherwise -- demonstrating that Israel does a good job investigating "price tag" attacks on a systematic level. This is the behavior of people who are guarding a belief that they desperately want to be true, and will cling to it through hell or high water. I don't want to believe that Israel systematically fails to investigate price tag attacks. I prefer it when Israel does a good job, and I'm unhappy when it does a bad job. But the fact of the matter is that they've been a colossal failure in this arena; and it's not an unimportant arena.

Housing Demolition and "Price Tag" Terror

Yesterday, extremist Jewish terrorists attacked the Palestinian village of Duma, killing a one-year old child and seriously injuring members of her family. It is the latest in a wave of so-called "price tag" attacks launched against Palestinians (as well as Israeli targets seen as sympathetic to the Palestinians), purportedly in response to Israeli government actions which curb settlement growth (the moniker "price tag" refers to the attackers wishing to exact a "price" for such Israeli actions). Bibi Netanyahu has called the attack an act of "terrorism" -- as he should -- but there has long been a culture of impunity that surrounds these attacks and ensures they will continue no matter how many outraged statements are released from the Prime Minister's office.

So in terms of the next move, I was wondering whether this might be an appropriate venue to apply Israel's longstanding policy of demolishing or sealing the houses of the terrorism suspects. Israel has long done this as a form of deterrence for suicide bombings or other terrorist acts, and there is some evidence that it has been effective. There are also many strong arguments that it is illegal and immoral; for purpose of this post I'm shunting those arguments aside not because I don't think they have weight, but because I don't think they have any more weight when applied to a Jewish home versus a Palestinian home. If it's going to be off the table, it should be off the table for all. But to the extent that the Israeli political and legal system has accepted this tactic as an anti-terror tool, then it should be used against terrorists of all stripes.

The remaining question, then, is whether it would be an effective tool. And my instincts are that the answer is yes, absolutely it would. Obviously destroying a house has a deterrent effect for straightforward, tangible reasons that apply to all homeowners equally. But in the context of Jewish "price tag" settlers particularly, it also carries significant symbolic meaning as well. The ideological construct that surrounds these attacks are all about land and the inalienable right of Jewish occupancy thereto. A punishment that severs that cord carries with it an expressive power that is far more powerful than a simple prison term. Destroying the homes of Jewish settler terrorists would put a "price tag" on the "price tag"; extremists willing to give up their liberty or even their lives may pause if the immediate effect of their barbarism is the evacuation of their precious outposts.

So yes, I think it's worth considering. And certainly, putting on the table would be a powerful signal that the Israeli government draws no distinction between different terrorisms -- if housing demolitions are good for the goose, they're good for the gander as well.

Made Men

I endorse, 100%, the following posts regarding the "mob justice" surrounding a Minnesota dentist who killed a protected Lion in Zimbabwe: Max Fischer at Vox, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, and Clark at Popehat. Mob justice is not a good thing. It's not a good thing when imposed upon those who "deserve" it, and it's not a good thing because it is exceptionally poor at accurately identifying desert.

One difficulty surrounding internet outrage mobs, picked up on by Kevin Drum, is that they are often comprised of an infinite-iteration of individualized reactions which, taken in isolation, may be perfectly reasonable and measured expressions of outrage. Not all, of course -- even at an individual level threats of violence or vandalism would be unacceptable. But sometimes its a problem of multiplier. There's obviously nothing wrong with being upset that someone killed a beloved charismatic megafauna. Nor is there anything wrong with being harshly critical of an idiotic newspaper column, or taking umbrage at a crass and offensive tweet. The problem, of course, is there is a huge difference between a few people doing that and millions of people doing it. A controversy which might have been localized to a particular community, and blown over in a couple of days (potentially with offender and aggrieved persons being able to work out an acceptable resolution in person), now are massive international stories that can decimate lives and livelihoods. No individual member of the mob feels like they're doing anything untoward, but the aggregated effect is completely morally indefensible. The problem lies in the balance -- how do we as a collectivity express the "right" amount of outrage, when "amount" is determined largely by just how many voices are contributing to the choir.

I don't have an answer to that question, exactly. I think there are some markers to be on the lookout for, including whether the target is a public persona and whether the focus of the internet narrative is to promote the normal workings of the legal system rather than impose a form of vigilantism. But I do agree with Fischer when he says that mob justice "is not primarily about punishing the crime or the criminal, but rather about indulging the outrage of the mob and its thirst for vengeance." I've written about similar themes in my "Criticism as Punishment" post, and I refer back to it here. When we -- either as a legal collectivity or as a mass of private individuals -- seek to use "punishment" as a mechanism for expressing our own moral outrage, there is an exceptionally high potential for abuse. The next time one (and I include myself in this) think of joining in a chorus of outrage, pause and think whether one's contribution is primarily about correcting the wrong, or about signaling you're in the right.

Jesus the Settler

In an ideal world, one of the nice things about being Jewish is that one would not have to answer the impossibly anachronistic historical thought experiment "What Would Jesus Do?" What Jesus would do is pleasantly irrelevant to either my theology or my political morality, and so by all rights it shouldn't concern me.

In the real world, of course, Jews in the West live under the constant shadow of Christian domination, and so it is often quite essential that we play the tremendously silly game of enlisting Jesus to this or that cause. The latest rendition of this spectacularly stupid charade comes from former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, who stated that were he around today, the Bethlehem-born Jesus Christ, along with Mary and John the Baptist, would be "considered Jewish settlers." This statement, in turn, led to a histrionic response by Ryan Rodrick Beiler (for many years a Mennonite activist in East Jerusalem) who contended that Oren "may have crossed the line from belligerence to blasphemy" (an interesting choice of words, to be sure) in so labeling Jesus.

I want to reiterate, once more, what a profoundly stupid exercise this is. Taking historical figures from the vastly different geopolitical and moral context that existed 2000 years ago and importing it into the present-day is one of those ridiculous, open-ended rorschach blobs that allows one to see whatever one wants to see. But since we're apparently forced to tackle the subject, let's see if there is in fact anything useful that can be mined out of it.

Oren's case for saying Jesus would be "considered" a settler is very simple:

1) Jesus is a Jew residing in the modern-day West Bank;

2) Jews residing in the modern-day West Bank are considered settlers, therefore;

3) Jesus would be considered a settler. Q.E.D.

Beiler's response is to contend that Jesus, well-known friend of the downtrodden, would in no way affiliate himself with the settlement enterprise. He would instead protest it, and identify himself with oppressed Palestinians laboring under occupation. But this, you'll note, isn't actually responsive. It doesn't disprove Jesus' status as a settler, it just argues that he'd be a settler with left-wing, pro-Palestinian views.

Beiler, for example, cites to the Geneva Conventions (specifically, Article 49 of the 4th Convention) as to what makes a "settlement" a "settlement" and thereby a violation of interntaional law. That Article states that

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Settlements, as most international legal scholars agree, represent such a "transfer" of the civilian population and are therefore illegal. But you'll notice that there is no proviso that says "...unless a member of the transferred population really sympathizes with the cause of those under occupation." Beiler's argument is a non-sequitur -- it isn't a political litmus test that would render our hypothetical modern-day Jesus a settler; it's that he'd be considered a member of the occupying power's civilian population living in the occupied territory.

What is interesting is that Beiler does not make the strongest textual argument for Jesus not being a settler -- namely, that he wasn't "transferred." Jesus wasn't "transferred" to Bethlehem, he was born there. The Israeli government would have nothing to do with it. The problem, of course, is that there are plenty of Jews born inside settlements who are still deemed to be "settlers" even though they were never "transferred" to the territory (the implications of this observation resulted in a fascinating argument between international law scholars Eugene Kontorovich and Kevin Jon Heller -- links collected here). One could make a similar observation regarding persons who move to a settlement from a country other than Israel (e.g., the stereotypical Ariel resident from Miami) -- they would not part of Israel's "own civilian population" and thus would seem to fall outside the scope of the provision. Nonetheless, such persons are "considered" settlers all the time.

The result of this line of thinking does less to make me think that a Jew born in Ariel isn't a "settler" than it does make me continue to believe that we over- (and usually mis-)rely on international legal concepts to frame our understanding of the relevant issues and terms surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is clear is that who is and isn't deemed a "settler" is more of a political and moral judgment than it is a legal doctrinal question, which is why it strikes Beiler as so outrageous to ascribe the label to Jesus -- the problem isn't one of qualification but of implication.

Yet Beiler's position is more than just misguided; it is positively dangerous. Stripped to its roots, Beiler's argument for why Jesus is not a settler boils down to the following:

1) Settlers are bad people;

2) Jesus was not a bad person (in fact, he was a very good person), therefore;

3) Jesus was not a settler. Q.E.D.

This is dehumanizing; it presents the problem of settlements (which are, it is worth noting, a state infraction of international law, not an individual one. The legal proscription contained in the Geneva Convention is against the state which transfers, not upon the person transferred) as one of snarling monstrous settlers who are categorically excluded from the realm of persons who might have sympathy for or advocate on behalf of the Palestinians. As a question of sociology this is assuredly overstated (I remember reading Israeli election returns and seeing that someone from Kiryat Arba voted for Meretz -- though for the life of me I wonder what his or her story was). Obviously, settlers come in all shapes and sizes, from religious true-believers to people searching for cheaper property values to, yes, the snarling monsters who carry out the "price tag" terror attacks. Moreover (and this is equally important), that large swaths of the settler community are not snarling monsters does not in any way obviate the injustice the settlement enterprise imposes upon the Palestinian people, for injustice is not the sole, or even primary, enterprise of snarling monsters. This is the truly dangerous wrong Beiler commits: the conflation of bad structures with bad people; the worse the structure is, the more irredeemable the people implicated inside it are. Ultimately, this logic can lead only to dehumanization and hatred, and will always fail as an avenue of just social change.

In sum, Oren's logic is right: Jesus, as a Jew living in the West Bank, would be considered a settler today. This does not mean that he would not take pro-Palestinian positions; nor would the possibility of him taking such positions justify the settlement enterprise. The contours and legitimacy of Israeli settlements exist independently of the character of the individuals who live inside them, and it is a serious mistake to conflate the two.

What If the Dog Misses the Whistle?

Lee Smith has an utterly dreadful piece in Tablet claiming that Barack Obama employed anti-Semitic "dog whistles" in his interview with Jon Stewart. Now, I'm Jewish and pretty attuned to anti-Semitism to boot, and I watched the Stewart interview without anything setting my ears a-prick. Indeed, I thought back on the interview and couldn't even recall anything that might be a contender for an anti-Semitic dog whistle. Perhaps that's because I'm part of the strong plurality of Jews who supports the deal. But it says something meaningful when those who should be most attuned to the whistle apparently fail to hear it.

So what was the part of the interview that Smith contends is Obama's lapse into anti-Semitism? The apparent answer is that Obama urged Congress to not be influenced by "lobbyists" in voting yay or nay on the deal. Smith's line of reasoning is that attacking "lobbyists" inherently conjures up images of illicit Jewish financial influence and dual loyalties. It's more than a bit of a stretch, particularly since Smith manages to refute it in his own column: Attacking "lobbyists" is a standard-issue, borderline cliche invocation in American politics that is employed by all politicians of all backgrounds on all issues. Smith is actually right that it is essentially a meaningless statement -- all politics is lobbying of one form or another; it's just a question of which lobbyists one prefers -- but that further emphasizes that this is meaningless rhetoric, not a dog whistle of any variety.

That's not to say that "lobby" rhetoric cannot be used in an anti-Semitic fashion. When politicians suggests that there is something inherently suspect about Jewish groups engaging in lobbying, or contends that Jews winning the political game is proof of a political malfunction, or asserts that we lack a democratic system due to outsized Jewish control, those are all anti-Semitic tropes without question. But boilerplate rhetoric against opposing lobbyists is a far cry from that. Smith needs to learn to distinguish a dog whistle from a voice inside his own head.

Language Fails

The National Review's Kevin Williamson, on Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders:

He is, in fact, leading a national-socialist movement, which is a queasy and uncomfortable thing to write about a man who is the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and whose family was murdered in the Holocaust. But there is no other way to characterize his views and his politics.

Oh, I bet if you really tried you could find a way to describe Bernie Sanders' politics without calling him a Nazi. But it's amazing how the need for page views can suddenly cause one to lose access to a thesaurus, or one's basic capacity for human decency.

Charles Jacobs: The Last, Best Hope of Those Idiots the Jews

Charles Jacobs is the founder of "Americans for Peace and Tolerance" -- one those Orwell-inspired groups which exists to foster religious discord and sling mud at Islamic communal institutions. This is an endeavor in which, thankfully, he stands more or less alone in when placed vis-a-vis the broader Jewish community, and that abandonment confuses and angers him. Why don't Jews adopt the policy positions of Charles Jacobs? Why are they so gosh darn liberal?

The answer, Jacobs posits in a remarkable column posted earlier this month, is straightforward: it stems from "Jewish Cognitive Infirmity." Jacobs calls it "Jupus" (he links it to a related term apparently in use by some of our Christian "friends": "Jew flu"), and it provides the best explanation for "Jewish political idiocy."

Now let's be clear: this article has a clear satirical tone to it. I don't actually think that Jacobs believes that Jews possess "an auto-immune disease where the antibodies that are normally produced to fight off external infections, have their function somehow inverted, and begin to attack the host body itself." But it is clear that Jacobs absolutely believes that the Jewish community, writ large, is comprised of politically inept morons. His column is addressed to his "Christian friends" who are "baffled" at Jews' propensity to take stances on Israel or other issues which defy their expectations, and it is absolutely clear that he wholeheartedly endorses their befuddlement. Christians who encounter Jews with political opinions different from their own most certainly should not respect the possibility that Jews actually know what they're talking about and therefore give their perspective close and thoughtful consideration. No, they should proceed on the assumption that Jews are mentally diseased idiots and carry on saving them from themselves. Isn't that what friends do?

You know, some people might think that with anti-Semitism a real and growing concern, having someone explain to the world that Jews are morons and their political opinions should be ignored is less a response to the problem than it is an instantiation of it. But then again, I'm one of those idiot Jews; so I guess I should be thankful that I have a wise man like Charles Jacobs who will watch out for me and my tiny Jew-brain.

Great (Israel) Cases Make Bad (International) Law

Yesterday, the ICC pre-trial chamber by a 2-1 vote ordered the ICC prosecutor to reconsider its decision to close its investigation into the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident. I heard about this decision via a column by Bar-Ilan and San Diego law professor Avi Bell, who lambasted it as a completely unprecedented decision that fails as a matter of law and whose legal determinations will by necessity only be applied against Israel. This struck me as intuitively plausible -- I've long thought that international legal determinations made in Israel-related cases tend to be tickets good for this ride only.

But I knew that Bell has somewhat of a conservative reputation on Israel-related issues, and since international law is not my area of speciality, I was curious to hear what more left-wing and Israel-critical voices had to say on the subject. The person I particularly had in mind was Kevin Jon Heller, a international law specialist at the University of London who has been a harsh critic of Israel's behavior from an international law perspective for sometime. That said, just as Bell's more conservative slant doesn't mean that I haven't found his analysis to be thoughtful, likewise I've always found Heller's writing illuminating despite his often adversarial stance towards Israel.

So I was happy to see that Kevin has written a lengthy analysis of pre-trial chamber's decision. And -- in substance though perhaps not in angle of approach -- he agrees with Bell entirely. Heller describes the decision as "deeply problematic and extremely dangerous decision — nothing less than a frontal assault on the OTP's prosecutorial discretion," attacks it as fundamentally misunderstanding the law regarding "gravity" of the alleged offense, and accuses it of applying the wrong standard of review in a bid to "maximi[ze] its own power". He also (in a comment) claims to be "shocked by the nasty tone of the decision", characterizing comments in the opinion as "exceptionally uncivil, unnecessary, and unprofessional."

Heller's post is more technical than Bell's is (which makes sense, since Heller is writing on a international law blog and Bell in a general news column), and so he focuses more on the damage this precedent would do to the ICC as an institution. The crux of his analysis (though you should read him, the expert, rather than me, the novice) focuses on how the decision misapplies the concept of "gravity". Obviously there are many human rights violations that occur around the world, and the ICC cannot investigate all of them. One main guideposts for the exercise of ICC prosecutorial discretion is whether the case is sufficiently "grave". In this litigation, the "case" gravity was an attack on a blockade-running ship that resulted in approximately 10 deaths. But, the prosecutor argued, "case" gravity is not all that matters: it also is relevant who the alleged perpetrators were (low-level grunts, or top military or political leaders) and the "situational" gravity (that is, the broader context in which the particular alleged wrong occurred). The latter, incidentally, is not as one might expect the "situation" in Israel or Turkey. It's the situation in The Comoros, of all places. Why? Because unlike Israel or Turkey, the Comoros is a party to the ICC convention, and the hook for ICC jurisdiction is that one of the flotilla ships was Comoros-flagged. The prosecutor basically reasoned that (a) there was no basis for concluding that any high-level Israeli officials could be found to have engaged in any rights violations and (b) that as part of the Comoros situation this event was an isolated one-off, hence, the allegations lacked sufficient gravity for the ICC to investigate. And this is what the-pre-trial chamber rejected. It basically collapsed the entire inquiry of gravity into "case" gravity -- is 10 deaths sufficiently grave? -- and answered "yes", regardless of the surrounding situation and regardless of whether any high-level officials are implicated. And this, as Heller observes, is completely unworkable as a legal rule -- it would compel the ICC to prosecute dozens if not hundreds of cases that previously would have been obviously of insufficient gravity.

Of course, the counterargument to that is precisely what Bell and I suspect -- that this precedent won't be one because it won't be applied anywhere else. The ICC prosecutor will not, in fact, prosecute every case where there are roughly ten deaths, and the pre-trial chamber will not disturb that decision once made. While he does not explicitly echo Bell's assertion that the putative rule of decision here will be applied to Israel and nowhere else, Heller seems to think that the decision having no practical significance outside the Israel-context is a more likely outcome than the complete overload of the ICC structure.

The legal rules announced in this case, and the broader willingness of the pre-trial chamber to micromanage the prosecutor's decision, will not have any broad resonance. They will not apply to other cases or controversies, they will not meaningfully alter the governing legal regime. They will simply be the latest datapoint for an undeniable pattern: Israel gets treated differently from any other country in the international legal arena. People worried about the effects on the international legal system as a whole can rest easy.

The Tiger is Getting Hungry

Winston Churchill had a famous line about despots who ride about "on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry." I've often thought the same about the relationship between the Jewish pro-Israel establishment and conservative "Christian Zionist" organizations like Christians United for Israel (CUFI). This article on the Forward, detailing CUFI's newfound willingness to flex its political muscle in defiance of traditional pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, is a case in point.

CUFI has no interest in the bipartisan political strategy of the traditional pro-Israel groups -- it is a conservative right-wing outlet and wants "pro-Israel" to be thought of and take the form of a conservative, right-wing movement. To this end, it has adopted policy positions long thought of as an anathema to the pro-Israel community. The most obvious representation of this is CUFI's position on a one-state solution, where they basically mimic the stance of Jewish Voice for Peace: technically neutral, but functionally all in favor. But unlike fringe groups like the JVP who can be easily dismissed as non-players, groups like CUFI have heft to them. And the mainstream pro-Israel community therefore has not given them the pariah treatment -- even though one-stateism is supposed to be a redline issue that demarcates the borderline of "pro-Israel."

In addition to the substantive objections to this approach, it carries with it a more practical problem as well: it functionally represents the sidelining of the Jewish community from their position as leaders of the pro-Israel community. Groups like CUFI want to assert conservative Christian control over the narrative, and that necessarily means that Jews -- mostly liberal, mostly Democratic, mostly pro-two-states -- will be shunted aside.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that the mainline Jewish organizations brought upon themselves. They were happy to accept "support" from right-wing groups that had no interests in listening to Jewish perspectives and no interest in preserving the status quo where Jews took the lead in constructing the narrative of pro-Israel. They rode the tiger, allowing to gain more and more power until it became too dangerous to dismount it. At that point, its the tiger which calls the shots. And the old guard forced to hang on is little more than a figurehead.

Not Your Everyday White Guy

If this doesn't encapsulate the "white-but-not-quite" racial status of American Jews, I don't know what does:

"Mr. Cardin [Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin] looks like a regular white guy, nice guy, whatever, but in actuality he’s a Jewish white guy," [C-SPAN caller] Eric said Wednesday. "If the public was informed of that by C-SPAN, I think they would take his comments differently."

The caller accused Senator Cardin of "a conflict of interest" regarding the Iran deal because he is Jewish and thus "concerned about Israel."

Second Blush Thoughts on the Iran Deal

On Facebook, I noted that I was working hard to not have an opinion on the Iran deal, because I knew nothing about it and shouldn't come to a conclusion simply via rote mimicry of ideological cohorts. It was observed by a friend, though, that one of my God-given rights as an American is to "have an opinion based on nothing and then broadcast it publicly through as many channels as possible". And as a blogger, I try my best to live by that credo.

I should start by saying that I have not read the deal itself. This is because the technical characteristics of the deal probably wouldn't mean that much to me, and in particular they'd mean nothing out of context (specifically, the context of feasible alternatives). The sources I read to educate myself include Tom Friedman's interview with the President, Jeffrey Goldberg, AIPAC, Marc Goldberg, David Adesnik, Max Fisher's interview with arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis (highly recommended), Douglas Murray, and of course the metric ton of commentary folks have been blasting all across Facebook for the past few days. Here, then, is where I'm at now.

(1) Obviously, the deal can't be evaluated against an ideal world where America stands steely-eyed and strong and Iran capitulates to everything our heart's desire. One makes deals with autocratic regimes pursuing nuclear weapons under less-than-ideal circumstances -- that comes with the territory. Likewise, we can't evaluate the deal based on what we could have gotten 10 years ago. Assessing this deal is a comparative exercise -- how does reaching this accord compare to either no deal or another deal that could be realistically obtained now?

(2) This deal clearly has its eye on one thing and one thing only: slowing down Iran getting a nuclear weapon. It doesn't care about ending Iranian terrorism. It doesn't care about liberalizing the country. It doesn't care about rectifying the nation's many, many human rights abuses. All of these things are important, but they're not the subject of this deal (and were not, realistically, going to be improved by any deal). I have heard the argument that lifting the sanctions will nudge Iran in a more conciliatory direction, but I'm highly dubious. I'm also inclined to agree that the cash flow it is about to see stemming from the sanctions relief will redound to the benefit of the various terrorist groups Iran likes to fund.

(3) I am unconvinced that there was a "better deal to be made". As far as I've seen there were essentially two mechanisms America supposedly had for exerting more leverage over Tehran: continuing the current regime of exceptionally tight sanctions, or military strikes. The former doesn't work: The current sanctions regime was unsustainable -- the only way we got countries like Russia and China (and arguably even the EU) onboard with tighter sanctions was in service of getting a deal. If no deal was in sight, most of our international allies would have walked away from the sanctions and we'd be left with nothing. The military option is risky for a host of reasons; it might not work, it definitely will prompt retaliation, it definitely would be a diplomatic catastrophe for the United States in forums far afield from Iran, and it definitely will result in blowback that we really don't need. Robert Farley has long convinced me that the ability of pure airpower to bend other countries to our will is overstated, and the more resources we invest in ensuring that the military operation is successful, the more we risk being mired in yet another intractable Middle Eastern conflict.

(4) Indeed, one thing that Lewis said in his piece -- which, again, is the most informative of all the ones I read -- really stuck out for me. It's that "[e]very six months, the deal we could have gotten six months before looks better. Every time we tried to hold out for a better deal, and every time we got in the position of a worse deal." That dates back to the Bush administration, so this isn't a case of weak Obama being weak and not leading with leadership. The fact is the trendlines haven't been good for awhile now, and experientially speaking trying to get a "better deal" has only made things worse. To quote Lewis again:

I was talking to a colleague who is unhappy [with the deal], and it's kind of fascinating. He's unhappy because, he said, "We spent eight years, and the deal we got is not better than the deal we could have gotten eight years ago." And it's like, oh, no kidding. That's not an indictment of the deal, my friend, it's an indictment of eight years of fucking around. [...]

I would give [this deal] an A....[Now, c]ompared to the deal we could have gotten 10 years ago, if the Bush administration hadn't had their heads up their butts? Not an A! That would have been a great deal!

I remember when they had 164 centrifuges, in one cascade, and I said, "You know what, we should let them keep it in warm standby. No uranium, just gas." And people were like, "You're givin' away the store!"

In short, I think opponents of this deal bear a heavy burden of persuasion as to why this time things will be different. And for me at least, they haven't met that burden. I agree with Jeffrey Goldberg that "The dirty little secret of this whole story is that it is very difficult to stop a large nation that possesses both natural resources and human talent, and a deep desire for power, from getting the bomb."

(5) On the particular metric of "slowing down Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon" -- which again, is clearly the only thing the deal is concerned about -- it seems likely to be a net positive over other feasible alternatives. Lewis certainly seems to think so (including ranking it higher than the alternative of bombing Iran). A lot of the technical details of course mean nothing to me, both on the science side (what are the risks of the technology Iran is allowed to keep) and on the logistical side (is 24 days lead time for inspections a lot or a little?). That said, I don't think the deal's efficacy depends on Iran suddenly not being a power-hungry illiberal reactionary autocracy. The "snapback" provisions seem pretty robust and offer ample opportunities for western states to punish Iran for cheating (or suspected cheating). And notably, these provisions can kick in without assent by China or Russia, who are the players whose commitment is most dodgy.

(6) All of that said, I still have a serious concern, although it's an idiosyncratic one that maybe is only shared by me. One way of thinking about this deal is that it trades reduced Iranian nuclear capabilities (via inspections, etc.) for increased Iranian ability to sponsor terror (because of the cash infusion it will get when the sanctions are lifted). And my quite unique position is that I always thought that Iran getting a nuclear weapon was always exaggerated on the threat scale. Nuclear weapons are and have been easily deterrable via conventional modes of statecraft. Even countries which hate each other (like the US and the USSR) pulled it off for decades. And even if one thinks Iran is so entirely suffused with millennarian impulses with respect to Israel that it would risk itself being wiped off the map via an Israeli nuclear counterstrike, it's difficult to imagine that it would risk harming its own holy sites in Jerusalem. By contrast, Iran's sponsorship of terror organizations like Hezbollah has been a thicket that normal diplomatic statecraft has not been able to satisfactorily resolve. Hence, a trade that reduces the former risk while amplifying the latter strikes me as exactly backwards. This may explain why all major elements of the Israeli polity -- including the liberal opposition -- don't like the deal. It strengthens Iran on pretty much all axes save nuclear weaponry (of course it does -- that's what makes it a deal. Iran gives something -- ability to quickly get a nuclear weapon -- to get something -- increased resource access. Outside fantasies where America Green Lanterns Iran into a total capitulation, that was always going to be the result), and Israel quite reasonably doesn't want to see Iran strengthened. And of course, Israel will bear the brunt of an Iran more capable to fund its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and around the Middle East.

(7) So if I was to argue against the deal, that would be my point of attack: it weakens Iran along a threat dimension whose danger was overstated at the expense of strengthening Iran along a threat dimension whose danger is understated. Yet ultimately, that argument seems more of a general criticism of misplaced global priorities than it is a specific criticism of this deal. Assuming I'm right that the sanctions would have been unsustainable absent a deal, the choice was never "weakened terror Iran/strengthened nuclear Ian versus strengthened terror Iran/weakened nuclear Iran". The alternative to weakening Iran's nuclear capacities while relieving it of international sanctions was to strengthen Iran's nuclear capacities while relieving it of international sanctions. The lifting of sanctions was baked into the cake -- they knew it, and we knew it, and the only question was whether we could use the leverage we temporarily possessed to get a deal that accomplished the one, solitary goal it set out to accomplish. Based on my read, and what I've seen, I think that it did. The result is, to be sure, an Iran that will in many ways be more powerful and more dangerous in 2020 than it is in 2015. That's a security risk that will need to be dealt with in its own way. But it wasn't an eventuality that this deal, in these circumstances, was capable of forestalling.

Eastward Bound

Almost ten years ago (wow!) I remarked on a comment by a Hamas leader who attributed some sinister motives to the blue stripes on the Israeli flag. He claimed that they represented Israel's desired borders, lying not from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean (as at least might have some superficial plausibility), but from the Nile River to the Euphrates. It was a delightful bit of conspiracy-mongering of which I had never heard of before. And never had again -- until now:

Dan Cohen also shared his experience with Jewish privilege in Israel as a visiting American Jew. He said, “When I go there, typically Israelis will ask me how long I’ve been there. And they’ll encourage me to join in the project.” “Project” is a term used by Zionist Jews that refers to the creation of a Greater Israel which would lie between the Tigris and Nile rivers and expand from where Israel lies today to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

Oh it's the Tigris now? Does our thirst for land never cease?

The source of this lovely atrocity is "MintPress News", which seems to be appropriately fringe (though not so fringe so as to fail to snag a bunch of quotes from -- who else -- Jewish Voice for Peace). In mild defense of both JVP and Cohen (who appears to have no affiliation with JVP), it seems like that particular bit of truth-y insight might have come directly from the article's author. But don't worry, there's plenty of the usual JVP nonsense -- my favorite in this round being "[Zionism] is just a political movement built on stolen land and depriving others of human rights. I can’t let this be done in my name. I have a right to be here and not agree with Israel." This, naturally, comes from a non-Native American living in Minnesota. As I wrote the last time this particular bit of historical blinders emerged:

[I]n all seriousness: is there any metric -- any metric at all -- under which a Jew living in Colorado [or Minnesota --DS] is not further implicated in colonialism than a Jew living in Tel Aviv? Because I can tell you that Jews ... do not have a multi-millennium connection to Fort Collins.

One almost gets the sense that to be a Jew is simply to be born as a trespasser, and that no matter where one goes your existence will be seen as a form of oppression.

How Much Anti-Semitic Nonsense Can Be Packed Into One Speech?

The PLO's ambassador to Chile endeavors to find out:

Addressing members of the “Gran Logia” Masonic Lodge, Jada’a said that Palestinians “don’t recognize the existence of the Jewish people” as there is not, in fact, any such people.

“This is not my personal analysis. Here we can refer to the Jewish Israeli professor from the University of Tel Aviv, Dr. Shlomo Sand, in his book ‘The Invention of the Jewish People.’ A Jew with Israeli passport announces that, the so-called Jewish nation is a made up invention. Because a religion cannot be a people,” he said.

Sand believes that contemporary Jews are descended from the Khazar people from the Caucasus and are not connected to the Biblical Israelites. His ideas are widely opposed both in academia and among Jews.

“Until 1896 when a group of academic intellectuals, financial advisers, majority being non-Jewish Europeans, decided to create the Zionist movement with one pretext/excuse; the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people. Although the truth is that this (the goal) is to protect their plans of dominating life in the entire planet,” he added.

Jada’a also recommended that his listeners read the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Czarist forgery published in the early 20th century purporting to expose the inner workings of a global Jewish conspiracy.

Bonus for citing to the "Jewish Israeli" Shlomo Sand, given that Sand has declared his desire to "cease considering myself a Jew.

UPDATE: PA President Mahmoud Abbas has summoned the ambassador back to Ramallah.

Aly Raisman's Muscles

Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman is posing for ESPN's famous "body issue". A few years ago Jill posted her spin on that forum (stemming from mutual conversations between the two of us), and I think it holds water. I'm a fan of the Body Issue -- it's a useful corrective to SI's "Swimsuit Edition", and I think it treats its subjects with respect and does the concept of the body right. Bodies in the body issue are respected because they can do amazing things -- in Raisman's case, an astounding array of flips, jumps, and twirls that make me dizzy just thinking about it.

I was struck by this statement by Raisman, though, which is a stark commentary on how (female) bodies are viewed normally:

Reisman is five feet and two inches worth of muscle — bulkier than many other gymnasts, she says, but that didn’t stop her from proudly posing before a team of photographers. “I think imperfection is beauty,” says Raisman. “Instead of being insecure about my muscles, I’ve learned to love them. I don’t even think of it as a flaw anymore because it’s made me into the athlete that I am.”

Put aside the idea that Raisman could ever be seen as "bulky". I accept that "bulky" is a relative term and one is naturally going to assess oneself in relation to one's peers. But it is shocking that Raisman could ever have seen her muscles as a "flaw". I say "shocking" not as an indictment of Raisman's rationality, but as a commentary on the sorts of social norms that create such a mentality. It seems obvious that Raisman's muscles should be viewed as amazing, for precisely the reasons she says: they are what makes her into an elite, Olympic-caliber athlete. It takes a heaping truckload of malformed messages about what a woman's body "should" be to take that intuitive awesomeness and turn it into a "flaw" that one must "learn[] to love."

And while people talk about how male athletes are sexualized too -- well, no, not like that they're not. Male athletes can and do absolutely feel insecure about their bodies; but it almost always takes a functional form: Am I as strong as I could be? Am I as fast as I should be? I've yet to hear of male athlete ever consider his muscles, or any other aspect of his physique which enables him to do the amazing athletic feats of his chosen profession, to be a flaw.

Any way, it goes without saying that Aly Raisman is an insanely strong and powerful woman. One doesn't need the Body Issue to know that, of course, but to the extent it provides with a venue to love her loveable muscles, all power to it.

Happy 4th of July!

Our closest friend in Berkeley is coming to our apartment for the traditional meal of hot dogs (probably other things too, but I care only about the hot dogs). So no real blogging today. I will say that having independence -- autonomy, sovereignty, the freedom to choose one's path as a people -- is a great gift. The United States is hardly unique in purchasing that gift at the expense of considerable pain and death, but nonetheless that does remain an indelible fact of our history. On the other hand, that is not and should not be the only fact of history either. It's up to each generation to justify the charge, by making this nation into something great.

Quote of the Day: What's in a Name?

From Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza (1936):

"What's in a name?" Anthony went on. "The answer is, practically everything, if the name's a good one. Freedom's a marvelous name. That's why you're so anxious to make use of it. You think that, if you call imprisonment true freedom, people will be attracted to the prison. And the worst of it is you're quite right."

Quoted in Charles Leslie Stevenson, Persuasive Definitions, 47 Mind 331, 335 (1938).