"From the River to the Sea": A Guide to the Perplexed

So we're all talking about the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" -- which, after Temple Professor Marc Lamont Hill said it at a UN conference, reportedly caused his termination from CNN.

I don't want to talk about Hill directly though. Quickly: He should face absolutely zero professional consequences at Temple -- that's a straightforward academic freedom issue. There is no academic freedom analogue to a sinecure at CNN, but I probably wouldn't have fired him either -- then again, I have a pretty high bar for firing people in cases like these. Certainly, the network that employs Rick Santorum doesn't have much of a leg to stand on in this respect.

What I do want to do is give some context -- hopefully helpful -- to the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." I do not wish to directly challenge anyone's substantive political commitments on the score. Much the opposite: my assumption is that there are a great many people for whom the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" sounds wholly innocuous if not laudatory -- who doesn't want freedom for all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? -- and are a bit baffled that such a statement could trigger such an intense backlash.

In particular, my target audience is someone I imagine thinking along roughly the following lines:

1. They support freedom for all people who happen to reside between the Jordan and Mediterranean;
2. They read "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" as a pithy way of expressing the above commitment;
3. They've noted, with some confusion, that many Jews seemed to react extremely poorly to the use of this phrase; and
4. They assume that there's at least a decent chance that the reason for this negative reaction is not that the Jews in question are opposed to all or some people between the Jordan and the Mediterranean being free, and accordingly wonder what the actual reason is.

That fourth proviso is important. I say that while fully recognizing the sad truth that there are plenty of people -- Jewish and not -- who really don't desire or care about the freedom of all people in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.

Still, I stress this element because I think that thinking along these lines is a good habit to get into: when a marginalized group reacts with strong negativity towards a statement or program which seems, on a facial semantic level, wholly unobjectionable or laudable, it's good practice to hold open the possibility that they have reasons for their rejection that are not purely venal, selfish, or stupid. 

This is habit shouldn't just extend to Jews, of course. In the recent controversies over Louis Farrakhan's antisemitism, for example, some Black (including some Black Jewish) authors expressed concern over the way discourse on antisemitism honed in on Farrakhan. Many White people, for whom Farrakhan's antisemitism, homophobia, and all-around awfulness seemed obvious and uncontroversial, were perplexed by this response, and some resolved that confusion by saying "wow, Black people just can't condemn even obvious bigots like Louis Farrakhan!" But this was a bad response. Certainly, some people had that problem (just as some people really do simply object to the notion of a free Palestinian people). But a cursory reading of many of the authors in question would demonstrate that their issues had nothing to do with failing to recognize Farrakhan's bigotry. The better move was to instead figure that the hesitation regarding how the Farrakhan/antisemitism discourse was proceeding stemmed from something more complicated than the naked inability to see obvious antisemitism for what it is.

So, to swing it back to the case at hand: when Jews respond poorly to a statement that you read as simply an uncontroversial call for freedom, you can either think (1) "wow, Jews sure do hate freedom!" or (2) "wow, there's probably something more complicated going on here -- I should investigate!" This post is dedicated to those who take door #2.

Enough throat-clearing. What is the "more complicated" that drives many Jews' sharp antipathy to the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"?

First, some history. This phrase does indeed predate Hamas. But its historical pedigree has tended to be tied to more maximalist elements of Palestinian politics -- the branch which really doesn't see a place for Jews (or at least an equal place) anywhere in Israel or Palestine, and who have at times quite explicitly endorsed the project of pushing Jews into the sea.

At the most basic level, then, the triggering aspects of "from the river to the sea" stem from its association with a brand of violent anti-Zionist maximalism which, particularly around the War of Independence in 1948, spoke of throwing Jews into the sea (the internet is replete with debates over whether this or that Arab leader really said this or that precise quotation, but there doesn't seem to be much controversy that the general rhetoric of "pushing them into the sea" was present at that time and was perceived as a genocidal threat).

The traumatic associations here cannot be overstated -- just a few years after a third of the world's Jewish population was massacred, a goodly chunk of the survivors living in the nascent Israeli state were threatened with a renewed genocide that promised the Jews living west of the river that they would soon find their final resting place in the sea. Insofar as "from the river to the sea" reverberates with that history, it should not surprise that it is viewed as a threat.

The above account explains why, for some Jews, the "river to the sea" rhetoric is perceived as outright genocidal, and for many, that's enough. But another line is that the "river to the sea" language is a call for the "destruction of Israel." In broad strokes, this claim is that the slogan seeks the elimination of the state "Israel" and its replacement with something else -- namely "Palestine" (think the "Make Israel Palestine Again" slogan). This interpretation presents a more complex case.

The question of when a state is "destroyed" is peculiarly metaphysical -- it evokes the Ship of Theseus -- but the slogan's defenders seem to have an apt rejoinder: they are not calling for the destruction of Israel, but its reformation. All they want, in Hill's articulation, is a secular, equal state -- not a "Jewish" state or a "Palestinian" state, but a state for all its citizens where all those permanently residing between the river and the sea enjoy the same, full, free rights. Just as America didn't stop being America when it passed the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Act, neither would Israel cease to be Israel if it changed its laws to provide for that vision of secular liberal equality. It would simply be an Israel with better laws and institutions than Israel does now. And just as urging civil rights for American Blacks did not entail desiring the subjugation of American Whites, neither is calling for freedom for Palestinians a demand for the oppression of Israeli Jews.

One interesting feature of this rejoinder, however, is that it suggests that the slogan need not actually be "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." It could just as easily run "from the river to the sea, Israel will be free." Indeed, on a purely semantic level, that would seem to be the more accurate expression. The state that currently exists, and where objectionable unfreeness currently obtains, is Israel. The state which would be passing the equivalent of the Civil Rights Act would be Israel, not Palestine. If the political program on the table is really a set of statutory reforms designed to provide secular equality, the name of the state need not change.

Nonetheless, I suspect that most of those who chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" would reject the substitution. This suggests that there is a replacement going on: Israel-with-better-laws is not viewed as the same thing as a free Palestine. That, in turn, indicates that the political ambitions are not reducible to simply establishing political rules in the river-to-sea territory that replace "Israeli" or "Palestinian" or "Jew" or "Arab" with just "citizens".

The trick is that the slogan does not refer to freeing Palestinians. It speaks of freeing Palestine -- a territory, not a people. When we speak of freeing a people, we usually are referring to individuals who lack certain legal rights and prerogatives. When we speak of freeing a territory, we usually are speaking of a land that is under foreign dominion. The former is the language of, e.g., segregation -- people lacking full citizenship rights. The latter is the language of the occupation: Palestine, the land, is ruled by outsiders -- i.e., Israel. This status would not itself be cured by the extension of citizenship rights (any more than, say, France giving Algeria equality in the French state would have "freed" Algeria, though it arguably would have freed the Algerians). And this also explains why a slogan saying "Israel will be free" rings so odd: free from who? Israel already controls the territory in question; there's no foreign domination to speak of. It is Palestine that currently is occupied by an external power, and so it is Palestine, not Israel, that needs to be freed.

Put another way: the grammar of the slogan gives a hint as to what is meant by the word "free". It isn't the freedom of individual liberties implied by a call for a secular, equal state; it is the freedom of liberating an occupied territory from foreign domination. That's not wrong, it's just different. If I wrote "from California to Texas, Mexico will be free", any normal reader would take that to be saying that this entire stretch of territory should be under the rule of Mexico -- that these Mexican territories are under the foreign domination of the United States, but one day they will be freed (restored to Mexico). You can endorse that revanchist claim or not, but it'd be very weird for me to insist that this slogan actually was just urging that the Chicano/a community be treated fairly by whatever country happened to rule from California to Texas.

So let me stress: on its own, the claim that there is a territory "Palestine" that is currently under alien rule by Israel is not objectionable. Indeed, it is the locus insight of a two-state solution: there is a Palestine -- the West Bank and Gaza -- which Israel occupies or has occupied, that territory is not Israel's (i.e., Israel is a foreign or alien power to it), and that territory should revert to Palestinian control. Likewise there are territories which are properly Israeli (they are not foreign or alien, these lands are its "homelands"), and so those territories are rightfully under Israeli control. Put aside the usual half-million complications, and this is roughly my position: Israel should control Israel, and Palestine should control Palestine. Two states for two peoples.

But the formulation of viewing Israel as the alien outsider occupying the land of Palestine is not the same thing as a call for equal rights. More to the point, this formulation takes an ugly turn when it is conjoined with "from the river to the sea". Whereas in the two-state model there is an equality between Israeli and Palestinian entitlements -- both are "home" in at least some of the territory, neither are wholly alienated or excluded -- if Palestine as a political entity extends from the river-to-the-sea, then none of the territory is "Israel's", Israel is foreign to all of it, and the demand that it be reverted to Palestinian control really is a demand that Israel disappear in a very tangible way. In a different way, this would be the (or a) problem with "Greater Israel" -- it implies that Palestine is nowhere, that there is no Palestine to be freed (which, of course, is a claim right-wing Israelis make all the time -- "there's no such thing as Palestine" -- and suggesting that Palestinians are foreign interlopers on Jewish land).

The "Make Israel Palestine Again" slogan crystallizes the view that -- beyond the particular legal regime that might be enacted -- there is something more fundamentally wrong about there being an "Israel" of any sort, that it represents a sort of alien intrusion whose existence in itself thwarts the existence of a free Palestine. Palestine is not fully free so long as there is an Israel, because any territory that Israel might occupy is occupied. When Hill said that he "just got off of a flight from Palestine", referring to a flight that almost assuredly departed from (pre-67) Israel, he's not making a statement about the existence or not of legal rights. He's making a statement about the true lawful ownership of land that has been usurped. The land -- all the land -- is Palestine. Israel -- all of Israel -- is a foreign occupation. And while I don't think it is fair to Hill to suggest he supports genocide against Israeli Jews, I do think it is fair to say he believes that the great bulk of Israeli Jews are fundamentally foreign interlopers anywhere they reside from the river to the sea -- which is why he can characterize the entire conflict is being "about land theft, expulsion and ethnic cleansing by foreign settlers to indigenous land."

If the entire presence of Israel anywhere from the river to the sea is an alien imposition on Palestine, then the net result is that Jews are deemed foreigners everywhere from the river to the sea. In addition to echoing some specific antisemitic tropes (the Jew as the eternal outsider/foreigner/wanderer), this sort of otherization very often comes attached to decidedly inegalitarian projects and attitudes towards Jews, and accordingly it tends to cause skepticism about the feasibility, durability, and sometimes sincerity of professed commitments to full equality in a secular state. At the very least, it isn't really compatible with the professed neutrality of this state -- one group is in its home, the other is at most a tolerated outsider. At the extreme, triggers those more terrifying "into the sea" worries (even if here the Jews might be given the courtesy of boats, that they might "go back where they came from").

This connection is far from speculative. When Helen Thomas snapped that Jews in Israel should "get the hell out" and "go back to Poland", Mondoweiss suggested that this was a salutary gesture -- it would certainly inject some new vigor into Polish Jewish life (as one Jewish wag replied, "I'm deeply touched by this gesture of philanthropic ethnic cleansing."). More recently, I recall reading a thread by a (Jewish) anti-Zionist who acknowledged that, if and when Palestine was freed "from the river to the sea", it was very likely that many Jews in Israel would leave. This, he assured us, was not a bad thing or a problematic thing -- it was a normal fact of decolonization, no different from the pied-noirs returning to France upon Algeria's independence. The incongruity of where "returning" would refer to in the Jewish case -- what, exactly, was our France in this scenario? -- was overlooked, as was the sheer historical audacity of just assuming that a sudden mass migration of Jews would be absorbed by the other nations of the world without any friction whatsoever. Such troublesome thoughts are easy to avoid thinking, when one sees Jews in Israel as settlers, colonizers, foreigners, and outsiders -- of course they can go back to "where they came from".

So in addition to the historical pedigree, another reason why "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" might provoke a strong reaction is that it is taken to imply that Jews are foreign to all of the land from the river-to-the-sea, that we are outsiders and interlopers in its entirety, that the goal isn't the creation of a Palestinian state but the elimination of a Jewish homeland, that Palestine will be freed only when Israel is gone, and that while our departure from the land may or may not be explicitly desired, it will not be viewed as any more tragic than any other colonizer uprooted from lands he had occupied.

So those are some associations or implications of the "river to the sea" slogan that help explain why many Jews react so strongly against it. There is a particular historical overlay between this rhetoric and the more explicitly violent, even genocidal, rhetoric that has been directed at Israel since its foundation; there is also the implied demand that "Israel" be struck down and replaced by "Palestine" -- suggesting that more than just a demand for equal citizenship and a neutral state is at issue -- and the corresponding portrayal of Jews as utterly and completely foreign presences in all the river-to-the-sea land.

Perhaps you find these rationales compelling, perhaps not. But -- as odd as this is to say -- my goal wasn't exactly to persuade.

Recall what I said my ambition was and who I said my desired audience was. My audience was those persons who found the slogan innocuous and who were confused why so many Jews reacted so sharply against it; my ambition was to explain those reactions in ways that don't reduce to "Jews hate the idea of Palestinians being free."

What had concerned me most about much of what I had been reading wasn't that many people thought this slogan was a straightforward and praiseworthy call for freedom. It was the jump from "this slogan seems to be about freedom" to "if Jews object to this slogan, it must be because they hate freedom." The jump should have been to "if Jews object to this slogan, there's probably something more at work -- and while I don't know if learning what it is will change my mind, I should at least be willing to hear it out".

I do not think that, if you had never heard "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", the case for why this slogan raises Jewish hackles is self-evident. I just dumped a lot of history and analysis on you; I fully get why someone who isn't versed in that history or analysis would hear those words and not have it raise any alarm bells whatsoever. Indeed, I get why some might be perplexed at how it even could raise alarm bells for someone else. I also get why someone who wasn't versed in the relevant history and was dropped from a mountain hut wouldn't immediately get why "all lives matter" is objectionable. Context is something acquired, it isn't innate. We can't ask for people to be born with the necessary context. We can ask that they be aware that there might be context left to acquire.

So I tried to give context, and hopefully you found the context informative and maybe even persuasive. But I'll frame my ambitions even more modestly: all I hope to have accomplished is that, even if you didn't find my above analysis ultimately persuasive, you would nonetheless agree it presents an explanation for Jewish unease or unhappiness about this slogan that isn't flatly risible, as it would be if we simply detested Palestinian freedom. At the very least, there's a genuine issue here that goes beyond the superficially absurd. And if that seems like a rather small victory, think of how big of a step it is from "these people just hate the idea of Palestinian freedom."

This is the habit I seek to inculcate. Whether we're talking about Jews or any other outgroup, it is good practice to assume that if alarms are raised, they're probably not raising them based on the obviously stupid, venal, or self-interested reasons. There's a strong chance there's something more complicated going on.

So go ahead and assume we have the basic capacity for empathy, reasoning, and analysis that would take us beyond the obvious traps, and see where the path takes you. Maybe you conclude we're still wrong. Maybe you conclude that we're right. Maybe there's a more nuanced position in the middle you end up landing on. No matter what, you've done us the service of treating us as epistemic equals. And that's no small thing.

The Farr Nomination and the Future of Senate Oversight

The announcement from Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the Senate's sole Black Republican member, that he would oppose the nomination of Thomas Farr to a federal district court seat in North Carolina has officially torpedoed the nomination. Without Scott (and Jeff Flake, who has said he will vote against all judicial nominees until a bill protecting the Mueller investigation is brought to a vote), Farr didn't have enough votes to be confirmed.

The reason Farr was a particularly controversial figure is that he was implicated in racist voter suppression efforts in North Carolina, dating all the way back to his time on the Jesse Helms campaign. I assume that, aside from that bit of historical pedigree, he is more or less identical to any other candidate the Trump administration might nominate for the seat.

It is interesting to me, then, that in all cases such as this the burning question is always "will these two or three Republican Senators vote no?" We're way past the possibility that the bulk of Republican Senators might in any way buck the Trump administration's dictates -- even in circumstances where the tangible impact of the defection is nothing. The man (or woman, but let's be realistic about probabilities here) who is nominated instead of Farr will no doubt be a conservative, FedSoc approved jurist whose pattern of voting on controversial cases will be almost impossible to distinguish from how Farr would have voted. When that jurist gets confirmed instead of Farr, there is no net loss for the conservative legal project.

And yet -- by all appearances, it is beyond the realm of possibility that more than a bare handful of Republicans would oppose Farr. Scott's defection did trigger a belated (and pointless) return back to undecided from Official Moderate Republican Susan Collins (surprising no one, when it looked like she'd be the decisive vote she announced she'd back Farr). One might think that -- especially after Scott sank the nomination anyway -- a cluster of, I don't know, 30 Republican Senators might announce that Farr's history of racist voter suppression made him unsuitable for the federal bench, bask in the praise the media would heap upon them for their independence, and then get ready to vote for the functionally-identical nominee Trump put forward instead. But no.

This, above all else, was my thought during the Kavanaugh hearing. Had Kavanaugh been defeated, the alternative would have been almost certainly "a judge whose predicted voting record on the bench would be substantively identical to Kavanaugh's in every respect, but who wasn't also maybe a sexual predator in his youth." Oh the sacrifices! But apparently it is one, since pretty much no Republican Senator has ever found this logic remotely compelling.

This is why I have no confidence in the GOP Senate's ability or interest in providing even a modicum of checks upon the Trump administration. Faced between the choice of a conservative nominee who is corrupt/racist/incompetent/criminal, and waiting another few weeks for a nominee who is just as conservative but doesn't have any of that baggage, the Republicans in the Senate have proven they'll choose Door #1 every single time.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume L: The Titanic

It's the 50th iteration of this series! When we began, way back with the Fukashima disaster, could anyone have imagined we'd find fifty random world events that people blamed on the Jews? (answer: yes, effortlessly)

On this special day, we explore blaming the Jews for The Titanic. The ship, not the movie (obviously, we get the movie by default since, you know, Hollywood. I'll leave it to the commenters to decide whether the 1997 Oscar Best Picture is something to be blamed or credited for).

Anyway. A Canadian Arabic-language newspaper has an account of why the Titanic was built, and why it sank. You might be surprised to learn that neither "luxury passenger travel" nor "icebergs" factor into the narrative:

The Jewish Freemasons built the giant Titanic ship and charged it with the fictional costs, only to kill three businessmen, who built it with a magnificent construction, to drag them on board, and then sink them into the ocean floor and bury the secret with them for ever. The [businessmen were against] the idea of ​​creating the Federal Reserve! They loved to be rid of them in order to pave the way for the new world order. 

This is the sort conspiracy theory that really riles me up. I mean, it's one thing to accuse Jews of murdering powerful global actors as part of a plot to retain dominance of the international financial system. It's another thing to have us take such a manifestly inefficient path towards the goal.

Do you really think that there aren't simpler ways to kill three businessmen than constructing the largest ship the world had ever seen, then sinking her during her maiden voyage? Think of how wasteful that is! You're an antisemite -- you're supposed to think Jews are stingy.

I can accept baseless conspiratorial hatred, but I will die before my tribe is charged with sloppy craftsmanship. There are lines, people.

On Israel's "60 Discriminatory Laws"

At a UN meeting commemorating International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Temple University Professor Marc Lamont Hill referred to the existence of "more than 60 Israel laws that deny citizenship rights to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish."

It's one of those claims I've heard bandied about, in various formulations, many times, and I thought it was worth digging into a bit.

The basic referent here, as far I can tell, is a list from the Israeli NGO Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel), which compiles laws which "discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens in Israel and/or Palestinian residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) on the basis of their national belonging." The "or indirectly" matters quite a bit -- as Adalah confirms, while some of these laws represent explicit discrimination, "more often, the laws are worded in a seemingly neutral manner, but have or will likely have a disparate impact on Palestinians in their implementation."

Now, one might think that my objection here is to the conflation of "direct" and "indirect" forms of discrimination. And to be sure, there is a very large difference between a law which says directly "Israeli Jews, but not Israeli Palestinians, are entitled to X" and a law which is neutral in form but happens to have a disparate impact on Palestinians. Likewise, not all of the entries on the Adalah list seem like fair play. For example, Adalah includes a 2010 law which offers certain perks to soldiers discharged from the IDF. It contends this discriminates against Palestinian Israelis because, unlike other Israeli citizens, they are not subject to mandatory military service. But they aren't excluded from military service either -- they just (unlike Jewish Israelis) have the option to forgo it (one could argue that this is a law which favors Palestinian Israelis at the expense of their Jewish co-citizens). So to characterize this law as one that denies Palestinians equal citizenship seems like an extraordinarily deep stretch.

Others are likewise shaky calls. For example, the law which increases the threshold for entering parliament is attacked as a means of seeking to squelch Arab political participation. And to be sure, it seems evident that one motive (though not the only one) for that law was the belief that, given deep fragmentation among Arab Israeli parties, it would knock out some of the smaller groupings. But if that was the goal, it backfired: Arab parties instead united under a Joint List and surged to become the third-largest party in the Knesset. In any event, to characterize that law as one which " den[ies] citizenship rights to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish" is more than a bit of a stretch.

Still, it is absolutely fair to observe that "indirect" forms of discrimination nonetheless contribute in a very real way to tangible inequality. That's as true in Israel as it is in America; a focus on formal equality is manifestly insufficient to capture ways in which Palestinian citizens of Israel are disadvantaged in Israeli society. And it'd be unfair to accuse Hill of hypocrisy on this score, at least -- I have no doubt that he would, if asked, also deem American laws which are facially neutral but have a disparate impact on African-Americans as contributors to a racist American system.

Nonetheless, something slick is happening here, and I think it's important to zero in on what it is. The phrase "laws that deny citizenship rights to Palestinians" is vague, intentionally so, but it certainly connotes more explicit forms of identity-based discrimination that mimic something like South African apartheid or American Jim Crow. Hill could rejoin that this isn't what he means by the phrase -- he intends to sweep more broadly, because unjust inequality isn't limited to cases which mimic South African apartheid.

Fine -- but if that's the case, then we have to start asking whether a state having "60 laws" which are facially neutral but have a disparate deleterious impact on certain vulnerable minorities is comparatively abnormal. Put another way: if we adopted Adalah's standard for a law which "den[ies] citizenship rights" to a particular outgroup and applied it to America, how many discriminatory laws would we have? 20? 100? 1000? What about Poland? What about Cameroon? What about China? What about Kuwait? And so on. My strong guess is that, under this metric, having sixty discriminatory laws falls well within the normal range for countries of its size.

To be clear, despite the verbiage above my argument isn't "whataboutism". It is perfectly fair to say that the existence of such laws -- even the existence of more of such laws -- in many other countries wouldn't justify them in Israel's case. And I'd agree with that. But -- and here's the "slick" part -- Hill is not trying to make the argument that Israel is common among nations in having laws which in effect disadvantage certain outgroups. He's trying to assert that Israel is unique in this respect, or at least uncommon. Speaking of "laws that deny citizenship rights" is meant to suggest that Israel stands out and beyond the pale -- so much so that we should support (Hill is explicit on this point) violent resistance efforts against it akin to that which the ANC employed against apartheid South Africa.

What we have, in short, is a bait-and-switch. On the one hand, the rhetoric Hill employs is designed to give the impression of a narrower and more virulent set of wrongful conduct that is similar in form to apartheid and seems harmonious with a relatively aggressive set of responses. On the other hand, if you press him on the substantive meaning behind the rhetoric, he can fall back and say "no, no -- I'm talking about something much more expansive". But that class of wrongs is no longer in sync with the sort of remedies Hill is proposing -- unless he's willing to say that pretty much every country on earth should be subjected to violent insurgency on account of its failure to abolish laws which have a disadvantageous disparate impact on certain minorities in the state.

And if even he is willing to ride that slope all the way to its slippery bottom, he'll find that few are willing to follow him down. A theoretical consistency is overshadowed by an known and accepted practical inconsistency; the mobilizing force of his remarks depends on preserving an intentional asymmetry between substance and rhetoric, between the actual content of the wrongs he's alleging Israel commits and the connotations implied by how they're described. It is not feasible to get widespread support for the proposition that every country should be targeted for a terrorist insurgency as a means of overturning its unjust practices. It is feasible to get widespread support for the proposition that a particular country (preferably someone else's) be so targeted.

Again, the argument here isn't "well, if you don't criticize Romania and Sri Lanka for this, how can you criticize Israel?" I'm well aware that caring equally about everything is an impossible and unreasonable demand; people focus on what they focus on for all number of reasons. But there is a very large difference between arguing "this is a wrong we see everywhere, I just happen to focus on it in this particular place" and "this particular place stands out as wrongful in a way one doesn't see anywhere else." The former and the latter are different claims and demand different justifications.

And likewise, I'm concerned about the rapidity with which people are beginning to argue that a claim of double-standards is just a way of kicking up dust. Yes, it's true that no functioning program of political or social action actually comprehensively applies to every "like" case simultaneously. No, that doesn't mean that patterns of disparate or disproportionate focus on a particular group never can give rise to an inference of discriminatory maltreatment (hell, that's the entire basis for looking askance at disparate impact!). Curtis Marez's limp argument that academic BDS targets Israel because, hey, "one has to start somewhere" -- as if the focus on Israel was a sort of random precipitation, as if the next academic organization over might just as easily look at China or Turkey or America -- is an insult to everyone's intelligence.

Certainly, Hill understands this well in his case -- defending his friendship with and admiration of Louis Farrakhan (with whom he is far closer to than, say, Linda Sarsour), Hill contended that "Black people are the only people who are demanded to throw people away". Regardless of whether it is in fact true that this is only demanded of Black people (and I might respond with: "Hi! I'm a Jew! My people should talk with your people about our shared experiences on this dimension!"), would it really suffice as a response to reply by saying "well, maybe 'throwing away' open bigots is only demanded of Black people -- but it's still the right thing to do, and we should demand it everyone, so what grounds have you to complain"? In reality, it isn't an accident that such demands disproportionately fall on certain groups and not others, and that non-accidental non-proportionality does not exist outside of valid discourses about justice and equal treatment.

In any event, we've strayed afield from where we started. In broad sweep, the move Hill is making is a similar play to that which I critiqued in my column on accusing Israel of "genocide". That allegation likewise attempts to harness the moral gravity of a narrow set of wrongs and apply it to something substantively much broader -- switching back and forth between the rhetorical force generated by the former (genocide as death camps) and the substantive sweep captured by the latter (genocide as "losing your culture"). The move only works if one consciously blurs the pivot, but that obfuscation is fair to call out. Here, it's paired with the more prosaic problem I identified with those omnipresent maps -- a failure to use consistent metrics across cases, such that the statement "laws which deny citizenship rights" doesn't mean "nothing short of explicit segregation or denaturalization" in Turkey and "any law which isn't arrived at through a perfect simulacrum of the Rawlsian original position" in Israel.

The problem with the "60 laws" formulation isn't that there aren't valid objections to some or even many of the laws Adalah has in its database. Nor is it the self-serving (and transparently ridiculous) argument that Palestinians (whether citizens of Israel or not) face systematic and serious discrimination in Israel, much of which emanates directly from the Israeli state. The problem is that the move Hill is pulling relies on a set of disingenuous rhetorical tropes that deliberately mislead as to the content of the claims he's making. The substantive content of his claims absolutely establish that Israel commits wrongs -- but only within the normal bandwidth. That's a problem, because Hill needs to characterize Israel as especially evil, especially mendacious, especially corrupt, and especially worthy of revulsion. Why? Because he knows full well that the sorts of demands he wants to make -- a full boycott coupled with a violent military insurrection -- only fly if people believe he's talking about an especially horrible Other.

And that's how you get a phrase like "more than 60 Israel laws that deny citizenship rights to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish."

Racial Discrimination isn't a First Amendment Right (Yet)

I've written a bit about First Amendment Lochnerism -- the use of the First Amendment to strike down a bevy of (generally progressive) government regulations as violations on "free speech". Because an expansive view of "speech" can encompass all manner of activities hitherto thought of as unremarkable subjects of public regulation (consider laws which force drug manufacturers to disclose potential side effects -- compelled speech!), a hyperactive First Amendment jurisprudence can threaten huge swaths of the modern regulatory state. And indeed, it seems as if the First Amendment has been the conservative judiciary's weapon of choice against disagreeable liberal policy victories -- from campaign finance reform to public sector unions.

Anti-discrimination law, in particular, is vulnerable to this trend because it is very easy to view an anti-discrimination rule as a form of compelled association (why should I have to engage in a business transaction with a group I don't want to associate with), and because most discrimination has a self-consciously expressive character (I'm not doing business with this group as a means of expressing my disdain for them).

A few days ago, the Ninth Circuit encountered another probe in this direction when Charter Communications, the third-largest cable distributor in America, defended itself against a § 1981 charge of racial discrimination by claiming its application would violate its First Amendment rights.  Charter was accused of refusing to distribute the channels of a Black-owned cable company due to racial animus. It denies the claim, of course, but it also argued that even if it had been engaging in racial discrimination, such a choice would represent an exercise of Charter's "editorial discretion" and thus was immune from governmental oversight under the First Amendment. To the extent § 1981 -- one of the oldest civil rights laws in America, forbidding race-based interference in the creation of a contract -- is applied to such "editorial" choices, it is unconstitutional.

The Ninth Circuit rejected this defense and allowed the suit to proceed. But we're still seeing more and more data points suggesting that the First Amendment is viewed as a promising avenue for derailing discrimination claims, and I think there are ample grounds for civil rights activists to be very anxious about the trend.

Cynicism as "Realism" as Cowardice

Among the many, many terrible things Mort Klein has written -- well, I don't actually want to rank them, because there's a lot bad. But this is bad.

If these illegals were all conservatives who would likely vote republican, none of these leftwing supporters of these illegals would be supporting the illegals.None! https://t.co/uEJMhj5u0x

— Morton Klein (@MortonAKlein7) November 26, 2018

Indeed, it's not just bad. It is one of the more despicable rhetorical ploys one sees in politics today. It is cynicism dressed up as realism. But it's worse than that, because what it's really intended to do is to serve as a buoy, a life raft to allow people to ignore obvious moral obligations by pretending that nobody really follows them anyway.

First of all, as Jill Jacobs notes, it's not like anybody has polled these migrants, so we actually have no idea how they might vote if and when they become U.S. citizens. The blithe assumption that they'll obviously vote Democratic is itself a pretty brutal self-own -- "clearly, given how terribly we've treated immigrants there's no way they'd ever vote for us!" is now right-wing orthodoxy -- and the Republican extension that this justifies xenophobic policies is the epitome of murdering your parents and crying orphan.

But if we lived in a different sort of world -- one where Republicans weren't committed to explicit policies of gratuitous cruelty towards refugees and immigrants, one where bipartisan immigration reform had succeeded instead of being torpedoed by an ascendant racist right -- would these groups be automatic liberal constituencies?

I hardly see why. It wasn't that long ago that Latinos were a swing bloc. It wasn't that long ago that Asians were a swing bloc. It wasn't that long ago that Muslims voted Republican by crushing margins. To the extent these groups are now viewed as reliably Democratic, it's caused less by unalterable cultural properties and more by the GOP's increasingly brazen embrace of open White Supremacy.

And on the other side: there have been refugee groups whose politics have coded "right" -- generally those fleeing socialist authoritarian nations. Cubans and Vietnamese would fall into this category, as would (I suspect) Venezuelans more recently. Yet contra Klein, I've seen no evidence that Democrats have abandoned their generally positive pro-refugee stances as applied to these groups. Just because conservatives can't imagine not acting based on partisan motives doesn't mean nobody does it. It just emphasizes how morally bankrupt contemporary conservatism is -- it's lost the ability to even fathom a principled stance. And as for Democrats, when faced with new constituencies that might start off suspicious of progressive politics, you know what we do? We try to win their votes, by making the case that our policies are better. Our success in doing so has translated to flipping a few south Florida and southern California House districts -- and that's the way it should be. Oh boo hoo -- it's so unfair that you need to actually appeal to different constituencies, even when they're not White! Welcome to democracy!

What's going on here? Why is Klein making arguments of this sort? The specific answer, obviously, is that Klein is a xenophobic hack with a loose allegiance to factual reality. The general answer, though, is that it's offering conservatives a way to be moral cowards while saving face.

Here's the thing: everybody understands that morality makes certain demands of us in the political realm. And everybody also understands that those demands might sometimes incur costs, or cause dissonance, or otherwise make us feel uncomfortable. So we're all vulnerable to pied pipers suggesting that we can dispense with those commitments -- who tell us what we already long to hear, who let us recode our cowering instincts as a form of nobility, or at least savviness.

Klein's cynicism styles itself as realism -- the hard-headed political realist understands that all this noble talk about "loving the stranger" is only so much political posturing, you'd be a sucker to be taken in by it. It's an attractive message because it disguises moral cowardice for clear-eyed vision, and that's exactly why it's so despicable. Messages like these do immense damage to the moral fabric of our political world; they don't just unravel the sense that we have duties to one another that extend beyond momentary political advantage, they undo that sensibility in a way that is masked as a virtue.

But make no mistake: it is cowardice. Telling oneself that just treatment of refugees is a sucker's game because it's just Democrats playing politics is a way of avoiding an obvious moral duty. It exploits a vulnerability in our collective psyches to make our politics coarser and crueler, and that makes the activists who peddle it utterly beneath contempt.

Nazi Saluting Students Won't Get Punished

The Baraboo (Wisconsin) School District has so decided, contending that it "cannot know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved" and that any proposed discipline would violate the First Amendment.

I don't want to get into the merits of either these justifications. Hearts are notoriously hard to read (itself a good reason not to hinge our approach to discrimination on the fickle organ), and I'd have to do more research to feel confident appraising the merits of the First Amendment question (on the one hand, presumably the school's power is limited in cases of off-campus speech like this, on the other hand, remember "Bong Hits for Jesus"?).

All I want to say now is something I've said before: They would say it about Jews; they'd say it about others too. Sometimes one hears claims to the effect that "nobody would ever tolerate such-and-such behavior if it was targeting Jews", as a claimed contrast to cases where social actors are tolerating some form of bigoted behavior which targets another group. It's an ugly bit of victim-competition which attempts to cast Jews as having yet more unearned privileges and advantages that set them apart from the truly marginalized.

But, as we see here, people do target Jews with hateful acts, and other people do let them get away with it. The myth that -- alone amongst the oppressions -- any hostile act towards Jews (and -- the implication often goes -- many acts that aren't really hostile at all) is met with immediate and overwhelming punitive firepower is just that: a myth. It isn't reflected in reality, and it shouldn't be relied upon.

Trendlines! (Almost) 50 State Edition

In politics as in anything else, one does not want to be caught fighting the last war. And so, reflecting on the last election, it's worth asking not where the states currently are on the red vs. blue continuum, but where they're going. What are the trendlines?

Note: A trend is just that -- a trend. A state can be "trending" blue but still be quite red, or vice versa. Nonetheless, I'm not including states that are, for lack of a better word, "boring" -- so overwhelmingly and consistently preferring one party or the other that it doesn't really matter of any side is marginally improving its prospects.

* * *

Alaska -- Blue: While still a pretty reliably Republican state, Democrats have been quietly making the last several congressional elections close. Rep. Don Young (R) may have served since 1973, but he hasn't gotten over 55% of the vote since 2012. An extremely robust independent streak (allowing, e.g., Lisa Murkowski to win a write-in Senate campaign) also makes Alaska a little more complicated than your average red bear.

Arizona -- Blue: Kyrsten Sinema's Senate victory caps off the official entry of Arizona into "purple" territory (strong performance on the House side too!).

Arkansas -- Red: Hey, remember how Bill Clinton was from Arkansas? That was a long time ago.

California -- Blue: California's leaned blue for awhile, but it wasn't that long ago that some Republicans could at least compete (remember the Governator?). Not today. The sweep of Orange County House seats cements the complete collapse of the Golden State's GOP.

Colorado -- Blue: It seems like Colorado almost leap-frogged over "purple" to go straight to "light blue". Cory Gardner has a massive target on his back come 2020.

Florida -- ???: Florida's a tough nut to crack. It was probably the purplest state to almost completely resist the blue wave this year -- the GOP performed about as well here in 2018 as it did in 2016. That's testament to (a) better-than-average performance among Latinos and (b) really cranking up the dial on rural Whites -- a good recipe for GOP success. The wildcard is the passage of Amendment Four, which significantly relaxed Florida's brutally draconian felon disenfranchisement laws. Most states, that wouldn't be enough to make a difference -- but Florida is close enough (and its felon disenfranchisement rates racially skewed enough) that it could matter.

Georgia -- Blue: Slowly but steadily, Georgia is getting competitive. But the emphasis is on "slowly". Brian Kemp's defeat of Stacy Abrams -- without even needing a run-off -- shows that there's still a ways to go before Democrats really put the Peach State in play.

Indiana -- Red: Obama managed to win here in 2008, but that seems like eons ago now. Indiana was always the most conservative of the rust belt states, but it's really tacked hard right over the past few cycles.

Iowa -- ???: Democrats won three of four House seats and almost managed to flip the fourth (a feat which, to be fair, reflects more on King's unique awfulness than any general Democratic competitiveness in western Iowa). But we lost what seemed to be a winnable governor's race, and rural midwestern states seem to be inching right. Hard to say which way the winds are blowing, but if you forced me to guess I'd say Iowa is more likely to get redder than bluer.

Kansas --- Blue: Again, it's a slow process, and not likely to show up on any presidential races anytime soon. But Democrats are starting to consistently compete in Kansas House races again, and, of course, we just took the governor's mansion.

Maine -- Red: Maine still has a decidedly blue lean. But its rural environs aren't as decisively blue as they used to be, and this is still a state that -- however flukishly -- gave Paul LePage two terms as governor.

Michigan -- ???: Michigan snapped back hard into the Democratic column in 2018, but it's still worth asking whether it will join a broader midwestern drift rightward. Debbie Stabenow's closer than expected Senate race against John James (she won 52-45) suggests that there's still plenty of fight left in Wolverine Republicans.

Minnesota -- Red: Republicans flipped two congressional seats from blue-to-red this cycle, and both were in Minnesota. They were washed out two Democratic gains in the suburbs, but there's no question Republicans have been consistently improving their performances here over the past few years. They may not be able to touch Amy Klobuchar, but one day Rep. Colin Peterson (D) is going to draw a real challenger and then it's quite likely Minnesota will have an even D/R congressional delegation.

Missouri -- Red: Time was Missouri was a national bellwether. No more: it's pretty firmly in the red camp these days.

Montana -- Blue: Jon Tester's best performance yet is buoyed by growth in the western -- and more liberal -- half of the state.

Nebraska -- ???: Democrats have been wondering if Omaha might give them an opening, but Kara Eastman actually did worse in her 2018 race against Rep. Don Bacon than Brad Ashford did in 2016. Yes, Ashford has the advantage of (one term of) incumbency, but 2018 was a much better year than 2016 was. The rest of the state remains ruby red.

Nevada -- Blue: The American west/southwest is probably the area where we're seeing the most decisive Democratic momentum, and Nevada -- where Harry Reid helped build a formidable Democratic machine -- is at the forefront of that. Like Colorado, Nevada seems to have jumped straight past "purple" and into "light blue".

New Hampshire -- ???: Like much of New England, New Hampshire seems to be consolidating blue a bit, but the Granite State in particular is notoriously politically volatile. Gov. Chris Sununu's (R) 53/46 re-election win was a bit closer than expected though.

New Mexico -- Blue: Of all the southwestern states, New Mexico has the longest standing blue roots, so in terms of "trend" it's probably moved less than some of its neighbors.

North Carolina -- ???: A few years ago, there was a lot of hope in the southeastern United States -- Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida -- as the big growth area for the Democratic Party. Looking back, it's been a mixed bag. The fact that the North Carolina legislature has gerrymandered itself to hell and back and has a questionable commitment to the entire concept of "democracy" isn't helping matters, but voters have put a kibosh on some of their worst instincts.

North Dakota -- Red: Do you know that Barack Obama kept North Dakota to a single digit margin in 2008? That feels like a long time ago. Goodbye Heidi Heitkamp -- you'll be missed.

Ohio -- Red: As non-college educated White voters have shifted red, things have gotten a lot harder for team blue in the Buckeye State. Sherrod Brown was a big bright spot in an otherwise dim Democratic performance this year.

Pennsylvania -- ???: "Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in the middle." Pennsylvania is tough to characterize. On the one hand, of all the "blue wall" Trump wins in 2016, PA was the most surprising, and Democrats performed well here in 2018. On the other hand, both the "Pittsburgh" and "Alabama" portions of Pennsylvania seem like the sort of places that could continue a red-ward trend -- albeit one perhaps offset by the bluing of greater Philadelphia.

Texas -- Blue: It's easy to overread Beto O'Rourke's performance this year -- which to my mind was equal parts (a) Texas getting bluer, (b) Beto being a really good candidate, (c) 2018 being a good Democratic year, and (d) everyone hating Ted Cruz. But still "a" is a real part of that story. I wouldn't characterize Texas as "purple" yet, but it's definitely moving in that direction. And importantly, Democrats are making serious plays in some of the suburbs.

Virginia -- Blue: The only southeastern state which has decisively taken a turn in the Democratic direction is Virginia. Virginia's DC suburbs are starting to catch up to their Maryland neighbors as deep blue pools, and Democrats are also performing decently downstate too.

West Virginia -- Red: No region of America has shifted more decisively towards the GOP than Appalachia, and no state is more Appalachian than West Virginia. Puts Joe Manchin's victory in perspective, though.

Wisconsin -- ???: Beating Scott Walker was sweet, and Tammy Baldwin had little trouble winning reelection to the Senate. But the midwest still seems to me to be a troublespot for the Democrats -- it's hard to imagine that if Minnesota is pivoting right, that Wisconsin will buck them and move left.

Philadelphia Police Department Sued for Antisemitic Discrimination

Two Philadelphia police officers are suing the department, alleging antisemitic discrimination.

In a nice bit of "THIS is what a Jew looks like!" communal pluralism, the Latina Jewish officer is the one making note of "jokes" about blowing up Israel and alleging retaliation for trying to take Rosh Hashana off, and the White (Russian) Jewish officer is the one who got hit with threats of deportation.

Hurray for Jewish diversity!

Anti-Pelosi Democrats are 2018's Stein Voters

The attempted rebellion of about a dozen and a half Democrats -- primarily "moderates" -- against Nancy Pelosi is a nice reminder that self-indulgent posturing in the service of self-destructive politics isn't just a feature of the progressive movement's left flank. Anybody can play!

There isn't any good reason for why Nancy Pelosi shouldn't be Speaker of the House, and the rebel faction has barely offered one other than some vague murmurings about "change" (I'm having flashbacks just writing that sentence). But the political calculations here are, if anything, even worse. Let's review:

• Not to put too fine a point on it, but the broad argument that Nancy Pelosi is a weight dragging Democratic electoral chances seems to have been rather decisively falsified by our massive gains nationwide a few weeks ago.
• Speaking of which, the political storyline with respect to the House should be "Democrats pick up nearly 40 seats in a crushing blue wave", followed closely by "Donald Trump is terrified of a House with subpoena power." But let's step all over that story in favor of yet another "Dems in disarray" narrative the media loves so much! Nothing says "the adults are back in town" like immediately collapsing into petty infighting!
• The idea that the savvy political move right now in the Democratic Party is to step on perhaps the most prominent female elected official in the party in service of a tack to the center is ... let's go with "counterintuitive."
• Even in swing districts, the number of independent voters who realistically are making their D-or-R voting decision based on whether Nancy Pelosi is speaker is charitably described as "trivial". And of that set, the number who will care about something as an inside-baseball-y as the vote for Speaker cannot be measured by any instrument known to man. Put differently: if someone is going to vote Republican because Nancy Pelosi is speaker, it's cute to think they'd make an exception for a Democrat who voted against Pelosi on the floor.
• To the extent that anyone who promised to "not vote for Pelosi for speaker" needs a face-saving measure, the solution clearly is "vote for someone else in the caucus meeting". Then -- once you lose that vote by a predictably crushing margin -- say you've fulfilled your promise to "vote for someone else" and fall back in line like a good soldier. If that sounds too clever by half, keep in mind we are dealing with a hypothetical class of voters who will hold a grudge over the House leadership vote for two years, yet apparently won't be influenced by or care about anything the House actually does over that time period.

Honestly, there's nothing more "Democrat" than a bunch of sanctimonious morons deciding that opposing Trump is way less fun than a few weeks of needlessly self-destructive intraparty fratricide. 

The only pleasant thing about this whole affair will be watching Pelosi crush the insurgents like bugs. See, unlike them, Nancy Pelosi actually does know how to play the political game.

What is This Strange Feeling of Hope I Have?

I've written a lot about Corbyn, and Corbynism, and the deeply toxic impact it's had on British (and particularly progressive British) Jewish life. There's so many depressing or negative emotions associated with that whole state of affairs, and I have to think over the course of the past few years I've articulated all of them in one form or another.

But one thing I don't think I've ever written -- but which I've felt for awhile now -- is my sense of inspiration.

Because as terrible as Corbynism has been for progressive Jews in the UK -- they haven't taken it lying down. They've rallied, they've organized, they've refused to be cowed. And they've won serious victories -- the adoption of the full IHRA definition being just one example. Yes, there are many -- many -- Labour activists who are still quite publicly and viscerally hostile to Jewish activity. But it's also the case that there are many Labour politicians who have boldly and uncompromisingly stood with the Jewish community -- obviously Jewish figures like Luciana Berger, but also prominent non-Jewish members like Sadiq Khan.

Faced with an emergent antisemitic tide in Labour, UK Jews dug in their heels and fought back. And if you compare the genuine resistance to antisemitism that we're seeing inside Labour to, say, the utter capitulation to racism that's characterized the contemporary Republican Party in the face of Trumpism, there's no question that the left comes out looking much better -- not because we've won the battle (or anything close to it), but because there actually is a battle. It hasn't been a steamroller, and we've given as good as we've got.

I'm inspired because in the UK there are far fewer Jews, who are far less interlaced in political and social life, than in the US. So if they can do it there, we can do it here. Yes, there's antisemitism on the left in America. But the Jewish community hasn't slunk away, and we haven't even stepped back from our posts as a core progressive constituency (79% of Jews voted blue in the midterms -- that's more lopsided than pretty much any other group save African-Americans).

If you're worried about the influence of Louis Farrakhan on the left, go ahead and do that -- but also be cognizant of the fact that, as much as certain figures in the movement have been utter failures on that issue, there's been a sustained, powerful firewall of progressive activists who have stepped up to the plate and who are -- again -- giving at least as well as we're getting. If this is a fight, then we're fighting -- and on Farrakhan-related questions, I dare say we're winning pretty decisively.

There's a fantasy in which the Democratic Party saw a group of left-wing activists hostile to Jews and immediately tossed us overboard, and then there's the reality where the Democratic Party has been remarkably robust in listening to Jewish concerns and holding the line against attempts to exclude us from the movement. It's not the case that antisemitism doesn't exist in the Democratic Party, but neither is it the case that when it manifests it riots unchecked. Jews speak out, and when we do it matters.

And here the comparison to the Republican Party couldn't be starker. I don't know if the RJC has even tried to object to, say, Soros conspiracy mongering by Republican officials -- but if it has, it's barely been a speedbump. You want to talk about a political movement which is scarcely even trying to fight antisemitism in its own ranks -- there's your mark.

Bizarrely, sometimes it seems like conservatives get more credit because Jews are so marginal in their movement that there are no "fights" about antisemitism at all -- if the Republican Party wants to run conspiracy theories about the globalist Jews corrupting the volk, nobody on the inside could stop them and nobody on the inside really tries to stop them. The progressive movement has visible friction precisely because there's resistance to internalized antisemitism that is virtually non-existent in conservatism. What sometimes seems like comparative placidity in the conservative ranks is a mirage -- it disguises an utterly routed state.

So I'm feeling weirdly good right now. Are there efforts within the left to marginalize Jews? Yes. But are Jews going to simply roll over and concede to them? Not bloody likely. And the most heartening part is -- experience has taught me that we won't be fighting alone, and we won't be fighting in futility. This is a battle we can win.

The Antisemitism that Keeps Me Up at Night

What is the type of antisemitism that keeps you up at night?

For me, believe it or not, it isn't the violence. It isn't Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is scary, but -- rightly or wrongly -- I continue to think that this sort of antisemitism is and will remain a rare occurrence in the United States.

The antisemitism that gives me nightmares is a different sort, and requires some explaining. But the short version is that it's the antisemitism of negative partisanship (or "the politics of hurt").

Here's what I mean by that. Antisemitic acts are sometimes done by people who don't conceive of themselves as antisemites. In such cases, we'd expect that the reaction of Jews to those acts -- the declaration that "this was antisemitic" and "this hurt us" -- to count as a negative. The actor would not have desired that result, that his or her action elicited such a response would count against it. And even if the actor isn't so chagrined, we'd hope that this would be the impact on social observers. If people see that Jews reacted negatively to something -- that we thought it was scary, or unjust, or antisemitic, or what have you -- then they'd be less favorably disposed towards whatever it was that caused us to react so poorly.

But this isn't always what happens. Sometimes, in some cases, a poor Jewish reaction isn't viewed as a negative. It's viewed as a positive. It shows that you're poking the right people. It shows you're standing up to power. It shows that you haven't been cowed. "If you're taking flak, that means you're over the target", as the saying goes -- a saying which assumes that those firing the flak are also the enemy to be targeted.

Consider Tamika Mallory's infamous remark, in response to Jewish criticism of alleged antisemitism, that "If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!" Obviously, in context there was a specific antisemitic valence to the "Jesus" reference that has been much remarked on. But even if you strip that part away, there's a deeper problem: Mallory is casting it as a point of pride that the Jews are critiquing her -- are her "enemies". It's one of the ways she knows she's on the right track. The victim-blaming template Ariel Sobel attributed to the Women's March -- where largely progressive Jewish criticism is transformed into a coordinated right-wing assault (itself an antisemitic maneuver of deep vintage) -- is in the same vein. The goal is to make it so that when people hear these sorts of criticisms from these sorts of people, their instinct is to pull closer towards the object of critique. If they're taking flak from Jews, then they must be over the target.

This is what keeps me up at night, because it subverts any possibility of effective Jewish political action in response to perceived wrongs. If it is a perk that Jews are upset, if it is a positive political sign, then it's counterproductive for Jews even to try and communicate "this hurt us." Expressions of Jewish hurt end up redounding to the benefit of those causing the hurt. What are we to do?

Particularly in political contexts, this can yield dangerous feedback loops. I have no doubt that Jewish dislike of Jeremy Corbyn cost Labour votes in some districts, particularly heavily Jewish neighborhoods. I also have no doubt that, on a national level, the perception that Jews dislike Corbyn gained him at least as many votes as it lost him. There are definitely people for whom the chasm between Corbyn and the Jews is how they know Corbyn is "THE leader". The reason why Labour under Corbyn has so much trouble "quitting" antisemitism is because Labour is, in very real ways, aided by the perception that Labour under Corbyn antagonizes the Jews.

This has effects here at home too. Consider how Minnesota Jews might react to the Ilhan Omar doubletalk controversy I wrote about yesterday. Right now, the way I feel towards Omar, and the way I imagine many Minnesota Jewish community members feel, is something like the following:

We have serious problems with BDS, which for us has deep associations with antisemitism and antisemitic exclusion targeting Jews around the world. But beyond those substantive problems, it's especially upsetting and disrespectful for you to come before a synagogue, say you find BDS 'counteractive', and then once the election is over say 'actually, I've always supported BDS' and pretend like you weren't blatantly misleading us. The moderator "didn't ask a yes or no question"? Don't insult our intelligence. And add this to the 'hypnotize' tweet -- which you've still never acknowledged has antisemitic resonances -- and we've got some very serious concerns right now.

In a healthy political environment for Jews, this sort of sentiment would be viewed as a negative for Omar. It would be damaging, if Jews in her community were reacting this way, that would be a sign she'd done something wrong. I'm not saying it should necessarily be fatal or unrecoverable -- indeed, I think the opposite. In a healthy political environment, the fact that this would be viewed as a problem would motivate Omar to try to heal the damage and mend the rift. It would be bad for Ilhan Omar to be in a state where Jews were upset with her.

But does anyone have any confidence that, if such above sentiments were expressed, it would be viewed as a negative for Omar? Is it not possible, even likely, that such a reaction from Jews instead would be evidence that Omar was "bold", was "independent", was "unapologetically progressive" (even though, of course, the base of the controversy was actually that Omar had engaged in a pretty classic case of political weasel-wording)? Wouldn't the Jewish reaction very quickly be recast as a right-wing reaction, even though most Minnesota Jews are quite consciously progressive? Wouldn't many people be even more positively inclined towards Omar than they already were -- proud to see her stand tall against the Jewish onslaught?

Again, this is speculative -- we don't know how, if at all, the Jewish community in Minnesota plans to respond to Omar, nor how Omar plans to respond to her Jewish constituents. And the possibility of turning converting Jewish opposition into political support doesn't mean it's a path that would be taken. A genuine ally would resist the temptation; even if the prospect of adulation for "standing up" to the Jews presents itself, she would not indulge because of her own accord she would be unhappy that Jews were unhappy with her.

Nonetheless, this prospect -- and my fundamental lack of confidence that this prospect isn't actually reality -- keeps me up at night. David Hirsh wrote worryingly that -- more than BDS, more than school or synagogue security, more than the future of relations between Israel and the west, more than anything else -- "what really frightens me is that a generation of left-wing activists are being taught that the enemy is the Jews." Even if you think that's a little overwrought, I would endorse the notion that a generation of left-wing activists are being taught that if Jews are angry at them, that means they're doing something right rather than something wrong.

Naively or not, the cornerstone of my resistance to antisemitism -- what gives me the confidence that it can be resisted -- is a firm belief in the possibility that empathic dialogue and open communication can change minds and alter behavior. I believe -- again, perhaps naively -- that most people don't want to see Jews hurting, and hence that when we express hurt, people will be at least more inclined to change their ways.

If that's wrong, if people -- including the people in my community, including the people that supposedly are my most essential allies against Pittsburgh-style antisemitic violence -- are excited, thrilled, empowered by seeing Jews in distress, then my entire edifice for fighting antisemitism crumbles. And that keeps me up at night.

The Train Has No Brakes: International Scouting Edition

Two French Jewish delegates were barred from an interfaith scouting meeting hosted in Tunisia, in response to demands from the Tunisian BDS movement. Neither delegate was Israeli, and the organization they were representing, the International Forum of Jewish Scouts, is an umbrella organization for Jewish scouts across the globe.

There does seem to be some confusion as to who was responsible for the exclusion: the JTA article attributed it to meeting organizers, but the IFJS statement contends that BDS activists and nationalist parties in Tunisia sought and received a judicial order barring the Jewish delegates from attending.

But nobody seems to be contesting that this was a consciously sought-after outcome by Tunisian BDS groups, who had explicitly condemned the participation of the IFJS as "disguised normalization" of Israel.

In conclusion, the BDS movement has nothing to do with antisemitism and Jews who think otherwise are simply incapable of tolerating criticism of French Jewish scouts Israel.

Antisemitic Hate Crime Crimes Spiked in 2017

The FBI has released its hate crimes data for 2017. Jews remain, by far, the most frequent victims of religious-based hate crimes (58% of the total, Muslims were the second-most common victims at 18.6%) -- that's been true since the FBI began recording data in 1992.

Antisemitic hate crimes also surged in 2017, rising 37% from the previous year.

It's unclear whether the FBI figures include the bomb threats that terrorized JCCs early in 2017. Some have tried to argue that these threats (which it turned out were made by an Israeli-American teenager and an African-American journalist) were not antisemitic and that it is thus misleading to include them in a list of antisemitic incidents (I argued strenuously against that position here). My guess, though, is that they were included -- if only because the Department of Justice itself made the decision to indict the Israeli-American culprit on hate crimes charges. I'm not normally one to brag about being backed by the Sessions DOJ, but ....

In any event, assuming the bomb threats were included in the figure (and accounted for 163 discrete incidents), removing them from the total would yield an increase in antisemitic incidents of about 13% -- roughly the same rate as the overall increase in hate crimes across all victim groups.

The Senate as a Minority Set-Aside: A Modest Proposal

Every state receives 2% (2/100) of America's Senators. This is true for big states like California (12% of the US population) and small states like Wyoming (.18% of the population). The result is that smaller states have political influence grossly in excess of their number of citizens. Indeed, just nine states comprise half of the American population -- meaning that half of America is represented by 18 Senators, while the other half gets a whopping 82. And thirty-three states -- Missouri and smaller -- have a larger proportion of Senators than they do a proportion of the American population (which is to say, their state's population comprises less than 2% of the American total).

Critics of this arrangement contend that it is anti-democratic. But defenders say that's exactly the point. The Senate is designed to avoid tyranny of the majority; it is part and parcel of a broader commitment to protecting minorities from the predations of the majority.

On this view, we can think of the Senate as a minority set-aside program. A quota of seats is reserved for members of a given political community (those who live in small, less populous states); they are guaranteed representation far in excess of what they'd likely receive in a purely "meritocratic" (democratic) selection process.

Surely, the concern about tyranny of the majority is a valid one. And that got me thinking: why stop there? After all, if we're worried about tyranny of the majority, that concern is at least as robust -- maybe more! -- when talking about racial minorities compared to the minority of people who happen to live in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska. If the point of the Senate is to protect these vulnerable minority groups from being run roughshod by the majority, don't racial minorities deserve at least as much protection as Nebraskans?

So here's my proposal: The 25 least populous states have less than 20% of the American population, but nonetheless hold half of all Senate seats. Call them the "set-aside" states -- they get extra Senate representation to protect the minority from the majority. My proposal is that in the set-aside states, one of two Senate seats should be voted on only by people of color. So in Kentucky (26th most populous state), one of the Senators would be voted on by all residents in Kentucky, and the other only by non-White residents.

Now you might be thinking: that's not fair! Why should only a small subset of the population (Kentucky is approximately 15% non-White) get an entire Senate seat allocated to itself, one which most Kentuckians aren't able to vote for? But that's the same "tyranny of the majority" logic rearing its head again: after all, one could say the same thing regarding why tiny Kentucky -- barely a tenth the size of California -- should get two whole Senate seats all to itself. If the way we protect minorities is by setting aside half of our Senate seats to numerical minorities, then there's no reason why geography should be our sole or even primary metric.

Think of how minority-protective this would be! Currently, there are just nine non-White U.S. Senators even though people of color comprise 23% of America (again, contrast that to 50% of all U.S. Senators hailing from states comprising just 20% of the population). But if the set-aside states -- Oklahoma, Iowa, Utah, Mississippi ... all the way down to tiny Wyoming -- all took their principled devotion to avoiding tyranny of the majority and applied it to race, that number would shoot way up. Assuming each of these states elected a racial minority to one of the two seats, we'd have another 25 non-White U.S. Senators -- a total of 34%! Admittedly, this still wouldn't be as lopsidedly disproportionate as the overrepresentation of rural states -- indeed, it'd be closer to proportionate representation than the status quo -- but in service of avoiding tyranny I think we we can let that slide.

The color of skin you're born with is morally arbitrary, but then, so is living in Montana versus New York. Since I keep hearing that malproportioned electoral representation is absolutely crucial to avoiding tyranny of the majority, and since tyranny of a racial majority has historically been a far greater threat to American liberty than tyranny of the California, Texas, Florida .... Georgia majority, I can't fathom any reason why this proposal wouldn't gain the support of all those principled defenders of the Senate as a bulwark of minority rights.

Doubletalk from Ilhan Omar

While campaigning in the Democratic primary for Minnesota's Sixth District, then-candidate (now Congresswoman-elect) Ilhan Omar participated in a debate at a local synagogue. She was asked about BDS, and responded as follows:

 "I believe right now with the BDS movement, it’s not helpful in getting that two-state solution. I think the particular purpose for [BDS] is to make sure that there is pressure, and I think that pressure really is counteractive. Because in order for us to have a process of getting to a two-state solution, people have to be willing to come to the table and have a conversation about how that is going to be possible and I think that stops the dialogue. I want to make sure that we are furthering policies and advocating for things that get people closer to having that conversation."

It was a statement which assuaged some (though not all) of the Jewish concern about her 2012 tweet accusing Israel of having "hypnotized the world".

But now, the website Muslimgirl* claims to have a quote from Omar's campaign that suggests she's flipped on the issue: "Ilhan believes in and supports the BDS movement, and has fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized. She does however, have reservations on the effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution."

Now, if you squint really hard you might be able to jam those two statements together in a way in which they aren't mutually contradictory. The first statement focuses on why BDS is "counteractive" -- i.e., tactically ill-advisable -- without explicitly disavowing it. The second statement likewise acknowledges "reservations on the effectiveness of the movement" in the course of claiming to support it. It's also worth noting that the first statement is Omar's own words, while the second comes from her campaign -- it wouldn't be the first time a campaign worker issues a statement that runs ahead of what the actual politician wants.

Indeed, my suspicion is that Omar will likely land somewhere in a middle position -- opposing any legislative action to target BDS (she already opposed such a law in Minnesota), and supporting the right of others to boycott Israel, while not outright endorsing the practice on her own personal level.

But really, this just feels like classic doublespeak to me. In a contested primary, in front of a Jewish audience, Omar opposes BDS. Post-election, speaking to a Muslim media outlet, she supports it. It's not exactly the boldest example of progressive leadership. But what can you do? Politicians gonna politic, I guess.

* Most of the MuslimGirl article is a lengthy explanation for why "criticizing Israel isn't antisemitic", helpfully illustrated by the many issues and cases where Jews themselves are critical of Israel. Which, of course, we often are! And one might think that the commonality of such criticism among Jews suggests that the objection to, say, Omar's "hypnotized" comment isn't reducible to it being "criticism of Israel" but instead is something more specified -- say, its overlay with the trope of mind-controlling Jewish hyperpower. 

Alas, we never quite get there. Perhaps this is because MG thinks antisemitism only exists when it has something "to do with religion" -- a ludicrously narrow definition of antisemitism that is abandoned within the same paragraph when the author continues that it "is anti-Semitism ... to erase the opinions of these Jewish people living in Israel and abroad" who are critical of Israel in the author's specified ways. I actually agree it is antisemitic to erase the views and perspectives of Jews to better fit a particular political narrative -- one might suggest that assuming anyone who opposes Israeli settlement policy also gives a blanket get-out-of-antisemitism-free pass to any statement styled as "criticism of Israel" counts as just such an erasure -- but what does any of that have to do with "religion"?

UPDATE: In a text exchange with the writer at a Twin Cities area Jewish website, Omar appears to have confirmed her stance is the one attributed to her by her campaign: "I believe and supports the BDS movement, and have fought to make sure people right to support it isn’t criminalized, re: my vote against the Anti-BDS bill. I do however, have reservations on effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution."

While she denied that her answer at the synagogue forum was "politically expedient" -- she said the moderator “didn’t ask for a yes or no answer" and that she had run an "unapologetic campaign" -- it's pretty clear that this was a case of talking out of both sides of the mouth.

Cindy Hyde-Smith's "Public Hanging" Remark Actually Perfect Metaphor for Modern GOP

Mississippi Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) (she's headed into a runoff against Democrat Mike Espy) landed in hot water with her ... interesting choice of words to describe a supporter. Said Hyde-Smith:

"If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row."

Given Mississippi's long and brutal history of lynchings, it was a rather ill-advised comment.

I admit I've never heard this expression before. But from context, it sounds like the idea behind it is something like "I like this guy so much, if he asked me to do something facially unpleasant, I'd throw myself into it in the most enthusiastic manner possible."

And as an expression of GOP racism, it's hard to think of a more apt metaphor.

David's Novel Post-Election Electoral Proposal

There's been a lot of controversy regarding several extremely close races whose ultimate victor remains up in the air. These include the Arizona Senate race and the Florida Senate and Gubernatorial races (as well as, potentially, whether the Georgia Gubernatorial race will head to a run-off).

Here's my novel proposal to defuse these controversies and ensure that the person ultimately seated has democratic legitimacy:

1) If, after election day, a Democrat is ahead: count all the votes.

2) If, after election day, a Republican is ahead: count all the votes.

3) If, after all the votes are counted and a Democrat is ahead within a preset margin of victory: recount all the votes just to be sure.

4) If, after all the votes are counted and a Republican is ahead within a preset margin of victory: recount all the votes just to be sure.

5) If steps 1 - 4 are scrupulously and fairly followed: seat the winning candidate.

I know it's crazy -- but it's just crazy enough to work!

A D.C. Statehood Dilemma (and a Solution)

D.C. should be a state. I find that indisputable, on the same basis by which I find intolerable the existence of any territory permanently governed by the US which nonetheless lacks full voting rights in the US. That covers D.C. as well as Puerto Rico, and also the U.S. Virgin Islands and several of our Pacific island territories. Each should be, or be part of, a state.

But D.C. it seems has a particular problem associated with its statehood, centering around two constitutional clauses: Article I, Section 8, clause 17 and the Twenty-Third Amendment.

The first is the one that enabled the establishment of D.C. in the first place: it gives Congress the power to "exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States."

The second gives that territory  -- "[t]he District constituting the seat of Government of the United States" -- electoral votes "equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State", provided that it cannot be more than the least populous state (which is to say, it can't be more than Wyoming's three). That last proviso has been moot since the Amendment's adoption, since D.C. would only be entitled to three electoral votes anyway.

These two clauses together pose a problem.

Because Article I, Section 8, clause 17 gives Congress superior power to exercise legislation over the "District" which is the "Seat of Government", one could not form a state -- or at least, a state whose statehood is equal to that of California or Arizona -- in that "District". An important part of making D.C. a state is precisely that it gets the same authority to govern its own affairs just like any other state (no more Mayor Franks!). And of course, if the state of D.C. does grow populous enough, then it should be able to gain its rightful proportion of electoral votes.

So D.C., the state, has to be a separate entity from the constitutionally-described "Seat of Government" "District". On its own, that's easily surmountable: Congress shrinks this "District" (whose area only has a maximum, not a minimum) to the barest possible limits -- probably the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court, and National Mall -- and then grants statehood to the remainder (another possibility is to retrocede the territory back to Maryland -- but the below problem still applies)

But the problem is that in that world, the 23rd Amendment remains in play, and that rump "District" -- which (hopefully) has no people in it -- still is entitled to the amount of electoral votes it would be entitled to were it a state.

How many electoral votes is that, and how do they get appointed? Well, that depends on how many "Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State". One answer is zero: since nobody lives there, it would get no congressional representation at all. But that doesn't actually track the constitutional text: Article I, Section 3, clause 1 gives each state two Senators, period, without respect to population. And while Article I, Section 2, clause 3 does apportion congressional representatives be population, it also guarantees that every "state" shall receive at least one representative.

So now we have a problem: even after D.C. statehood, there still will likely be a rump "Seat of Government" that has no people but three electoral votes. What to do? I see two possible solutions:

1. Have no "Seat of Government". The Constitution permits the establishment of this Seat of Government, but it doesn't require it. Moreover, the same provision which permits Congress to establish a seat of government also allows it to exercise authority over places "purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings." So Congress could "purchase" the White House from D.C. for a nominal fee, at which point it is a federal building (like a fort) but still in the state of D.C. (rather than the Seat of Government).
2. Allocate the "Seat of Government's" electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The Twenty-Third Amendment guarantees the Seat of Government three electoral votes, but it also specifies that these electoral votes shall be appointed "in such manner as the Congress may direct". So Congress could "direct" that they appointed really any way it likes, but the most natural choice is to whichever candidate receives the most votes nationwide. This would have the additional salutary effect of -- in a very slight way -- giving meaning to the national majority in Presidential elections, which (as 2000 and 2016 have painfully shown) currently has no weight whatsoever.