Back In The Fold

Pope Benedict XVI has reinstated four Catholic bishops previously excommunicated by Pope John Paul II for their implacable opposition to liberalizing reforms. One of the bishops is a Holocaust denier. Jewish organizations are, predictably, outraged, but at this point I'm just resigned. Pope Benedict has also given greater prominence to a prayer wishing for the conversion of the Jews. Though I was optimistic at first, his tenure in office has been outrage after outrage.

So what else is new? I think institutional Christianity has long since proven that its default position is of hostility to Jews. Sometimes, it deviates, for a little while, but by and large it eventually reverts to the mean. The Catholic Church is no different, and I don't really think that these problems are ones that are traceable simply to this Pontiff. When Pope Benedict passes on, the odds are much, much better that his successor will be of his cut, rather than that of John Paul II.

In Struggle and Out

Over at Alas, a Blog, Jack Stephens has a post excerpting from an interview with Juliano Mer-Khamis, a Jewish man who directs a theater company for Palestinian children in Jenin. Mr. Stephens has his own blog, The Mustard Seed, where he writes about various facets of, and resistance to, oppression from a Christian Marxist perspective. This blog has a grand total of two posts on anti-Semitism, in one of which he grates his teeth and criticizes Hamas after a particular brutal massacre in a Jerusalem school. It is "truly sad", he writes, and illustrates "the beef" he has with Hamas:

[W]hile they are a resitance [sic] force to a brutal occupation, they are also a reactionary right-wing religious organization. That being the case, they do not respect women’s rights, they will attack LGBTQI folk, and use religion as an excuse for actions just like above.

Try to keep the outrage out of your voice, Jack! Oh, and the other post has to do with Sarah Palin's pastor. Beyond that, it seems, anti-Semitism is a non-issue. Good to know.

Right now, though, the top post on his blog is entitled "Resistance and Western Domination: 'If you don’t struggle, you surrender,'" and draws heavily on the aforementioned interview with Mr. Mer-Khamis.

There were a couple things that struck me about Mr. Mer-Khamis, and how he, and Mr. Stephens, are the disheartening, and in a lot of ways quite scary, counterweights to the message of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish. Much of what he writes is quite tendentious -- he loves guns, he supports guerrilla warfare, he does his part by backing the guns with "knowledge, with culture, with discourse, with free discourse, with theater, with music, with revolutionary songs as we saw in different places in the world." In a lot of ways it is really quite pathetic. But the key graf, that really gets at the problem, comes here:

There’s two ways to deal with this conflict: either you surrender or you struggle. Struggling is not something that you can discuss upon the results or make speculation how it will come out, you just struggle. Because if you don’t struggle you surrender...

When I first read this, I paused. I recognized this logic. In the words of Loki, "I've heard a rant like this before". It is the logic that led to the Gaza operation. Recall my post, what do you do when nothing else works? It seems the answer is, you struggle. You lash out. Israel's Gaza operation was, at the end of the day, motivated by this binary of "surrender or struggle". Either you resign yourself to constant rocket firing forever, or you struggle. Israel could not see another option presented to it. It interprets the global mandate as being "surrender to Hamas". Nobody will stand up for them and say, "you have a right to be here too." Instead, people deliberate if their presence is an affront to God or merely humanity, and then -- dripping with condescension and holier-than-thou attitudes -- decide that, despite their imperialist temerity to want home somewhere, yes, (some of) the Jews can stay, maybe, at Palestinian sufferance. And if Jews die as a result? It happens.

I’m joining them hand by hand, because Zionism is also my enemy, my dream is to live together, Arab, Jews, in one free democratic country and Zionism is exactly the opposite. Zionism is all about ghettoing people into walls, it is about separation, it is about ethnic racism.

This has been one of the hallmarks of the discussion we've been having over the past few weeks on Israel and Zionism. Zionism is not "all about ghettoing people into walls ... separation ... [and] ethnic racism." In some forms it has led to these things, but it is not about them. As Julie put it somewhere, if you can't understand why Jews had the Zionist impulse beyond a naked desire for power, ethnic chauvinism, and imperialism -- if you think Zionism was fundamentally "about" that -- you're not the type of person who has a role to play in reconciliation. By defining the other side as per se unjust, you make it fundamentally impossible for dialogue to proceed. If "reasonable deliberation" (as Iris Marion Young would put it) is one in which both sides approach the table with an aim towards agreement, and one simply fiats that the other side's desires are embodied by injustice (racism, terrorism, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism), then dialogue is a dead game.

I read the words of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Mer-Khamis and I can't help but think that they really love conflict. They revel in being on a side, fighting the good fight. The glory of the struggle. They need an opponent. They need someone to lash out against. The Jews are on the other side. Their perspective, their own liberation movement -- this is not worth engaging. Trying to work with it, trying to say you are in favor of both the liberation of the Jew and the liberation of the Palestinian, is (as Jack put it elsewhere) akin to being on the side of both "the ANC" and "apartheid". Ironically, the ANC I think would have been very careful to describe itself as being both pro-African and pro-White, refusing to buy into the destructive trap of eternal "struggle" wherein these two groups are implacably opposed.

We are blessed that not all, or even most, Jews and Palestinians agree with Mr. Stephens and his compatriots. Most Jews (inside and outside of Israel) support a two-state solution. As of January of 2008, most Palestinians did too, with 53% lining up behind two states for two people, and only 15% supporting a single bi-national state (the remainder -- 32% -- support only a Palestinian state in Palestine). There are Palestinian leaders -- Dr. Abuelaish, Sari Nusseibeh -- who concur, and are working very hard to check against the rhetoric of eternal struggle put forward by Mr. Stephens (and, for that matter, his pro-Israeli counterparts, such as Avigdor Lieberman). Even if I believed that the bi-national state represented the optimal solution right now (and I don't), if the people whose lives are actually on the line want an incremental solution, then by golly I'm going to incrementalize to the best of my ability. I can't help but observe that yet another blogger with communist affiliations is so committed to the cause of the oppressed that he sees fit to ignore their expressed preferences.

But therein lies the rub: A world in which both Jews and Palestinians agree on a solution (two-states) that is different from the one he thinks is just is a world where these two groups no longer struggle, and that is a threat. Indeed, I suspect Mr. Stephens would characterize it as surrender. I'd characterize it as co-existence and mutual respect, but I'm not him. "Struggle or surrender" are the words of those who so value the struggle that they never want it to end. They love being in a state of permanent conflict, with the security that comes with having a "side", the defiant solidarity, the moral righteousness that comes from rooting out evil. They hate evil more than they love good. Victory does not come from co-existence and agreement. Victory comes when you've managed to grind the other side so far into the ground that they sue for the right to be subjugated. And liberation politics becomes merely a fight to see whose ox is gored.

In the post on his own site, Jack talks up Franz Fanon and argues that resistance to oppression means (is defined by) rejecting "the oppressor's" law, military, rules of war, morality, "etc.". We, of the West, have no right to criticize it (Do Jews? Do the Mizrachi?), for Palestinians are only expressing "approval of their resistance to Israel as they see no other way." The fact that this is self-evidently untrue, as shown by the aforementioned examples, is yet another demonstration of how Jack desperately wants to preserve this binary between violent, apocalyptic struggle, and "surrender".

That one condemnation of Hamas, so many months ago, seems quite far away, doesn't it? And the "etc." is fraught with implication, for I think part of Jack's "etc" is that resistance "means" rejection of the "oppressor's" humanity. Once they are on the other side, they are null entities. Their hopes, their dreams, their pain, their death, are washed away. And then I go back to what I wrote:

The rages of extremism simply cannot survive due accord to all the victims of conflict. It can sustain itself quite well when your side is all that matters -- when you pick a "team" to express "solidarity" with and to hell with everyone else. It cannot, it cannot, survive those who care about the lives and liberation of all people.

The rejectionist stance that Jack exemplifies is a rant we've all heard before. What does he think the more virulent forms of Zionism were but a rejection by the colonized Jew of the law, morality, and structure of their oppressors? Does he think we had a right to do that? Does he think it is consistent with respect for our mutual human dignity? No? Why not? Either because he adopts the absurd position that the Jews who promoted Zionism were not oppressed, or because they were morally obligated to not "resist oppression" in the only way that Jack considers to be meaningful. In other words, we were obliged to accept our subordinated and colonized status.

At the end of the day, Jack isn't opposed to Zionism. He thinks he is, but he clearly isn't, for if the oppressed truly have the right to throw off wholesale the logic, law, morality, and even humanity of their oppressors, then there are precisely zero grounds to critique it. He is merely picking sides: he thinks Palestinian liberation is a more worthy cause than Jewish liberation, and so he is pro-Palestine, and "in struggle" anti-Jew. His prerogative, of course, but I will be fucking damned if he gets to call that leftist.

True progressives understand that desiring liberation for any group only makes sense as part of a broader commitment to liberation for all. Otherwise, it is mere partisanship and self-interest, and that is no basis for making normative claims. Commitment to human equality means breaking the dichotomy between "struggle" and "surrender", and pursuing a third way: listening, cooperation, respect, and co-existence. Jews and Palestinians alike (and their allies) have an obligation to pursue their liberation in a way that is respectful of and makes room for the equal humanity, dignity, independence, and self-determination of the other. Anything else is dressed-up chauvinism.

***

To tell the Jewish people how to resist means imposing onto the entire population ones world view of “acceptable” resistance while at the same time doing nothing to actively fight against the European and Arab theocratic machine which is slaughtering the Jewish people and seeking to recreate a condition of permanent exile and subjugation. To tell the Jewish people to resist in a certain way essentially defeats the purpose of resistance as resistance is that form which the Jewish choose to fight against the absolute and utter genocidal policies of global Christiandom, Islam, and secularism. To tell the Jewish people to “resist” in a certain way that is “better” than what they are doing now is to tell them to subjugate themselves to their oppressors; it is telling them to stop resisting.

The moral superiority and bigotry that Christian, Muslim, and secular intellectuals impose on the Jewish people, as if they are in a morally better place than the otherized Jew, is an utterly appalling line of thinking rooted in Christian, Muslim, and enlightenment "liberal" hegemonic racist thought. It is the pinnacle of thought that is deeply rooted in a history of telling the other how to “cope” with imperialism; that the other should accept the “civilizing” mission of the oppressor nations; that they can’t resist the oppressor nations as it violates international “law,” “human rights,” “morality,” the “rule of warfare,” etc. This can be seen by reading the histories of the ANC to the Zulu resistance, as well as Gandhi's call for Jews to willingly submit themselves to the gas chambers.

To tell the Jewish people not to use Zionism, including occupation, barriers, and settlements, to resist is to assume they all have a unilateral way of thinking and that they fully accept everything these entities stand for as supposed to accepting certain aspects, rejecting others, being critical of some, and readjusting weak positions. It assumes their acceptance of Israel means blind adherence to all of their policies as supposed to the approval of their resistance to anti-Semitic murder as they see no other way. It assumes only the Gentile can see the intricacies while the Jew can only see absolutes as if the Jew cannot comprehend complex thought.

To tell them to not resist in a certain way is to apply the rule of the oppressor onto the oppressed, it implies subjugation to the oppressor. The rule of the oppressor is “international law” and the “rule of warfare.” What have those two concepts (let alone the many others that Gentiles use to justify obliterating the Jewish people anywhere and everywhere, and that certain intellectuals use to criticize Jews for supporting Israel) done for the Jewish people? It has led to their massacre. What has law and morality done to stop the Holocaust or the ethnic cleansing of Jews for the Arab world? Nothing, it has continued to blow hot air with no action.

There are certainly strains of that analysis I find compelling. Nonetheless, insofar as it manifests itself in blind acceptance of whatever strategy Jews use to liberate themselves from constant, murderous, brutal oppression -- no matter how unjust or illegitimate they may be, it must be rejected under any robust conception of common human dignity. Being Jewish and human means a right to resist our oppression, and being Jewish and human means an obligation to do so in morally acceptable ways that are consonant with equal humanity and the human rights of all people. Those are my obligations -- not to "struggle or surrender", but to find a way to co-exist. Jack rejects those, and in doing so betrays his fundamentally reactionary bent.

"I hope that my children will be the last price."

This was one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the entire Gazan war. A Palestinian doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish, who had worked in Israel for many years and was a bridge of peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people watched as an Israeli shell hit his Gaza home, and saw three of his daughters killed. The only person who he could think to call was an Israeli journalist and friend, who took the call live on air on Israeli television. The journalist, clearly struggling to maintain his composure, tried to explain to the audience what was going on, and helped organized an IDF ambulance that was dispatched to the scene, evacuating Dr. Abuelaish's wounded family members. They are currently being treated in Israeli hospitals.

This video -- the raw, human anguish of a man who just saw his innocent daughters die in a conflict he spent his life trying to end -- is something that must be seen by all those who, like myself, consider themselves pro-Israel. Those are the people I'm speaking to right now. It is not difficult for me to empathize with the Israelis killed, maimed, or terrorized by Palestinian rockets. It is not hard for me to feel alongside them the impotent rage. Of course I think that Palestinian terrorism is incompatible with even the remotest regard for Jewish lives.

But I think there is a tendency -- a trap, you might say -- to believe that because we fundamentally do not want civilians to die, the suffering of those that are killed is somehow alleviated. Is diminished. Good intentions mean that most of the dead men and woman "had it coming", or are "collateral damage". They can kind of be lumped in as one indistinguishable mass of an enemy populace.

The video, here, viscerally brings home the fact that innocent, blameless, good-hearted Palestinians are dying. They're dying brutally, violently, in the arms of their parents or children or friends or relatives. To them, it is going to be little consolation that a militant might have been firing next door, or that an Israeli shell fell a little bit off the mark.

Sometimes, military strikes have to happen. But this is their inevitable result. In any large scale military encounter, there are dozens or hundreds or thousands of scenes just like this. I have to think that we'd be much more hesitant to support violent reprisals if we actually were taking due account of the lives of those who will be shattered in its wake. Dr. Abuelaish's family has to be part of our equation. It can't be abstracted, it can't be waved away, it can't be shrugged off as eggs and omelets. A necessary step for actual peace and reconciliation is the fundamental, unshakable belief that these lives matter, something that requires more than a vague regret that civilians are killed.

After one watches the video, one also must listen to the interview Dr. Abuelaish gave shortly after the events. He is distraught, of course -- how could he not be? But even in the height of his anguish, he calls for peace.

“The peace process is the only one, but to be real. Not playing games. not to play games. That is what is going on. And I think it’s time that people should lead the leaders, not the leaders to lead the people.”

That Dr. Abuelaish can express these sentiments, right now, is nothing short of amazing. It shows the depths of his commitment to peace. Could one really, right now, blame him for rejecting that stance? His good intentions, just like the Israelis, bought him nothing but a shell crashing through his house. Yet here he is, still standing and proclaiming his allegiance to co-existence. The path he takes, has to be our own. You have to watch that video, and be shocked. Be outraged. Be angry. And then, after that -- recommit yourself to the cause of peace and dignity for all persons -- Jewish and Arab, whose lives are being broken by this intractable war.

All of this came from Harry's Place, which continues to show why it is one of the most important liberal Zionist voices speaking today. They also link to this post, which says some other very important things. But the key graf is this:

The ‘we are all Hezbollah now’ crowd had embraced Hamas long before the fighting in Gaza. Theocratic totalitarianism is, after all, the latest fashion accessory for the ‘left’. Their language was redolent with scarcely concealed anti-Semitism and demonstrations against the war were filled with an iconography of hate and menace. Those who favoured the Israeli action in Gaza were only too ready to minimise and justify civilian casualties, attempt to discredit inconvenient witnesses for their supposed bias, and, at the margins, flirt with anti-Arab racism.

So whose side do we choose? How about ours? This is a left blog, written from different perspectives though sharing some common values; social justice, anti-racism, equality, respect for human life, a hatred of oppression. That’s the side to be on. Hold hard to our principles and use them as a guide, rather than rely on a blind partisanship. Some of the best commentary chose this path and called for long-term action for a settlement. Too often it was drowned out by the clamour of the committed.

The post focuses on the myriad of distractions trotted out by pro-Israel and pro-Palestine voices alike, all united by the common characteristic of seeking to lay blame and stir rage rather than enforce humanity and forge peace. Many of these people, to borrow from Rev. William Sloane Coffin, hate evil more than they love good. They see conflict as an opportunity to express outrage: to show that they are committed foes or lovers of Israel. They hate the violence enacted upon their "side" so much that they forget to pursue the good -- they forget to act in such a manner as to promote peace.

You look in the eye of an Jewish child who has just been orphaned by Islamic terrorists looking to send a message to Israel, and talk about Zionist colonialism tends to turn to dust. If it doesn't, you've let hate trump good. The Israeli man who felt compelled to scream at Dr. Abuelaish while he was at the hospital bedside of his wounded niece clearly prefers hate to good, because you can't tell me that one can love good and react that way to the presence of an anguished parent.

The rages of extremism simply cannot survive due accord to all the victims of conflict. It can sustain itself quite well when your side is all that matters -- when you pick a "team" to express "solidarity" with and to hell with everyone else. It cannot, it cannot, survive those who care about the lives and liberation of all people.

I believe that more firmly than I do anything else.

Congo Update, Part II

The UN Dispatch has more on the capture of Gen. Laurent Nkunda. This looks like a big breakthrough, less because of what Nkunda himself did (though he's a major negative influence) and more because it signals Rwanda is willing to break off it's destabilizing policies towards its western neighbor. The reason Nkunda's arrest is a bit surprising is because in general he's been viewed as a Rwandan front. The indicators now, however, is that Rwanda is willing to abandon Nkunda and the policies he represents in favor of engagement with the Congolese central government.

This New York Times article also gives some excellent context on what's going on, and really sounds a genuine note of optimism.

Is This Solidarity Too?

Barcelona cancels Holocaust memorial event, claiming that "Marking the Jewish Holocaust while a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place is not right." The linked article cites several other remarks from European officials making similar analogies: a Norwegian diplomat wrote that "the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing the same thing to the Palestinians, as the Nazis did to their grandparents," and the German neo-Nazi party, clearly seeing an opportunity for some historical rehabilitation, is planning a march under the banner of "Stop the Israeli Holocaust in the Gaza Strip."

Fool Me Three Times....

J. Harvie Wilkinson, a judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, is an interesting fellow. Very conservative, he still manages to skirt under my "radical right-wing" radar, despite several blatant provocations. The first time I came across him, it was in the context of an appalling church/state opinion which basically ruled the state could discriminate against Wiccans. Then it slipped my mind, and so when he wrote a really dumb article reacting to the Seattle and Louisville desegregation cases, I was really surprised.

Now Wilkinson is out in the Washington Post calling for a truce in ideological picks for his circuit (known as the most conservative in the nation). Does he recognize that his court is known might fairly be described as being slanted far to the right? Nope. Did he call for a similar truce or ceasefire at any point in the Bush administration. Of course not.

A little suspicious, don't you think?

Congo Update: Nkunda Arrested

Rebel Congolese General Laurent Nkunda has been arrested in Rwanda. I don't see any more information, but previously it appeared as if Nkunda had lost control over his rebel force, and the new leadership was prepared to reintegrate into the national government.

A Wise Wrinkled Green Thing

Benjamin Cardozo, then Chief Justice of the highest court of New York state, appears to be preemptively channeling Yoda in his opinion in Moch Co. v. Rensselaer Water Co., 159 N.E. 896 (N.Y. 1928): "A time-honored formula often phrases the distinction as one between misfeasance and nonfeasance. Incomplete the formula is, and so at times misleading."

Seriously -- was he high, or what?

The Tears of Our Friends

There is a very important post that went up on the British, pro-Zionist blog Harry's Place a few days back. It refers to some articles written during the Gaza conflict by a man named Ed Husain. I had never heard of him, but apparently, he is a leading member of faction in the British Muslim community that most fervently rejects radical Islam, presses for separation of religion and state, and argues that the violent and theocratic movements that characterize organizations such as al-Qaeda and Hamas are un-Islamic and ought to be critiqued not just on liberal grounds, but on theological grounds as well.

But during the height of the Gaza conflict, he wrote this article. It is angry. It contains some passages that make me uncomfortable. The writers at Harry's Place (which generally is somewhat more "pro-Israel" than I might identify with, but not by much) say that "certain phrases in the articles that were uncharacteristically ill judged." Others have been more vocal in their attacks.

But HP did not join them. He did not chide or break ties. Instead, the writer of this post had this to say:

But look at the context of these articles. Have you seen the pictures of the carnage in Gaza? The human beings on fire, decapitated, reduced to lumps of meat? How did you react to that?

There is absolutely nothing wrong, in my view, with calling for urgent pressure to be put on Israel - as well as on Hamas - to take the risk for peace. You might not support such calls, or think them misguided and naive. But these arguments need to be had.

Can you appreciate why somebody might have a strong emotional reaction to - let us face it - the deaths of many many people, many of whom had absolutely nothing at all to do with Hamas, but were nevertheless killed?

You don’t agree?

Think about your immediate reactions to Islamist outrages against British or Jewish people. How did that make you feel.
[...]
The bottom line is this. What sort of politics does Quilliam [the foundation Mr. Husain helps run] represent?

From what I have seen of their work - and I’ve followed them closely - it is very clear that they stand firm against sectarianism, and are among the best at articulating the bankrupcy of the line that the Islamists have been pushing us to accept, that the the state should “ally with the soft jihadists to ward off Al Qaeda”. They’re genuine opponents of extremism: not extremists who have reined in their rhetoric.

Moreover, it isn’t as if democrats and anti-fascists have so many allies, that we can afford to engage in in-fighting with those with whom we have certain differences of opinion. So, Ed thinks that Israel should be ashamed of itself for its conduct in Gaza? Well here’s some news: lots of other people who are staunch advocates of two states do as well.
[...]
Here’s the bottom line. I may disagree with Ed Husain: but I will not see a friend and an ally being hung out to dry like this.

Lots of death breeds angry people. This is not an unreasonable reaction. Whatever else one thinks about Gaza, I think it is fair to say that the operation occurred because neither Israel nor anybody else has really figured out what's a "good" response to Hamas rocket fire. Doing nothing seems intolerable, but doing this seems unlikely to reign in the attacks either. That's a tough situation to be in, but it's not one that is likely to assuage the hearts of persons whose friends, relatives, neighbors, or brethren die as a result.

Angry people sometimes say things that make us fidget. Angry people sometimes say things they themselves regret. It's no shock that Jews and Palestinians (and human beings in general) are at their most radical in the wake of violence. I know how hard it is to maintain a moderate tone and press for a mutually just solution at the precise time when I'm imagining rockets falling on my head and people laughing at the carnage. Why should I expect the global Muslim community to not have a similar struggle when it their own compatriots are the ones who are suffering?

The post at Harry's Place is important, because it keeps all that in mind. This is a violent conflict. People -- including people genuinely and truly committed to a peaceful, two-state solution -- will get angry. That's not only to be expected, that's totally legitimate. We cannot be so quick to dismiss their emotions -- of grief, of anger, of rage. But we have to continue to move forward in the mutual hope of achieving dignity, peace, and contentment.

I Don't Like It When People Are Obnoxious On My Behalf, Either

Oh, shut up, Mort:

What is the reason President Obama chose this sequence ["We Are A Nation Of Christians And Muslims, Jews And Hindus -- And Non Believers"] when listing these four religions?

Throughout its history, the United States has always been known as a nation based on Judeo-Christian values and heritage.

Moreover, surveys show that there are some 5 – 7 million Jews living in the United States. Most surveys show that there are 1.8 – 2.8 million Muslims living in the United States.

In contrast, in President George W. Bush's Inauguration Speech on January 20, 2001, he said the following, "Church and charity, synagogue and mosque, lend our communities their humanity, and they will have an honored place in our plans and laws."

Oh my God, could you be more annoying? What is this, third grade? Grow up!

Stories of Anti-Semitism

My good friend Richard Jeffrey Newman is collecting stories of anti-Semitism in a post over at Alas, a Blog. He's looking for stories from Jews and non-Jews alike -- his only rule is that you can only give a story: no analysis, no critique of some politician's rhetoric. Just a story.

It's a good project, and an interesting one, and Mr. Newman has specifically told me he's looking to grab from as wide a scope of people as possible. So, if you have a story you'd like to share (anonymously or otherwise), please drop by his comments section and put it down.

Bye-Bye

A toddler says goodbye to President Bush:

[The embedding was screwing with my layout -- just click the link to see the video]

I have to say, on behalf of rhythm-impaired White people everywhere, I thought it was endearing watching President Bush try to dance.

Out With The Yoo, In With The Lederman

Some days the world just works out. One of those days is when anti-torture advocate Marty Lederman takes the job formerly held by John Yoo.

Thomas, Morales, Race, and Crime

City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999), dealt with the constitutionally of a Chicago ordinance prohibiting "loitering". Specifically, the statute, enacted in response to gang violence, intimidation, and drug dealing, forbid "criminal gang members" from "loitering" with one another or anybody else in any public place. Loitering was defined as staying in any one location without an apparent purpose. The police could order loiterers to disperse, but could not arrest the persons unless they disobeyed the order.

The Supreme Court struck done the ordinance, saying it was too vague. Justice Thomas dissented, and (among other points) wrote the following:

Today, the Court focuses extensively on the "rights" of gang members and their companions. It can safely do so -- the people who will have to live with the consequences of today's opinion do not live in our neighborhoods. Rather, the people who will suffer from our lofty pronouncements are ... people who have seen their neighborhoods literally destroyed by gangs and violence and drugs. They are good, decent people who must struggle to overcome their desperate situation, against all odds, in order to raise their families, earn a living, and remain good citizens. As one resident described, "There is only about maybe one or two percent of the people causing these problems maybe, but it's keeping 98 percent of us in our homes and off the streets and afraid to shop. By focusing extensively on the imagined "rights" of the two percent, the Court today has denied our most vulnerable citizens the very thing that Justice Stevens elevates about all else -- the "freedom of movement." And that is a shame.

I always find it interesting when Justice Thomas brings in his perspective as a Black man when crafting his judicial opinions (and I think that's pretty clearly what he's doing here), precisely because he is (falsely, in my view) alleged to never do so. Each time I read Justice Thomas write, I become more convinced that the claim he simply does not care about Black people -- that he has consciously and deliberately set himself away from the race -- is simply untrue.

After all, the claim Justice Thomas is making here is not unknown in the Black community. Randall Kennedy, writing in (among other locations) his book Race, Crime, and the Law notes that historically Black people in America have faced twin injustices from the criminal justice system: over-enforcement against Black alleged criminals, but also under-protection of Black victims. There is a definitive class within the Black community which, observing the gangs and drugs and street crime that are immolating their neighborhoods, wants nothing else than to see the police come down with an iron fist and crush the criminal element once and for all. That perspective can't be ignored, and it particularly can't be ignored when the communities which are seeking more stringent police enforcement are the same one's that are at risk from police racism -- a statement which may be true in many of America's urban cities. See Dan M. Kahan & Tracey L. Meares, The Coming Crisis of Criminal Procedure, 86 Geo. L.J. 1153, 1169-70 (1998).

The trade-off between risk of racist over-enforcement, and racist neglect on the other, is probably real, (some of the more extreme cases, like the recent apparent execution of an unarmed Black man by a San Francisco transit police officer, can be fought against without serious compromise, but over the broad stroke choices will have to be made) but there is something quite pernicious in largely White outsiders deciding where the line ought to be drawn. There are limits on how much pressure we can put upon the Black population via over-policing so we can feel safe, but there are likewise limits on how much we can deny police protection so we can feel like good liberals making our statement about the racist criminal-industrial complex. One Black student in my criminal law class today, reading Thomas in Morales said that while he doesn't agree with Justice Thomas often, something rubs him the wrong way about very abstract appeals to constitutional values when the folks who are getting killed by them are his aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters.

But. But. This is not the whole story either. When the Morales opinion was released, Steve Chapman wrote an editorial for the Chicago Tribune ("Court Upholds America's Right to Hang Out," Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1999, p. 19) where he made some important points. First, that Justice Thomas, living in wealthy Fairfax County, Virginia, isn't going to be ordered to leave his own neighborhood simply for talking to someone whom, it turns out, is an alleged gang member. Second, that Justice Thomas' perspective on what is good for the Black community is hardly universal, including amongst Blacks themselves. The ordinance in question in Morales, it turns out, received the votes of nearly all the White aldermen on the council, but the Black membership voted 2:1 against it. They were attuned to the risk that what they were being asked to vote for was essentially a new crime of "standing around while Black" -- and that's something of concern to their community too.

So what's the point to all this? The perspective of Justice Thomas, and those Black Americans who agree with them, is not "anti-Black". It is rooted in a particular conception of what the Black community needs in order to flourish and be safe. The mediation between over-enforcement and under-protection is a difficult question, and the line that Justice Thomas seeks to draw is not necessarily illegitimate. But at the same time, it is at the moment a minority view within the community, and both I and Justice Thomas need to be attentive to that. Insofar as the majority of the Black community still sees itself as more imperiled by police over-enforcement than they do by police neglect, that's an opinion I -- as a voter or a policymaker -- have to give significant(not blind) deference to. And Justice Thomas, for his part, has the right to make his case as to what policies best create equality for the Black community. But he has to be mindful that, being of the minority view in his community, listening to him is not exhaustive, or even sufficient, to say I've "engaged" the Black perspective on the subject.

Israeli Supreme Court Overturns Ban

Fabulous news:

Israel's Supreme court overruled on Wednesday a parliamentary panel which had decided to bar Israeli Arab parties from running in next month's parliamentary election.

The court issued its decision in response to an appeal filed by Arab politicians against the ban. A spokesman for the Courts Administration said judges overturned the ban in an unanimous vote Wednesday.

In response to the court decision, Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi said: "We have defeated fascism, but this battle is not quite complete, discrimination has become centralized. We will finish this operation in Israel on the day of elections."

The Central Elections Committee (CEC) last week banned the Arab parties United Arab List-Ta'al and Balad from running in February's parliamentary elections amid accusations of racism from Arab MKs.

The fact that the decision was unanimous is also welcome. Had the ban not been overturned, Arab parties were justifiably threatening to boycott the upcoming election and establish an alternative parliament of their own.

Meanwhile, although these declarations of mine are always moot because I'm not an Israeli citizen, I'm renouncing my allegiance to Kadima for supporting this maneuver, and am throwing myself back into the camp of Meretz (which has long been supported by my home Synagogue anyway), the only Zionist party to oppose the ban.

Back in the Swing of Things Roundup

It was a rough time last week, but things are looking up. Not only was I graced with the presence of the most lovely lady I know, but apparently we got a new President, whom I really dig. So let's get some links off the browser, and jump into this new week with a smile and some can-do spirit! (I'm not sure I'm ever this perky in person. I'm not even sure why I'm this perky now)

The Voting Rights Act: Still a good idea, still deterring dirty tricks.

I actually prefer it when they're explicit about things: A large group of British academics signed a petition expressing their opinion that "Israel must lose" its war against Hamas, as a corollary to their belief in "the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation".

One thing I will say Israel needs to lose is the instinct to crack down on political protesters. What is with them these past few weeks?

Rachel Maddow explains why she found the whole Rick Warren/Eugene Robinson gambit infuriating.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a massive prick, albeit one who inspires fabulous parodies.

Richard Jeffrey Newman writes far better posts than I do about anti-Semitism -- even though he seriously disagrees with me on much of the topic.

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell is looking like the man who will be tapped to lead Obama's mid-east peace initiatives. Sounds like a good choice.

Recriminations

The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is holding up so far, but that doesn't mean Hamas is behaving peacefully. Instead, it seems to be emerging from the conflict with an eye towards torturing and sometimes killing its political opponents:

Hamas militiamen have rounded up hundreds of Fatah activists on suspicion of "collaboration" with Israel during Operation Cast Lead, Fatah members in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip.

They said the Hamas crackdown on Fatah intensified after the cease-fire went into effect early Sunday morning.

The Fatah members and eyewitnesses said the detainees were being held in school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into make-shift interrogation centers.
[...]
A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added.
[...]
Eyewitnesses said that Hamas militiamen had turned a number of hospitals and schools into temporary detention centers where dozens of Fatah members and supporters were being held on suspicion of helping Israel during the war.

The eyewitnesses said that a children's hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into "torture centers."

A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas's house-arrest orders.

Hamas? Using schools and hospitals as bases to enact violent, thuggish, and authoritarian policies? Say it ain't so!

Anyway, the favored punishment seems to be shooting the alleged "collaborators" in the legs, but everything from summary execution to blinding has been reported as well.

My guess is that Hamas is attempting reassert its authority to show that it was not in any way weakened by the Israeli attack. I don't know if it was weakened or not, but in a sense it doesn't matter so long as it is still stronger than the alternatives, and my distinct suspicion is that in Gaza, Hamas remains significantly more powerful than Fatah.

The Beast

Dude, I got to score me a piece of that ride.

The Tough Questions

There are segments of the population -- both of which I probably overstate the importance of, given their over-representation amongst the commenteriat -- who really view situations like the Gaza conflict as simple, cut-and-dry. Either Israel, responding to illegitimate aggression by Hamas, can respond with whatever force it wants, for however long it wants. Or, Israel, being essentially an illegitimate occupying power, cannot respond to any attacks on it by Palestinian terrorists, and accordingly any response is assumed, facially, to be immoral and probably criminal.

Both of these positions are, it should be needless to say, wrong. Israel has a right to respond to terrorist rocket fire, and its response has to be within the bounds of the laws of war.

But what does that entail?

One of the frustrating things about this conflict is that a serious moral evaluation of it required very local and specialized knowledge that few, if any, of the commentators had (and that's true in both directions). The Palestinian death toll for this operation was a little over 1,000 people, with roughly half of those being civilians. This is being decried as far too many. Well, in one sense, that's obviously true -- any amount of death is too many, because our default assumption should always be that people should not have to live in war zones. But within the context of a large-scale counter-insurgency operation in a heavily urbanized area against a foe which uses civilian shields, how does 1,000 dead stack up? I have no idea.

What are the proper rules of engagement for conducting urban counter-insurgency? How does one respond to the large-scale use of human shields, or the more general embedding of military personnel and equipment in civilian areas? These are difficult questions, both from a moral (just war) and technical (military tactics) standpoint. I know the IDF does actually do a lot of work developing rules on both ends of the question. But it is fair to say that the IDF is somewhat of a partisan player in this discussion, and that particularly from the moral side of things it might not be quite right to devolve the rules over to them.

An area I think that could use a good dose of heavy-duty progressive thought is the arena of moral conduction of military counter-insurgency operations -- from large-scale strategic considerations to smaller-scale tactical rules of engagement questions. Without those baseline metrics for evaluation, we really have no way of really warranting a lot of the claims many are making about the justness of Israel's military response on a micro-level. It's precisely that gap, I think, that drives many to the extreme -- they really want to judge Israel (innocent or guilty), a sound judgment would rely heavily on micro-level questions we can't answer (both because the empirical data isn't available and because the metrics by which a judgment could be made haven't been evaluated yet), so we push the debate to the edge of the cliff where those questions fade into the brush in favor of more macro conceptions of who is "right", overall, in the contest.

#44

President Barack Hussein Obama. Yeah, I like the sound of that. Today was certainly a historic day for America, and a moment where we caught another glimpse of the promise of what our nation can become.

Okay -- enough fawning. Time to get to work, people.

Bush Commutes Sentence of Ex-Border Patrol Agents

This was one of the cases on the radar screen, and Bush elected to commute but not pardon two border patrol agents convicted of shooting and killing wounding a fleeing drug smuggler, then trying to cover it up:

Bush's decision to commute the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who tried to cover up the shooting, was welcomed by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. They had long argued that the agents were merely doing their jobs, defending the American border against criminals. They also maintained that the more than 10-year prison sentences the pair was given were too harsh.

Rancor over their convictions, sentencing and firings has simmered ever since the shooting occurred in 2005.

Ramos and Compean became a rallying point among conservatives and on talk shows where their supporters called them heroes. Nearly the entire bipartisan congressional delegation from Texas and other lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle pleaded with Bush to grant them clemency.

Bush didn't pardon the men for their crimes, but decided instead to commute their prison sentences because he believed they were excessive and that they had already suffered the loss of their jobs, freedom and reputations, a senior administration official said.

The action by the president, who believes the border agents received fair trials and that the verdicts were just, does not diminish the seriousness of their crimes, the official said.

Compean and Ramos, who have served about two years of their sentences, are expected to be released from prison within the next two months.

They were convicted of shooting admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks as he fled across the Rio Grande, away from an abandoned van load of marijuana. The border agents argued during their trials that they believed the smuggler was armed and that they shot him in self defense. The prosecutor in the case said there was no evidence linking the smuggler to the van of marijuana. The prosecutor also said the border agents didn't report the shooting and tampered with evidence by picking up several spent shell casings.

The agents were fired after their convictions on several charges, including assault with a dangerous weapon and with serious bodily injury, violation of civil rights and obstruction of justice. All their convictions, except obstruction of justice, were upheld on appeal.

A pardon would have been worse -- the men will still have served over two years in prison.

The fact that some people consider these men heroes for shooting an unarmed, fleeing man (even if that man was himself a criminal) is a sign of just far out of control our discourse has gotten on border security and/or the war on drugs. My understanding is that police officers cannot shoot at a fleeing suspect unless it is a case where deadly force would be warranted, and this wasn't it.

Ceasefire Update: Hamas Signs On

The Jerusalem Post reports that Hamas will accede to a one-week ceasefire with Israeli forces, after previously indicating it would decline to do so. In even more heartening news, several smaller (and generally thought to be more radical) Palestinian factions, such as Islamic Jihad, have agreed to the truce, and in fact it looks like pressure from these groups is what made Hamas change its position. Israel, for its part, will begin gradually withdrawing from Gaza today, and if calm holds will allow border crossings to open.

I still think Israel is going to have to realize that some rogue Palestinian element, somewhere, is probably going to manage to fire off a bullet or a rocket during this ceasefire, and not let that derail them. But for the moment at least, progress seems to be being made.

Progress in Congo?

I was a geography freak as a kid, and one country that has always inexplicably fascinated me is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (known when I was a child as Zaire). I'm not sure why that country in particular piqued my interest: maybe because it started with "Z", maybe because it was so big and smack in the middle of Africa. But it's always stuck with me, even to this day.

Unfortunately, the roughly two decades comprising my life have not been good times to be a member of the DRC/Zaire fan club. They've been locked into a devastating civil war for decades now, and the central government has been too weak to stop the violence, bloodshed, and human rights violations that have been running rampant. I genuinely think that President Laurent Joseph Kabila is a good guy -- a position I first came to after reading this CNN article on sexual assaults and rapes done by army and rebel soldiers in the country -- and after holding the first free and open elections (he became a transitional President after his father was assassinated, and held the election shortly thereafter), he has helped Congo slowly but surely build up its democratic institutions. But the overall pattern still was not looking good.

But we may be on the edge of a turnaround. Reuters reports that the Congolese government and rebel groups in the east are on the cusp of a peace agreement which may end the fighting once and for all. The forces formerly under the command of dissident General Laurent Nkunda (read about him here) are apparently no longer loyal to Nkunda, who was responsible for much of the fighting and war crimes in the east. Nkunda reportedly has been deposed by General Bosco Ntaganda, who claimed (accurately) that Nkunda was blocking peace efforts. Ntaganda, of course, is no picnic either -- he's wanted by the Hague for war crimes of his own. But as the mediators in the region have been saying, for Congo, the first priority has to be ending the fighting. We can worry about international law prosecutions afterward.

Israel To Declare Unilateral Ceasefire

Good, and about time, though I don't know how long it will hold up. The "unilateral" part, paired with Israel saying it will still respond to rocket fire, seems to be a recipe for disaster. But progress is progress. The reason, I gather, Hamas is not joining the cease-fire at this time is contained in this statement:

Hamas has said a cease-fire alone is not enough.

"We are working in every direction so we can achieve our objectives in stopping the aggression, lifting the blockade, opening the crossings, and the compensation of our people and the rebuilding of the Gaza strip," said Hamas delegation spokesman Salah Bardwill.

I thought the whole point of people calling for a ceasefire was to put an immediate end to the devastation being wrought by the Gaza campaign, rather than tying it to other (legitimate, to be sure) political goals. If Israel had refused a ceasefire until it got a commitment from Hamas to recognize it as a state and cease all terrorist attacks, the war would have never ended.

Meanwhile, Israel has it's own set of delusions it's laboring under:

The senior official says he expects Olmert to announce a "cessation of military operations because we have achieved our goals both militarily on the ground and with our international partners,"

"Hamas' military machine has been substantially destroyed," the official added. "They have been given a sufficient deterrence that they will think twice before attacking again."

Are they serious? What in this operation might have possibly made Hamas even blink before attacking again? We already know they don't care for shit about Palestinian suffering (much less Israeli). The latest operation, bizarre notions to the contrary notwithstanding, isn't going to make Gazan residents love Israel more, and will undoubtedly create a host of new folks willing to attack Israel.

Maybe the capacity is reduced, but the will is as strong as ever. The military option -- whether it lasts one day, or thirty days, or three years, is inherently limited in what it can accomplish, because you can't in the modern world -- consistent with any modicum of human rights treatment -- prevent people from getting a hold of guns and launching attacks.

I'm not saying there is no role for military endeavors. But they aren't going to win the day -- at best they are dilatory. The folks who don't want Israel and Palestine to be at peace will never be rendered incapable of launching attacks, and their motivation will always be present because they know the fastest way to derail any emergent peace effort is to get the two sides fighting again and radicalizing yet another cadre of citizens on both sides.

Israel did seem to win a reasonably serious concession in a renewed effort to stop arms smuggling through tunnels on the Egyptian border. I think, though, that this victory has to be paired with a drastic increase in humanitarian aid admitted into Gaza -- indeed, a drastic increase in the humanitarian aid directed at Gaza, period. Things have to move fast: there are some things on the negotiating table that can wait awhile people bargain. Getting people food, water, jobs and electricity is not one of them. If Israel thinks Hamas has been truly incapacitated, then it must seize the moment to help get Gaza productive and on its feet, and encourage the international community to do likewise. Otherwise, we're going to be back where we started again.

When Animals Attack

Greatest headline ever: Mice suspected in deadly cat fire.

Via That Somber City, who calls it "mouse terrorism". And indeed, authorities say it was likely a suicide mission. But what a way to go.

Going Forward, Going Backward: Post 2.5

I threw up today.

Very sudden too -- I was talking to two of my friends in the hall, laughing, and all of the sudden, there it was (I was right outside my door and had time to run to the bathroom, thankfully).

It was the apex of two days of unbelievable stress and pressure. Today's post actually was better than yesterday's (through most of which I was a nervous wreck), but it's the sum total of things. As I expressed earlier, conflict makes me physically sick, and boy did today ever bear that out.

There are folks on these threads who have explicitly expressed that they do not want this project to continue; others who have made it very clear that they cannot imagine anything useful coming out of this discussion (either because of perceived lack of faith, or because they don't like that I'm talking about X instead of Y, or any other number of sins). All their prerogative -- but they seem dedicated beyond that to hanging around and trying to dynamite the discussion even for those people whom it is helping or who do find it useful and interesting. That angers me far more than any disagreement does -- even more than the personally directed attacks at me for being responsible for any number of alleged sins. That I could take. It's the fact that these people are taking it upon themselves to decide that, because they don't like that I'm saying what I'm saying, nobody else can feel comfortable participating that gets me. Because people have been contacting me, and telling me they appreciate what I'm doing and saying, and what some other people are doing and saying, but it's way too hot for them to try and join the conversation. These people, more than anyone else, are the real casualties of the latest flames.

But I have personal friends too, and they're obviously getting worried about my personal health. A lot of folks are telling me I've got to let the haters just roll off me. It's so much easier said than done. I think at the point physical illness sets in, it's pretty clear this isn't a deliberate reaction on my part. But I think what this experience has impressed upon me is just how hard it is on a person to step into a space and be immediately surrounded by a horde of people all trying to rip you apart. It's indescribable. We all think of ourselves as macho and gung-ho until we're actually in this situation. Then we break like anyone else.

One thing these comments have reiterated for me is the need that I have for a separate space to which I can retreat and get away from these people. A space where I have control, and the social surroundings aren't out to chop me down and use me for firewood. I'm an integrationist at heart, but I do not want to and shouldn't be forced to integrate into this. But "this" can be seen as a microcosm of what many Jews have to deal with daily -- and it is up to the non-Jewish community to knock it off before they have any right to ask (much less demand!) we come back to the table. Some Jews are clearly very comfortable in the same environs that I and many if not most other Jews find intolerable. That's great. Seriously -- I'm happy that they're happy and content. I don't want them to feel as crushed as I do. But that some Jews can handle this, even revel in it, doesn't mean that I can or can be obligated to, and that goes equally for the Jewish community as a whole.

We got a whole host of people intent on using Jews as punching bags and scapegoats, and then, when we finally get sick of it and say "that's it -- we're going home", they yell back "What home? You don't have a home! You have nowhere to go but right here!" Now, in addition to being forced to endure the punches, we're told that the very desire to leave the abuse is the real sin and, indeed, the only real injustice. Taking punishment becomes elevated to the level of moral obligation. Even those who are not participating in the abuse itself (indeed, who may find the abuse personally repellent and are working to stop it), who nonetheless refuse to admit our right of exit, are complicit.

I could not imagine being trapped in a space such as this forever. Some people are trapped like that -- they can never escape from a social situation which is centered around tearing them down. I don't know how they do it. I'd fall apart. My respect for the fact that so many do not fall apart has been immeasurably magnified.

I am trapped in it for the time being, however, because I'm committed to seeing this project through. Why? Well, one, I don't want to give in to this crowd, and let them parade my head around on a pike and call it "victory" for whatever mutated beast it is they call their "progressivism".

And two, in emails and in comments away from Feministe, I've gotten a lot of expressions of support for what I'm doing -- many of whom have expressly said they've been deterred from commenting. They're genuinely too afraid to step into the ring. I can't say I blame them: I don't like commenting under the best of circumstances, and this is not the best of circumstance. But I wish more than anything else that they felt comfortable enough to speak, and I feel like these people are in a sense counting on me. They are pleading with me to continue. Call it self-aggrandizing -- I have the emails. Many of these comments have centered around a theme of "courage": how courageous I was to stand up and put myself in the fray for the sake of getting these opinions -- that they felt inchoately but could not express -- out there. I claim ignorance: I don't think I knew what I was getting into. I don't know why -- I've observed Feministe comments before, and I was warned even by some Feministe insiders that there are problems in their commenting community -- but for some reason I was optimistic. Had I known, I probably wouldn't have done it. I'm not very courageous like that. But the "compliment", such as it is, makes me feel sad: trying to speak of one's life and experience and hurt and pain should never be an act of "courage".

The post series will continue, though we're moving it to a once-a-week, rather than once-a-day, schedule. I've been retooling some of the stuff that's coming up in the hopes that it will do more good than ill. That's all I've got to say for now. But more will come.

Pro-Israel

Ezra Klein has an editorial in Ha'aretz entitled "What it means to be pro-Israel". It is a short and compelling statement on why J Street is such an important addition to the American political scene.

The War on Advil

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case where a school district strip searched a 13 year old goal, who had no disciplinary record and was an honor student, on the unfounded suspicion that she might have ibuprofen on her person.

Redding was pulled from class by a male vice principal, Kerry Wilson, escorted to an office and confronted with the evidence. She denied the accusations.

A search of Redding's backpack found nothing. Then, although she had never had prior disciplinary problems, a strip-search was conducted with the help of a school nurse and Wilson's assistant, both females. According to court records, she was ordered to strip to her underwear and her bra was pulled out. Again, no drugs were found.

In an affidavit, Redding said, "The strip-search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had. I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry."

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Redding and her family sued, and a federal appeals court in San Francisco, California, ruled against the school.

The court wrote: "Common sense informs us that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen ... was excessively intrusive."

The court said the school went too far in its effort to create a drug- and crime-free classroom. "The overzealousness of school administrators in efforts to protect students has the tragic impact of traumatizing those they claim to serve. And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen."

In its appeal to the high court, the school district said requiring a legal standard of "probable cause" to conduct student searches would cast a "roadblock to the kind of swift and effective response that is too often needed to protect the very safety of students, particularly from the threats posed by drugs and weapons."

As shocking as this case is, I'm not optimistic about what the court will do. The court has already held that the horrors of drugs means schools are allowed to punish students from uttering gibberish phrases which include drug terminology off of school property. Why would they hesitate to extend the analysis to allow for the sexual humiliation of women? The war on drugs has already established itself as a constitutional super-amendment anyway. Why should this case be the one that stops the cart in its tracks?

Sunny Day

Weather.com reports that it is "sunny" here in Chicago, with a temperature of -5 degrees (but feels like -16!).

Oh, mid-west. How could I have ever contemplated leaving you?

The Hyperpowerful Jew

Part II of the Feministe guest post series is now up. This was originally supposed to be Part III, but I flipped it with the second post -- it will be coming next.

I am so looking forward to these comments again.

Thoughts After Day One (AKA, Post 1.5)

So the first post in the series is up, and folks are commenting away -- we crossed 100 earlier this afternoon. And between reading and participating in the comment thread, and just sitting back and reflecting, I've been having a few thoughts.

I found it interesting that I wrote this post at this time -- not because we're in the midst of the Gaza operation and I should have been speaking about that, but because I've been having the closest thing to a crisis of confidence in my ideas about Israel and Zionism as I've had in some time (obviously, that's related to Gaza). It was nearly a year and a half ago that I first expressed, and Ansel encouraged me to write, a "Critical Jewish Manifesto". That was a long time ago. And there have been moments I've been significantly more sure of myself than I am right now.

Maybe the causality is reversed. Maybe getting these thoughts finally down on paper was the catharsis I needed to, at least in part, get past them. There are few feelings more soulcrushing than coming across a discourse and practice that you can feel tearing you apart, that you know is just wrong, but you can't figure out how to say it's wrong or how to articulate how it is killing you, and all the while you are being told that you're the savage and the barbarian and it'd be better if you and your false, panicky, paranoid, ignorant, bad-faith complaints were snuffed out for good. It's a feeling of utter despondency, helplessness and despair. I'm thinking about how Catherine MacKinnon described "sexual harassment" before it existed as a concept -- just this amorphous gas that damaged and abused actual women, but couldn't be grasped or discussed in a concrete way that law or society understood. It's a sentiment that several folks in the comments have told me they've been feeling as Jews, and I empathize, because I felt that way too.

Why'd this take one and a half years? This is a huge and daunting project, particularly when you feel like you're starting from scratch and a huge portion of people are spitting at you from the sidelines and telling you you're getting far too uppity for their tastes. Every time I started to try and write this, I'd fail: it was just too big -- I couldn't wrap myself around it. This series will likely be over 30 single-spaced pages by the time all is said and done, and I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. There will be little mention of the mythos of the "wandering Jew", little about Shylock and his stereotypical heirs, little about anti-Semitism placing Jews "at the center of history."

But it's a start. And naming this reality -- giving it a label and a structure and tracing its effects -- is the first step towards dealing with it. Once it's on the table, then we figure out how to use it as a mediating voice, and how to arbitrate between what it says and what other counter-narratives are posing. Just getting the word out there feels liberating. When anti-Semitism (as I've been talking about it) was nameless, I was too afraid to reach out my hand, for fear it'd be cut off and people would laugh. Now that it "exists", I'm secure enough to take risks I otherwise might not have been willing to do.

The question is how long this new found burst of optimism will survive the series' reception, given that a goodly portion of the comments have been varied forms of telling me to shut up. Getting the words on paper was cathartic, but if the prime response is "fuck off, Jew", the rush is going to dissipate real fast.

I don't enjoy comment wars. I don't participate in comment sections that often, for that reason. I don't like it when people are hurt or upset or angry -- with me or anyone else. And yet, I wrote this post knowing that I'd be throwing a rock at a hornets nest. I knew there would be anti-Zionist Jews who felt like they were being ignored, and critics of Israel angered that they felt they're being called anti-Semitic, and Palestinians and Arabs thinking that I'm silencing their voices, and Zionist Jews who would feel as if they were being shouted down yet again, and all manner of other things. I wrote the series anyway, because I thought it might nonetheless push the discussion forward, and I participate in the comments because I hoped my explanations might be useful to some people, and that I might in turn learn something from everyone else. I don't do this because I enjoy it. I'm a nervous wreck right now. I do it because I feel like it needs to be said.

One of the commenters takes the exact opposite view: "I don’t really want to see his next two [sic -- we got more than that to go] posts, but I’ll read ‘em for the fireworks." In other words, "I'm not planning to learn anything from these posts, but I'm excited at the prospect of a lot of hurt, angry people running through the comments." Working through issues of oppression is hard enough without some people viewing it as a spectator sport.

The response to the next post I predict will be, if anything, worse than the first one. I'm hopeful that Section III will begin a turnaround, but I'm really hinging my hopes on Section IV. Lose that ground, we lose it all.

"We Cannot Live Without Our Lives" Either: Jews, Privilege, and Anti-Subordination

The guest-posting stint at Feministe has begun! It'll will be a seven part series on Jews, anti-Semitism, anti-subordination, and Israel. I'll post a link to each post here as it comes up, but you'll need to head over yonder to get the full bit.

Part one is now available here.

"We Cannot Live Without Our Lives" Either: Jews, Privilege, and Anti-Subordination

The guest-posting stint at Feministe has begun! It'll will be a seven part series on Jews, anti-Semitism, anti-subordination, and Israel. I'll post a link to each post here as it comes up, but you'll need to head over yonder to get the full bit.

Part one is now available here.

Who Will Look After The Mizrachi?

One thing burbling in the background, but not quite at the forefront, is the degree to which Israeli domestic political considerations provoked its response in Gaza. Israeli citizens, not seeing any definitive increases in either short-term security or long-term peace from the ruling Kadima Party, began looking closely at more right-wing options (such as Likud). Kadima decides it needs to do something to look tough, and away we go in Gaza. I'm not saying that the rocket fire isn't itself a warrant for the attack. But I think domestic considerations explain why this particular flurry of rocket fire caused Israel to lash out, rather than any or every other particular rocket and mortar assault.

But something I should have caught, but missed, is the way in which domestic Israeli cleavages also are playing a huge role here. Consider this passage from an overall stellar post by Lisa Goldman which collects the perspectives of as many people affected by the Gaza operation as possible:

Nor is life terribly pleasant for children living in the Sderot/western Negev area these days. Then again, it’s been pretty bad for the past 8 years - with Qassams falling several times per day and sirens and safe rooms a part of life. No-one could figure out how to stop the Qassams, but the people of Sderot thought that the government was not really trying - that they were indifferent to the suffering of Mizrachim living on the country’s periphery. “Do something!” they cried out to the government, as elections approached and Bibi Netanyahu seemed positioned to win.

For those of you who don't know, Mizrachi Jews are Jews who hail originally from the Middle East. Already, this might surprise some folks, who are used to thinking of all Jews (and the Zionist movement as a whole) as White-European. But the only really unambiguously European group of Jews are Ashkenazim, which are not the majority in Israel. I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, as are the majority of American Jews (and obviously the majority of European Jews), so in the Western vision Ashkenazi = Jew. But that isn't true in Israel, though plenty of Ashkenazim live there too. Israel has plenty of Mizrachi Jews, and a large Sephardic (Spainish descent, including expelled communities resettled in Turkey and Morocco) population as well.

But alas, not all Jews are created equal in Israel. The Ashkenazi community is considerably more wealthy and powerful than either their Sephardic or Mizrachi counterparts. I don't want to overstate this point -- Israeli society has done a very good job of reducing inequality and unequal opportunity and integrating its (Jewish) population as simply Israeli. But obstacles, and more importantly mistrust, remain.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews are considerably more likely to live on Israel's periphery -- in places like Sderot, the Israeli town a mile from the Gaza border that is a perpetual target for rocket fire. This is one of the problems with viewing Israel -- or at least its Jewish population -- as an undifferentiated mass. The Mizrachi community doesn't fundamentally believe that the Israeli government is as interested in protecting them as it would be if the victims of the attacks were Ashkenazim -- a function of lingering Ashkenazi racism and privilege. And the Mizrachi community is, I believe, significantly more skeptical of peace prospects with the Palestinians -- a function of the fact that the root oppression they fled from in coming to Israel was Arab, not European, violence and domination.

Of course, this creates problems. Insofar as many of the Israeli victims of rocket fire are Jewish Arabs who still are not considered the equals of the dominant Ashkenazi class, there are issues of privilege that come into account with regards to Israel ignoring the rockets as well. The Arab background of many of these residents also helps complicate the picture we're looking it -- this violence is in some sense internecine. Regardless of what one thinks of the Ashkenazi move to Israel, there is no disputing the victimized status of Mizrachi Jews -- in terms of their historical mistreatment at the hands of the ruling Muslim classes, their eventual expulsion from other Arab countries (contemporaneous with the creation of Israel), and their subordinated status today -- much in the same way Gazans are.

Obviously folks know I find the privilege dynamics in the Israeli/Arab conflict difficult to begin with. Noting the particular pressure point within Israel that is producing the Gaza operation makes things even more complicated.

I'm not sure exactly what the upshot is of it. But it felt like useful information to know.

What Lies Beneath

I was talking with a friend over dinner last night, and he remarked that though he, like me, was conflicted about the Gaza operation, "if Israel's going to do it, they might as well go the whole way. If you're going to wreak that much devastation on the people of Gaza, I hope they're able to rip apart Hamas while they're at it" (I paraphrase, obviously).

Obviously, part of me agrees -- the only thing worse than an Israeli Gaza operation which has devastated (and probably radicalized) the Palestinian community there is an Israeli Gaza operation that has devastated and radicalized the Palestinian community while leaving Hamas mostly organizationally intact.

But, as I told my friend, the other half of me worries about what replaces Hamas if Israel does manage to crush it. My thought at the time was Islamic Jihad (a smaller but still prominent terrorist group which never signed on to the Israel/Hamas ceasefire in the first place). Or perhaps nothing "replaces" Hamas -- but I don't think Israel's security is improved by an anarchic Gaza that still will likely channel its rage towards Israel, only now without direction. The idea that a more "moderate" party would come to the fore seems pretty unlikely.

But apparently, even my pessimistic side was playing small ball. The Wonk Room gives an outcome considerably worse than anarchy or even Islamic Jihad taking over: the rise of Al-Qaeda-esque Salafist elements who pretty much view Hamas as a bunch of pikers. Indeed, Al-Qaeda itself is looking to reboot in Gaza after burning a lot of its credibility in the Muslim world by helping torch Iraq, on the not so crazy theory that there is little faster way to get themselves back in folks' good graces than killing Jews at the home base.

To the extent Hamas can be moderated, it's because it does actually try and govern things and has to deal with domestic political considerations as a restraining factor on its genocidal ideological ambitions. I'm not saying the pragmatic problem of governance always or usually wins out over Jew-hating ideology, but it is in the equation and provides a foothold by which progress might occur. Al-Qaeda does not really care about governing anything: as far as their modus operandi would be in Palestine, it would be completely unconcerned with providing for and stabilizing the Palestinian community and focused nearly solely on trying to make the Zionist state burn.

The temptation to think of Hamas as the worst thing out there for Israel is, as Ezra Klein points out, a mistake Israel has made before. It's how we got Hamas in the first place, when Israel decided that anything was better than Fatah's terrorist ethos. But Jews, of all people, should know -- it can always get worse. And I don't think we've hit bottom yet.

Dueling Protests

Da-da-ding-ding ding-ding ding-ding-da.

ZOMG

Whoa! Turns out that Bradley Schlozman is a massive, racist prick. Surely, that wasn't the precise reason why known when he was selected to lead the DOJ's civil rights division.

The Capital B

I'm often asked why I capitalize "Black" and "White" when referring to the racial groups. So I thought folks might like this passage by Catherine MacKinnon on why she does the same:

[I do not regard] Black as merely a color of skin pigmentation, but as a heritage, an experience, a cultural and personal identity, the meaning of which becomes specifically stigmatic and/or glorious and/or ordinary under specific social conditions. It is as much socially created as, and at least in the American context no less specifically meaningful or definitive than, any linguistic, tribal, or religious ethnicity, all of which are conventionally recognized by capitalization.

Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory, 7 SIGNS 515, 516 n.* (1982).

Of course, whether MacKinnon lives up to her stated ideals is far more controversial. See Angela Harris, Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory, 42 STAN. L. REV. 581, 590-601 (1990).

Bloggers slam bored, pathetic VP candidates who lie

Right back atcha, Governor:

Sarah Palin fired a new salvo in her war on the media, unloading in a new interview on her home state paper and “bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie.”

The Alaska governor, who has granted a steady stream of interviews since Election Day, also told an Esquire reporter that she wishes she had told McCain campaign advisors she’d be “callin’ some of the shots.”

She goes on to complain about the coverage of whether Trig Palin was really her baby, which I totally agree with her on -- cheap shot, tawdry, out of bounds. It also really didn't get that much coverage. But if Palin restrained her remarks to that case, I'd have to be in her camp on it.

But, of course, she goes on:

But Palin said she had adopted a philosophical attitude on the downside of the spotlight. "You have to let it go,” she said. “Even hard news sources, credible news sources — the comment about, you can see Russia from Alaska. You can! You can see Russia from Alaska. Something like that — a factual statement that was taken out of context and mocked — what you have to do is let that go."

Oh. My. God.

"Compulsion": By Ken Blackwell

RNC candidate Ken Blackwell, answering a question by a GLBT rights activist:

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a leading candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC), is coming under fire Monday for making remarks this summer that gays and lesbians suffer from a "compulsion" that can be "restrained."

"You can choose to restrain that compulsion," Blackwell told radio host Michelangelo Signorile, a gay and lesbian advocate, this summer during the Republican National Convention. "And so I think in fact you don't have to give in to the compulsion to be homosexual."

"I've never had to make the choice because I've never had the urge to be other than a heterosexual," Blackwell added, "but if in fact I had the urge to be something else I could have in fact suppressed that urge."

Oh, Kenny. Any foot soldier of the gay agenda can tell you, the trick is seeing whether you could compel yourself to be gay. You've never had the urge to be anything but heterosexual? Fabulous. Many gay folks have never felt the urge (social and familial pressure, yes, internal urge, no) to be straight. If they can get over their hang up, so can you.

Try being gay for a week, Ken, and get back to us.

The Brilliant Decisions Continue

The Israeli Central Election Committee has voted to ban two Arab parties from competing in Parliamentary elections*:

Knesset spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist. Arab lawmakers have traveled to countries listed among Israel's staunchest enemies, including Lebanon and Syria.

The 37-member committee is composed of representatives from Israel's major political parties. The measure was proposed by two ultranationalist parties but received widespread support.

My first thought upon reading this was vague recollection that this is not the first time the CEC had attempted to bar nationalist Arab parties, and each time their maneuver was struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court. My suspicion -- shared by OW commenters -- is that the same result will occur here. Thus far, the only Israeli political party successfully banned was the hyper-nationlist Kach Party, which was advocating expulsion of Israeli Arabs in the 1980s.

I doubt that the banned parties are comprised of folks or ideologies I'd be all that fond of. But that's true of a lot of political parties in Israel (and the United States, for that matter). Democracy means letting them run. The move by the CEC is anti-democratic, immoral, and worthy of strident condemnation. And yes, it threatens Israels claim to be the only liberal democracy in the Middle East (a false statement anyway, given Turkey, but it could until now claim to be amongst the few).

* I'm 90% sure that the CEC banned the parties specifically, rather than a race-based ban "Israeli-Arab parties" in general. A small consolation though, given that I believe these are the only two specifically Israeli-Arab parties running (Arabs are on the slate of several mainstream parties, and the Israeli Communist Party is relatively well-integrated between Jews and Arabs).

Simply Silly

Can you be anti-Zionist (in the expansive sense of wanting to eliminate the Jewish state in Israel) and not be anti-Semitic? Depends on your definition of the latter, but for the most part I say "sure, if you're willing to oppose all other existing nation-states and equally call for their dissolution". Take a comment left at Orthodox Anarchist, laying out the Anarchist Federation's (UK) position on the conflict:

No state solution in Gaza

One thing is absolutely clear about the current situation in Gaza: the Israeli state is committing atrocities which must end immediately. With hundreds dead and thousands wounded, it has become increasingly clear that the aim of the military operation, which has been in the planning stages since the signing of the original ceasefire in June, is to break Hamas completely. The attack follows the crippling blockade throughout the supposed ‘ceasefire’, which has destroyed the livelihoods of Gazans, ruined the civilian infrastructure and created a humanitarian disaster which anyone with an ounce of humanity would seek an end to.

But that’s not all there is to say about the situation. On both sides of the conflict, the idea that opposing Israel has to mean supporting Hamas and its ‘resistance’ movement is worryingly common. We totally reject this argument. Just like any other set of rulers, Hamas, like all the other major Palestinian factions, are happy and willing to sacrifice ordinary Palestinians to increase their power. This isn’t some vague theoretical point – for a period recently most deaths in Gaza were a result of fighting between Hamas and Fatah. The ‘choices’ offered to ordinary Palestinian people are between Islamist gangsters (Hamas, Islamic Jihad) or nationalist gangsters (Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades). These groups have shown their willingness to attack working class attempts to improve their living conditions, seizing union offices, kidnapping prominent trade unionists, and breaking strikes. One spectacular example is the attack on Palestine Workers Radio by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, for “stoking internal conflicts”. Clearly, a “free Palestine” under the control of any of these groups would be nothing of the sort.

As anarchists, we are internationalists, opposing the idea that the rulers and ruled within a nation have any interests in common. Therefore, anarchists reject Palestinian nationalism just as we reject Israeli nationalism (Zionism). Ethnicity does not grant “rights” to lands, which require the state to enforce them. People, on the other hand, have a right to having their human needs met, and should be able to live where they choose, freely.

Therefore, against the divisions and false choices set up by nationalism, we fully support the ordinary inhabitants of Gaza and Israel against state warfare – not because of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, but simply because they’re real living, feeling, thinking, suffering, struggling human beings. And this support has to mean total hostility to all those who would oppress and exploit them –the Israeli state and the Western governments and corporations that supply it with weapons, but also any other capitalist factions who seek to use ordinary working-class Palestinians as pawns in their power struggles. The only real solution is one which is collective, based on the fact that as a class, globally, we ultimately have nothing but our ability to work for others, and everything to gain in ending this system – capitalism – and the states and wars it needs .

That this seems like a “difficult” solution does not stop it from being the right one. Any “solution” that means endless cycles of conflict, which is what nationalism represents, is no solution at all. And if that is the case, the fact that it is “easier” is irrelevant. There are sectors of Palestinian society which are not dominated by the would-be rulers – protests organised by village committees in the West Bank for instance. These deserve our support. As do those in Israel who refuse to fight, and who resist the war. But not the groups who call on Palestinians to be slaughtered on their behalf by one of the most advanced armies in the world, and who wilfully attack civilians on the other side of the border.

Neither one stare nor two states, but no states.

Whoever dies, Hamas and the Israeli state win.

Now, I happen to think this is rather silly, but it's at least quite even-handed in its foolishness.

Of course, I could argue that -- insofar as I don't believe the putative "solution" which actually give either Jews or Palestinians (but for purposes of this post, Jews) what they need in order to secure their liberation -- it really doesn't matter that it is a "neutral" rule: it's a rule that perpetuates the subordinated status of Jews. And that's bad. But I'm in a good mood today, so I'll give the AF a cookie for at least going all-in on its proposal, rather than only asking Jews to eat the cost.

I still think they're kind of loopy though.

The Death March to Sex Equality Continues

A few months back I talked a bit about viewing men as sexual objects and why it's okay, given that it isn't going to "objectify" us in the sense of reducing us -- socially speaking -- solely to the level of bodies whose worth is predicated only on the sexual pleasure we give to others.

In, I think, a similar vein, Belle Waring asks the following:

How much would straight men's homophobia have to die down to get to the point where hot guys would make out at parties and bars in an effort to attract chicks? Not before I am a dirty old woman, right? I mean, I have known guys to do this, but more because they were wasted and feeling experimental. I brought this up to John and he questioned whether women would think it was hot. My response was a deadpan, "I figure there's got to be room in there for me somewhere." More seriously, yes, women think gay guys getting together is hot.

Now, I always assumed women did not find gay guys getting together to be hot, evinced by the famous confusion women express over why guys find lesbian hook-ups hot. But I admit that I could be wrong, and the commenter who notes the appeal of yaoi fan-fic certainly has a point.

So then to answer Belle's question, I think we seem to be moving in that direction, at least if debate parties are any indicator. Faux-gay hookups, when I've observed them, seem to be less about signaling the surrounding women "look how hot I am", and more about "look how spontaneous, tolerant, and fun-loving I am" -- it's kind of part of the half-step being taking amongst today's youth wherein being gay isn't necessarily cool, but being tolerant of gay people is. You make out with another guy, you show you're not a homophobe. People who like non-homophobes are pleased.

Would be even better if we moved beyond that to straight guys hooking-up with gay men as a sexually arousing performance to pick up girls? Eh. The equality aspect appeals to me, but it feels a little low-brow. Then again, I guess I don't object when I'm the beneficiary. So, if it gets you off, I guess I have no objection.