CCAR Resolution on the Kairos Document

Reproduced without comment.

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Central Conference of American Rabbis

Resolution on the 2009 Kairos Document

Adopted by the CCAR Board of Trustees, April 15, 2010

Background

The ongoing struggle of Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side in the land sacred to both is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. People of good will, whatever their faith or background, have beheld twin horrors: Israel’s existential struggle in the face of massive invasions and years of indiscriminate bombings and murderous terrorism, along with the horrible suffering and indignities experienced on a daily basis by Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Israel and the Palestinians desperately need a peaceful settlement that brings about an end to the occupation of Palestinians lands[1] and that provides dignity and self-rule to the Palestinians and security to Israelis in a Jewish and democratic state. Such a solution is a moral and practical necessity in the interest of all. This moment in history calls for sober, honest, and nuanced voices coming especially from involved religious leaders who understand the necessity of compromise and who can speak truth to power on both sides. The cause of peace is not served by pronouncements which vindicate one side while demonizing the other, but by the courage of moral clarity and respect for truth.

In December, 2009, a document known as “Kairos / A Moment of Truth: A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering” was issued and signed by nine Palestinians members of the Christian Clergy and six Palestinian Christian laypersons.

A close reading of Kairos reveals that it is anything but a document based on truth. Careful consideration of what it says and what it does not say, of the history it paints and the history it obfuscates, and of the moral yardstick it applies to Israel yet compromises in the face of Palestinian violence, reveals a morally inconsistent and theologically suspect document that speaks only part of the truth, and not always that.

Sadly, this document also rejects or ignores more than a half a century of Jewish-Christian rapprochement and takes its place among other Christian documents which, throughout history, have intended to delegitimize the Jewish people’s continuing Covenant with God, particularly by arguing that our Covenant has been superseded by Jesus and Christianity. Too often, such Church documents have been utilized as pretexts for our persecution, our expulsion, and even our attempted annihilation. Since the Shoah and World War II, and particularly beginning with Vatican II, the Jewish people has come to expect better from our Christian brothers and sisters.

Like the Kairos authors, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is deeply concerned about the welfare of the Palestinian people, as our record indicates.[2] Our strenuous objections to Kairos do not diminish our commitment to a two-state solution as the only avenue to achieve a just and lasting peace, preserving a secure Jewish State of Israel and facilitating for the first time the realization of the Palestinian people’s nationhood.

Among its many failings, Kairos:

1. Echoes supersessionist language of the Christian past, since rejected by most mainstream Christian denominations, referring to the Torah absent Christian revelation as, in the words of the Christian Scriptures, “a dead letter.”[3]

2. While opposing and negating the applicability of scriptural texts, historical presence, and theological discourse to justify the existence of a Jewish state,[4] does exactly that in making its case for a Palestinian State. [5]

3. Consistently objects to “the Occupation,” without making clear that it is referring exclusively to lands occupied by Israel and in dispute since the Six-Day War of 1967. Ultimately, the document becomes clear, altogether rejecting the very notion of a Jewish State.[6]

4. Insists that the root cause of Palestinian resistance – both violent and non-violent - is ”the Occupation,”[7] obfuscating the historical truth of the Arab world’s militant rejection of the existence of a Jewish state pre-dating 1948, and the decades of war and terrorism, which, in 1967, prompted and necessitated the taking of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan heights.

5. Purports to promote non-violent resistance as the only legitimate Christian response to the Israeli occupation, yet expresses “respect” and “high esteem for those who have given their life for our nation,” thereby implicitly condoning, even praising, suicide bombers.[8]

6. Attempts to neutralize the concept of terrorism through the euphemistic reference to “terrorism,”[9] implying that the deliberate Palestinian targeting of Israeli civilians with the aim of killing as many as possible in order to strike fear and terror is not terrorism at all, but a form of “legal resistance.”

7. Paints a compelling picture of the reality of Palestinians living under Israeli rule, but ignores the reality of Israelis forced to flee for their lives into bomb shelters, or in fear of being blown up while eating in a restaurant, celebrating a Passover Seder or dancing at a Bar Mitzvah Celebration.

The Kairos Document has been explicitly endorsed by a relative few Palestinian Christian leaders.[10] However, the acceptance and endorsement of this document by certain other individuals and church groups with which we have enjoyed harmonious interfaith relations has been surprising, disturbing and profoundly disappointing. For the contemporary Christian to ascribe to this supercesionist document would be saying to their Jewish neighbors and friends – indeed to the world – that Judaism has no validity as a covenant religion, that the pain and martyrdom endured by countless generations of Jews was for naught; that the world would have been better off without the religious, cultural, spiritual, social, scientific and educational contributions of Jewish people throughout ages; and that the God we worship and serve is no God at all. So many mainstream churches have rejected superscessionism, not only because of the centuries of persecution it has engendered, but because they believe it not to be true. In short, those who would associate themselves with this document and the religious foundation upon which it is based would be erasing years of Christian soul searching and repentance as if they had not been. We expect more from our interfaith partners. We are forced to wonder whether these Church organizations do not recognize the supersessionist and anti-Semitic nature of the Kairos document or whether they no longer care to share interfaith dialogue with us.

Therefore, the Central Conference of American Rabbis:

1. Declares that Kairos is a factually, theologically and morally flawed document;

2. Insists that the document’s explicit supercessionism and inherent anti-Semitism prevent Kairos from providing a legitimate framework for interfaith dialogue and understanding;

3. Acknowledges with appreciation Kairos’ call to the Palestinian people to reject hate[11] (as we all must do), to follow the Christian commandment to “love both enemies and friends” and to resist “through respect of life,” as required by cited Christian Scriptures;[12]

4. Challenges the authors of Kairos to be true to the love and respect of life they endorse and the very scriptures they quote by rejecting as immoral and un-Christian the indiscriminate and deliberately targeted murder of Israeli men, women and children;

5. Again insists that such acts of murder, either as acts of revenge or with the specious designation of “legal Palestinian resistance,”[13] do indeed comprise terrorism, denounced by people of conscience throughout the world as an unacceptable tool for achieving political ends;

6. Asserts that the Jewish people’s right to national sovereignty in the Land of Israel is primarily established, not by subjective religious belief or fundamentalist reading of Hebrew Scriptures, but by a millennium of national existence and civilization there, followed, even in exile, by nearly two millennia of unbroken physical and spiritual support of and yearning for the Land;

7. Labels as theologically hypocritical and historically dishonest the assertion that the Palestinian people’s historic presence on the land establishes its right of return,[14] but that the Jewish people’s historic presence, dating back 3000 years, does not establish that very same right;

8. Calls on Christians of good faith to recognize the complexity of the Israeli-Arab conflict, which is complicated by territorial dispute as well as competing allegiances to sacred land, Palestinian suffering and Palestinian terror; and which must not be reduced, as Kairos’ authors do, to an assertion that the Jewish people are in the wrong and that the Palestinian cause is fully just;

9. Calls on all who have endorsed Kairos to look deeply into its words and honestly into their own souls and to recognize and forswear the flawed and distorted picture of reality it paints;

10. Serves notice that the CCAR would require serious reflection before continuing our common cause with any Church body or organization that endorses or continues to endorse Kairos;

11. Re-affirms our commitment to our continuing interfaith cooperation with Christian groups that affirm the continuing, unique Covenant between God and the Jewish people; and

12. Recommits itself to all worthy and legitimate endeavors to bring an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people, to be achieved through negotiations to establish a Palestinian State adjacent to and in cooperation with a secure Jewish State of Israel.

13. Urges our members to educate themselves on this matter and to seek opportunities to share concerns about the Kairos document with their local Christian colleagues and lay people.

---

[1] We define such “Palestinian lands” as land in Israel’s hands since the Six-Day War of 1967 that was not part of Israel before that time and which has not been annexed by Israel. We also recognize that the exact boundaries of such land may be altered in the course of negotiations.

[2] See “Where We Stand on Israel,” 2002 and 2003; Resolution on Peace in Israel, 2001 inter alia,; Resolution on Gaza and the West Bank, 2006; Resolution on Building a Defensive Barrier between Israel and Palestinian Communities, 2004; Resolution on Discriminatory Home Demolitions in Israel, 2005; and countless others.

[3] Kairos 2.2.2

[4] Kairos 2.2.2

[5] Kairos 2.3.1

[6] Kairos 9.3

[7] Kairos 1.4

[8] Kairos 4.2.5

[9] Kairos 4.3

[10] On its website, the Kairos Document purports itself to be endorsed by thirteen Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem. And yet, that supposed statement of endorsement makes no allusion to the contents of the document nor does it endorse nor make reference to the contents of the Kairos document itself. It is instructive to note that the original Kairos document listed Bishop Dr. Munib Younan, head of the "Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land.," as one of the sixteen signers, the only one who held a position other than pastor at that time; but that Bishop Younan’s name was subsequently removed from the list of signatories.

[11] Kairos 5.4.3

[12] Kairos 4.1.

[13] Kairos 1.5

[14] Kairos 2.3.2; 2.3.4

There's More To College Than What's In Your Porn File

A couple days back, Jessica Valenti posted on the creative modification of an anti-choice advertisement in the NYC subway.

Before



After



Uh-oh! Somebody at Red State is aghast:

Want to go to college, but there is a pesky baby growing inside of you? Abort! A life is far less important than your co-ed fun and career plans, right? Your dreams are all that matters, baby be damned. Can’t let that get in the way! Follow President Obama’s thinking and don’t let yourself be “punished with a baby!”
[...]
Loves encouraging abortion for convenience. Loves encouraging abortion because a baby, a human life, doesn’t fit in with your super fun college plans. Denies the trauma that abortion may cause to the woman, but rejoices at the thought of killing a baby who isn’t timely.

But you want it to be safe, legal and rare? Baloney. Willy nilly matters of convenience are not part of that definition. You have devalued life to the point where *convenience* over-rides a life itself, in your minds.

As Jessica responds, this is a rather ... odd ... diminishing of the importance of college. To be fair, the author seems to find the idea of a woman caring about her "career plans" to be ridiculous too. But by and large, the image he's putting out there is of the selfish slut-chick who wants an abortion so she can have her four years of drunken hook-ups and MTV spring break trips. Clearly, for women, college is just a chance to star in a "hot co-eds 4 u!" video.

Clearly It's Not Being Enforced

Apparently, Maryland judges are constitutionally required to be "most distinguished for integrity, wisdom and sound legal knowledge" -- the only qualification of its kind of any state nationwide. But then they hand down decisions like Conaway v. Deane, so obviously the language is more aspirational than anything else.

Same Old Same Old

There's this idea that the Tea Party represents some unheard of political phenomenom, the likes of which the nation has never seen before. In reality, it's actually pretty common for cranky White folks to preach the apocalypse when things seem not to be going their way.

Looking Right Past It

John Derbyshire to UPenn Black Law Students Association: You're biologically inferior to me:

Our species separated into two parts 50, 60, or 70 thousand years ago, depending on which paleoanthropologist you ask. One part remained in Africa, the ancestral homeland. The other crossed into Southwest Asia, then split, and re-split, and re-split, until there were human populations living in near-total reproductive isolation from each other in all parts of the world. This went on for hundreds of generations, causing the divergences we see today. Different physical types, as well as differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality, are exactly what one would expect to observe when scrutinizing these divergent populations.
[...]
We see the same differences in traits that we don’t think of as directly physical, what evolutionary psychologists sometimes refer to as the “BIP” traits — behavior, intelligence, and personality. Two of the hardest-to-ignore manifestations here are the extraordinary differentials in criminality between white Americans and African Americans, and the persistent gaps in scores when tests of cognitive ability are given to large population samples.

Via United States of Jamerica.

Empathy Quick Hit

Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West's article on how John Paul Stevens showed the importance of "empathy" in a judge is a very good piece.

Evolving Thoughts

A solid observation on originalism:

[S]cholars such as Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood have demonstrated that the era from 1765 to the turn of the century was a dynamic period of consistent change and deep thought about political relationships. One cannot freeze a particular moment during that era and infer from it precisely what well-informed people thought, because they had not yet finished thinking about what something like freedom of speech or the relationship of church and state should be.

Ossification is hard!

Pink Tea

The folks at CODEPINK want to declare a truce with the rabid right-wingers in the Tea Party, to see if they can find some "common ground". Unsurprisingly, a large part of that "common ground" would entail slashing foreign aid to Israel (and Egypt -- why stop there? Why not foreign aid, in general?). They happily cite such luminaries as Ron Paul and "Conservative commentator" Pat Buchanan to bolster their case that the Tea Party right and the CODEPINK left should be just one big happy family -- at least where foreign policy is concerned.

Of course, nobody who's observed the behavior of former Rep. and Green Party VP candidate Cynthia McKinney should be surprised at this new desire to jump into bed with the racist right. Many folks seem quite enamored with the coloration produced by the green-brown swirl.

All I say is this: You can judge a movement quite well by who it thinks would make for good friends. I have very good reason not to trust a foreign policy agenda led by Pat Buchanan. And, just as well, I have very good reason not to trust a movement that thinks it would be wise to have our foreign policy inspired by Buchanan, either.

Stand By Your Ad, Mark II

Democrats, led by President Obama, are trying to reverse the influence of corporate money on elections in the wake of Citizens United, have hit on some interesting ideas:

One provision would require the chief executive of any company or group that is the main backer of a campaign advertisement to personally appear in television and radio spots to acknowledge the sponsorship, the officials said.

These are akin to the "I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message" bits you see at the end of every candidate ad, except applied to corporations (and presumably, unions and other such groups). Kevin Drum applies this standard to a California Proposition being pushed by Pacific Gas & Electric designed to force public competitors out of business. The ads, of course, feature "the most reasonable looking soccer mom you've ever laid eyes on, and it's in heavy rotation financed by PG&E's millions." But would they be as effective if the CEO of a massive power company was forced to come on at the end? Maybe not.

The New Kids on the Block

My mom was very proud that she heard the name Sidney Thomas floated as a potential SCOTUS pick before I did. I told her that there's no way he's anything more than a name. Democrats aren't going to nominate a total darkhorse like that -- too risky.

But the other two names the article mentions -- though both equally implausible -- at least are theoretically interesting. I've heard at least one other person mention Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy specialist who would make the nomination discussion all about economics (good for Obama). And, well, you know my opinions on Martha Minow -- so I'll just add that if you want to put a liberal's liberal on the court, she's possibly the only candidate that could make Pam Karlan look tame (Minow's liberalism, to be clear, manifests itself as 100% pure awesome).

Primitive Minds

I was doing some reading yesterday on the science of emotions, and at one point in the course of discussing certain 18th century views on the subject, the author noted a division traceable to the controversy over whether the brain and mind were united or split. This debate, he said, still had some salience today. And I snickered a bit at that -- oh, the West and its preoccupation with the classics. Of course the mind and brain are united -- where else would the mind come from? The inability to abandon the idea that the mind floats free of the brain was, I thought, just a symptom of Western thoughts propensity to assign validity to a concept for no more reason than Descartes said it.

Then later in that same reading, the author mentioned a patient that was referred to him (a neurologist) from a group of psychologists, and observed that the very fact that we distinguish between neurology and psychology is itself a relic of this brain/mind divide mentioned above. And that gave me pause -- because I do find that split very intuitive, but I have trouble characterizing it in ways that don't resort to parceling out the mind from the brain. The closest I could come is saying that neurology deals with physical trauma, scarring, lobotomies, and the like, while psychology deals with chemical imbalances (such as in some forms of depression). But this doesn't seem to leave much room for psychotherapy regarding, for example, traumatic experiences and things like that -- ideas which I would characterize as firmly psychological but do not feel particularly neurological.

So -- egg on my face. Guess I'm one of the Luddites.

Of Traitors and Terrorists

Gotta love Roland Martin for this. To be sure, Confederate soldiers weren't terrorists in any general sense -- that label, I think, is reserved for folks who as a matter of policy violate international humanitarian norms in order to achieve political ends, and I haven't read anything that suggests that Confederate war tactics were, as a matter of course, outside the normal bounds of the laws of war at that time. But Martin isn't really using the terrorist label for that purpose -- rather, he's making a comparison between the specious justifications given for "honoring" Confederate soldiers ("they were fighting for what they believed in!" "There were aggressive acts by the North") and similar rhetoric used by terrorist apologists the world over.

The fact is that Confederate soldiers weren't terrorists, so much as they were traitors. But either way, there is nothing honorable about it.

Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias has a great post about "the white southern political tradition’s very partial and selective embrace of majoritarian democracy."

As long as national institutions are substantially controlled by white southerners, the white south is a hotbed of patriotism. But as soon as an non-southern political coalition manages to win an election—as we saw in 1860 and in 2008—then suddenly the symbols of national authority become symbols of tyranny and the constitution is construed as granting conservative areas all kinds of alleged abilities to opt out of national political decisions.

And then the rest of the country is supposed to honor this as authentic Americana. Count me out.

Fork in the Road

Orin Kerr comments on the phenomenal diversity of Obama's reported short-list for Justice Stevens' soon-to-be vacant SCOTUS seat:

First, consider the broad range of choices Obama faces. His shortlist consists of former law clerks to a wide range of the liberal Justices of the 1970s and 1980s. Obama must choose between a Brennan clerk (Garland), a Marshall clerk (Kagan), and a Blackmun clerk (Wood). Further, the shortlisters differ dramatically in that they had different high-level positions in the Clinton Administration. Will Obama pick the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (Garland), the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division (Wood), or the former Associate White House Counsel (Kagan)?

Even if Obama decides on a former academic, he has to pick which kind of resume he wants. For example, does he pick the woman who was a full-time law professor at the University of Chicago from 1981 to 1993 (Wood)? Or does he pick the woman who was a full-time law professor at the University of Chicago from 1991 to 1995 (Kagan)? Obviously, these are big choices.

No matter who he chooses, Obama will continue to break new ground, or at least help bolster some of the low numbers of people of certain arguably underrepresented backgrounds on the current Court. For example, Elena Kagan would become only the second former Harvard professor presently on the Court (joining Justice Breyer). Either Kagan or Wood would be only the second Chicago professor (joining Justice Scalia). Further, Merrick Garland would be only the second Justice on the Court who went to Harvard College; then Harvard Law School; then clerked for Henry Friendly; then clerked at the Supreme Court; and then worked at DOJ and was a partner at a big DC law firm before serving on the DC Circuit (joining Chief Justice Roberts).

Elena Kagan would also bring notable educational diversity to the Court. Kagan would be the very first Justice ever to have attended Princeton and then Harvard Law. Obviously, that would be a major break after two consecutive nominees who had attended Princeton and then Yale Law (Justices Alito and Sotomayor). Whoever Obama picks, I think it’s clear that Obama faces a major choice and that his selection will be a historic occasion.

Reading through the recitation of the trio's clerkships, I still thought this was serious -- I was imagining some in-depth discussion of the different branches of liberalism represented by Justices Blackmun, Marshall, and Brennan. Alas, I was met with sarcasm instead. Albeit funny sarcasm.

However, Professor's (fully-warranted) snarking aside, I think there are some significant choices inherent in the Wood/Kagan/Garland decision. First, in terms of relative controversy of appointment, there are notable differences -- Wood looking like the most likely to spark a fight, Garland the least likely, and Kagan somewhere in the middle. Kagan would be a change in being a rare (in recent times) Justice with no prior judicial experience -- folks vary as to whether that's a good or bad thing. At the same time, she has a reputation for being a consensus-builder -- an attribute Stevens shared and that Obama may thus value in the ever-present battle to secure Justice Kennedy's vote. Kagan also is probably the most sympathetic to expansive executive power of the three.

Garland is known for being a "moderate", although I'm not quite sure where that reputation comes from -- I had always thought of him as the second of the two liberal lions on the DC Circuit (alongside Tatel). And Wood, for her part, might be the purest intellect of the threesome (no knock on the other two) -- if Obama wants someone capable of going toe-to-toe with Scalia, Wood is battle-tested from her years of sparring with Posner and Easterbrook on the 7th Circuit.

Of course, the three do all share one critical attribute: all are clearly qualified and would make stellar Supreme Court Justices.

Picking a Nit

Who here is surprised that Mississippi Governor Haley "The top is not the top" Barbour (R-MS) doesn't think that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's omission of slavery from his "Confederate History Month" proclamation was a big deal? Not me!

UPDATE: The DNC smells blood.

Narrowed Down

NRO asked various contributors for their take on who Obama will nominate to fill John Paul Stevens' court seat. Ted Frank, of the Center for Class Action Fairness, makes what I can only imagine to be a faux-serious case for Frank Easterbrook:

One striking thing about the Obama administration is the extent to which it has modeled itself after the television series The West Wing — right down to picking silly fights with talk-show hosts.

Obama could do it again. The fictional President Bartlet, faced with the political problem of two Supreme Court vacancies, picks someone Republicans would like in addition to his conventionally liberal choice. Having already nominated a conventional liberal in Justice Sotomayor, Obama could demonstrate his bipartisan chops by nominating the greatest living jurist — his fellow Chicagoan, Reagan appointee Judge Frank Easterbrook.

Judge Easterbrook is 61, older than any Supreme Court nominee since 1972, and, in his 25 years on the bench, he has become famous for such principled stands as upholding the constitutionality of a Chicago ban on spray paint even as he ridiculed it as a ludicrous law. If Obama forces swing-state Democrats in the Senate to vote for the confirmation of a judicial activist out of the popular mainstream, he’ll make the 2010 midterms even more painful for his party than they’re already expected to be. On the other hand, Obama can recapture independents for an increasingly marginalized Democratic party by proving that he values merit more than politics (including identity politics) in the nomination process. Think how relieved Senators Specter, Reid, Lincoln, and Bennet would be.

Aside from getting the West Wing plot wrong (Bartlet nominated a liberal and conservative because the two justices leaving the Court were a liberal and a conservative. That hardly applies when the anchor of the Supreme Court's left flank is the one retiring), I can only say come on. Even if we narrow the field to conservative 7th Circuit judges affiliated with the University of Chicago who are already living legends, Obama still would nominate Richard Posner over Frank Easterbrook (no slight intended on the latter -- Posner's just more iconoclastic).

Mom's Worst Nightmare

Louis Armstrong, "What a Wonderful World", is my mom's favorite song. So mom -- this one's for you:

Debater's Forum

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) continues his rightward push to best position himself for a 2012 run (am I the only one genuinely curious if he could carry his home state against Obama?). Unfortunately, he's not very good at it -- basically admitting his lawsuit against health care reform is motivated by politics:

VAN SUSTEREN: It doesn’t sort of escape me that the people who have filed are all Republicans, with the sole exception of the attorney general in Louisiana is a Democrat. I think he’s probably the only — is he the only Democrat who has joined this?

PAWLENTY: As far as I know. You know, of course, there’s probably some political overtones to it, but I think it’s also, frankly, Greta, philosophical. We have a group of people like me who view the federal government should have a limited role. There’s a bunch of people who have a different view. And that’s what the courts are for, to hash out these differences. So let’s get it on.

Wait: back that thing up. Courts are there "to hash out differences" regarding philosophical conceptions of the role of government? That's funny, because I could have sworn that's what legislatures were for. Apparently, the "it" Pawlenty wants to get on is some good ol' fashioned judicial activism.

Revealed Secrets

So the trip was a surprise birthday party for my dad. My mom took him to NYC to go to Peter Luger's in Brooklyn (he's always wanted to go). That wasn't the surprise. The surprise was that my brother and I flew out to meet them. Specifically, in the hotel lobby, where I fell into step beside my dad and managed to stay there for a good 45 seconds before he realized I was there. The double-take was excellent.

The Last Lion

Justice John Paul Stevens has just announced the end of his 30+ year tenure on the Supreme Court. I know how much he loved this job, and so how hard this decision must have been for him. But I salute his career, and hope he has an enjoyable retirement.

Secret Doings Afoot

I'm going on a trip tomorrow. But I can't tell you where, because part of the trip involves surprising someone, who may (or may not) read this post. For all you know, it's you!

But probably not. The person who is being surprised will find out Friday. The rest of you will be let in on the secret later that night (or maybe Saturday).

In the meantime, here is the best thing ever.

Grumpasaurus Roundup

I was feeling grumpy all day today, but I started to snap out of it tonight.

* * *

A Wisconsin prosecutor is threatening legal actions against teachers who follow a recently passed state law providing for comprehensive sex education. "Safe sex" apparently constitutes "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" (Via).

A Qatari diplomat was brought into custody after an incident on an airplane. Early reports indicated he might have tried to set off a shoe bomb, but now it sounds as if the situation was sparked by a misunderstanding about smoking on airplanes. Massive international crisis averted, minor diplomatic incident likely still ahead.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) has apologized for leaving out mention of slavery from his Confederate History Month proclamation, and added a paragraph stating "that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights."

However, at least one prominent Black Virginia Democrat is not accepting the apology, citing a pattern of similar behavior from Governor McDonnell. On the other side, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a characteristically gracious, and insightful, post.

Assholes abound in the case of the small Southern town which went to extreme lengths to avoid having a lesbian student sully their prom (faux-lesbianism for the titillation of male students was, if prom photos are to believed, quite permitted).

The free speech analysis may be on target, but I think it's beyond clear that having inflammatory anti-Muslim messages posted on American military bases is precisely the sort of thing that poses a genuine threat to the security and well-being of the nation.

Pro-Israel Students Attacked with a Machete

Two students at Carleton University (no relation to my alma mater) have reportedly been the victim of an attack, with the perpetrators targeting them because of the pro-Israel views. One of the students was an Israeli, the other was well-known on-campus for his pro-Israel views:

Nick Bergamini, 22, says he believes he and his roommate Mark Klibanov were targeted for their political and religious beliefs when they were confronted by a group of men outside a Gatineau bar early Monday morning.

"We were just walking, minding our business and they said ‘Zionists' and they went after us because of our political beliefs and his religion," Bergamini told CTV Ottawa on Tuesday.

During the confrontation, Bergamini was punched in the back of the head. As the pair walked along Promenade du Portage towards Ottawa, they were harassed by the same group again. This time the men were allegedly armed with a machete.

"The guy opened up the window and said, ‘I'm the one who hit you, you effing Jew,'" Bergamini recalled. "They got out and kind of charged at my roommate, backed off and I heard ‘open the trunk,' so I looked right at the trunk to see what was coming out and I saw a big machete."

The pair ran and managed to escape unharmed.

Other reports say that attackers threw the machete at the pair, transitioning this from assault to attempted murder. The Canadian Jewish community, for its part, sees this sort of attack as being directly correlated with increased demonization of Israel in certain academic communities:

Len Rudner, director of the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said being a Jew or Zionist in Canada should not prompt such an attack.

"Maybe we should consider the impact that words can have in accelerating the argument to the point where people feel that this kind of behaviour is acceptable," Rudner said.

"If you permit a constant invective and demonization of the Jewish state and people who support the Jewish state, some people will feel that this gives them the permission or responsibility to carry out this kind of attack."

Canadian police are investigating the incident.

It's Real Life

Nice of folks to check up on David after his dentist appointment.

Damsels in Distress

Somebody page Mark Olson! This women in the sex industry clearly needs to be saved from her life of slavery and exploitation!

Mushrooms Are Pretty

President Obama has issued a revision of when the US will use nuclear weaponry:

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China. It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack. Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

For the past half-century, much of the world lived under the shadow of a nuclear threat -- the idea that we were a button-press away from global annihilation. The goal of many was to try and put the nuclear genie back in the bottle -- to forestall what to many seemed like an inevitable trek to self-imposed extinction. Basically, this new policy restricts (to the extent that a positivist statement of policy by an actor empowered to reverse that decision literally whenever he so choices can be a "restriction") the use of our nuclear arsenal to either (a) cases of nuclear attack or (b) states not a part of the NPT. But apparently, a substantial chunk of the population prefers a world where it is entirely unknown whether and when the US will unleash apocalyptic waves of destruction. The person who sent this to me said it made it wonder if Obama should be tried for "treason". Roger Simon inquires "Does he hate us? Does he hate this country?" Meanwhile, actual military policy expert Robert Farley notes that we are perfectly capable of projecting conventional deterrence through our massive conventional arms advantage. The threat to bring nukes to a chemical or biological weapons fight was never credible in the first place, both because of the difference in scale of destruction and because we can sufficiently deter through conventional means. Finally, as Whiskey Fire points out, the whole problem with the new form of threats we face (from terrorist organizations and other NGOs) is that we're skeptical of whether conventional deterrence postures work against them at all, dissipating the defensive force of nuclear weaponry.

Treason History Month!

After an 8 year hiatus, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has re-established April as Confederate History Month. Now, I don't have an intrinsic objection to recalling Virginia's historical foray into treason in defense of slavery -- it is important to remember the sins of our past. But that hardly seems to be the tenor of this proclamation. Indeed, it doesn't mention slavery at all.

Scratch One Maverick

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) informs us that, contrary to popular perception, he's never been an independent voice for anything:

Many of the GOP's most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions. "Maverick" is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. "I never considered myself a maverick," he told me. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities." Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.

I'll leave to others as to whether McCain has served the interests of Arizona, but I whole-heartedly agree that what others called maverickism, I call "principle-less support of whatever position is most politically expedient or ego-enhancing at the present moment" -- the abandonment of the decades-long "maverick" label because it was hurting him in a GOP primary being only the most recent example.

So at least we're on the same page there.

Islamic Jihad Agrees To Stop Rocket Attacks?

A spokesperson for the terrorist group Islamic Jihad has announced that the group has "stopped the rocket fire into Israel for internal Palestinian purposes - first and foremost to help end the siege on the Gaza Strip". This is newsworthy because unlike Hamas, which has periodically agreed to such cease-fires after discovering that running a territory comes with political pressures incompatible with blowing people up all the time, Islamic Jihad has persistently cast itself as the more radical alternative to Hamas (and has far fewer political constituencies it must be accountable towards).

Of course, it is possible that they're lying. And it's also possible that the slack will be picked up by new, yet more radical al-Qaeda-linked groups that have been spotted in Gaza. But for now, good news! Does it mean that Israel will lift the boycott on the territory (i.e., is it working or has it worked)?

Of Anti-Semitism and "Collective Guilt"

Still reeling from sexual abuse allegations that have implicated the entire Church, up to and including the Pope, the Vatican is now claiming that public attacks against it are reminiscent of classic anti-Semitism:

As the pope listened, Cantalamessa read the congregation a part of a letter he received from a Jewish friend, who said he was "following with disgust the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the pope..."

"The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted from the letter.

Of course, it is true that the shift from personal to collective responsibility is a hallmark of anti-Semitism.* But that's not what's going on here. The allegations against the Catholic Church are that the body's institutional hierarchy, including then-Cardinal Ratzinger, has been complicit in the perpetuation of massive amounts of sexual abuse against children. It doesn't stop being "personal guilt" because lots of people are guilty. Many institutional actors in the Catholic Church were aware of this abuse, in a position to respond, but failed to do so. For that, they are guilty. And unlike Jews, who lack a formal corporate organization, Catholicism organizes itself as a unified hierarchy, which does mean that, insofar as the organization was aware of this behavior, the organization can rightfully be seen as carrying some measure of responsibility.

I don't apologize for saying that. And I think it neither anti-Catholic, nor reminiscent of anti-Semitism, to say so.

* Fun thought experiment: Here's a way to reveal how much you think anti-Semitism disappeared. Let's say a DA started getting pretty aggressive in subpoenaing Church officials (including potentially the Pope), and filing indictments against the guilty actor. Do you think it would be seen as relevant if the DA was Jewish? Because I certainly do -- and it's a fact that would not be presented in a benign way.

UPDATE: The pastor has apologized to both Jews and pedophilia victims.

You Can Be a Single Lady Too!

Ann Bartow calls it "gender construction right before your eyes".



I personally love the look the little girls give dad. It's all "you fucking idiot." He does, however, seem appropriately abashed.

Our "First Gay President"

Oooh, the FRC's Tom McCluskey thinks he can snark:

[I]f it was argued during his two terms in office that Bill Clinton was “our first black President” because of his supposed liberal policies that would benefit African-Americans (though I’m not quite sure what President Clinton did, that he wasn’t forced to do, that would benefit any minority except for Chinese monks with political donations to spend.) With that argument shouldn’t Barack Obama already be our “first gay President” due to his liberal policies pushing the homosexual agenda?

In a massive shocker, McCluskey actually has no idea why President Clinton was referred to as "our first Black President". It wasn't due to his policies, per se. Rather, the phrase originated via Toni Morrison, who commented during the Lewinsky scandal the following:

Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President's body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear "No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and--who knows?--maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us."

Do you see a word about President Clinton's policies? No. It's about two things: one, his demeanor, and two, that Blacks identified with how he was hounded during his Presidency, how his enemies seemed intent on hyper-vigilance towards his sexuality and sexual misconduct, with a persistence that seemed mismatched both to the gravity of his offenses and to the treatment accorded to other public figures. The behavior seemed less about the pursuit of justice, and more about keeping a bright kid who had gotten a bit too uppity down, and that was an experience that Black people nationwide identified with. See also Paul Butler, Starr is to Clinton as Regular Prosecutors are to Blacks, 40 B.C. L. Rev. 705 (1999).

I don't think that Obama is known for having a gay demeanor. I also don't think that the method of opposition towards him is particularly reminiscent of the anti-gay bigotry propagated by, among others, the FRC. But alas, the FRC is little more than a partisan smear-factory with the veneer of religiosity. The odds that they've even had contact with substantial numbers of people outside the far-right's White Christian heterosexual base are rather low.

Hip Hop Hurray

Rosa DeLauro is a Fucking Hipster has officially made my life better.

Now You Want Our Help

The anti-government Christian militia accused terrorists have asked for public defenders. Of course, they ought to receive them, but still, lolz.

IACHR: Venezuela Complicit in Burgeoning Anti-Semitism

A new report out by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has found the state of Venezuela complicit in a surge in anti-Semitism in that country. Unfortunately, the JC article repeats the whole bit on Chavez's "those who crucified Christ" remark, which I'm told by credible sources is not understood to refer to Jews in Latin America the way that it would be understood in Europe. But there are plenty of other examples besides:

Since Hugo Chavez took power, antisemitic expression has grown exponentially: in government media; in the dissemination of the Protocols of Zion; in the accusation that "Semitic banks" are sabotaging the economy; in the fact that the Caracas Jewish school was raided twice by armed forces "searching for Mossad-supplied arms caches"; in the desecration of two synagogues; and in the closing of the Israeli Embassy. The Venezuelan ambassador to Moscow even alleged that Jewish citizens implicated in a 2002 anti-Chavez coup were "Mossad agents".

The origins of Mr Chavez's attitude can be traced to the influence wielded over him by his Argentine, pro-Nazi, Holocaust-denying school companion, the late Norberto Ceresole, who - in his 1998 book on Mr Chavez's election victory - warned of the Venezuelan "Jewish mafia".
[...]
Mr Chavez is undoubtedly obsessed with a world Jewish conspiracy represented by the less than 12,000 Jews remaining in Venezuela. They are becoming the scapegoat for his dysfunctional administration and the economic crisis that is engulfing a country blessed with oil, coffee and sugar.

One third of the Jewish community has fled, fearing Soviet-style state antisemitism. Indeed, such a policy has all the appearances of having already begun.

A pro-Chavez television show named Venezuelan Jewish leaders as anti-Venezuelan conspirators, and called on other Jews "not involved in the conspiracy" to publicly denounce their coreligionists. A Chavista newspaper editorial questioned whether "we will have to expel them from our country… as other nations have done."

I've previously blogged on emergent anti-Semitism in Venezuela here, here, and here. The world is beginning to take notice.

The New Oppression

Glenn Beck substitute host Doc Thompson finally understands the pain of racism:

For years I’ve suggested that racism was in decline and yeah, there are some, you know, incidents that still happen with regards to racism, but most of the claims I’ve said for years, well, they’re not really real. But I realize now that I was wrong. For I now too feel the pain of racism. Racism has been dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans. The health care bill the president just singed into law includes a 10 percent tax on all indoor tanning sessions starting July 1st, and I say, who uses tanning? Is it dark-skinned people? I don’t think so. I would guess that most tanning sessions are from light-skinned Americans. Why would the President of the United Stats of America — a man who says he understands racism, a man who has been confronted with racism — why would he sign such a racist law? Why would he agree to do that? Well now I feel the pain of racism.

And without tanning, how can the poor White man "pass" as Black, thus gaining access to all the benefits that accrue to dark-skinned persons in our society? It's just a way of locking in privilege, that's what it is!

Other-Necessity

Passing affordable health care: neither self-regarding nor an "indulgence".

Common Language

Some students at Trinity University are pressing to remove "In the Year of Our Lord" from their college diplomas, because, naturally, not everyone thinks Jesus is Lord. Eugene Volokh thinks this is silly:

They are apparently not trying to get the university to drop “Trinity” from the diploma, on the theory that “Trinity” directly references the Trinity, and not everyone believes in the Trinity (one of whose members is Jesus Christ).

But beyond this, the problem with this argument — and the flip side argument that the Constitution is a Christian document because it too mentions “the Year of our Lord” — is that it takes things far too literally. “The Year of our Lord” in a date is about as religious as Providence, Rhode Island, or Corpus Christi, Texas. The meaning no doubt stems from Christianity, as so much in our culture stems from Christianity. Yet all the terms have acquired secular meaning, and using them does not require belief in the theology from which the terms originally stemmed.

I think there are at least two problems with that analysis. First, unlike "Providence, Rhode Island" or "Trinity University", there is another well-known and commonly used term that fills the niche of "A.D.": "Common Era" (C.E.). I have no other clear way of getting someone to know I'm talking about Providence other than by saying "Providence". But while C.E. is certainly less commonly used than A.D., it is quite well-known and part of the English lexicon. Of course, sometimes college names do change (Carleton used to be Northfield College, Duke University used to be Trinity College until 1924), for a variety of reasons, and maybe at one point students will come up with a new name for Trinity that isn't religiously oriented. Which is, of course, their right -- think Phillip Morris to Altrea. If the constituent body of an institution wants to change its name -- for whatever reason -- I don't see why "because the current name might offend some stakeholders" is a particularly bad reason.

But I think the bigger issue is that unlike both Trinity and Providence, "In the Year of Our Lord" isn't just a reference to a religious history, it is a specific religious affirmation. It makes a statement of belief. A place can be named after any number of things, and the religious beliefs of its founders are as good a place to start as any. I don't think anybody reasonably interprets it as holding any normative reflection on the beliefs of its contemporary citizens. By contrast, "in the year of our Lord" has very specific doctrinal message behind it. It doesn't just point to some historical connection with religiosity, it makes a particular claim about the nature of religious truth. That puts it in a qualitatively different field. Even as a resident, it doesn't say anything about me that folks who believed in Christian Providence founded a town in Rhode Island. It does say something when the official documents I receive come with a contested religious claim on them.

Jews Barred from Cairo Synagogue

Usual caveats apply given the source, but it is consistent with recent Egyptian government actions, which have shown that it does not consider the country's Jewish community to be true Egyptians in any meaningful sense.

Voyeur RNC

I'd want to hear a little more about allegations that the RNC spent money on, among other things, trips to "a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex." But as it stands, it seems like homosexuality is good enough to titillate Republican leaders, but not good enough to actually secure equal American rights. Hurray, exploitation!

Via.

Out of Sight, Out of My Mind

In the grand tradition of law school being a series of pyrrhic victories, I've just found out I've been appointed one of the Articles Editors for Volume 78 of the University of Chicago Law Review. As a friend of mine put it upon hearing the news: "congrats; see you at graduation." Unfortunately, I've had to deliver essentially the same message to Jill.

Nonetheless, for some irrational reason, I'm excited. I'm sure that will fade away shortly. But for now, I'll enjoy the feeling.

Dirrell DQ11 Abraham

In what was, for the most part, an exciting if one-sided fight, Andre Dirrell (19-1, 12 KOs) prevailed over previously unbeaten, Super Six tournament leader Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KOs). Unfortunately, it didn't quite happen the way Dirrell would have liked. Dirrell was well in control of the fight on every card, including knocking "King Arthur" down for the first time in his career in round four. But he was beginning to tire, and referee Laurence Cole (who was at his typical levels of incompetence) missed what should have been a knockdown against "The Matrix" in Round 10.

In round 11, though, things got scary. Dirrell slipped on a ring logo in the corner, and went down. Abraham then proceeded to uncork a massive right hand that knocked Dirrell out cold. You can see it here (at around 55 seconds in):



Dirrell was clearly, clearly already down when the punch was thrown. And so Abraham was disqualified, rightfully so.

So a couple of things. First, Abraham loses massive points for acting like a punk. I can accept, barely, that he did not intentionally mean to hurt Dirrell. Things can get a little wild in the ring, and its the referee's job to get between the fighters in situations like this (Cole, predictably, was way out of position). Nonetheless, this was an obvious foul, and Abraham lost a lot of respect for both trying to pretend that Dirrell was not on the floor when he hit him, and then later accusing Dirrell of acting.

Which moves us to number two: Dirrell was obviously not acting. You don't act the twitching you saw from Dirrell when he was on the canvass. If you're acting, you don't keep up the facade after the announcer already has proclaimed you the winner (Dirrell, for quite some time after the fight, still didn't seem to realize he had won). You don't show the signs of clear disorientation that Dirrell demonstrated if you're acting. And finally, unless you're a bad guy on an episode of House, I don't think actors can fake trained doctors into thinking you might have a brain bleed. Dirrell almost definitely suffered a severe concussion as a result of Abraham's blatant foul.

And finally, number three: This fight is the exact reason I hate Francisco Lorenzo's true acting job that got him a DQ win over Humberto Soto. I supported the fine against Lorenzo at the time, precisely on the grounds that his behavior leads folks to think boxers are faking injuries when they're not, and in a sport such as this, even a moment's hesitation can quite literally be fatal.

As much haterade as I direct towards Cole, he did act reasonably quickly to make sure a doctor was in the ring, and was quite firm in making the correct DQ ruling. But what if he had wondered, even for a few extra moments, if Dirrell was just putting on an acting job? A bunch of the folks I was watching with were pretty quick to say that Dirrell was at least partially BSing. Again, observing how Dirrell behaved both after the punch landed, and in the aftermath responding to Showtime's attempts to interview him (attempts that failed because Dirrell was essentially incoherent), that assessment is obviously wrong. But it's the actions of people like Lorenzo who plant that seed of doubt when faced with situations like Dirrell's, and frankly that's not acceptable given the risks these fighters take on for our entertainment.

Oh, Here We Go Again

Someone call the waaaaambulance. The UNHRC once again is throwing a hissy fit because not everyone treats it as God's gift to human rights (or Judge Goldstone as His messianic messenger himself). Honestly, I don't think I know of any substantial political body with as thin a skin as one finds on the UN Human Rights Council. Maybe it's due to the incredible dissonance of existing as a living mockery to the very idea of justice, fairness, and equality. That's got to do some serious psychological scarring.

You Control The Protest

Ta-Nehisi Coates' post on the problems besetting the Tea Party protests is characteristically excellent. All three critical points he makes are really solid:

(1) The civil rights movement was effective because it knew how to choreograph a protest, to maximize its effectiveness while minimizing the potential for embarrassment. The participants were drilled in proper protest behavior. So while the media may have been rearing to go with "crazy Black people run wild in the streets" storylines, the protesters themselves saw it coming and reacted accordingly, defusing the threat.

(2) Of course folks opposed to the Tea Party agenda are going to try and paint their protests as bad things that the rest of the country should also think are bad. That's their job. It's the Tea Party folks' job to behave in such a way so as to make that tactic unfeasible, and it's their fault that they're not.

(3) The Tea Party is probably institutionally incapable of remedying this problem, because if you weed out the crazies, there's nothing left there. The sort of folks that cause the tea party to come off as extremists to the bulk of the American public aren't fringe actors, they're the base.

Fabrication

In an otherwise unimpressive ("the liberal Democrat Lanny Davis" -- oh please) column for Pajamas Media, Ron Radosh does say one thing of importance right at the start: describing the "fabricated crisis" between Israel and the United States. That's very true, but not in the way he means. Who is calling this flare-up a "crisis"? Not the Obama administration. Not the Netanyahu administration. The only people who seem desperate to characterize this as a crisis are Obama's right-wing Republican opponents.

Which raises the question of "why?" Why are conservatives so eager to turn what would seem to be a rather routine, if somewhat high-profile, dispute between allies into a "crisis"? Here, they strike me as the equivalent a sad-sack lover, searching frantically about for cracks between the the Democratic Party and Israel, and the Democratic Party and its Jewish base. Oh no, they're having a fight!, they moan, as (not too far) inside their hearts leap with glee. Maybe she'll leave him! Maybe then she'll come rushing into my arms, the man who always loved her most!

It's kind of pathetic. The American/Israeli relationship is not so fragile that any public disagreement represents a "crisis". This is something recognized by the Americans, the Israelis, and pretty much every sane commentator around the world. The only folks who don't get are the ones on the outside, looking in. Creepers.

It Could Be, But Probably Won't Be

The UNHRC is apparently set to consider resolutions relating to the "organ theft" charges recently leveled against Israel, upon the submission of a Libyan NGO. Now, obviously, simply making spurious accusations against Israel isn't grounds for contesting the accredition of an NGO body -- that treatment is reserved for Jews who don't display the proper degree of reverence towards a body that views them with the respect of a spit bucket. Likewise, the High Commissioner on human rights cannot be expected to review or screen the language of such NGO submissions -- that practice, too, seems restricted to Jewey-Jew organizations with their offensive Jew language.

But I keep on hoping -- maybe this will be the "contradiction-closing case". A phrase coined by Derrick Bell, it refers to a case by a generally prejudicial body that goes in favor of the party it spends most of its time subjugating, normally because the case is such an outrageous departure from generally norms of equity that even the subjugaters can't help but notice it. The decision is proof that the body is fair, the system is just, and that it rules "merely according to law" and facts. The credibility gained by the case then can be drawn upon as it goes back to its standard operating procedures of maintaining an oppressive sphere.

It won't be, though. Despite the UNHRC's demonstrated track record of being a one-track Israel-bashing machine, whose concern for human rights is 8,522 square miles wide and an inch deep, there has been little substantive pressure on them to modulate their stance even a teeny bit. I'm genuinely curious if there has ever been an anti-Israel resolution forwarded to the council that they've voted down. I doubt it. Maybe this will be the first. I doubt that too.

Shots Fired at Cantor's Office

The House minority whip, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), has reported that bullets were fired at his office in Virginia. Obviously, this is very scary and needs to be investigated. And the perpetrators should be caught and punished. But Cantor's attempt to both link and detach this from the rhetoric of political violence would make a contortionist proud:

He also accused Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine and Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland - a member of the Democratic House leadership - of "fanning the flames" of violence by using threats that have been made against Democratic members "as political weapons."

"Legitimate threats should be treated as security issues, and they should be dealt with by the appropriate law enforcement officials," Cantor told reporters on Capitol Hill. "It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain. ... Enough is enough. It has to stop."

So on the one hand, Rep. Van Hollen is "fanning the flames" of violence ... but he's doing it by noting that rhetoric promoting violence has, in fact, been leading to violence? And he should stop doing that because it makes political violence ... political?

I know enough about the left to know we have our share of crazies who would do shit like shoot at a Congressman's office (particularly, it must be said, a Jewish congressman). But the difference here is that there hasn't been any concerted campaign by the national Democratic party to portray the Republican position as totalitarian, to cast GOP members as enemies of the state, and to openly advocate "revolutionary" measures soaked in blood-drenched language. It isn't Democratic cartoonists who have presented their adversaries as gang-rapists of the Statue of Liberty.

The apocalyptic turn the Republican Party has taken is a scary thing, and one they need to get under control. But if they insist on just seeing it as another political battle to struggle against the Democratic Party with, what hope is it that they'll take steps to remedy the problem before something more serious occurs.

Officially Court Bound

TULIP reports that the Bongani Masuku case is officially heading to the Equality Court, after Masuku ignored a 45-day deadline to apologize to the Jewish community for remarks the South African Human Rights Commission ruled constituted hate speech. One thing I don't know is what deference the Equality Court gives to findings made by the SAHRC (do they review de novo, for abuse of discretion, or what?).

You can read my prior coverage of the case here, here, and here.

FFXIII Midway Review

I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy XIII over break (X-Box 360 version), and am currently playing through it. About halfway through (Chapter 7), I'd say it's good, but I wouldn't say it's great.

Story: The game very quickly gives off a cyberpunk vibe that I think is very cool -- recalling the good old days of Final Fantasy VII. I like the plot progression so far, and the story feels novel while at the same time lying well within the Final Fantasy corpus. A-.

Characters: Lightening is a good strong character; one of the strongest female characters I've experienced yet, and the first female lead character in all the FF games I've played. Vanille started off being unbearably annoying, and now exists just on the ragged edge of toleration. For the record, I know its possible to create an irrepressible female character without her being absolutely obnoxious (see, e.g., Penelo), so this is a definite step backwards. And as for Hope, well, I wonder if it is a cultural thing that there has to be a whiny adolescent blond kid in every series iteration. He's always there, and he's always annoying. Other than that, the cast is pretty nondescript. B.

Music: Blah blah not as good as when Uematsu was doing it blah blah I'm old and grumpy blah blah blah. B.

Gameplay: Okay, problem. First of all, this game is linear. Like, even granting that it is a JRPG and a Final Fantasy game, this game is on rails. The levels are not expansive at all, basically involving walking in a straight line towards various monsters -- more reminiscent of Jade Empire than anything. But unlike even Jade Empire, not to mention every other Final Fantasy game, there are no real towns -- just dungeon after dungeon after dungeon. They integrated shops (which you essentially never use) into save points, just to insure the lack of need for towns.

The battle system is pretty good, though I think ultimately a step backwards from the FFXII gambit system. The latter was such a drastic departure from the series, and was so successful, that I'm surprised they didn't stick with it. Speaking of miscues from the last game, the whole bit about augmenting weapons is really poorly designed. For starters, they don't tell you that this is a something you do until quite a ways in. Meanwhile, you're acquiring "components", which for all the world look like "loot" from FFXII that you're supposed to sell off. Deceptive, that is. And once you do start upgrading weapons, the process is quite hazy. You can get efficiency bonuses, but its more guesswork than anything else. Once you start upgrading weapons, it becomes nearly impossible to justify switching to new gear, meaning you're stuck piling on the same old weapons until they eventually transform into something new (I haven't gotten that far yet). It's counterintuitive, frustrating, and a clear step backwards for the series. C+.

Overall: B.

Last Chance

Thomas Sowell goes off the deep end in his paranoid delusions about the Obama administration:

The ruthless and corrupt way this bill was forced through Congress on a party-line vote, and in defiance of public opinion, provides a road map for how other "historic" changes can be imposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

What will it matter if Obama's current approval rating is below 50 percent among the current voting public, if he can ram through new legislation to create millions of new voters by granting citizenship to illegal immigrants? That can be enough to make him a two-term President, who can appoint enough Supreme Court justices to rubber-stamp further extensions of his power.

When all these newly minted citizens are rounded up on election night by ethnic organization activists and labor union supporters of the administration, that may be enough to salvage the Democrats' control of Congress as well.

If only we had launched a military coup like you recommended last time, Sowell! Now, having seen a bill passed by Congress (shudder) and facing the prospect of voters voting (oh noes!), we're really caught on the edge of the precipice.

What Do Jews Actually Believe?

Three interesting links on that front:

(1) Adam Serwer, digressing from a post on a different topic, observes that "Jewish perspectives aren't really all that common on television despite the number of Jewish reporters -- instead, you have a reverse Al Sharpton problem, where the "Jewish perspective," is almost entirely represented by a minority of public intellectuals who are actually conservative, despite the fact that most Jews are liberals."

(2) Jeffrey Goldberg likewise takes aim at the AIPAC conference for not having a sufficiently large tent. Though most Jews, including most pro-Israel Jews, are liberal, the conference attendees lean definitively to the right. There are some exceptions, including the ATFP's Ghaith al-Omari.

But the dearth of speakers who approach the most contentious issues of the Middle East from a left-Zionist perspective is noticeable. Most American Jews voted for Obama; most American Jews are liberal; and most American Jews understand the difference between the legitimate security needs of the State of Israel and the theological, political and economic needs of the small minority of Israelis who have settled the West Bank. So would it hurt to bring in speakers from the Meretz Party, from the kibbutz movement, from the New Israel Fund, from the Reform Movement, so that the AIPAC attendees could hear for themselves the views of Zionists who disagree with the policies of Israel's right-wing parties?

J Street, by contrast, Goldberg gives strong credit to for welcoming diverse perspectives (even if the organization "sometimes makes me crazy").

(3) And finally, speaking of J Street, they've got their latest poll out measuring the attitudes of American Jews on various issues. Obviously, J Street is an advocacy organization, so take their data with a grain of salt. But for information not easily gained (like standard favorable/unfavorable questions for political candidates), it's probably pretty solid. And it's interesting across the board.

PACBI and I Come to an Agreement

Well, at least we have a consensus on one issue: Believing in the propriety of Israel as a Jewish democratic state, regardless of any other political commitments regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, is inconsistent with supporting PACBI's boycott agenda. Glad we got that squared away. I think some folks were under the misapprehension that the BDS movement in any way sees itself as in pursuit of a just, two-state solution that respects both Jewish and Palestinian rights to self-determination. Essentially all the available evidence already pointed otherwise, but it's nice to see the PACBI organizers make things explicit.

What Does It Mean To Have Dual Loyalties?

One of the more pernicious charges leveled at pro-Israel Jewish voters is that they possess "dual loyalties" -- their allegiances are split between Israel and the United States. Some make the point with the characteristic vitriolic racism we've come to expect. But Glenn Greenwald ties it to the ever-present Republican push for Jewish votes through claiming that their party is better for Israel:

I've previously noted the glaring contradiction among neoconservatives, whereby they simultaneously (a) tell American Jewish voters to vote Republican because (they claim) the GOP is better for Israel and (b) insist that it's anti-Semitic to point out that some are guided by their allegiance to Israel when forming their political beliefs about U.S. policy. Obviously, anyone who does (a) is, by logical necessity, endorsing the very premise in (b) which they want (when it suits them) to label anti-Semitic. Neoconservatives constantly make political appeals to Jewish voters expressly grounded in the premise that American Jews are guided by allegiance to Israel (vote Republican because it's better for Israel), yet then scream "anti-Semite" at anyone who points this out. When faced with this glaring contradiction, their typical response -- as illustratively voiced by Commentary's Jennifer Rubin, after she argued in a 2008 Jerusalem Post column that American Jews should vote against Obama because he'd be bad for Israel -- is to deny that "that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are antithetical" and insist that "support for Israel in no way requires sacrificing one’s concerns for America’s interests." In other words: to advocate for Israel is to advocate for the U.S. because their interests are wholly indistinguishable, even synonymous. [internal hyperlinks omitted]

Now, I think I've sufficiently registered my displeasure at the notion that Jews are single-issue voters whose vote can be grabbed based on whomever runs to the most hawkish position possible on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's deeply patronizing to begin with, and clearly doesn't match either Jewish political behavior nor expressed Jewish preferences regarding the conflict; yet, instead of re-evaluating what it would take to get Jewish votes, Republican operatives just moan louder and louder that we're crazy. So yes, that annoys the hell out of me.

Nonetheless, I think this dual loyalty argument needs some interrogation. Specifically, what does it mean to have dual loyalty?

The general definition I read is that one has conflicting loyalties when one is willing to prioritize the interests of another nation over ones own. So I constantly read folks saying how the US supporting Israel clearly isn't in America's interest, because it has this effect on our budget or that effect on our other foreign policy priorities in the region or the other effect on our general national security posture. Implicit in all of this is a pretty narrow, generally neo-realist (think Walt and Mearsheimer), understanding of what "American interests" are. Neo-realists would hold that nations are only interested in maintaining and augmenting their national security posture; because the structure of the international system is anarchic, states cannot trust one another and must perpetually behave defensively.

I don't entirely reject this outlook, but I think that it is typically taken too far and doesn't match actual state behavior. And particularly for a hegemon like the United States, it really doesn't make sense. To say the United States must adopt its foreign policy towards Trinidad and Tobago with an eye towards minimizing security threats simply defies belief. States want security, yes, but states want lots of other things as well: prosperity, cultural interchange, and moral progress, to name a few. And, as we might expect, these values are often contested -- what is in "America's interest" depends greatly on moral priors which can and are disputed; in most cases, to say "you're not behaving in America's interest" is to say "you're not behaving in my conception of America's interest". So long as one is putting forward a good faith vision of what the American project should be, I don't think it makes sense to accuse them of failing to be loyal to America. Fool-hardy, perhaps, but not disloyal.

And I do think such a conceptualization of pursuing the American interest can encompass urging policies which help another nation. Let's say the United States was considering adopting a policy which would simply gratuitously hurt Greece. I think a citizen would be perfectly justified in opposing it; it is quite reasonable to conceptualize American interests in such a way so as to not be vicious to other countries for no reason (I also would expect Greek-Americans to be more vocal in their opposition -- something I see no problem with. Greek-Americans have the same right as everyone else to promote their own conception of the national interest). Even if we modify the hypothetical so that the policy was not "gratuitous", but instead was just financially exploitative: suppose Wall Street had an opportunity to loot Greece blind, sending billions of assets into our borders. Once again, I don't think "loyalty to America" requires one to support the action. Mutual international prosperity can be an American interest. And once we accept that, we can accept anything as at least potentially in America's interest, because that category is something that gets developed through a process of democratic deliberation -- it doesn't exist in the ether waiting to be plucked out by Salon columnists and Harvard neo-realists.

The point is that these appeals to "American interests" (and this is hardly the only context in which they pop up -- including, often, assertions that folks opposed to the prevailing wisdom regarding the American/Israeli relationship are hostile to American interests) almost always take as a given a static conception of what American interests are that is usually the very thing under dispute. By fiating that conflict away, they can then cast their opponents out of the realm of true citizenry. I don't think the move is legitimate.

So is there such thing as "dual loyalties"? I can think of two examples, neither of which describes what pro-Israel Americans are doing. The clearest example is when someone simply does not see themselves, in good faith, as pursuing a project that is in the American interest. Often times, people don't -- I doubt the American al-Qaeda terrorists think they're doing what they're doing for the ultimate good of America (even if they think that it is ultimately good for the people of America). Loyalty in this case means loyalty to the sovereign. Second, I think one could argue that pursuing benefits for an extraterritorial body in a way that runs contrary to domestic law is an example of dual loyalty. I'm not actually convinced of this, because I really think that loyalty is a state of mind, and if a person truly believes their acts are good for America even if they breach the law, I'm not sure loyalty is the block I'd hang them from. Nonetheless, it is a little semantic, since I have no qualms about saying such a person can be punished for their malfeasance. And since I think that loyalty to a country does provide at least a general duty to obey the sovereign, I don't feel that uncomfortable with this formulation (though consider the age old movie plot where the hero has to deliver some secret to the enemy that reveals domestic treachery in order to stop the war which would destroy America).

The Big Win

I referenced this poster when my mom was freaking out over whether the Democrats would pass the health care bill.



A big win for Obama and Pelosi, but an even bigger win for America.

Racial Slurs Hurled at Democratic Congressmen

Three Democratic Representatives, John Lewis (D-GA), Andre Carson (D-IN), and Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), all are reporting that anti-health care protesters have hurled the n-word at them as they walked towards Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has been met with anti-gay slurs such as "faggot" and "homo" as he walked on the Hill.

UPDATE: Republican leaders (but not all Republican Congressmen) have strongly denounced the slurs. Good.

Hey, It Worked

Ha'aretz reports that Netanyahu has bowed to American demands in the wake of the Jerusalem construction flap, freezing settlement construction, easing restrictions in Gaza, and releasing Fatah prisoners.

So, good work, USA. Now it's time to get folks back to the table. No more excuses.

What If They All Went Away....

KJH is right, this is ironic:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken a harsh position against undocumented Armenian workers in Turkey, threatening to expel thousands amid tensions over allegations that Armenians were victims of “genocide” during the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

Resolutions passed recently in the United States and Sweden to brand the World War I killings as “genocide” undermine peace efforts with Armenia, Erdoğan said during his visit to London, according to excerpts from an interview with the BBC Turkish service published on the BBC Web site late Tuesday.
[...]
Referring to about 100,000 undocumented Armenians working in Turkey that Ankara has so far tolerated, Erdoğan said: “So what will I do tomorrow? If necessary, I will tell them ‘come on, back to your country’… I’m not obliged to keep them in my country. Those actions [on genocide resolutions] unfortunately have a negative impact on our sincere attitudes,” Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying.

The context, as noted, is the recent resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide as a genocide. You can read my latest commentary on the matter here.

NCAA and a Roundup of Other Things

I love the NCAA tournament. And I particularly love the first few rounds, with a billion games going on at once and buzzer beaters and upsets by nobody-seeds you couldn't find on a map. And then there's the fun of making fun of my Georgetown alumni. Unfortunately, this year I took pity on her and the Hoyas going to the Final Four. That turned out great -- teach me to be nice to Liz.

* * *

A retired US general has blamed the Srebrenica massacre on Holland allowing gays in the military. That's because this general is a prejudiced dick, with views that have no basis in fact, history, or logic.

Bibi Netanyahu has apparently listed off concessions Israel is ready to make after its serious diplomatic faux-pas that has strained US-Israeli (not to mention Israeli-Palestinian) relations. Essentially, it would freeze, though not cancel, the offending housing announcement, as well as release more Palestinian prisoners and reduce checkpoints in the West Bank -- even possibly expand the amount of West Bank territory under PA control.

Jon Chait quite properly eviscerates Juan Cole's attack on "people like Jeffrey Goldberg", and the general presumption of ascribing to any remotely pro-Israel figure sets of views that they don't hold. This is yet another example of the maddening vagueness that often typifies discussions about who believes what regarding Israel and Palestine.

It's a shame we don't do more racial profiling -- we might have been even less likely to catch this guy.

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) becomes the second "no-to-yes" switch on the health care vote (after Dennis Kucinich).

Don't blog on controversial topics you know absolutely nothing about, unless you're indifferent to spreading malicious and false insinuations.

Gaza Rocket Kills Thai Farm Worker

A rocket launched from the Gaza strip has killed a 30 year old Thai farm worker in Southern Israel. The rocket was reportedly launched by a small Islamist off-shoot which views Hamas as being too moderate; the Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade also claimed responsibility. Hamas, though not claiming responsibility itself (both of the above groups are its rivals), unsurprisingly blamed Israel for the attack, citing "the recent escalation against our people and our holy places." The latter refers to unfounded allegations that the Israelis are planning to take over the Temple Mount.

Ultimately, the decision to fire rockets lies in the hands of those who light the fuse. They're the ones who have the power to make the rocket fire stop, or perhaps the political entity that controls the region (which would be Hamas), and the buck stops with them. That being said, it remains unclear to me the grounds for believing that the continued blockade of Gaza is likely to have any impact on such terrorist attacks.

What a Strange Hypothetical

DougJ poses the following thought experiment:

Suppose there was a small country in Africa that was deemed vital to American political interests for whatever reasons. Suppose furthermore that it was constantly at war with its non-African neighbors, for whatever reason (maybe the country’s fault to some extent, maybe not). Suppose that African-American families owned the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal and that the heads of the editorial boards of two of the papers were African-American and that the editorial pages of these newspapers consistently expressed support for this small African country, more or less whatever it did (for the sake of accuracy, let’s say the Times was a bit more critical than the others). Suppose further that Ebony and Jet (now owned by an aging Harvard adjunct and someone from Australia) devoted a large part of each issue to describing anyone who criticized this small African country as racist (EDIT: or as a “self-hating African-American”).

People would eventually start to laugh at the “racism” charges, right?

The second thing that hit me upon reading this, which I'm putting first because it's a shorter thought, is the idea that it is particularly suspicious when Black people say things are racist, or Jews say something is anti-Semitic. Doug puts a lot of weight on this, and it is hard to see why -- presumably, if the hypothetical racism allegations regarding this country are so misguided, they should be considered suspect regardless of who was promoting them. I'm not sure what else to take from Doug's hypothetical except that he subscribes wholeheartedly to Professor Bell's rules of racial standing. Or perhaps I should respond with "suppose there was a community widely dominated by non-Jews, that greets every claim that something is anti-Semitic (and some claims that say nothing of the sort) with dismissal and derision. People would eventually start to laugh at the notion that they care about anti-Semitism at all, right?" (The answer, of course, is "wrong").

But what immediately struck me as weird here was this notion that people don't laugh at racism charges in America right now. It's not like we live in an America where, any time someone makes an allegation of racism, everyone immediately takes it seriously and demands accountability from the wrongdoer. Much the opposite -- the standard operating procedure for a significant swath of the American population (including one major political party) is to simply allege the folks are playing the "race card", make jokes about political correctness run amok, and whine about how nobody can say anything that isn't pre-screened for approval by Al Sharpton without being called a racist (cue eyeroll).

What does this tell us? Two things. First, that "ism" charges are considered laughable based on conduct that doesn't even approach Doug's hypothetical. Second, if one asks the purveyors of the "race card card" why they do so, they won't answer "because racism isn't a bad thing". They'll tell you a story very similar to Doug's -- about how the charge of racism has been diluted to non-existence by overuse, how it's important to preserve for "true, serious" cases, how they're merely reacting to aggressive thought-policing by the gatekeepers of acceptable racial discourse.

In other words, the narrative of why racism became laughable is a tale of majoritarian speakers telling themselves a highly distorted story of how "racism" is used as a weapon, so they can justify dismissing it out of hand. Or laugh at it.

One way of exaggerating the prominence of an "ism" charge is to presume that anytime a member of the minority group opposes your position, they are implicitly accusing you of racism/anti-semitism. As Doug laments, "I’ve had it with the fact that every time someone says something that opposes the Israeli far-right that person is labeled as an anti-Semite (EDIT: I forgot about the ones who are labeled self-hating Jews.)"

But if one canvasses the reaction of prominent Jewish organizations, one notices the anti-Semitism charge is pretty absent -- rather mysterious, given its presumed ubiquity. To be sure, many groups are now asking the Obama administration to defuse tensions after having expressed its condemnation. And they might be wrong. But if one looks at those statements -- AIPAC, CPMAJO (no permalink), and the American Jewish Committee -- neither the word, nor anything insinuating it, is present. Indeed, as I noted, a top official at the AJC wrote a furious post in the scandal's aftermath accusing Israel of "taking the US for granted". Those editorials Doug alludes to? Here's the Washington Post, maybe your ctrl-f for anti-Semitism works better than mine. The NYT editorial board hasn't issued a piece on the controversy, but Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd have, both backing tough action towards Israel. Jeffrey Goldberg called Secretary of State Clinton's chew out "smart and necessary". Even Abe Foxman, the particular villain of Doug's play, was clear that he viewed some American reaction to the Israeli move as entirely appropriate and understandable. And that doesn't even get into J Street.

The fundamental premise behind Doug's story -- of anti-Semitism accusations being pervasive and pervasively abused -- is simply wrong. Not only are important players in the Jewish pro-Israel community openly backing the Obama administration, but even those more circumspect simply haven't been accusing anybody of anti-Semitism. So enough with the victimology, already.

Revenge of the Bigelow Memo

An intrusion upon seclusion case is going up to the Supreme Court. Maybe the University of Chicago Law class of 2011 can jointly write an amicus brief, taking advantage of our extensive (and well-remembered!) knowledge of the subject.

The Beautiful Letdown

Finished with exams; kind of beat. I'm traveling home Wednesday, then coming back here over the weekend. We'll see when I get my blogging mojo back.

No True Egyptian

Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosny is an interesting fellow. He had run to be chief of UNESCO, but ran into trouble after he had been reported as saying he wished to burn any Israeli books found in Egyptian libraries. He recanted that stance, but was rejected anyway, after which he blamed a global Jewish conspiracy for his defeat.

One of the things I observed was most distressing at the time was Hosny's conflation of "Jew" and "Israeli", as when, for example, he declared his opposition to building a museum of Egyptian Jewish heritage so long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was ongoing. Recently, we saw another example of this two-step, regarding the financing of restoration of Jewish synagogues in Cairo. Hosny declared, accurately, that these locations were as much a part of Egyptian culture as any Church or Mosque. So, good. Except that now, the Egyptian government has nixed a re-dedication ceremony, citing "Israeli aggression" against Palestinian protesters (it isn't clear, to be sure, if Hosny had any role in that decision).

Again, if Egyptian Jews are Egyptian, then it's not altogether clear what Israel's actions have to do with the rights of the Egyptian Jewish community. Unfortunately, the actions of the Egyptian government make it clear that it doesn't consider its country's Jews to be true citizens, but essentially representatives of a foreign power, and valid pawns in its diplomatic proceedings.