Dershowitz Tries To Knock Off Pro-Israel Congresswoman for not Hating Obama Enough

Back in September, I became aware that Joel Pollak, brother of Commentary contributor Noah Pollak, was going to challenge Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), on the grounds that the latter was insufficiently pro-Israel. It struck me then as an odd choice: Rep. Schakowsky has a well-known and well-deserved pro-Israel reputation stretching through her whole career. Not to mention Schakowksy represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district that agrees with her on near-every issue and, um, doesn't agree with Pollak or his brand of conservatism.

Nonethelss, Alan Dershowitz, either out of loyalty to a former student or a desire to shrink the definition of pro-Israel such that its adherents could fit into a Saskatoon synagogue, has decided to endorse Pollak. It won't really matter -- Schakowsky has never even dipped below 70% in any of her re-election fights -- but it is a sad commentary on Dershowitz, whose only apparent beef with Schakowsky is her alleged failure to "speak out" on alleged wrongs done by the Obama administration toward Israel.

In any event, J Street has risen to Rep. Schakowsky's defense. Good for them -- there are serious problems facing Israel, the US, and the world today, and we need serious people like Jan Schakowsky in Congress facing them. Now is not the time to elect some random political neophyte whose campaign alpha and omega is "Obama is teh suckz". And shame on Alan Dershowitz for electing to sacrifice his pro-Israel credibility so cheaply.

Haredi Protests Planned Over Israeli Desegregation Order

The Haredi Jewish community in Israel is planning to protest the enforcement of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling which would require they desegregate their schools (currently, Ashkenazi and Sepharidc Jewish students are kept apart in these ultra-religious academies). If the parents disobey the court order, they risk a two-week jail sentence for contempt of court.

Am I the only one who really isn't bothered at the prospect of a bunch of racists being thrown in jail for awhile by the Israeli government? Seriously, my sympathy for these blots on the holy name is very, very limited.

Thurgood

I saw Thurgood today with some folks from Covington. It was very good. Laurence Fishburne was spectacular in his role, and often times was laugh-out-loud funny. I can't recommend it highly enough.

The most interesting thing about the play was actually the audience, however. Anytime Marshall mentioned a historical name or fact (Homer Plessy, Japanese Internment, Douglas MacArthur), the audience gave a collective "mmm", as if to say, "yes, I remember that from 6th grade Social Studies." And whenever Marshall announced the achievement of some civil rights victory, the crowd broke out into applause. As I said to a friend, it felt very "U-S-A! U-S-A!" to me. Albeit not in a good way -- more as a way of externalizing ourselves from the "past" Marshall was speaking about. I'm very skeptical that, if Justice Marshall were alive today, he would support our efforts to externalize racism as something "past".

UC-Irvine Bans MSU Over Israeli Ambassador Disruption

Wow. The formal decision letter is here, detailing the various provisions of the UCI student code that the Muslim Student Union violated when it persistently disrupted a planned speech on campus being delivered by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. As a result, the university has suspended the MSU for one year. I'm not an expert on campus free speech issues, so I don't weigh in on the legal issues this undoubtedly raises, but I do think this is probably going to turn into a much bigger controversy.

Via the VC.

HOFer

It seems like anytime someone gets inducted into the Hall of Fame (whatever sport), they give the same spiel. This is the greatest honor of my life. Nothing could ever compare to this. I'm without words. And then you have former lightweight boxer Danny "Little Red" Lopez (42-6, 39 KOs), on his induction yesterday:

"Getting inducted is a big honor, getting the ring and the whole shot," said Lopez, who fashioned a 42-6 record with 39 knockouts in a 10-year career. "I felt much better winning a fight in the ring, but this is comparable to it. Pretty close."

I love it. "This is a pretty nice feeling. Nothing like actually being in the ring and knocking people's skulls in, but you know, it's close."

Israeli Gaza Flotilla Probe Announced

It looks good to me (not that it will matter). The probe is being headed by a retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice, and includes members with both international law and military backgrounds. Two international "observers" (with unclear powers) will participate in the proceedings -- a Nobel Peace laureate from Ireland, and a military lawyer from Canada. The panel will have full authority to look into, among other things, the legality of the blockade writ large, the legality of the particular raid on the flotilla, particular questions about the rules of engagement applied to the flotilla operation and whether they'd been breached, the Goldstone commission and Israel's ability to investigate itself, and the behavior of the Turkish passengers on the flotilla and the IHH organization.

The panel "will be able to summon any person or organization to testify, or to give it information in some other fashion, on any issue it deems relevant," except that it can only access military files "directly relevant" to the operation, including those from a separate, internal IDF probe being conducted contemporaneously. It can, however, request additional inquiries if it finds the IDF probe insufficient. Finally, all statements given to the commission will not be admissible in any legal proceedings, to encourage candor.

Sounds like a pretty robust investigatory panel to me. But I still maintain it will mostly be irrelevant, because what people want out of their "investigation" is either an indictment or an exoneration (depending on their alignment). Well, that might not be totally fair -- I'd be surprised to see any significant protest from the pro-Israel folks if the country's own panel decided to excoriate the operation (this is purely a matter of relative credibility -- the same conclusions, reached in identical language, by an international body would be met with outrage). But if the panel mostly exonerates the Israeli behavior (and I suspect it will -- the legal and factual issues are simply too unclear to warrant broad-based condemnation), the anti-Israel crowd will pitch a fit no matter how independent the panel objectively was. And while it will claim that it's real objection is that an Israeli panel can't "investigate itself", I'm honestly doubtful they'd react much differently if an international panel reached the same conclusions in identical language (we'd just shift to complaints about the all-powerful Jewish Zionist Israel Lobby tainting the commission).

But that's all counterfactual. The point is, there is a panel now, it looks pretty robust and independent, and it will issue a report at some point. And my conjecture is that this report will have virtually no bearing on anything.

UPDATE: Ha'aretz's editorial doesn't seem to think this panel is that impressive at all. But I'm a little confused -- the editorial says the panel has no powers at all, but the article seems to make clear that it has significant subpoena power.

"International Standards"

The refrain about the Israeli probe of the Gaza flotilla incident is that it must conform to "international standards". And recently, I've been curious: What are "international standards"? Do they refer to anything specific? Or is it kind of like "international human rights standards", where "international" is deployed less for any substantive content, and more to piggyback on the fuzzy, cosmopolitan cadences of the word "international"?

Everything I've seen of international legal investigations, after all, tends to show they really don't have very high standards at all. Most war crimes tribunals, for example, are adjudged failures unless they secure convictions of high-ranking accused parties -- the "standard" is "guilty until proven guilty". There aren't particularly strong rule of law norms at the international level, there isn't a deep basis of precedent which acts as constraints against politicization, and there isn't a broad-based acceptance of the legitimacy of the international bodies to act as adjudicators. It makes the particular choice of rhetoric very, very interesting to me.

Abbas' Barak Moment

Shlomo Yosef has a very savvy read on Mahmoud Abbas' recent comments regarding Israel -- comments which are, without question, huge steps in a positive direction for the leader of the PA. For those of you who don't know, Abbas met with Jewish leaders in the US where he affirmed the historic connection of Jews to the land of Israel (citing the Koran for support), including the right of Israel to define itself as a Jewish state, disavowed a one-state solution (while noting its increasing popularity in the Palestinian street), and registered support for a joint Israeli-Palestinian-American committee to look into issues of incitement (by both Israelis and Palestinians). This is a rather big deal, for a few reasons. For starters, Yasser Arafat notoriously denied any historic connection between Jews and Israel, so this is in fact a substantial about face by Abbas. Moreover, for those worried about Arab leaders saying one thing to Western audiences and another to the Arab world, Abbas reiterated his comments when questioned about them by al-Jazeera.

Anyway, Mr. Yosef writes:

In doing so Abbas is having a Barak moment from 2000. Regardless of the claims and counter claims of what happened in Camp David in 2000, any Israeli in the street will tell you that Barak offered the Palestinians everything and Arafat walked away. It seems now Abbas is offering Bibi everything and is seeing if he will walk away. If he does this will give the PA everything they need to move off a negotiated track and on to a path of a unilateral declaration of statehood.

The question is whether Netanyahu is stupid enough to walk away, and the answer to that is obviously "yes" (I've spent a lot of time observing Netanyahu). But it's not inevitable. And as Mr. Yosef notes, this is a critical decision, for even if Abbas' statement is cynically motivated (and I don't care one way or the other whether it is or isn't), if Israel doesn't respond, they lose control of the discourse of a two-state solution, possibly indefinitely.

Don't take the opportunity to miss an opportunity. Now is the chance -- to seize a historic moment to negotiate peace, or to show that, yes, Israel is capable of being ruled by leaders as foolish as Yasser Arafat.

Greene With Envy

The burgeoning story about Alvin Greene, the "surprise" Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina, sure is strange. But absent any showing of fraud or other illegal shenanigans, I have to admit I'm a little unsympathetic to my partymates in the Palmetto State. If you are so disorganized that you can't mobilize your own base to vote for your establishment pick against the guy who literally could only be known as "the other guy", that's your own damn fault.

Quote of the Day

A blogger at Mondoweiss (no link) defended Helen Thomas by asserting that, contrary to popular outrage, would be the ideal outcome to see Zionism collapse and a reinvigoration of Jewish culture in Poland as the refugees flee, er, back where they came from.

In response Judeosphere writes: "I'm deeply touched by this gesture of philanthropic ethnic cleansing."

For. The. Win.

Of Matters 101

For obvious reasons, I wasn't going to touch the comments section of this post with a ten foot pole.

But against my better judgment, I did read through it. And while it brought back some nasty flashbacks, I do think it also caused a few things to clear up in my mind.

I feel like there is a distinct aversion amongst blogs that are roughly in the political "range" of Feministe towards discussing anti-Semitism. That's true at least of the blogs that aren't avowedly anti-Israel (those mention anti-Semitism quite often, albeit usually to mock it) -- and despite my rather horrific experience there (which was easily the worst of my blogging career), I would not say that the Feministe crew (at least the two I know well) are anti-Israel. I know this because I know the folks who invited me to contribute, and I know that they did so neither to humiliate, nor to demonstrate how broad-minded and fair they were (to invite a radical such as myself). But amongst these blogs, one sees anti-Semitism mentioned extraordinarily rarely. I think the Feministing post on Helen Thomas was the first time I've ever seen them mention the issue of anti-Semitism (a search for the term on their site reveals no hits, with only a bare handful for "anti-semitic"), and it was, to say the least, sorely lacking (to be fair, the author was quite appropriately raked over the coals for it in the comments).

But back to the main. What distinguishes the rare discussions of anti-Semitism in these forums is not that folks universally mock and deride the concept. On the Feministe thread, you will find many that don't. What is different is that folks that would in other contexts be seen as trolls, here are just "the other side". The lack of 101 penetration is astounding. Respect how the Jewish community describes its own experience. Don't accuse us of being psychopaths, overly sensitive, manipulative, or flat out liars. Don't group our history and experience into the narrative of others. Being a Jew who disagrees with the bulk of the community does not earn you super-standing. The "anti-Semitism card" can and is easily trumped by the "anti-Semitism card card". Calling a particular statement respecting Israel anti-Semitic does not mean one condemns all criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitic. For that matter, critiquing one's statement regarding Israel does not necessarily mean we've called you anti-Semitic at all.

This is basic stuff. But, unlike most "isms", for anti-Semitism there's no consensus around it. And that's a problem. The whole reason why blogs like Feministe are adamant about not letting the basics be up for debate in every thread is that these conversations are incredibly passionate and painful -- too much so to be rehashed over and over again. To have to explain, ad nauseum and in the face of incredibly hostile fire, why certain frames wound, why the majority narrative is inadequate, why the status quo is inadequate, is utterly exhausting.

And so, whereas I think your average anti-racism blog could -- through community self-policing and judicious moderation -- prevent every conversation from devolving this way, the lack of consensus regarding anti-Semitism means we're perpetually stuck in the most emotional and fraught terrain of the endeavor. No wonder people don't want to do it.

But it must be done. I try to do it here. I tried (and failed) to do it at Feministe. I tried (with more success) to do it at Alas, a Blog.

It must be done. There is no other way.

Harman Smokes Winograd

I understand folks are disappointed that Bill Halter lost his bid to unseat Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AK). But the news wasn't all bad yesterday. Marcy Winograd -- best known for advocating the dissolution of Israel and implying that Henry Waxman had dual loyalties -- was soundly defeated in a primary challenge to Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA). Harman won by nearly 18 percentage points -- roughly in line with her 2008 results against Winograd. Contrary to what GOP talking points might have you believe, rabid anti-Israelism will not, in fact, get you elected in a Democratic primary (in fact, all the evidence shows that it turns Democratic voters off).

Lincoln Survives (For Now)

It looks like Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) will turn back a spirited primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter and advance to the general election. I have to admit, I was surprised -- I had thought Lincoln was pretty much toast. In fact, I still think she's toast -- her general election polling is pretty weak too -- but, you know, fool me once.

Assuming that it doesn't become a moot point in November anyway, what's the upshot of this primary? I still think it was positive (and say this as someone who has no trouble supporting Lincoln in November). It definitely scared her off from being too much of a corporate shill, and at the same time don't really think it made her any less electable. If she's dead in the water anyway, you might as well try to wring out the most good you can in the event of a miracle.

In any event, some savvy campaigning and true political grit from Senator Lincoln. Congrats on a hard-fought victory, and here's looking forward to another surprise come November.

This Can't Be Happening

A new study out finds that the children of lesbian couples actually turn out better than those raised by heterosexual couples (fun fact: the baby whose picture graces the CNN story is adorable). I'd be interesting in seeing what variables the researchers controlled for (particularly income). Nonetheless, I find hilarious the response of outraged conservatives who can't stand the fact that science doesn't back up their prejudices:

"You have to be a little suspicious of any study that says children being raised by same-sex couples do better or have superior outcomes to children raised with a mother and father," [Concerned Women for America's Wendy Wright] said. "It just defies common sense and reality."

"Common sense" is silly enough here, but "reality"? The whole point of a study like this is that it tells us what "reality" is. All Wright is showing is that her beliefs are unfalsifiable. The point isn't to protect children, the point is to protect Wright's ability to maintain her prejudices with as little cognitive dissonance as possible.

Peril on the High Seas

Iran has announced it is sending its branch of the Red Crescent to try and break the naval blockade of Gaza. Am I the only one who thinks this is the match that could set off a regional war? Maybe not, with US troops still in the region providing a deterrent. But I have a hard time seeing how this doesn't end violently. There is no way that Israel lets an Iranian ship of all things through to Gaza. It's entirely possible that this ship, at least, won't include weaponry in its cargo (one of the reasons I'm reticent to support a wholesale lifting of an inspections regime targeting cargo entering Gaza is that I remember the Karine A). But the Israelis, quite understandably, aren't going to go on instinct on this one. Meanwhile, one has to think that an Iranian ship is significantly less likely to be boarded peacefully than any member of the "Free Gaza" flotilla, including the Mavi Marmara. And one gets the sense that the Iranians know this too, and are out looking for a provocation.

It's just not a good situation. And the intervention of Iran, it'll get worse before it gets better.

Sudden Travel

I'm flying out to Minnesota today immediately after work, and won't be back until Sunday night. I'll be essentially entirely disconnected for that entire time. The blog's half-hiatus extends yet again.

Color Me Stunned

In an entirely shocking decision, the UCU Congress has decided it has absolutely no problem hosting known anti-Semites to drum up support for its BDS campaign. I'd say people wonder why Jews are fleeing that union in droves, but wait, the UCU notoriously refused to wonder about that at all either.

Operation Make The World Hate Us

Leon Wieseltier has a brilliant column up on the Gaza flotilla incident. Seriously -- it might be the best thing I've ever seen him write (and, while I find Wieseltier maddeningly inconsistent sometimes, when he's on, he is on. So to say it is his best work is high praise). I'll try to excerpt, but it's one of those cases where I really have to resist the temptation to copy and paste the whole thing:

Israel does not need enemies: it has itself. Or more precisely: it has its government. The Netanyahu-Barak government has somehow found a way to lose the moral high ground, the all-important war for symbols and meanings, to Hamas. That is quite an accomplishment. Operation Make the World Hate Us, it might have been called.

I leave it to others to make the operational criticisms of the Israeli action, and will say only that even my amateurish understanding of the tactical challenge posed by the interdiction of the boats suffices to suggest that there were other ways to do this. I also will not pretend to a perfect grasp of what happened on board the Mavi Marmara. I have pondered the videos that both sides have released, and concluded that the Israeli soldiers sliding down that rope had no intention of attacking the people on board and that the people on board had no way of being confident of this. I cannot expect Palestinians and their supporters to believe the best about the Israeli army. (This is what Israeli hardliners call “the restoration of deterrence.”) I do not doubt that some of the activists on the ship welcomed a confrontation with Israel, but the Israelis should not have obliged them. In any event, what took place on that deck looks to me like a tragic misunderstanding. Yet there was no reason to think that anything else would have transpired.
[...]
It is also the inevitable consequence of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cunning pronouncement last year that the Israel is now endangered by “the Iran threat, the missile threat, and the threat I call the Goldstone threat.” The equivalence was morally misleading, and therefore dangerous. Ideological warfare is not military warfare. I have studied the entirety of the Goldstone Report, and whereas I do not doubt (and wrote in this magazine in the days before Goldstone) that Operation Cast Lead caused the unjustifiable death of non-combatants, I also do not doubt that the Goldstone Report, which was nastily indifferent to Israel’s security predicament and to the ethical challenges of Israeli self-defense, was an instrument in a broad campaign of delegitimation against Israel—and yet the threat of delegitimation is not like the threat of destruction. It is different in kind. A commando operation is not an appropriate response to an idea. “This was no Love Boat,” Netanyahu said yesterday. “It was a hate boat.” He is right, but so what? The threat of delegitimation is not a military problem and it does not have a military solution. And the attempt to give it a military solution has now had the awful consequence of making the threat still greater. The assault on the Mavi Marmara was a stupid gift to the delegitimators.

You do not have to be a general to grasp these distinctions. In fact, judging by Israel’s recent history, it might help not to be one. But the militarization of the Israeli government’s understanding of Israel’s situation—this has been the most sterile period for diplomacy in all of Israel’s history—is not all that led to the debacle at sea. Rules of military engagement that allow soldiers to fire on political activists (I leave aside the question of their humanitarianism for a moment) may signify something still deeper and even more troubling. It is hard not to conclude from this Israeli action, and also from other Israeli actions in recent years, that the Israeli leadership simply does not care any longer about what anybody thinks. It does not seem to care about what even the United States—its only real friend, even in the choppy era of Obama—thinks. This is not defiance, it is despair. The Israeli leadership seems to have given up any expectation of fairness and sympathy from the world. It is behaving as if it believes, in the manner of the most perilous Jewish pessimism, that the whole world hates the Jews, and that is all there is to it. This is the very opposite of the measured and empirical attitude, the search for strategic opportunity, the enlistment of imagination in the service of ideals and interests, that is required for statecraft.

The complication—the one that deprives anybody who acknowledges it of membership in any of the gangs of commentary—is that there is a partial basis in the actually existing world for a degree of Israeli pessimism. There are leaders, states, organizations, and peoples whose hostility to the Jewish state is irrational and absolute and in some cases murderous. Things are said critically about Israel that wildly burst the bounds of thoughtful criticism. The language in which Israel is described by some governments and international organizations is lurid and grotesque and foul. Anti-Semitic tropes—the conspiracy theory about the Jews, most conspicuously—is regularly encountered in otherwise respectable places. The analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that absolves the Palestinians of any significant role in it is widespread. I do not see how any of this can be denied, or shunted aside, or explained entirely in terms of Israeli behavior. But it is emphatically not the whole picture, except for those Israelis and Jews whose political interests and ideological inclinations prefer it to be the whole picture. For there are forces in Israel, and in its government, that have a use for Jewish hopelessness.

Again -- read it all.

(Blogging on my lunch break -- that's right, I'm committed).

Still Alive

I'm making a note here, huge success....

Work is very interesting, but a lot of, well, work. It's quite the time consumer. But I am still around, and I even (occasionally) am able to keep an eye on the news.

On Alas, a Blog, I wrote what I think was a pretty solid comment detailing less my views on the Gaza flotilla incident than my views on the best reaction to the incident. One of the things I said was that even amongst defenders of the legality or justifiability of the Israeli reaction to the blockade, you can find very few defenders of its wisdom. It would have been great to able to cite to Alan Dershowitz to back that assertion up, but unfortunately I hadn't seen this column yet. Oh well.

Meanwhile, I absolutely agree that the efforts of some Republicans, here Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), to turn this into a political issue is incredibly damaging to the notion that support for Israel ought to be bipartisan. By constructing partisan divides where none truly exist, McCain is only enforcing the idea that Republican equals pro-Israel and Democrat equals anti-Israel -- possibly good politics, but bad for the state of Israel in a context where image often becomes reality.

Memorial Day

Hope that your observance is both relaxing and reflective. I start my new job tomorrow, which I assume will drop off my blogging considerably. If I'm more scarce for the next few weeks, hope y'all have a great summer, and see you on the flip! (But I do plan to be around at least somewhat).

Gaza Aid Convoy Reportedly Attacked in International Waters

Reports are still sketchy, but the word is 2-3 dead after Israeli missile boats attempted to board ships trying to bring in various goods and aid to the Gaza Strip, in defiance of an Israeli blockade.

More as reports come in, and I don't want to prejudge when information is so scarce. But if this is what it sounds like, it is unacceptable behavior. You don't fire on an unarmed convoy, in international waters. I don't care how risible the Hamas regime that will receive the aid is, I don't care how suspect the motivations of the convoy organizers are, and I certainly don't think even justified fears over the misuse of cement, are good enough rationales to resort to a violent seizure. And I would bet that the (justified) international backlash over this will spell the end of the blockade anyway.

UPDATE: Okay, some new information coming in that sheds some additional light.
The IDF's official account of the incident is now up, the other main sources are here and here. Same caveats as above apply -- what we really have now are two sides to the story, not "the story".

1) The clashes apparently occurred on only one of the boats. Reports are that this boat represented a particular Turkish charity that was known as the most radical of the groups in the flotilla.

2) Israeli sources are claiming that the activists on the boat were armed with light weaponry (slingshots, clubs, bats, and knives, with conflicting reports about the possibility of pistols) and attacked the boarding commandos first. They're claiming they've got video to back up the assertion that the activists attacked the soldiers first, and soldiers fired back only to save fellow soldiers in mortal peril (and that these were the standing engagement orders for the operation).

I think this whole sequence of events can be broken down into several constituent parts. We can debate whether or not the flotilla was justified in trying to breach the blockade, rather than unloading in an Israeli port and transporting (most of) the goods by land. Even if we say they were not, we can still debate whether or not Israel was justified in commencing a boarding action to stop the flotilla. But again, even if they weren't, we can debate whether the activists had the right to violently resist the commandos. And finally, after that, we can ask whether the Israeli use of force was justified given that resistance.

Quote of the Day

Back in DC!

[A] one-sided focus on the behavioral causes of black disadvantage often gives rise to .... the temptation to substitute self-help programs for political action aimed at removing ideological and structural obstacles to equal opportunity. When political resistance to progressive change is formidable or stubborn, there is a dangerous tendency among elites to overemphasize self-help strategies or, worse, to opt for these strategies exclusively. Peer counseling, religious proselytizing, moral exhortation, and charitable giving, as worthy and worthwhile as they might be, do not constitute a politics. They are simply survival tactics.

Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Cambridge: Harvard UP 2005), 146.

Going Home-ish

Travel today tomorrow. It's tough to move when the secret service surround your house, but we're getting it done. We're going to my parents house for a few days, then moving to an apartment in Rosslyn June 2nd. First day of work at Covington is June 1.

Also, Adam Holland has a ton of good stuff up right now (look at the May archives).

Open Thread for Joe and N. Friedman to Yell At Each Other

Y'all may have noticed that I post a lot on Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism-related topics. Y'all also might have noticed that the comments to these posts have of late rapidly devolved into endless shouting matches between "joe" and "N. Friedman". These battles rage within a comment thread approximately forever, or until my next post on the topic, at which point they migrate seamlessly to the next thread and continue afresh.

Truly, their stamina is amazing. But it is also quite inefficient for the rest of us -- having to try and follow dozens of posts at a time to grasp every subtle maneuver and cutting insight. It would be far more convenient to have these arguments collected in one spot.

Plus, it might allow other folks to help develop a comment thread on what those posts are actually, you know, about (which, contrary to dominant belief, is not an overarching theorization of rights and wrongs in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict).

So, take it away boys. Be assured we're reading carefully.

Post-Panel Roundup

Today was a successful day. Aside from moving most of my stuff out of my apartment to the building I'll (hopefully) be living in next year, I also had my first academic panel. And it was great! Most shocking was the fact that people -- by which I mean, random people, people who had no connection to any of us or any reason to show up -- came to the talk. And they were attentive! And they asked great questions! And everybody was really positive towards all the papers! It was wonderful.

* * *

Sometime at Alas, a Blog (I forget if it was during my guest-blogging stint or in the comments), somebody responded to my critique that their position on Israel/Palestine was completely disengaged from mainstream Jewish experience by saying she could solve that simply by talking with and forming coalitions with leftist, anti-Zionist Jewish groups. I argued then, and still believe, that due respect for the Jewish community is not demonstrated when you only talk with those members who already agree with you -- particularly when that subset represents a tiny fringe of the whole. I thought of that event in reading this piece in the Forward, which makes it sound like the Presbyterian Church is going out of its way to avoid mainstream Jewish groups in formulating its Israel policy. And to the extent it does talk to them, it talks down to them. The bottomless pit that is Christian arrogance towards Jews never ceases to astound me.

Interesting post about an American Jew in Damascus.

Studies suggest that video gamers have better control over themselves in their dreams. I actually have had this experience, though I wouldn't have thought to associate it with gaming.

Twenty-somethings are not idiots about Elena Kagan. Yay my generation!

Leon Wieseltier correctly notes that the Sheikh Jarrah settlers are effectively claiming a right of return akin to that of the Palestinians. Having already established that reconciliation between Israel and Palestine means that not everybody gets to go home again, I can hardly making an exemption for a particular, formerly Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.

I just can't get upset about the so-called Sestak-gate.

J Street disavows Marcy Winograd (see my prior post), but Democracy for America stands by her after she came out in favor of a single-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and implied that Reps. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) were not loyal to America.

The Episcopalian Church slaps the wrist of its American branch for ordaining a lesbian bishop.

Main Mission

There was one extremely depressing paragraph in a generally depressing story about a flotilla of ships seeking to breach Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid:

Noam Shalit, father of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, told CNN he offered through his lawyer to attempt to convince the Israeli government to let the flotilla arrive in Gaza if participants would pass aid, including letters and medicine, to his son. The organizers of the convoy, including Berlin, refused, he said, telling him their main purpose is to break the siege.

This is highly indicative. To bring along letters and aid to Shalit is essentially a cost-free move by the convoy participants. It would signal nothing more than that its concern for human rights is universal, rather than particular only to when Israelis are wronging Palestinians (and not a particularly strong signal at that). And yet, they refused, because apparently it would distract from their "main purpose". I don't see how a proposal which would have made it more likely the convoy would reach Gaza shores would be in conflict with "breaking the siege", but I do see how such a proposal would distract from a main purpose of highlighting Israeli depravity and Palestinian innocence.

Oh, go to hell already. It's amazing how few people examining this conflict have a universal and principled concern for human rights and human dignity.

And also, I might add, the Israeli government claims it is perfectly willing to allow the goods into Gaza, so long as they are checked for security threats at an Israeli port. This probably isn't quite as one-sided as it sounds -- the convoy is bringing in construction materials, which Israel has been classifying as a security threat (one can use construction materials to construct bunkers), but it is meaningful information.

And Another One Bites The Dust

2L year ... finished. Aw, yeah.

Also, Barack Obama is apparently coming to visit. Which means that my block is filled with police, secret service, and barricades. I don't mind, except it will make moving out this weekend considerably more complicated.

Openhearted

The Forward has a solid piece up about the proposed new Mosque that will be built several blocks from Ground Zero in NYC. Unfortunately, while the local Jewish community seems to be primarily supportive, there was this rather misguided quote by a local rabbinical leader:

“The families of the victims of 9/11 don’t have to make distinctions about who in the Muslim community they’re dealing with,” said Rabbi Michael Paley, scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation of New York. “And so I’m openhearted.

Um, actually, yes, they do. It is important to respect the victims of terrible tragedies, such as 9/11. But I'm not sure why victim status gives license to not "make distinctions" amongst members of the social group which perpetrated the harm. If I'm attacked by a group of Latinos, even a "Latino group" like the Latin Kings, that doesn't mean I get to make stereotypes of all Latinos. And if I do, even if you feel sympathy for me, it's not the sort of judgment that should get any sort of legal imprimatur.

The Rabbi does go on to say that the leaders of this new Mosque have been important players in interfaith dialogue and partners for building community understanding. That's great news -- and all the more reason why we need to reject folks who groundlessly group them in with radical Muslim extremists.

To Catch a Critic

Before today, I knew virtually nothing about Rep. Jane Harman's (D-CA) primary opponent, Marcy Winograd, except that she had recently received a boost in the form of an endorsement by the major progressive grassroots group, Democracy for America. Rep. Harman is known as a liberal on social issues, a moderate on economic mattes, and a foreign policy hawk -- enough to get her on the radar screen of the base. But more importantly for our purposes, she has been implicated (albeit the investigation never went anywhere) in an alleged quid pro quo scheme with AIPAC regarding alleged espionage by former AIPAC officials.

So that's a large part of why Winograd is challenging Harman. And I have no problem with that. I do, however, have a problem with her views on Israel and her rather unsubtle insinuations that a prominent Jewish politician possesses dual loyalties (Winograd herself is Jewish), in an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg.

JG: Go this Henry Waxman question. Are you for a bi-national state or are you for a two-state solution?

MW: I consider myself a realist, okay? I'm Jewish. I've labeled myself as a Jewish woman of conscience who is compelled to speak out because of the suffering in the world. I support peace, so whatever both sides can agree to, which would probably be an agreement on a mutual exchange of territory, I would fully support, because I want peace. However, and let me share this with you, I grew up in a strong Zionist family, I sang at my brother's Bar Mitzvah, I sent my daughter to Jewish pre-school, I went to Israel when I was in my 20s. That's my background, and all that being said, I know that Israel was born on land where a million Palestinians lived. For many Jews the birth of Israel is a celebration, but for the Palestinians it was the nakba, a catastrophe. There's no safety or security in barring people from their homeland. Ultimately, Jews and Palestinians need to learn to live together, just as they lived in peace for many years.

JG: Can you be a liberal and a Zionist at the same time?

MW: Well, there's a less-harmful Zionism. I don't see Zionism as liberal. Zionism categorizes Jews as a race, which makes it easier for Jews to be targeted.

JG: Zionism doesn't categorize Jews as a race, it categorizes Jews as a nation.

MW: To me, there's no safety in creating a nation predicated on either racial or ethnic supremacy.

JG: How did you come to this view?

MW: I've been torn about this for a long time, and not really wanting to look at it, which a lot of Jews probably feel, wanting to turn away from it because it's too painful. It's too tied to our identity, to our neighborhoods, to our whole orientation. I My primary concern is peace. I don't feel comfortable advocating for a country based on ethnic and racial supremacy. Personally, I'm a believer in equality, one voice, one vote, Israelis and Palestinians, one voice, one vote, that's my personal position.

JG: Eventual bi-nationalism.

MW: Yes.
[...]
JG: Let's talk about what Henry Waxman said about you.

MW: I appreciate Henry Waxman, the fact that he pioneered generics, that he's concerned about the environment. However, on foreign policy we have strong differences. I would hope that all of our lawmakers would pledge allegiance to this country as the country they represent.

JG: Are you saying Waxman isn't loyal?

MW: I don't know. That's a question you have to ask him.
.
JG: Talk about Jane Harman's motivations. Is she in the same camp?

MW: I think she is a strong Zionist. I think she also profits off of war. She has helped build the aerospace industry's involvement in U.S. wars. She's a big supporter of aerospace in its present incarnation. I talk a lot about expanding aerospace into green technology.

In prior speeches Winograd has been unequivocal in her opposition to a two-state solution. This prompted Rep. Waxman to come out against her (this is the "Waxman question"), and eventually led her to insinuate quite strongly that he is not loyal to this country.

It is unfortunate to me that I don't think such charges necessarily are a poison pill amongst either the liberal or conservative base (don't pretend that the Paulite branch of the Tea Party wouldn't eat this up). Nonetheless, this represents an interesting litmus test regarding whether we're going to put forward another McKinney. The support Winograd is enjoying from DFA is troubling in this respect.

The candidacy also poses both promise and peril for groups like J Street. As far as I'm concerned, this is a gift-wrapped present for them: Winograd clearly opposes their vision of the conflict, and they have no interest in touching somebody who thinks Israel is "a state founded on the institutionalized superiority or exclusivity of one of [sic] religion, ethnicity or culture" that practices "crimes against humanity," "institutional racism" and "extermination." But despite their clear opposition to that outlook, Rep. Harman is not exactly the group's best friend -- indeed, she probably is representative of the sort of "pro-Israel" that J Street wants to undermine. Hence, they will be tempted to keep silent. That temptation is a mistake. J Street should, in its own interest, come out loud and hard against Winograd's candidacy and her repugnant views. This is not a tough call.

UPDATE: I should add that, wholly apart from her views on Israel and Waxman, Winograd sounds like, well, a nut. Her interview with Goldberg is full of flower-power-y statements opposing basically anything related to anything military, with a not-exactly-thought-out plan to induce aerospace companies to switch production to Green tech. When asked if there was anything she'd do to fight terrorists militarily, she responded by saying she'd join the ICC, which -- good idea or no -- is not exactly a military option (how exactly does she propose we get the terrorists to appear? Subpoena power?). She gap-fills a ton of her statements by saying she wants "peace", in the sort of manner that makes me hate the very word "peace" (and I hate hating the word "peace"). And when she lost the floor fight for the party endorsement for the California 36th primary battle, she alleged that the vote was corrupt. This is exactly the sort of person who, if given prominence, will come to humiliate the Democratic Party down the line. Mark my words on that.

Real Criminals Love it When The Police Are Busy

Police chiefs in Arizona and around the country believe that Arizona's anti-immigrant crackdown will lead to an increase in crime. That's no surprise. Aside from the fact that the supposed positive correlation between immigration and crime is mostly mythological anyway (indeed, if anything immigration is negatively associated with crime), the folks who actually are interested in committing violent crime are no doubt thrilled to know that the police will be wasting their time on trivialities.

Meanwhile, anything that increases distrust between immigrant communities and the police means that crime is less likely to be reported, that information that does come in will be sparser, less reliable, and harder to track down, and in general the job of cops policing immigrant-heavy communities will be made that much more difficult. But hey, what's the point of having baseless prejudices if you can't use them to enact policy?

Israel's Other Existential Threat

Jeffrey Goldberg in the NYT, circa 2008:

I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state - publicly, continuously and vociferously - to create conditions on the West Bank that would allow for the birth of a moderate Palestinian state. Most American Jewish leaders are opposed, not without reason, to negotiations with Hamas, but if the moderates aren't strengthened, Hamas will be the only party left.
[...]
The people of AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are well-meaning. But what's needed now is a radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel. Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely presidential nominees, are smart, analytical men who understand the manifold threats Israel faces 60 years after its founding. They should be able to talk, in blunt terms, about the full range of dangers faced by Israel, including the danger Israel has brought upon itself. But this won't happen until AIPAC and the leadership of the American Jewish community allow it to happen.

As Matt Zeitlin correctly points out, the gap between the "Chait/Wieseltier/Goldberg wing and the Yglesias/Beinart/Ackerman/Klein wing of the American Jewish punditocracy" simply isn't that large, and I'm perplexed at efforts -- by anybody, from either side -- to exaggerate it.

Jewish Groups Urge Repeal of DADT

Once again Jewish institutions demonstrate that they just don't understand what it means to hold "Judeo-Christian" values.

Another Historical Figure

I had never heard of her until five minutes ago, but Joan Trumpauer Mulholland sounds like an amazing person (and an amazing story). Not only was she a White southerner who participated in lunch counter sit-ins, but she applied and was admitted to the historically Black Tougaloo College (Mississippi) on the theory that integration wasn't something that should only be done by Black people.

On Liberal Versus Left Zionism

Spencer Ackerman's link to a post by Sean Lee critical of the entire concept of "liberal Zionism" gives me a wonderful opportunity to deal with a ton of wrong at once. Lee's post is long, but it boils down to a pretty simple claim:

The long and the short of it is that a liberal democracy is a democracy for all of its citizens equally. It does not accord privileges or rights based on race or religion. Israel is not that kind of a democracy. Instead it is explicitly an ethno-religious democracy, which is a direct consequence of the logic of Zionism, the logic of a Jewish state, as opposed to that of a state of its citizens.

A huge chunk of this dispute, obviously, can be chalked up to a slippage in the term "liberal", namely, whether we use it as a vague identifier for progressivism or other left-of-center philosophies, or whether we mean it in a very particular, Capital L sort of way, where it represents a particular normative philosophy predicated on governmental neutrality with respect to various identity affiliations and (non-harmful) life pursuits.

Insofar as this debate is purely descriptive, it mostly bores me, but it also reminds me quite strikingly of the recent Rand Paul controversy where everybody was wondering if his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act was required by his "libertarianism" or not. Now maybe that's a true description of libertarianism or maybe it isn't, but I think Matt Yglesias made the most cogent point on that dispute, namely, that if Paul's position is required by "libertarianism" or Goldwater conservatism or whatever, that doesn't let it off the hook, it just demonstrates that there is a fatal flaw in the ideology. Similarly, we can debate about what is included under the umbrella of "liberalism", but at the end of the day I'm less concerned with whether such things as nation-states, affirmative action, HBCUs, and the like are "liberal" than I am about whether they make a positive contribution to a fair, just, and egalitarian world. If it turns out they do and yet liberalism can't countenance them, that's a strike against liberalism, not the other way around.

Instead of starting with theory and then demanding practice catch-up, I forward a two-part criterion for evaluating proposals aimed at remedying anti-Jewish subordination: First, it has to start from the actual history and experience of Jews in the world, and second, it has to deal with the world as it is, not how we might like it to be.

From that framework, the liberal enlightenment model does rather poorly. It is a false promise (the "neutral", "liberal" state never actually extricates itself from the predilections of the dominant classes), and it is an unequal demand (nobody else is forced to make changes to accommodate the universalist ideal but the already-marginalized). As I put in my best post on the subject, The Superseded Jew:

[T]he liberal burden puts the onus on the oppressed class to craft a liberation agenda which maps perfectly onto an idealized fantasy that doesn’t exist and adhere to systematized rules and procedures which were crafted with reference to the current oppressive reality — they have to be both the paragons of idealized justice which nobody else practices and meet technical hurdles designed specifically to ratify an existing power structure which keeps Jews at the bottom.

I don't want to retread too much of the ground I covered in that post, but suffice to say I think that post really does a good job of interrogating this entire discourse of "liberalism" as applied to the Jewish experience. If you're skeptical of the point I'm making, I encourage you to read that post and then trot on back.

I will say here, briefly, that placing Jews at the mercy of others -- minorities governed by non-Jews -- tends to have a rather consistent result of Jews getting killed. Even subtracting publicly sanctioned discrimination, equal citizenship does very little to alleviate private anti-Semitism -- it isn't clear why this gets so little attention in Lee's post. Indeed, while he contrasts the position of minorities in the US or France (where, Lee says, the state has failed to live up to its ideals) to those in Israel (where the ideals themselves are supposedly flawed), I don't think he in any way establishes that this makes the liberal path obligatory. If the Black Power movement had won out in the 1960s -- if Blacks said "sorry, but we don't trust this liberal universalist model, so we're going to set off on our own" -- I think it would be arrogant to the extreme for Whites to say that Blacks had a moral obligation to accede to liberal prescriptions. They are in a better position than we to know, and we are in no position to (justly) superordinate our theory to their practice.

But I also think it's pretty clear that Lee is not operating from a standpoint that starts from the belief that one needs to take Jewish histories seriously in order to craft the policies and ideologies that will end up governing Jewish futures. Even putting aside his belief that it is "ironic" that the Israeli definition of Jew parallels that of the Nuremberg Laws (does he really think that's accidental?), the post is replete with analysis that does its best to run away from, not engage with, Jewish experience. Y'all might have experienced how angry I get when folks try to lecture Jews on what the Holocaust "taught us". Maybe the lesson European Gentiles needed to take from "the horrors of the first half of the 20th century" were that their nation-states needed to be replaced with multi-cultural liberal democracies. But why should Jews learn that lesson -- it wasn't our nation-state that fucked things up. The lesson most Jews seemed to take from the Holocaust is that all this talk of human rights and universal brotherhood and citizenship and enlightenment rationality counts for jack unless you've got some big fucking tanks backing you up. Where does Lee get off telling us that insight was wrong?

Later, Lee complains that Israel's social organization wouldn't be tolerable to us if Christians did it in America. When people run back to the sort of "you wouldn't tolerate this if it were Christians/Whites/Europeans/whoever" argument that Lee makes, nearly invariably they are doing their best to obliterate the experience of the Other -- trying to totalize the whole of existence under the ambit of majoritarian frames. The demand that we analogize a Jewish state to America as a "Christian" nation reminds me nothing more of the folks who think that Howard University is the equivalent of 1925 Ole Miss, and represents just as extreme a degree of lazy thinking.

Now, Lee does concede that the analogy might not work

because of Judaism’s unique history of persecution, and in particular, the Shoah. But that line of reasoning directly contradicts the idea that Jewish nationalism is just like any other nationalism and leaves us to ask the question: should we hold Israel to different standards than other countries that claim to be liberal democracies? And if so, doesn’t that directly contradict the underpinnings of universal liberalism and lead us to a cultural relativism in which liberals can no longer decry the lack of women’s rights in Afghanistan or human rights in Zimbabwe?

I think the real question this raises is why it is seen as some massive philosophical calamity that Jewish institutions might not aptly be judged via Gentile standards -- i.e., the very standards which have historically operated to keep Jews in a subordinated and oppressed position. Golly, it sure is mysterious why Jews might not want to accede to that state of affairs. And it is equally mysterious why non-Jews perhaps are more committed to preserving it. Look: The fact that your nationalism served no purpose but to subordinate and is entirely unnecessary except as a way of ratifying inegalitarian power arrangements doesn't mean that mine does. You deal with your shit on your own -- leave me out of it. (As an aside, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have the binational approach endorsed by the sort of person who is horrified at the prospect of "cultural relativism" and thinks it means we cannot criticize Zimbabwe. Normally that's the sort of statement one finds in The National Review or the latest Camille Paglia screed.).

Matt Yglesias wrote a short while back:

I completely grasp the pull of radical cosmopolitan values, but I think people who think that the area west of the Jordan River would be a great place to try implementing them in the short-term are being a bit crazy. It’s not even clear that Belgium or Canada will be able to survive as bi-national entities.

In that vein, I'll conclude with a story a friend once told me about a group of German Anarchists who, like Lee, were opposed to nation-states (indeed, all states) as a matter of principle. Their political program was to abolish all states -- Israel last. They are an example of folks who held fast to theories but nonetheless took due account of the actual experiences of the oppressed. It's fine to have principles, and it's fine to adhere to moral theories. But I think the least we can ask for is to not use the most vulnerable as crash test dummies to test them out. If it turns out liberal enlightenmentism can lead us all to salvation, fantastic. But we are not your guinea pigs.

A New Low

I'm actually amazed (and it's tough for media depravity to amaze me) that the Washington Post managed to put together a whole article on how Elena Kagan doesn't cross her legs when she sits. You have got to be kidding me.

Colt 45

I saw a truck drive by advertising Colt 45 malt liquor. On the side, in big letters, was the tagline "Works Every Time!"

That's a rather baffling slogan, isn't it? I could understand "refreshing every time", or "delicious every time". But in what sense, other than getting you drunk, does malt liquor "work"?

Colt 45: For when you absolutely, positively, need to get smashed.

Teaching Israel

Phoebe's whole post on how to interest liberal Jews in Israel is good, but I particularly endorse part II:

Place Zionism into a postcolonial-studies framework. Young, liberal, educated American Jews who hear "Israel" and "colonialism" assume what's meant is that Israel is a colonial entity. We need to get everyone to read Memmi, and to think of Israel as a state that came out of oppression, that's flawed in all the ways one expects of such states, but that's surprisingly successful, considering. No, the right-wing friends-of-Israel won't like this. But if young Jews had a better understanding of Zionism as a liberation movement for a people who'd been faulted for centuries for not having a land of their own ("Go back to Palestine" was a cry yelled at Diaspora Jews, after all), a movement that couldn't possibly have emerged in response to the Holocaust because it began well before, then perhaps the necessity of Israel as a Jewish state would become a starting point. How to best and most ethically protect Israel - and how to criticize its current actions that some read as colonialist but that I'd choose to criticize with other language for reasons I won't get into here - could then be discussed from a place where the country's very existence isn't up for debate by those who don't quite get where it came from in the first place.

This is a class I'd love to teach, though unfortunately I'm completely unqualified to do it (but somebody I know is getting her Ph.D. in French and French Studies with an emphasis on French/Jewish relations....). So I'll have to settle for owing Phoebe a huge debt for introducing me to Memmi in the first place.

The Unthinkable Retort

I noted the other day how pleased I was by Jon Chait's largely positive response to Peter Beinart's trechant critique of the American Jewish Establishment's perspective on Israel and young Jews (my original reaction to the piece). Consequently, like Mr. Chait, I was honestly surprised at the vitriole Beinart directed towards Chait's post.

Beinart's accusation towards Chait is that he isn't angry enough, for "there is only one decent response to these truths: fury. If you're not angry, you're either not paying attention or you don't care...." I have to admit that I am not in the camp of those who think what the Middle East conflict needs is more anger, and the contributions of those who think anger is the right emotion to "build on" have rarely been positive, in my view. It is very weird to me that Chait is getting a negative reaction for essentially agreeing with Beinart's main points.

What it is most symptomatic of, I think, is this idea that any disagreement with any criticism of Israel or Israel's supporters -- even if only partial, even if expressed in perfectly temperate tones -- is necessarily some sort of wild-eyed, pro-Likud, senseless screed aimed at suppressing any and all debate. That Chait, a supporter of Beinart, got met with this reaction almost reflexively is deeply worrisome to me, and does not bode well for the success of the project Beinart claims he wants to start.

Eventually, I Have To Start Studying, Roundup

But not today. Incidentally, I wrote the following on my Facebook wall: "I'm not registering a prediction, but it would not surprise me if Specter votes against confirming Kagan."

* * *

It never occurred to me that Susan B. Anthony might not have been anti-abortion, or have actually been the model prototype of a modern conservative "feminist". Like Yglesias, I just had chalked it up to changing politics.

Rand Paul's civil liberties positions aren't really what they're cracked up to be.

Manuel Miranda, a key player in conservative organizations focusing on judicial nominations, thinks Kagan's Jewish background proves she's actually a socialist.

Nate Campbell, another one of my favorite fighters who is likely reaching the end of his career, was very classy in this statement after his thorough drubbing at the hands of Victor Ortiz.

If you're interested in how implicit bias plays into anti-discrimination law, this Faculty Lounge, in addition to being interesting in its own right, links to a slew of prominent articles on the subject.

The Tea Party is finally breaking one of the bedrock rules of American politics: In internal GOP matters, the house always (used to) win.

Michael Steele favorably cites Malcolm X. I have no problem with that -- I think there is a lot of affinity between Black Conservative ideology and Malcolm's work -- but I'm not sure how many White Republicans agree with me (Incidentally, it's Malcolm's birthday today).

CNN has an interesting report on Cuba's "Decree 217", which forbids migration to Havana from Cuba's rural, poorer, and Blacker regions. Havana residents without proper papers are not legally allowed to live in the city, and face deportation if caught.

Home Demolitions

What is it about housing permits in the Middle East?

Hamas police wielding clubs beat and pushed residents out of dozens of homes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Sunday before knocking the buildings down with bulldozers, residents said.

Gaza's militant Hamas rulers said the homes were built illegally on government land. Newly homeless residents were furious over Palestinians on bulldozers razing Palestinian homes.

For years, Palestinians have criticized Israel for destroying houses, mostly because they were built without permits issued by the military. Now, Rafah residents complained, their own government, run by the Islamic militant Hamas that seized power in Gaza in July 2007, has done the same.
[...]
Residents said between 30 and 40 homes were torn down, ranging from concrete structures to tin shacks. They did not know how many people were affected. Hamas officials did not allow reporters into the area until the demolition was over.

Residents said more demolitions in the area were expected Monday.

Even if they are allowed to rebuild, Israel does not allow most building materials into the territory it has blockaded since Hamas seized power. The newly homeless residents are unlikely to be able to afford the steep black market prices for concrete, steel and wood. Some of the families cannot afford rent.

Rafah's mayor, Issa Nashar, promised alternative housing. Gaza's housing minister Yousef al-Mansi said he had no information about such housing.

The cynic in me -- and when it comes to the Middle East, the cynic is a very large part of me -- doesn't really know what the downside of this is for Hamas. The ensuing misery of these men and women only helps buttress its PR war against Israel -- indeed, a significant part of Hamas' governing philosophy has been strategically exposing their denizens to danger and deprivation so as to make Israel look bad. The theoretical downsides are (1) that it hurts these Palestinian men and women, and (2) that it discredits Hamas and weakens its grip on the population and global opinion. The first I hardly think the Hamas government considers to be a particularly salient harm at all, and the second is less of a big deal than one might think -- international cameras won't make the distinction, and while the displaced men and women know who to blame, their political influence is negligible particularly given Hamas' concentration of force and willingness to deploy it against its own population.

The Latest Terrorist Attack

A pipe bomb went off in a Jacksonville mosque where about 60 people were praying. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and the FBI has found remnants of the bomb in service of its investigation.

As Matt Yglesias notes, it is quite puzzling why this terrorist attack -- which actually involved a bomb going off -- isn't getting the attention other attempted assaults on Americans by violent extremists do.

The Dems Big Night

Jon Chait is right. Tonight was an excellent night for Democrats. We held the PA-12 (special election to fill John Murtha's seat) -- not too shabby, given that the district was the only one in the country to vote for Kerry in 2004 but McCain in 2008. Joe Sestak is, I think, a more formidable opponent for Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. Bill Halter pushed Blanche Lincoln to a run-off, which I believe he'll win -- it's a push as to whether this helps or hurts (not so hot) Democratic chances to retain the seat (Halter isn't an incumbent, which is good, but he's also quite liberal for Arkansas), but in a coin-flip environment I'd prefer the more liberal of two options. Finally, the Kentucky race ended up exactly as one would want it, with AG Jack Conway pulling the Democratic nod to face Tea Partier Rand Paul -- by far the most favorable match-up possible in the Bluegrass State.

So yeah. Good night.

Quote of the Confirmation Day

Michael Kinsley:

Now that the sex lives of Supreme Court justices have become grist for commentators, we are finally free to discuss a question formerly only whispered about in the shadows: Why does Justice Antonin Scalia, by common consent the leading intellectual force on the Court, have nine children? Is this normal? Or should I say "normal," as some people choose to define it? Can he represent the views of ordinary Americans when he practices such a minority lifestyle? After all, having nine children is far more unusual in this country than, say, being a lesbian.
[...]
Speculation is already rampant about why Scalia chose nine children over a more conventional lifestyle. Is he a sex maniac? That suspicion naturally arises. But perhaps once he started, he just never got around to stopping. Or maybe he just likes children. In recent days, Scalia’s friends have rushed to his defense, going out of their way to portray him as a model of sexual restraint. "Every Friday a bunch of us used to go down to this bar to pick up women," one of his college roommates recalls. "We’d always ask Nino if he wanted to join us, but he always said he was too busy studying. Frankly, we thought he was gay."

Inquiring minds want to know.

Why Now?

I'm not sure how I feel about Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) resigning after admitting an affair today. The fact that Souder is an abstinence-only crusader adds some irony, the fact that he shot a video promoting abstinence with his mistress adds yet more. But while I am pleased that for once a Republican actually has to leave politics due to sexual shenanigans (a Democratic affair, Bill Clinton excepted, seems to be death-on-sight), how is it that Souder has to resign while Senator David Vitter (R-LA) is still around?

The Unthinkable Reaction

Earlier today, Balloon Juice's DougJ wrote incredulously:

Presumably, the attacks will come, but I’m very surprised that there has been no mention yet at The New Republic or The Weekly Standard of Peter Beinart’s excellent, brutal anti-AIPAC/TNR/Weekly Standard piece from the New York Review of Books.

Beinart is a former TNR editor, as well as a big Iraq War pimp, so perhaps that inoculates him from the full 5,000-word Wieseltier treatment, but it’s been over 24 hours and no one has called him a self-hating appeaser of Islamofascism yet. What gives?

At the same time, Joe Klein wrote:

I would hope that the leaders of AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League etc etc would read it and think about it carefully, and that it forces those who have refused to debate these issues--how unJewish!--to start a real dialogue.

But I'm sure that it's only a matter of hours before someone calls Beinart anti-Israel or a self-hating Jew. How sad.

Jeffrey Goldberg quite appropriately responds:

Come on, Joe! There is real debate all the time in the Jewish community, even within the ADL! I've been to national meetings of the ADL when actual debate broke out! I belong to the biggest and most established Conservative synagogue in Washington, D.C., and one of beloved rabbis is a leader of the hard-left group Rabbis for Human Rights, and you know what? No one cares. Liberal critics of Israel and the organized Jewish community are going to have to let go of this particular meme. (Please see my post on a related subject, the taboo that won't shut up.) We live in an age when cartoonists -- cartoonists! -- are threatened with death for drawing pictures of the Muslim prophet, and yet an unseemly amount of space on the Interwebs is given over to condemning Abe Foxman for writing hostile press releases. It is not an act of bravery -- physical bravery, spiritual bravery, intellectual bravery -- to criticize Israel, not ever, and certainly not today.

By the way, I just asked Peter Beinart if he's been called an Israel-hater or a self-hater today. His response: "Actually no one has. It's been the biggest shock -- and happiest one -- of the piece. I don't think my grandmother has read it yet, though."

Of course, there are some rabid supporters of Israel's furthest right flank who have, in so many words, made that precise charge. But I think it is fair to say that Maggie's Farm ("Beinhart's 'liberal Zionism' is difficult to distinguish from that of ultra-left Jews who bash Israel or demur to the bashers and apologize for Obama’s dangerous domestic and foreign inanities."), William Jacobson ("Essays like yours, and those of the Medias Matters crowd, simply are viewed as small victories for those who seek the destruction of Israel."), and Phillip Klein ("[A]ll liberal Jews want to do is to pin the blame on Israel's efforts to defend itself, and engage in the magical thinking that more Jewish concessions will create peace and security. By doing so, they are helping the enemies of the Jews who are intent on finishing the job that Hitler started.") are not exactly AIPAC or the AJC. They do not represent or drive opinion in either the Jewish community writ large, or in its most prominent institutions. They are marginal, well, cranks.

And as for TNR -- the entity whose response was assuredly going to be a 5,000 word hit job? Well, Jon Chait has the first response up, and ... it's positive. "[A] call to arms to the American Jewish leadership that needs to be heeded." The essay is laudatory because "somebody needs to grab the American Jewish leadership by the lapels and shake some sense into it." Does he have quibbles? Of course he does, and those quibbles are well worth reading -- particularly the part where he notes that criticizing someone's critique of Israel is no more "silencing" of "criticism of Israel" than a piece like Beinart's is "silencing" of support of Israel. But his piece is obviously one of someone who thinks Beinart's essay is onto something very important, one that deserves to spread and lauded and trumpeted. Hardly the reaction we were told to expect. But maybe that's because we were somewhat overconfident in our presuppositions about what the pro-Israel community thinks. Perhaps we'll know better next time (UPDATE: Hell, even the Orthodox Union -- who of all people had the most right to be upset with Beinart's piece, given that he does cast Orthodox Jews as somewhat of a bogeyman -- are praising the article, or at least lauding it for getting a discussion going).

See my prior commentary on Beinart's essay here.

SCOTUS Rules Life Sentences for Juvenile (Non-Homicide?) Offenders Unconstitutional

The case was Graham v. Florida, the WaPo blurb is here. The ruling was a somewhat fractured 5-4 (Roberts, who would have been the sixth vote, concurred in the judgment with regards to this defendant, but did not agree that there should be a categorical constitutional bar). And meanwhile, Justice Stevens, going out in a hail of glory, let loose with this concurrence:

Society changes. Knowledge accumulates. We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes. Punishments that did not seem cruel and unusual at one time may, in the light of reason and experience, be found cruel and unusual at a later time; unless we are to abandon the moral commitment embodied in the Eighth Amendment , proportionality review must never become effectively obsolete.

While Justice Thomas would apparently not rule out a death sentence for a $50 theft by a 7-year-old, the Court wisely rejects his static approach to the law. Standards of decency have evolved since 1980. They will never stop doing so.

A fitting send-off to a stellar career by Justice Stevens.

A Fighting Faith, Redux

Peter Beinart has an extremely important, extremely provocative, and extremely necessary piece out in the New York Review of Books, entitled The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment. It argues, more or less, that most American Jewish organizations have been unsuccessful either in cultivating any sense of connection between young, (relatively) secular American Jews and Israel. Moreover, their approach to "pro-Israel" politics does not do justice to the liberal Zionist tradition, further turning off young Jews and exacerbating a generational and sectarian divide within the Jewish community on the proper stance towards Israel. The result is that the territory of "pro-Israel" is, more and more, becoming the province of the growing Orthodox right-wing youth and, more importantly right-wing Christian evangelicals (what Matt Yglesias terms to the "post-Jewish pro-Israel movement". This shift is happening at the exact same time as Israel's own youth cultural has taken a decided rightward shift. For those of us who think demographic realities and approaching binationalism represent an existential threat to Jewish existence, this is a grave prescription indeed.

Beinart is mostly right. There are quibbles -- there are always quibbles (I think he overstates the degree to which the behavior of American Jewish institutions is motivated by "illiberalism" versus a sort of paralysis in the face of the siren's call of Evangelical support). But the quibbles don't obviate the major point, which is that liberal Zionism -- and with it, the Jewish Zionist dream, are in a state of crisis, and the current guard of American Jewish leaders is not responding appropriately. They've forgotten, first and foremost, who they represent.

Beinart's most powerful points are about the poisonous influence of the Israeli religious far-right, and its growing influence in American orthodox quarters. Most American Jews, of course, still are Conservative or Reform. I'm Conservative not because I'm not motivated enough to be Orthodox, I'm Conservative because I fundamentally think we have a more comprehensive, more compelling, more engaging, more authentic, richer, deeper, and more meaningful conception of what Judaism means. Yet in its public persona my denomination has rarely managed to come up with a coherent self-identity beyond "Jews too lazy to be Orthodox". No wonder we're not considered real Jews amongst the Israeli religious authorities! I wouldn't respect me either, if that were my outlook. You want to know why young Jews don't affiliate with mainstream Jewish organizations anymore? Perhaps its because they don't want to have their Judaism defined by those who -- on the key issue of Jewish concern of the age -- write policy with two eyes on Evangelical Protestants.

It's past time that American Jewish groups begin representing their constituents, and that means taking a hard line on folks who would exclude us from the canon. It also means vigorously promoting our own view of what it means to be Jewish. I'm on the record as saying certain extreme proponents of settler violence and anti-Palestinian racism (I'm talking here of folks who are publicly in favor of exterminating Palestinians, or folks who say "You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic" as justification for permanently barring Arabs from voting in Israel) should be excommunicated from the faith, and I think the Rabbinical authorities of Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism should begin that process forthwith. If non-Orthodox Judaism is to emerge from its current decrepit state, it will need to take bold steps like this -- to show it is a "fighting faith" (to use an older phrase of Beinart's). I think we should defend our positions on abortion, and gay rights, and anti-racism, and religious liberty, as Jewish virtues, not just liberal ones. I think we should come to our policy positions with eye on what we want and what we need, not what John Hagee or Sarah Palin do. Fundamentally, the Zionist dream was about achieving democratic autonomy for the Jewish people. It's a faint autonomy if -- still -- we take marching orders from our Christian "superiors".

Israel Matzav, responding from the right, already recognizes these battle lines. He sneers at what he considers to be the faux-Judaism of young liberal Jews (indeed, he claims -- without support -- that many of them aren't Jewish at all "under Jewish", by which I take it he means Orthodox Jewish, "law"), and forthrightly declares that he'd prefer the support of the Evangelical Christian community over that of the bulk of American Jews. And, as Spencer Ackerman correctly notes, liberal Jews can't expect anybody but liberal Jews to care whether Israel stays a liberal, Jewish state. Illiberal Jews won't care if it remains liberal, non-Jews won't care if it remains Jewish. It's on us -- we can't rely on other people to do our dirty work for us.

The time has come for liberal Jewry to flex its muscle once again -- to stop taking its cues from the Orthodox right (or, needless to say given my past work, the fringe left) and stand up for our own values. If we think the dream of liberal Zionism is important, then it's up to us to preserve it. There is nobody else.

Automatic Self-Defense

Last year, a young, unarmed Black man was shot in his own driveway by a White police officer who thought he was stealing his own car. The shooting occurred in the mostly White suburb of Bellaire; the officer claimed self-defense, believing that the youth was going to pull a gun on him. This past week, the officer was found not guilty of all charges, apparently finding that the shooting was justified.

The Field Negro links this up to the O.J. Simpson verdict, arguing that Simpson's acquittal wasn't due to some asinine belief that Simpson was innocent, but simply the applied knowledge of Black jurors who knew what standards of evidence exist when White folks kill Black people, and believed justice should be colorblind. I remember also reading reports that the Black community celebrated the Simpson verdict not because they saw an innocent man going free, but because a guilty man was. It's not so macabre -- we live in a society whose criminal justice system is predicated on letting the guilty go free. That's what innocent until proven guilty means. That's what it means to believe that it "better that 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer." For a long time, that principle was a luxury reserved only for White folks. The Simpson verdict was a rare extension of colorblind justice. If you think the verdict was unjust, then you have to think it's unjust systematically -- not only when it causes criminals of a particular race to get off.

Nonetheless, I think the better comparison to this verdict is not the Simpson trial, but rather something like the "Subway Vigilante" case or Rodney King, and its racial inversions, such as the Chai Vang case. Ta-Nehisi Coates has written quite eloquently on this subject. White fears of Black-on-White violence are essentially an automatic self-defense acquittal at this stage (every time I read the facts of People v. Goetz, I get chills at how one could acquit -- especially the shooting of Cabey). No person of color is afforded this sort of luxury.

Several years ago, I wrote about the experience of young Black men being profiled because they "fit the description". As one man put it "Yeah. Young black male. I always 'fit the description.'" I wrote then:

I've never been stopped "on the street" by a cop. But I do remember one time when I was a teenager playing "hide and go seek in the dark" by my house. I was crouching behind a leaf pile in my front yard, wearing a dark hoodie, when a cop pulls up behind me. It could not have possibly looked more like a stakeout, and I knew it. So I stood up and heartily waved at the cop, who looked at me for a moment, then kept driving. There is no way in hell he would have just kept driving if I was Black.

Forget "kept driving", as this case demonstrates, I could have been shot.* If "young Black male" always "fits the description", "young Black male" also always means "valid self-defense claim". And that's another way of forfeiting certain, less-valued sorts of lives.

(I also highly recommend Jody Armour's Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America).

* I remember telling this story (quite shaken up) to my mother, who assured me that even if the cop had stopped me, all that would have happened is that my parents would have come out, verified that I lived in the house, and that would have been that. The facts of the Bellaire case put a rather sinister twist on that account -- Mr. Tolan's mother coming out was the proximate cause of the shooting (there was an "altercation" -- the family says the cop shoved the mom into a wall -- and when Tolan raised his head to ask what was going on, that was the movement that the officer took as a threat to his life).

Good Ibish Blogging

Hussein Ibish has a very good post up that simultaneously upbraids a really ridiculous post by Phyllis Chesler, and gives an interesting exogesis of Islamic holy texts that really should be required reading for all those who subscribe to the view that Islam is somehow an inherently violent religion. A snippet on the latter point:

Green was asking me about faith and violence in the context of Islamist extremists, and I said I didn't care for the phrase "religion of peace" which she mentioned, because all religions are social texts determined by the interpretations of their followers and all major religions had historically proven amenable to legitimating both peaceful and aggressive intentions. Green disputed this, saying that the Bible contains a narrative in which the relatively more violent, militaristic Old Testament texts can be reinterpreted in light of the New Testament texts in order to create a peaceful ethos, but that no such narrative existed in the Koran. "Or does it?" she asked me.

I noted first of all that while Green is absolutely right about the way many Christians have interpreted the chronology of scripture composition to allow more peaceful texts to condition the interpretation of more violent ones in the Bible, historically that hasn't stopped many Christians and Christian societies from behaving in an extremely violent manner, frequently in the name of God. However, I also pointed out that Muslims too have a narrative, which Green was clearly unaware of, that allows for the same kind of interpretation of more violent passages of the Koran in the context of more peaceful ones. I pointed out that the Koran was revealed over a period of historical time and that Muslims are well aware of and have discussed in detail throughout their history the understanding that most of the aggressive and militant passages had to do with the period in which the early Muslims are said to have been persecuted by pagan tribes. It is therefore possible, and indeed common, to find Muslim scholars interpreting the more militant texts in the context of more peace-oriented ones, in a manner that is indeed analogous to the way many Christians interpret the more militant Old Testament texts in the context of the more peace-oriented New Testament ones. Indeed, this process of contrapuntal interpretation is supported by the several passages of the Koran itself, including Surah 2:106. This is an absolutely accurate explanation of an important element of Muslim religious thinking that Green was unaware of and was suggesting doesn't exist, and it was important to correct her misapprehension. What I was "really saying" was, of course, that there is a strong basis in Islamic theology and doctrine for interpreting more violent texts in the context of more peaceful ones just as there is in Christianity. It's as simple as that. And it's true.

I'd also note that -- if doing something as radical as replacing the Old Testament with the New is what it takes to sanitize an otherwise "violent" faith, then Jews are in seriously trouble (who's surprised to see Christian-oriented thinkers utterly neglect to consider how Jews are affected by their analysis? Not me!), since our faith ensconced in the "Old Testament" whose rejection is apparently the saving grace (pun intended) for Christianity. Of course, Jews too have reinterpreted our holy texts via Talmudic expansion and other means, to emphasize peaceful behavior and minimize violence. So unless you want to say Judaism is an inherently warlike religion, then one has to give Islam the same opportunity for spiritual adaptation as we have.

Relatedly, Ignoblus has a good post on Ibish's good post on Paul Berman's good book (well, I haven't actually read the book, but it's gotten pretty positive feedback from what I've heard) The Flight of the Intellectuals.