NOW Who's the Big Forecloser?

This story, about a Florida homeowner who foreclosed on a Bank of America branch to satisfy a judgment against them (Bank of America wrongly tried to foreclose on their house, a judge ordered the bank to pay the family's legal fees, which the bank refused to do for months) has been making the rounds, and it is pretty sweet reading. The lawyer got sheriff's deputies to come with a moving truck and just start taking things (cash, desks, copiers, filing cabinets -- whatever). Eventually, the bank manager managed to get permission to cut a check to the attorney for what his clients were owed. Oh, to be able to listen in to that manager's phone call to his superiors. "No, you don't understand -- they're foreclosing on us! My desk is being loaded onto a moving van as we speak!"

But, as cool as this is, I actually might know of a case that could top it. And, not to brag, but it involves my dad. Like the folks in this case, my dad also was seizing property in order to satisfy a judgment. Unlike this case, though, the property was held by the local police department. Here's the tale:

I represented two victims of a notorious serial burglar in a civil suit. We took a default judgment and received a seven-figure jury damage award. We then backed a U-haul truck up to the Fairfax County Police Department with federal marshals in tow to seize the unclaimed stolen jewelry and other merchandise from the Fairfax police on theory that the thief (and my clients as judgment creditors of the thief) had better title to the unclaimed stolen goods than anyone in the world (including Commonwealth of Virginia) except the true owners. This caused an armed federal/state police standoff. Eventually, we took the merchandise to a D.C. auction house and had a televised auction to partially satisfy my client's judgment.

One day, I too hope to legally cause a reenactment of the Civil War on the steps of the Fairfax County PD.

French Peace Plan: Two States for Two People

In an effort to jump-start stagnant peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, the French government has released a new framework for beginning negotiations -- notable because (like President Obama), it explicitly stipulates "two states for two peoples" -- in other words, a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people, and an Israeli state for the Jewish people.

Also like President Obama (and like every single serious peace proposal by any party, for that matter), borders would be negotiated on basis of '67 lines, with agreed-upon swaps. It also is -- surprisingly -- neutral on the question of Jerusalem as a capital for both states, and delays negotiation on that question as well as on the issue of refugees until after borders and security arrangements are finalized. East Jerusalem is a red-line for Palestinians the same way that "right of return" is for Israelis, but I don't care if each side holds out for a favorable agreement on its issue of choice, so long as they get back to the table and start talking.

Overall, the parameters of the French framework are a step closer to Netanyahu's demands, and he'd be a fool not to jump on it -- assuming, that is, he is actually genuine about trying to actualize a two-state solution that envisions an independent Palestine alongside Israel. That assumption, of course, is far from clear.

"Death to X" Marchers are Bad People

Far-right Israeli protesters marched through Jerusalem yelling slogans like "death to the Arabs" and "Muhammad is Dead".

These people are bad people. They are enemies of peace; they are, on the Israeli side's key barrier to an eventual peaceful settlement and coexistence with the Palestinian people (just as their Palestinian analogues who talk about death to Jews -- e.g., in Hamas' charter -- are the primary Palestinian barriers to peaceful coexistence with Israel). As I have expressed before, if I had my way, they'd be excommunicated from my faith.

People who march around calling for the "slaughter" of others are bad people. David Bernstein wants to talk about recognizing "enemies", well, that works as a pretty good definition of whom I think are mine -- those calling for the wholesale slaughter of other people. It's true of the radical Palestinians who want it of Jews, and it's true of the radical Israelis who want it of Palestinians. Both are my enemies. How's that for some moral clarity?

Hackery in its Most Crystalline Form

One of the more frustrating things about this whole "based on '67 lines" flap is that, right up until the moment someone decided to make it into a "controversy", it was one of those things that was so obvious nobody dreamed it was ever controversial. I mean, on what other basis could one possibly base the borders of a two-state solution? The original partition plan? Do we simply divide up all the cities and draw straws? Of course the final borders are going to track '67 lines, with mutually-agreed upon swaps. There is literally no other conceivable starting point one could have for negotiations predicated on the creation of two states for two peoples.

Which is why "based on '67 lines with swaps" was the consensus pro-Israel position right up until the moment Republicans decided it wasn't. And there is perhaps no clearer demonstration of the utter hackery that has accompanied this "controversy" than the behavior of -- surprise -- Noah Pollak and his "Emergency Committee for Israel" (last seen backing Senate candidates who voted to cut off aid to Israel).

The committee put up an ad which, of course, is all up in arms about this '67 lines thing. Except -- whoops! -- Pollak live-tweeted Obama's speech, and at the time (not realizing -- reasonably -- that the consensus position on the conflict would suddenly become ripe for exploitation) was all about praising it. "Nothing new" about Obama's statement regarding the '67 borders. "I don't think there is anything in this speech that Netanyahu will find surprising or even disagreeable." And, most hilariously, "If someone had said to me yesterday, 'you'll be defending Obama on Israel tomorrow,' I would have laughed." Turns out, that premise was pretty laughable.

So Pollak is little more than a partisan hack, who reversed his own position on what Israel needs for its security based on nothing more than an opportunistic desire to attack the President. Israel hardly needs "friends" whose devotion is so thin. So step aside Pollak: some of us think Israel security is actually important -- more important, even, than scoring short-term political points at the expense of those actually working to bring peace and security to Israel.

Carleton Frisbee Dominates, but are they Historic?

Carleton College's ultimate frisbee team (CUT) won Division I nationals earlier this week, besting Wisconsin 11-5. It was a great victory, avenging an earlier defeat to Wisconsin in the North-Central Regional finals and capping an undefeated run by Carleton through the tournament. It's also Carleton's second championship in three years (and they were runners-up to Florida in 2010).

I told this to my dad, and he raised an interesting question. Carleton has an enrollment of a little less than 2,000 people. The University of Wisconsin has an enrollment of over 42,000 people (that counts graduate students -- but graduate students can be part of a college ultimate roster, and indeed, Wisconsin had at least one graduate student playing for it in the championship match). Carleton thus has 40,000 fewer students than Wisconsin -- it's over 20x our size. Our previous two D-I titles were over UC-Santa Barbara (2009) and the University of Georgia (2001), both smaller than Wisconsin (though Georgia clocks in at nearly 35,000 students) [my reading comprehension skills are terrible. Those were the women's champions that year -- Carleton defeated the University of Colorado (30,000 students) in both 2001 and 2009]. He asked whether, in the history of college team sports, there has ever been a championship match where the winning team was that much smaller than its opponent in terms of enrollment?

It's a fair question. In individual sports, of course, every once in awhile you get a standout who randomly is at some tiny school. But in team sports it is much rarer that a small school even plays with the big boys, and in the rare cases where they do and aren't utterly overmatched (e.g., Davidson in D-I basketball), they still don't typically win championships. Now, there might be some exception back in the old days when random teams came out of nowhere to win championships. And even today, one can imagine a sport like Crew or something where a smaller school might have matched Carleton's feat. But it's quite possible this is a unique, and uniquely impressive, accomplishment for CUT.

Anyway, regardless of whether it actually is a record, it's still a mighty impressive accomplishment. Congrats to CUT, and congrats to Carleton, for maintaining an elite level program in at least one sport for so many years.

The Lie That Jewish Donors are Abandoning Obama

Greg Sargent demolishes it here. Now, let's be clear -- there are some Jewish donors, Democratic ones even, that never liked Obama in the first place. They didn't donate to him the first time around, and they're not going to do so in 2012. Haim Saban falls into this category. And, what's more, I expect Obama's Jewish vote percentage to fall off, albeit modestly, from its 2012 peak. That's for several reasons: (1) 2012 won't be the rout 2008 was, (2) the economy will depress Obama's vote amongst all sectors, and (3) Republicans can't possibly be dumb enough to have someone like Sarah Palin on their ticket this time (can they?).

But with respect to the "big" story -- that wealthy Jewish Obama supporters are fleeing him in droves over his taking the mainstream American Jewish position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- no, it's just not happening.

The One and Only

PPP released a poll asking Iowa Republicans their preference regarding GOP presidential candidates. One respondent picked former Utah Gov. and ambassador to China Jon Huntsman. Not "1%", one person. PPP tells us a little bit about the lonely fellow who thinks Huntsman is the best GOP option.

David Schraub, Lobby Enforcer

Earlier today Jon Chait wrote up a post about M.J. Rosenberg's attempt to distill the power and terror of the Israel Lobby which more or less mimicked my reaction to the piece, namely -- did anything actually happen? The story timeline basically runs as follows (1) Sen. Carl Levin wrote up a letter critical of a statement by the Israeli Prime Minister, (2) he shows it to AIPAC's President, who approved of the letter, (3) the Israeli government, and with it some American Jews, flip out, (4) William Safire calls up and tells Levin's office that he has sources which say Levin's letter was ghost-written by an Israeli opposition official, which the office denies, and Safire ultimately decides he believes Levin's staff, (5) an Israeli official came to Levin's office to complain, and, after insulting the Senator, was thrown out, and (6) President Reagan comes out to back up Levin and the position of the letter.

In other words, the upshot of this terrifying display of Israel Lobby power was that (a) a few American Jews and the Israeli government got upset and (b) no other consequences whatsoever. In fact, the Republican President (Saint Ronald himself) backed up a Democratic Senator on the question. Yeah, that's a mighty chilly climate.

Contrast that to what went down in this Ron Kampeas posting about Jewish Republican State Sen. Adam Hasner's (R-FL) potential challenge against Sen. Bill Nelson (D). Kampeas originally cast the issue with regard to the votes of Florida's substantial contingent of older Jewish voters as a case of Hasner's support of the Ryan budget (bad) against his "impeccable pro-Israel record" (good).

I immediately tweeted that Hasner's "pro-Israel" record is only "pro-Israel" to the extent that one doesn't think the occupation is threatening to Israel -- in other words, perhaps the key point of dispute between various camps calling themselves "pro-Israel". To someone like me, someone like Hasner isn't pro-Israel in any meaningful sense of the term. And wouldn't you know if it Kampeas immediately recognized his error and updated the post to note Hasner has an "impeccable right-wing pro-Israel record" -- far more accurate (though oddly, the old version still persists on the permalink -- but if you read the piece on the front page of the Capital J blog, it's been updated accordingly).

Behold, the power of the left-wing pro-Israel lobby -- able to cause journalists to tremble and self-correct with naught but a tweet! Truly, my power and influence knows no bounds.

UCU Redefines Anti-Semitism to Shield UCU

The UCU, perhaps embarrassed over continuing allegations that it harbors a culture of institutional anti-Semitism, has finally agreed to investigate complaints from Jewish members and a torrent of resignations by Jewish academics.

Just kidding! Actually, they just decided to redefine the meaning of anti-Semitism itself, rejecting the commonly held EUMC definition (which affirms the possibility -- though, of course, not the inevitability -- that criticism of Israel could constitute anti-Semitism) in favor of, well, it appears in favor of no definition at all. So I guess it's not a "redefinition" of anti-Semitism so much as an erasure of it entirely -- which, when you think about it, is at least more in line with the UCU's general practice.

The closest thing any of the resolution proponents came up with as a counter-definition of anti-Semitism is "hostility towards Jews as Jews". As was observed, this is a far narrower definition of racism than is applied towards any other group; indeed, it is one that scarcely encompasses any anti-Semitism at all (so long as the speaker can claim to have his one Jewish friend). "I don't hate Black people, just the uppity ones" is still racism. "I don't hate Jews, just the Zionist ones", apparently is not.

Some members complained that the EUMC definition was used inappropriately to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel. Some of these complaints were clearly bogus -- I'm sorry, Sean Wallis, but "refuted utterly" or not, what you said was anti-Semitic under any plausible definition of the term. But even to the extent there were some "bad" allegations made, as one of the few opponents of the motion observed, no definition can, in itself, prevent misuse. The only way we can evaluate the validity of a charge of racism is by assessing it on the specifics -- not by starting with a presupposition that the charge is made in bad faith.

The broader point is this. We have in the UCU a union which endorses a boycott of Israel while praising human rights luminaries like Venezuela, specifically invited a convicted hate speaker to talk up said boycott (and affirmatively refused to disassociate itself from his anti-Semitism), and, faced with a wave of Jewish resignations from the union, elected to celebrate the demise of "Zionist" influence rather than investigate the possibility of a culture of anti-Semitism.

Each day that the UCU continues down this path is a day Eve Garrard's demand becomes more undeniable -- the UCU is simply not an organization that anyone genuinely concerned with anti-Semitism can retain membership in. It is infected beyond salvation.

So What?

Eric Yoffie asks the key question to Israeli hawks: So what if Palestinians are mostly to blame for the failure of peace talks?

Yes, I tell him, you are right. The Palestinians are at fault, but so what? A UN resolution will pass at the General Assembly in September, recognizing a Palestinian state. Israel’s international position is deteriorating. Economic sanctions might follow. And worse yet, elements of Palestinian leadership are already proposing a one-state solution—a single Jewish/Arab state in Palestine, with equal rights for all. If the proposal is accepted, Jews will become a minority in the new state; if it is rejected, Israel will be portrayed to the world as an apartheid state.

So, I ask, what is the plan? Even if we are completely right and the Palestinians are completely wrong, what do we do now to head off these very real dangers?

No matter how many times I have asked the question, I always get the same answer—which is no answer at all. Shmuel rants and raves; he tells me how unfair this is; he reminds me how we are the victims here. And I tell him: yes, yes, I agree. You are right; the world is an unfair place, especially to the Jews. But, I say, raising my voice, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

And the fact is that Shmuel doesn’t know. On some level he seems to feel that the current situation can continue indefinitely: Israel, secure in the justice of its cause, will continue to expand old settlements and build new ones. It will depend, as it always has, on the support of the United States. And if we are in trouble, we will rely on the rhetorical brilliance of our Prime Minister. Who knows America better than Bibi?

I'll make an aside here that relying on Bibi to extract one from a dangerous situation is like relying on Wilt Chamberlain to run your chastity clinic.

Anyway. We can parse how much fault in the current arrangement lies with Israelis versus Palestinians. I'd certainly agree that the situation Israel is in is unfair. But Yoffie is right -- so what? You can whine about how unfair the referees are, but if you lose the game, nobody is going to care. So yes, Israel is going to have to be the prime mover here -- not because it is the bad actor, but because that is the state of the world we're in. There's no way around it.

Oh Hi

Sorry I wasn't blogging today. I was too busy finishing my last law school final exam ever.

Conflicting Data

Reading about a Kadima voter who was exceptionally pleased with Bibi's speech to Congress, I was demoralized but counseled myself with "the plural of anecdote is not data." Unfortunately, new polls in Israel show Bibi's support soaring, with his approvals at 51% (they were, uh, pretty bad before).

On the other hand, a different poll found that 57% of Israelis believing that Israel should have supported President Obama's initiative. I'm not sure how to reconcile these two data points. The best answer I can give is that Bibi locked down his right flank. Except for the radical wings of the settler movement, for whom even contemplating a Palestinian state is heresy, there was little in what Netanyahu said that wouldn't be very appealing to, say, a Yisrael Beiteinu voter.

Still -- these numbers in tandem are very strange.

Joe Walsh is not a Friend of Israel (or Jews)

Chalk up another installment in my ongoing series: Christians lecturing Jews on why they're bad at being Jewish.

President Obama has effectively abandoned the 50-year-old U.S. alliance with Israel.

So, where is the outrage from the American Jewish community? Don’t they understand that the president is not pro-Israel? Aren’t they troubled by his history of pro-Palestinian writings, speeches, and actions? The short answer is that most American Jews are liberal, and most American liberals side with the Palestinians and vague notions of “peace” instead of with Israel’s wellbeing and security. Like the president, the U.N., and most of Europe, too many American Jews aren’t as pro-Israel as they should be and too many share his belief that the Palestinians are victims of Israeli occupation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As I've said before, if you're a Christian legislator who observes that most American Jews have a particular framework by which they view the conflict -- one in which ending the occupation and getting a deal signed are crucial to maintaining Israel's long-term security and status as a Jewish democratic homeland -- one reaction is to say "hey, maybe that perspective has something to it!" But Walsh, of course, prefers to lecture Jews for being insane.

As I argued yesterday, it is people like Rep. Walsh who aren't "pro-Israel" in any meaningful sense. Read his piece -- I defy you to find a workable strategy for securing Israel that carries with it any more sophistication than a Michael Bay movie. There is no indication at all that he has any understanding of Israeli political dynamics, Palestinian political dynamics, the questions which are the major sticking points in negotiations, or even a basic framework of justice that could provide a future framework for piece. It's just macho bluster that could be put in bullet point form. It's embarrassing to read.

The Winning (Losing) Strategy

I've had various people who claim to care about Israel say that "time is on Israel's side." One person I know said that Israel should keep building settlements until Palestinians agree to a deal, as a "price" for not negotiating.

These people are crazy. They are literally insane, and their delusions will see Israel destroyed. Jeffrey Goldberg makes the case that I've been making for months now -- the only thing Palestinians have to do to win everything is wait:

If I were a Palestinian (and, should there be any confusion on this point, I am not), and if I were the sort of Palestinian who believed that Israel should be wiped off the map, then I would be quite pleased with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance before Congress this morning.

I would applaud Netanyahu for including no bold initiatives that would have suggested to the world that Israel is alive to the threat posed by its seemingly eternal occupation of the West Bank.

In fact, I would make support for Netanyahu the foundation stone of my patient campaign to dismantle the world’s only majority-Jewish country. I would support not only Netanyahu, but the far-right parties of his governing coalition, the parties that seem uninterested in democracy and obsessed with planting more Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

The settlements would have my wholehearted backing. I would encourage my brother Palestinians to help build settlements at a brisk pace. I would ask the Israelis to build an even more intricate system of bypass roads on the West Bank that would connect Jewish settlements to one another and to Israel proper. I would ask my ostensible allies among the Arab nations to provide interest-free mortgages to Israelis in Tel Aviv, so they could move out to the settlements for some fresh air and a little more yard. And, while I was at it, I would insist that my leaders abort their campaign for United Nations recognition of an independent state of Palestine.

My goal: To hopelessly, ineradicably, entangle the two peoples wedged between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Then I would wait as the Israeli population on the West Bank grew, and grew some more. I would wait until 2017, 50 years after the Six Day War, which ended with Israel in control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I would go before the UN and say the following:

"We, the Palestinians, no longer seek a homeland of our own. We recognize the permanence of Israeli occupation, the dominion of the Israeli military and the power of the Israeli economy. So we would like to join them. In the 50 years since the beginning of the ’temporary’ occupation, we have seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis build communities near our own communities. We admire what they have built, and the system of laws that governs their lives. Unlike them, many of us live under Israeli military law but have no say in choosing the Israelis who rule us. So we no longer want statehood. We simply want the vote."

And this, of course, would bring about the end of Israel.

That's it. Wait until you've got 50.1% of the population, and then just say "all I want is to vote. That's all." Game over, thanks for playing. This "Jewish, democratic homeland" thing was nice while it lasted.

As Adam Serwer observes, the label "pro-Israel" should be reserved only for those who recognize the critical, existential threat Israel faces from this demographic time bomb. Folks with a lot of bluster but little knowledge don't count. Certainly, the National Union thugs who promise to resist the creation of any Palestinian state don't count (if I had it my way, these people would literally be excommunicated from Judaism). And craven leaders better at shoring up short-term political coalitions than taking the bold steps Israel needs to survive? They don't count in my book either.

Palestinians have time on their side. They have the UN on their side. They have the Arab World on their side. They have growing chunks of the international community on their side. We can whine and moan about how unfair it all is, or we can suck it up and realize that we're living in an unfair world, and deal accordingly.

Not a "Right of Return" Question, or, Josh Rogin Needs To Read Better

Foreign Policy Magazine blogger Josh Rogin has a piece up announcing "White House: Jewish 'refugees' right of return should be 'on the table'".

I read that, and I was rather shocked. "Right of return" for Jewish refugees? That would be rather bizarre. While there were a little less than a million Jewish refugees forced to flee from their homes in Arab countries during the time surrounding the War of Independence, they've never asked for or desired a "right of return". Rather, there demand has always been for monetary compensation for the property they lost (or that was expropriated from them). This, of course, parallels the generally proposed restitution for Palestinian refugees (that it should come via monetary compensation, not a "right of return" to Israel proper). As JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) puts it, the Jewish refugees and their descendants don't want to return back to Libya or Yemen or Iraq. "They want the international community to recognize their plight and integrate full compensation of their lost property as part of a final Middle East peace agreement."

So again, it would be very strange and very interesting for someone to ask about a Jewish "right of return", and it would be stranger still for an Obama administration official to say it is "on the table".

Alas, as it turns out, the simplest explanation appears to be the right one here--Rogin just made the entire "right of return" thing up. Here's the "full exchange", as relayed by Mr. Rogin:

"While Palestinian refugees have concerns that are understandable and need to be dealt with in the peace process, there was no reference in the president's speech to the approximately one million Jewish refugees that emerged from the same Middle East conflict. I'm talking about Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who were forced out of their homelands where they had lived for centuries," said B'nai B'rith International Director of Legislative Affairs Eric Fusfield.

"The international community has never acknowledged their rights and their grievances," Fusfield continued, "[C]an the U.S., as the peace process move forward, play a role in advancing the rights and concerns of these Jewish refugee groups and help ensure that as refugee issues are dealt with... that the focus will not just be on one refugee group but on all refugee groups emerging from the same conflict?"

[Obama administration official Ben] Rhodes responded: "Certainly the U.S., in our role, is attuned to all the concerns on both sides to include interests among Israel and others in Jewish refugees, so it is something that would come up in the context of negotiations. And certainly, we believe that ultimately the parties themselves should negotiate this. We can introduce ideas, we can introduce parameters for potential negotiation."

What's missing in that passage? Any mention of a "right of return". It's just not there, Rogin made it up out of whole cloth. I'm not sure why; possibly because he didn't realize there are other ways of "advancing the rights and concerns of these Jewish refugee groups" other than via a "right of return"? That would be weird -- it's not like monetary compensation for historical wrongs is some sort of novel and outlandish proposition. It's frankly baffling how this error was made -- and again, this wasn't a single slip -- he put it in the item title. But whatever -- however it is Rogin went astray, the point is, his post is flatly and flagrantly inaccurate, and needs to be corrected.

I emailed Mr. Rogin informing him of his error earlier today, but I haven't heard back (and he hasn't issued a correction). And in the meantime, since folks on the internet are already making hay over how this is an embarrassment for the Obama administration, it's important to push back against this egregious journalistic error now. Let's be clear -- if an Obama administration official had said this, it would be a grievous mistake. But he didn't say that. This was a case of a journalist completely blowing it, and other folks running with it.

And, as someone who has written before about the history of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their (typically ignored) claims for restitution, I think it's a terrible thing that -- when a Jewish official (here, from B'nai Brith) finally got that question on the table, and an administration official responded positively to it -- the issue immediately got misrepresented and contorted in a way that only makes it less likely that these people will ever see a dime. Folks like Noah Pollak, who were smugly talking about how there "are no Jewish refugees today", effectively dismiss these people's claims for historical compensation, and betray ignorance of Israel's internal political dynamics, where such restitution is a must-have for certain political parties (notably, Shas) to sign onto any peace deal.

UPDATE: Here was my stab at delineating a just solution for all refugees, a couple years back.

Exam Time Roundup

It'd feel more like "these are my very last exams!" if I wasn't already at work studying for the bar exam.

* * *

Are social conservatives seeing the writing on the wall with respect to gay marriage? The youth is just gone on this issue for them.

Congrats to newly elected Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who scored a massive upset (by a surprisingly comfy margin, too) to flip a historically Republican seat in upstate New York. The race was widely seen as only being competitive because of the Ryan Budget, which proved to be massively unpopular.

Remembering that the plural of anecdote is not data, it is still incredibly demoralizing to hear that Bibi's speech to Congress might have flipped a Kadima voter over to Likud.

Remembering that the plural of anecdote is not data, Bibi's speech seems to have caused Kevin Drum to reevaluate is previously staunchly pro-Israel position.

Putting the above to bits together, we manage to have a situation where both Americans and Israelis are moving in the wrong direction off this. As Ori Nir put it: "Good speech for Netanyahu; Horrible speech for Israel."

Eve Gerrard says the UCU is beyond salvation, after its latest ploy to abandon Europe's commonly-accepted definition of anti-Semitism because it was hitting a little too close to home (actually combating anti-Semitism in the union, of course, appears entirely off the table).

Big BLACK Convicts

Jesus, Scalia, at least try to hide it:

Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates.
[...]
[Justice Scalia, dissenting] added that the prisoners receiving inadequate care were not necessarily the ones who would be released early.

“Most of them will not be prisoners with medical conditions or severe mental illness,” Justice Scalia wrote, “and many will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym.”

Not to be left out, Justice Alito wrote his own dissent warning Californians that "The three-judge court ordered the premature release of approximately 46,000 criminals — the equivalent of three Army divisions." Ladies and gentleman, Rodney King is back -- and he's brought enough friends to fill the I Corps.

Yes, Californians, the Supreme Court has just unleashed an army of huge, muscular, probably dark-skinned convicts, coming to rape you and your family. Probably while you're sleeping (well, they'll wake you up to make you watch).

I don't mean to demean the problem of criminals being released before their sentences are up -- though California's three-strikes rules mean that some of these inmates are serving life sentences to ensure they never steal a set of clubs again. One way to avoid the hellscape of violent criminals running free is for California to release non-violent offenders, like our aforementioned golf-club thief.

But the bigger point is that violating the constitution has consequences. It means criminals go free, for instance. It means local budgets have to pay settlements to persons abused -- money that comes out of police, education, and sanitation budgets. It's a bad thing to violate the constitution. And if California wants to maintain the hyper-carceral state its been building up, well, it either has to pony up the dough for it, or it's going to have to settle for letting folks loose some of the time. Because maintaining a prison system with inhumane conditions isn't the American way.

PS: Anybody remember The Boondocks parody reality TV show "Big Bruthah"? Which White guy can last the longest living in a house filled with big BLACK convicts? God, I miss that comic strip.

Polling Israelis on '67 Borders

972 Magazine collects an amalgam of polling asking Israelis about their support for withdrawal to 1967 lines (with agreed-upon swaps). Standing alone, withdrawal is close to break-even amongst Israeli Jews (add in Israeli Arabs, who of course also have a vote, seems to push the numbers up by about 2-3%). But that number rises if withdrawal is considered part of an all-encompassing peace agreement.

What do we glean from this? One answer is that, like Bibi, Israeli voters do view '67 borders as a concession -- one they're willing to make, but a substantial concession all the same, and one they expect other things in return for. Another answer, which I think is closer to the mark, is that the Israeli public is very leery about withdrawal actually accomplishing anything. The lesson of Gaza and Lebanon were that withdrawal is greeted not by peace but by rockets, rockets, and more rockets. What both those withdrawals have in common is that they did not come as part of any larger agreement -- Hamas obviously still doesn't recognize Israel, and Lebanon has been rather pugnacious in announcing it will be "last Arab country to make peace with Israel." (Incidentally, the comments to this post on how its Palestinian policy has affected the country's internal dynamics are really interesting).

Obviously, one could say a deal is worth no more than the paper it's written on. But even paper is worth more than no deal at all. At the very least, there is a considerable difference between making a deal and reneging on it, versus explicitly holding out that no deal had ever occurred.

In any event, I still am a little baffled as to what other basis for borders there could possibly be aside from 1967 lines. So I'd be shocked if any future agreement doesn't end up tracking the Green Line relatively closely.

Marital Troubles

United States Representative Kurt Schrader, of Oregon's 5th congressional district, is getting a divorce. Why is this interesting? Because Schrader is the fifth straight representative of the OR-5 to divorce while in office. How many representatives has the Oregon 5th possessed since its creation? Five. So the next time you see a politician bowing out of a race in that district for "family reasons", give it a little more credence than normal.

Cain's Palin Moment: "Right of Return" Edition

Hey, remember when Sarah Palin had no earthly idea what the "Bush Doctrine" was? Herman Cain must be having flashbacks, as he just utterly bombed a question regarding Palestinian "right of return" to Israel.

But this morning on Fox News Sunday, Cain showed just how limited his understanding is of the Middle East peace process. Asked by host Chris Wallace what he would be prepared to offer Palestinians as part of a deal, Cain responded, “Nothing.” Just moments later, Cain was dazed and confused when Wallace referenced the issue of “right of return” of Palestinian refugees:

WALLACE: Where do you stand on the right of return?

CAIN: The right of return? [pause] The right of return?

WALLACE: The Palestinian right of return.

CAIN: That’s something that should be negotiated. That’s something that should be negotiated.

Wallace then helpfully offered Cain a definition of “right of return” — “Palestinian refugees, the people that were kicked out of the land in 1948, should be able to or should have any right to return to Israeli land.” Cain again showed his lack of knowledge, veering completely off his pro-Likud script. “I don’t think they have a big problem with people returning,” Cain said.

This is a guy who was just talking a big game about Obama throwing Israel under a bus. And yet here he is, blundering across the biggest Israeli red line there is.

Now, obviously this isn't a thought-out position from Mr. Cain. He was clearly ignorant about the question, took a wild stab at the answer, and happened to miss completely. So let me make an easy cheat-sheet for the political novice:

(1) Two-state solution, roughly tracking 1967 lines with mutually-agreed upon land swaps = the basic template of a negotiated solution for the past several decades.

(2) Palestinian right of return to Israel proper = the one thing no Israeli government will ever, ever accept, because it means the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

But don't sweat it. It takes practice to pretend to care about Israel and Jews in an effective and persuasive manner. I'm sure you'll improve with time.

Obama's Mideast Speech -- a Followup

Ron Kampeas has a roundup of various Jewish groups' reactions to Obama's speech, which, as one might expect, range quite broadly. I do think it's important to push back against the notion that Obama outraged the Jewish or pro-Israel community -- as Kampeas notes, stalwarts like the ADL and the AJC were quite effusive in their praise of President Obama, and Abe Foxman came out hard against the claim by Mitt Romney and other Republicans that President Obama somehow "threw Israel under the bus."

Meanwhile, the dust being kicked up over 1967 frankly baffles me. I guess I'm not surprised at Netanyahu's intransigence, as Bibi lacks any coherent normative commitments beyond his short-term political interests -- exactly the sort of leadership trait Israel needs right now. Having Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister during a crisis for Israel offers historians a wonderful glimpse into how the United States would have managed the Civil War if James Buchanan had remained President. But basically anyone with a pulse already knew that 1967 borders, with swaps, would serve as the basis for any future agreement.

I'm not entirely sure what other basis for borders there could be -- I'm assuming whatever extra territory Bibi thinks he'll get by not "basing" a Palestinian state on 1967 lines he's not planning to compensate by ceding Israeli territory elsewhere, but the acreage of the land in question isn't large enough substantially deviate from 1967 and create an economically viable Palestinian state. In particular, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's statement calling 1967 lines "Auschwitz borders" is horrifically insensitive and trivializing to Holocaust victims, and they deserve to be raked over the coals for it. Meanwhile, as Jon Chait observes, the main existential threat to Israel for the foreseeable future isn't Jordanian tank columns rolling in, but rather not being able to extract themselves from an occupation that threatens to eviscerate their civil society and render the Zionist dream of a Jewish, democratic homeland a distant memory.

And that leads me to my final point. Jeffrey Goldberg sardonically asks why Republicans are misreading Obama's speech, a speech which, by any objective metric, should have been seen as "pro-Israel in a red-meat I-heart-Israel, damn-Hamas, Iran-can-go-to-hell, Israel is the eternal Jewish state sort of way." Goldberg, of course, recognizes that the question answers itself -- Republicans are mischaracterizing the speech because Obama was the one who gave it, and because they see a political advantage in trying to cast the hitherto centrist consensus that existed with respect to the resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict as an attack on Western Civilization.

For years, there has been a tacit agreement with respect to the pro-Israel community -- that while we might disagree about what policies are best for ensuring Israel's long-term viability, security, and liberalism, everyone coming from a genuine position of respect for the state of Israel and its legitimacy as homeland of the Jewish people would be accepted as part of the community. That doesn't include everyone, or every Jew -- there are those who oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state, and they've always been ostracized (which I don't really mind). But the Zionist, pro-Israel community has always been a big tent, including groups like the modern ZOA, that don't even support a two-state solution, as well as more leftward, Peace Now types.

The conservative response to J Street's emergence has broken that agreement -- they haven't just disagreed with it with respect to policy, but they have engaged in a systematic campaign to declare it intrinsically "anti-Israel", anti-Zionist, and hostile to Israel's very existence. But if those are the new rules -- that a group or person shouldn't be pro-Israel if one honestly believes their policy prescriptions are bad for Israel's future survival -- then I see no reason to concede that folks like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or Allen West are pro-Israel in any meaningful sense. The policies they lay out place Israel in mortal peril -- possible the gravest danger Israel has faced since 1973. And what's more, I don't think they care all that much about Israel. Yes, obviously, Mitt Romney would think it a bad thing if Israel disappeared tomorrow. But he'd view it as bad because it would represent some sort of lost Western fortress -- an instrumental failure, not something that effects him personally. It doesn't make his life any worse if Israel ceases to be the fulfillment of the Zionist liberal democratic dream. It makes my life worse, and it obviously makes the Israelis' lives worse. But for Mitt? Israel's little more than a symbol, and an expendable one at that.

Again, if the litmus test is a subjective self-assessment of thinking that one's acting in Israel's best interests, then Mitt Romney is precisely as pro-Israel as Barack Obama is. But if we're going to make this a substantive test -- what policies are best for ensuring Israel's continued survival as a Jewish democratic nation -- he fails utterly. And if he wants to start playing on that field, I'm happy to meet him there.

Talk Turing To Me, Baby

Clive Thompson discusses the Turing Test with an AIM sex bot. Good times.

Obama's Mideast Speech

The buzz on this speech has already been fluctuated wildly, from "he won't say anything new" to "he's going to make an exceptionally bold and ambition statement on resolving the conflict."

I don't know which intuition is right, but the latter is obviously more fun to speculate over. So what do I want to hear?

1) Clear assertion of the right of Palestinians to a state, based on 1967 borders. There will be landswaps, and there should be landswaps, but the basic right of Palestinian statehood has to be acknowledged.

2) Clear statement that the establishment of a Palestinian state is in Israel's clear, existential interest. Palestinian statehood isn't a "favor", nor is it just idealistic posturing. It's a necessary condition to Israel's continued safety and security as a Jewish, democratic state.

3) Clear affirmation of Israel's right to defend itself and live inside secure borders. This is boilerplate at this point, but obviously remains important.

4) Clear rejection of the right of return. Rightly or wrongly, a speech that forwards points #1 and even #2 will be seized upon by rightist elements as "proof" that Obama is "anti-Israel". That's ridiculous, but it's reality. Observing that the right of return is a non-starter, and that at the end of the day not everyone is going to be able to live in the precise patch land they want to, is a good hedge against this. It's a known negotiation red-line, everyone knows that a final deal won't include it, something that is objectively hostile to final resolution of the conflict, and something that pro-Israel folks care about passionately. Compensation for refugees, yes, absolutely, but no right of return.

5) A call on both parties to hit the negotiating table. Both sides bear their share of the blame on this. The Palestinians got a 10 month settlement freeze, and spent much of that time dicking around rather than attempting to make any progress. On the other hand, that freeze was pretty anomalous for a Netanyahu administration that, by and large, is abjectly incompetent at best (with coalition members who are best described as fascistic). Whatever -- the point is that the only way things happen is if people sit down at a table and commit to banging an agreement out. Enough is enough.

How many of these points do you think Obama will hit? Fingers crossed for a good speech.

UPDATE: Four out of five, by my count. Obama specifically punted on refugees (as well as Jerusalem), but the functional replacement w/r/t my political analysis was his call for a demilitarized Palestinian state. I continue to be a little perplexed at why this is supposed to be so appealing. I want Palestine to have a monopoly of violence in its borders. The alternative isn't "no weapons in Palestine", but rather something like Hezbollah setting up shop with the actual government too weak to stop them (just like in Lebanon). But again -- whatever helps make a deal....

Knesset Moves To Recognize Armenian Genocide

The Jerusalem Post reports that a Knesset bill officially recognizing Turkey's genocide of Armenians is moving forward. Historically, bills of this nature have stalled because of the importance of maintaining Israel's friendly relationship with Turkey. But now, with the two countries' ties at a historic nadir, that concern apparently has fallen off.

There was a similar reversal last year in the US Congress, where the House Foreign Relations Committee passed am Armenian genocide resolution, after years of seeing it narrowly fail. Jewish groups had historically been, at best, tepid with respect to the resolution, in part to assuage Turkey (which made it very clear that it would retaliate against Israel if Jewish groups didn't toe the line). As Turkey began to turn more aggressively against Israel that year, though, that leverage went away, and a major barrier to the resolution's passage disappeared with it.

Then and now, one can debate how much of this is "a diplomatic shot at Turkey draped in self-righteous clothing" versus "doing the right thing now that Turkey has already spent its leverage which had hitherto prevented it." Obviously, the latter is more noble than the former. But regardless, the important thing is that the victims be commemorated.

And as for Turkey, my message remains the same as its ever been: Grow up. Lot's of countries have horrible things in their history. It's true of the US, it's true of Israel, it's true of China -- it's probably true of every country -- and it's true of Turkey. Turkey has plenty of contemporary problems to deal with (e.g., it's Prime Minister threatening to expel its remaining Armenian population), but part of maturing as a nation is learning to deal with your past.*

* Which, incidentally, is part of why Israel's recent flurry of "anti-Naqba" legislation is so distressing.

Quote of the Day

From my Feminist Philosophy readings:

Edward Said's Orientalism has fathered a received wisdom in colonial studies that has proved to be as narrow and frozen in its scope as it has been powerful in its impact. It proceeds from a conviction in the totalising nature of a western power knowledge that gives to the entire Oreint a single image with absolute efficacy. Writings of the Subaltern Studies pundits of a group of feminists, largely located in the first world academia, have come to identify the structures of colonial knowledge as the originary moment for all possible kinds of power and disciplinary formations, since, going by Said, Orientalism alone reserves for itself the whole range of hegemonic capabilities. This unproblematic and entirely non=historicised "transfer of power" to structures of colonial knowledge has three major consequences; it constructs a necessarily monolithic, non-stratified colonised subject who is, moreover, entirely powerless, and entirely without an effective and operative history of his/her own. The only history that s/he is capable of generating is necessarily a derivative one. As a result, the colonised subject is absolved of all complicity and culpability in the makings of the structures of exploitation in the last two hundred years of our history. The only culpability lies in the surrender to colonial knowledge. As a result, the lone political agenda for a historiography of this period shrinks to the contestation of colonial knowledge since all power supposedly flows from this single source. Each and every kind of contestation, by the same token, is taken to be equally valid. Today, with a triumphalist growth of aggressively communist and/or fundamentalistic [identity]-politics in our country, such a position comes close to indigenism and acquires a near-Fascistic potential in its authoritarian insistence on the purity of indigenous epistemological and autological conditions.

It has weird implications for the feminist agenda as well. The assumption that colonialism has wiped out all past histories of patriarchal domination, replacing them neatly and exclusively with western forms of gender relations, has naturally led on to an identification of patriarchy in modern India with the project of liberal reform alone. While liberalism is made to stand in for the only vehicle of patriarchal ideology since it is complicit with western knowledge, its opponents--the revivalists, the orthodoxy--are vested with a rebellious, even emancipatory agenda, since they refused colonisation of the domestic ideology. And since colonised knowledge is regarded as the exclusive source of all power, anything that contests it is supposed to have an emancipatory possibility for the women. By easy degrees, then, we reach the position that while opposition to widow immolation was complicit with colonial silencing of non-colonised voices and, consequently, was an exercise of power, the practice of widow-immolation itself was a contestatory act outside the realm of power relations since it was not sanctioned by colonisation. In a country where people will still gather in lakhs to watch and celebrate the burning of a teen-aged girl as sati, such cultural studies are heavy with grim political implications.

Tanika Sarka, Rhetoric against the Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife, Economic and Political Weekly (September 4, 1993), p. 1869.

Professor Sarkar is an Indian historian (currently teaching at Jawaharlal Nehru University). The piece is on how this harsh binary between empowered colonial discourse, and resisting "traditional" ones, ended up masking and suppressing an indigenous political and social resistance to certain oppressive practices (here, child brides). While Orientalism certainly flattens out the cultures it gazes upon (so that "India", as a whole, supports marrying off children), defenders of the orthodox status quo are easily able to pivot off "anti-colonialism" to do the same thing -- casting their preexisting intellectual and social opponents as agents of the empire, complicit in its evil, while their behavior -- far from representing an internally-contested expression of proper cultural norms -- is "resistance", and thus not the proper subject of critique.

I don't repost this quote because I think this is something "all feminists" or "all people opposed to colonialism" do (the fact that Professor Sarkar wrote the article, and that it was assigned in a Feminist Philosophy class, gives lie to that notion anyway). But I do think Professor Sarkar is responding to a real dynamic that has real consequences in terms of how we understand securing human rights across diverse, plural societies.

Okay, One More Thing

Our lovely anonymous friend is complaining that there are "personal attacks" on him on this blog, which he proclaims are the reason for his defiance of the banning. Since he (a) hasn't linked to them and (b) is, um, anonymous, I have no way of verifying what those posts are or what their content is. I can't commit to taking any action with respect to those posts until I know what they are.

My email address is listed in the comments policy. Let me know what posts are so offensive as to grate you so, and I'll see what I can do.

Comments Moderation Back On

See, this is why I can't go anywhere nice. A bunch of comments deleted as violations of policy (specifically, combinations of numbers 1/1.5, 2, 3/3.5, and 5). So moderation comes back on. Sorry for the inconvenience to the people who have been behaving themselves. As to the folks whose comments were deleted, I refer you to Comment Policy #1 for an explanation.

I may have to require a sign-in, if only so I don't accidentally delete valid comments under a misplaced suspicion that they are actually written by a cloaked banned commenter. I have to think on that for awhile.

UPDATE: Moderation lifted.

Workshop Roundup

Come to law school for the makeup class, stay for the workshop (actually going to the makeup class is apparently optional).

* * *

Former Utah Gov. and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman takes the bold (for a GOPer) stance that climate change is real and scientists are worth listening to -- except for the part where we do something about it. Oh well, baby steps.

Newt Gingrich's poll tests -- too extreme even for Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

Cornel West flips out at Barack Obama. Melissa Harris-Perry has the best response. My favorite part was West's outrage that a hotel bellhop could get tickets to Obama's inauguration, but he couldn't. Outrageous!

Ex-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) declares John McCain knows nothing about torture, McCain's office responds with "who?"

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has a manifesto in the New York Times. Rebecca Lessee lets fly at it, but while I think a lot of her points are well-taken (and Abbas' misleading omissions and use of the passive-voice are aggravating), I'm beginning to come around to the notion that centering the Israel/Palestine discussion around endless sniping over narratives is probably not all that useful (though I continue to hope that respect for each others' stories is the "end game").

Hamas interviews one of the protesters at the Jordanian/Israel border. She misses the good old days when her father "massacred the Jews" of Hebron (she's 92 and originally from Hebron, so she's speaking from experience regarding the 1929 pogrom). Meanwhile, a Hamas official is licking his lips over the opportunity to wipe the Jews out.

Jocks for Equality

Man, how can you not love Charles Barkley? His recent statements regarding gay men in sports are fantastic:

Also weary of the perception that a majority of straight male athletes are intensely homophobic, Barkley said gay players pose no problem, adding, “Man, we need to outlaw guys who suck at sports.”

“I really like ESPN,” Barkley added. “They do a great job. But like once every two or three months, they bring all these people on there, and they tell me how me and my team are going to respond to a gay guy.

“First of all, every player has played with gay guys. It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say, ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.”
[...]
And now Barkley, who played as masculine as any 6-foot-4 power forward in the history of playground or pro hoops, uttering the words, “It didn’t bother me,” saying he knew he had gay teammates.

“Any professional athlete who gets on TV or radio and says he never played with a gay guy is a stone-freakin’ idiot,” Barkley said. “I would even say the same thing in college. Every college player, every pro player in any sport has probably played with a gay person.

Barkley’s message: Don’t worry. Deal with it.

“They’re not going to do anything in the locker room,” he said. “Doesn’t work like that.”

Barkley added that he wished Welts, whom he knows well because he lives in Phoenix, the best in the fallout from his public revelation. He also explained his stance and feelings about the issue.

“First of all, society discriminates against gay people,” Barkley said. “They always try to make it like jocks discriminate against gay people. I’ve been a big proponent of gay marriage for a long time, because as a black person, I can’t be in for any form of discrimination at all.”

Talk about straight talk.

Meanwhile, if I had to pick the hockey player most likely to be at the fore for marriage equality, Rangers thug Sean Avery wouldn't top the list. But way to prove me wrong. And honestly, I should know better -- I was always tickled to note that the enforcer on my high school hockey team was arguably the smartest, most thoughtful member of it -- he ended up attending the London School of Economics. So there you go.

Making it Worse on Yourself

Wisconsin Scott Walker (R), showing that his astounding lack of empathy does not extend only to the working class, is attempting to withdraw his defense of a state law permitting same-sex couples hospital visitation rights, on the grounds that it contravenes a state constitutional ordinance barring same-sex marriage, as well as "legal status[es] identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals."

Obviously, there is a parallel to the federal Department of Justice declining to defend the Defense of Marriage Act on their belief that it violates the federal constitution. Procedurally speaking, I don't have strong thoughts on when, if ever, it is appropriate for the executive to not defend a duly-enacted law. But that debate does not obviate the substantive difference between seeking to affirm the equal human rights of all Americans, and trying to denigrate and destroy those families Scott Walker thinks are comprised of second-class citizens. I also find it notable the way conservatives seamlessly pivot between noting that marriage isn't a prerequisite for such things as hospital visitation rights (to demonstrate that there is no rights-violation from the marriage proscription), while simultaneously fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent gay couples from enjoying those privileges. It's rather dizzying.

In any event, if I were a judge hearing this argument, I'd be sorely tempted to invoke the doctrine of constitutional avoidance to reject Governor Walker's position. The doctrine of constitutional avoidance basically counsels courts to interpret ambiguous statutory (or here, state constitutional) provisions in ways that "avoid" causing constitutional problems (notably, this doctrine does not require that the Court affirmatively state that the "problematic" interpretation necessarily would be unconstitutional, only that it raises a significant specter of constitutional controversy). The more bans on gay marriage impinge on specified, concrete rights and privileges of gay couples, the harder it is to maintain that they don't constitute a prima facia equal protection violation. I think that the text of the Wisconsin amendment is, at best, ambiguous as applied to hospital visitation privileges, so it seems like a prime candidate for avoidance. And, of course, phrasing the ruling as an exercise in avoidance helps build precedent for what should be clear -- the linkage between bans on gay marriage, and restrictions of the rights of homosexual couples, raises real equal protection concerns.

IDA ...HO? HoT? TH?

Peter Tatchell is promoting this year's International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia as an opportunity to pressure Commonwealth countries (Tatchell is British) to drop their regressive and often brutal anti-gay laws. This is obviously timely, what with Uganda's "kill the gays" bill back on tap. But all I can think of is Tatchell's acronym: IDAHO. International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Shouldn't it be IDAHoT? Or IDAHT? Or you're all hung up on pronounceability, switch "homophobia" and "transphobia": IDATH. Yes, it means you no longer evoke America's 43rd state, but trust me, it's less evocative than you think.

New Rule Roundup

Not eating lunch today was a mistake.

* * *

In the wake of the NHL barring Detroit Red Wings fans from throwing Octopuses onto the ice after goals, Down Goes Brown offers up some other new hockey rules.

Obviously this legal interpretation isn't going anywhere, but still amusing: Florida accidentally outlaws sex. Kind of like how Texas accidentally barred marriage.

TNC on how all Black people are scary Black people.

Interesting documentary on an Israeli doctor working to save the life of a Palestinian child in the midst of Cast Lead. Apparently it is getting rave reviews.

Hamas is willing to accept a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, but will never recognize Israel, because that would imply giving up the right to a Palestinian state ... beyond 1967 borders.

I do approve of Tolkien permanently transforming elves from midgets to lithe giants.

SPME Taps Out

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is a group that, by all appearances, has laudable intentions: speaking up against the BDS movement and in favor of genuine engagement and peace between all parties in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it looks like there is much less than meets the eye.

My suspicions were originally raised by this review essay they published, which inaccurately labeled J Street and J Call as supporters of the BDS campaign and appeared to lament the "consensus among Israeli intellectuals in favor of a Palestinian state." But I assumed that it was a one-off, not an officially sanctioned position.

Unfortunately, it looks like the group really is going out of its way to pander to the right. They just released a letter urging CUNY to reverse-its-reversal regarding the honorary award to playwright Tony Kushner. One does not have to agree with Kushner to find this difficult to swallow -- particularly given SPME's anti-boycott focus on academic freedom. One also has to note the naked dishonesty of calling Kushner a BDS advocate -- a position he has repeatedly rejected (and whose rejection has become well-known in the wake of this controversy). And I was so excited at how "the system worked".

Worse, SPME also makes a specific point to defend instigating trustee Steve Wiesenfeld -- he who labeled Palestinians "not human", which is perhaps the clearest evidence to date that their concern is not about creating the conditions of mutual respect required for peace, but simply provincial partisanship on behalf of putatively "pro-Israel" speakers. Just as Kushner deserves criticism for his positions on Israel (and he does), Wiesenfeld deserves everything that's come his way as well. Creating space for peace in the middle east means undermining all those who demean the worth and dignity of others -- whether the speakers identify as "left" or "right", "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestinian".

It is all deeply unfortunate. The center I occupy is holding fine, but it is always frustrating when one finds out someone you thought might make for a suitable ally -- isn't one. Tragically, SPME has come out on the wrong side of this issue -- and done so in a way that seriously damages their credibility as a true force for peace and reconciliation.

Ignorance is the Best Disinfectant

Kevin Drum points to Boston Globe story casting doubt on whether disclosure of conflicts-of-interest is a useful check against abuses.

Basically, researchers ran a study where one set of people was asked to make an appraisal (say, the value of a house), and another was designated experts to assist them in their appraisal. When the experts were given a conflict of interest (being paid more based on how high the appraisers valued the house), they gave inferior advice. Big surprise. But when the experts were forced to disclose their conflict, they gave even worse advice. And, the appraisers were more likely to listen to the conflicted-experts, because they didn't want to seem untrusting after the appraiser disclosed their conflict. So massive failure all around.

This reminds me of a similar story regarding a law mandating transparency in corporate executive compensation. It was passed during one of those scandals over how ridiculous corporate salaries were, and the idea was "we'll shame them into bringing their compensation practices down to earth." Well, all that happened was now all the companies knew what their competitors were paying, and all the companies below the median immediately hiked their salaries to match the market. And those above median? Well, they thought they were just rewarding good work, and wanted to maintain their edge at attracting talent -- so they jacked up their compensation too. Yay, bidding war!

What'd I Miss Roundup

Part of the frustration with yesterday's blogger outage was that I was actually planning on posting real stuff (honestly!). Now, I just have to clear the browser again.

* * *

CUFI and J Street: More in common than you might think?

These ads are humiliating as a Democrat and as a Jew. Demon sheep, anyone?

I admit a perverse curiosity in knowing just what type of porn Osama was into.

I'm really stunned that any legislator could vote to shackle female inmates while they are giving birth. It's one of those policies I know exist, but that I always imagined was just bureaucracy gone wild.

Prominent racist saxophonist Gilad Atzmon attempted to hold a fundraiser for a Gaza flotilla, but it appeared to have flopped dramatically.

The National Review turns on Mitt Romney.

Blogger Outage

FYI, there was a blogger outage yesterday, which kept me offline and apparently has (temporarily, I hope) removed a few of my posts. One of them has since returned, but there is at least one still missing -- hopefully to be back soon!

Social Conservatisms

Ta-Nehisi Coates observes that, for all the controversy over Common coming to the White House, hip-hop actually has pretty strong socially conservative roots. Of course, TNC isn't the only one who has observed this. But it did register something interesting: social conservatives don't like social conservatism -- when it's done by other people. Their social conservatism is good and salutary. Other people's social conservatism is reactionary and barbaric.

I might have first noticed this during "Islamo-fascism Awareness week", "that magical time of year when Republicans briefly pretend to care about gay rights." Iranian social conservatives want to stone homosexuals, while their American peers merely went wild over abolishing lengthy prison terms for them. And remember all the hell Dinesh D'Souza took when he forthrightly noted that part of the reason reactionary Islamic movements hate us is for our, well, freedoms? Yeah, that went over well.

The Glass Ear

David Hirsch is here responding to the University of Johannesburg's Peter Alexander's defense of his institution boycotting an Israeli peer university, but the message he sends has a far broader resonance than that:

I raised the issue of antisemitism in my argument against the boycott. I think Israel is singled out, for no politically or morally relevant reason, for punishment. I think that the history of antisemitism in Europe and now in the Middle East is such that singling out Jews arbitrarily for punishment is a dangerous thing to do. To go easy on our criticism of the antisemitism of some of Israel’s deadly enemies is also dangerous. There is an increasing body of evidence that the boycott movement brings with it a disproportional hostility to those who oppose it, many of whom are Jews. Jews are challenged to criticize Zionism in the terms set out by their accusers on pain of being denounced as racist and as pro-apartheid. The issue of antisemitism has been raised by the OSCE, by the US state department, by the South African Human Rights Council and by a UK Parliamentary committee.

Peter Alexander simply says that the issue is raised in bad faith, in a dishonest last-ditch attempt to win a losing argument. He refuses to take the issue seriously. He refuses to respond. A fellow sociologist raises the issue with Peter and he looks stonily on and says: you are only pretending to be concerned, and really you do it for selfish and secret reasons. Instead of examining the antizionist social movements in which antisemitism is alleged to appear, he looks within himself, and finds himself not guilty. But as a sociologist he should understand that racism is an external and objective phenomenon, not a subjective feeling inside his own soul.

Peter makes much of ‘the call’ by ‘the oppressed’. But when Jews raise the issue of antisemitism he listens with a glass ear.

No more comment needed.

The System Works

Now that the CUNY-Tony Kushner flap appears to have wrapped itself up, let's reflect for a moment. Because -- correct me if I'm wrong -- as far as I'm concerned, the system worked.

How can I say that? Isn't the very fact that Kushner was originally rejected for the degree proof of some sort of failing?

Well, yes, obviously. But the whole point of having a system in place regarding academic freedom is to have failsafes and redundancy. A working system of academic freedom is not one in which nobody ever screws up. A working system is when those screw ups are rectified by other actors in the process, protecting the freedom of persons to make statements or hold positions others find distasteful.

So let's go to the timeline here:

1) CUNY faculty votes to award Tony Kushner an honorary degree.

2) A CUNY trustee delivers a speech mischaracterizing Kushner's views on Israel.* This persuades a minority of trustees to vote to block Kushner's award.

3) Everyone flips out. The New York Times, J Street, Ed Koch, Jeffrey Goldberg ... people who like Kushner, and people who find his views on Israel deeply wrong. Everyone.

4) CUNY reverses its decision and decides to grant the honorary degree.

5) Kushner indicates he'll accept the award.

As far as I'm concerned, that transition from #2 to #3? That's kind of what we want to happen, no? I mean, yes, obviously, it'd be better if Jeffrey Wiesenfeld wasn't a dick in the first place. But the next best thing is the part where the entire social community unites across their partisan divides and says "wrong, bucko." And then the board immediately reverses itself. Hurray! The great failures of academic freedom aren't cases like this -- they're the ones where the suppression happens, and the world collectively shrugs.

A culture of open inquiry and academic freedom isn't one where nobody ever tries to stifle opinions they dislike (anymore than it is one in which nobody promotes an idiotic idea). A culture of academic freedom is one in which, when those missteps happen, the broader community acts quickly and decisively in defense of the enterprise. That, by all appearances, is what happened here. And in that, it was a great success.

* Kushner has said that Israel's founding involved ethnic cleansing, and has expressed grave misgivings about Israel's founding in the first place. He has not supported a campaign of boycott against the state. Obviously, I disagree, strongly, with anyone who thinks Israel shouldn't have been founded. The ethnic cleansing claim is a factual question towards which I am unqualified to opine. The historian Kushner relies on, Benny Morris, argues that some cleansing occurs but that it was not official policy -- it was an ad hoc decision by individual commanders on the ground.

Post-Nap Roundup

It was such a wonderful day outside. I have no idea why I came back to my apartment and collapsed into an 1.5 hour nap.

* * *

Uganda's "kill the gays" bill is back, albeit it sounds like the execution part itself has been removed.

Adam Serwer comments on the President inviting Common to the White House.

In the burgeoning intra-Iran feud between Ayatollah Khameni and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Geneive Abdo explains why we should root for Khamenei. Recognizing the force of her arguments, nonetheless, I myself am rooting for injuries.

Anti-Shariah laws -- bad for religious liberty, hence, bad for the Jews.

Robert Farley on Chomsky the IR theorist.

Do my homework with me! Read Martha Nussbaum's critique of Judith Butler.

Rick Santorum Comes Out Against Pre-School

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (R) thinks pre-school education is basically fascism in another garb (via):

Rick Santorum, a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, even raised the specter of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy in a speech here Friday night while explaining why his grandfather emigrated to the U.S. His uncle, he said, “used to get up in a brown shirt and march and be told how to be a good little fascist.”

“I don’t know, maybe they called it early pre-K or something like that, that the government sponsored to get your children in there so they can indoctrinate them,” Santorum said.

I know what he means. Pre-school was all about getting you to stand in orderly lines and march inside when dear leader teacher tells you to. There's all this emphasis on sharing and respecting differences and not resolving conflicts by punching people in the face. Basically, it's a Islamo-fascist-Marxist-liberal-leftist-Obamacare nightmare come true.

Human Rights as Moral Rights

Ori Herstein on the unreflective human rights community:

As we were all taught, human rights law aspires to capture basic moral rights. Yet, somehow the aspirational component of human rights law is lost on many of the more zealous and unreflective members of the human rights community, for many of which the positivistic lawyerly labor of stringing together the variety of hard, soft, and ephemeral sources of international law functions as a form of moral as well as legal reasoning. For the unreflective human rights lawyer your position is morally wrong because it is legally wrong. Figuring out what the law is is not the beginning of the conversation – as is usually the case for legal academics – but rather the end of the conversation.

And this is where things turn from frustrating to worrying. In the minds of some, human rights law does not merely aspire to reflect morality but actually does – by definition –reflect morality, thereby making human rights law insular and immune to external moral critique. Some human rights lawyers appear to have appropriated not only certain legislative powers over international law, but by extension also view themselves as legislators of morality itself. And, anyone who dares argue against or question the supposed presumed state of human rights law is categorically an enemy of moral rights. Because after all, human rights are moral rights. Aren’t they?

I think this is amplified by my feeling that "international law" in this field is particularly amorphous and malleable, and is this particularly vulnerable to being bent to fit the moral priors of the opinion leaders who determine what international human rights law is. Substantive moral commitments can and are easily snuck into black letter doctrine as the way things always were, and then their presence as legal rules in turn buttresses their status as clear moral obligations.

One Camp, Two Camps, Three Camps, Four Camps

Two events, nearly back to back, have recently gotten me to thinking about the fissures, real and imagined, within the Jewish community regarding Israel. The first is CUNY's nixing of an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner, based on his views regarding Israel (that decision may be reversed). The instigating trustee accused the Palestinians of being "not human", and his accusations regarding Kushner were of dubious accuracy (and defended by the bizarre logic that Norman Finkelstein affirmed them -- apparently Finkelstein is the epitome of a credible source now?). Needless to say, Kushner and I do not see eye-to-eye on Israel -- not even close (it's also needless to say that Kushner was being honored for accomplishments utterly unrelated to his views on Israel) -- but the actions of CUNY were cowardly, misrepresentative, and not in keeping with the spirit of academic freedom.

The second is a benefit concert headlined by Gilad Atzmon to support another Gaza flotilla. Atzmon is someone who has described himself as a "self-hating Jew", among various other outrageously racist comments (the list is literally too long to recount and manages to run past virtually every anti-Semitic theme of the past century, from blaming Jews for the Holocaust to accusing them of schemes of world domination to asserting that Judaism is an inherently "supremacist" ideology). It isn't clear whether the flotilla organizers have officially sanctioned the concert (being hosted by a Methodist Church, incidentally); needless to say, accepting a check from Gilad Atzmon should be seen as accepting one from David Duke (who has praised Atzmon in the past).

What connects these two events in my mind is not that they represent the battlelines of the "debate" in the Jewish community over Israel, but rather the fact that they don't. Most Jews, regardless of political predilection, recognize Atzmon for the despicable thug that he is. And with the CUNY controversy, it has been noteworthy to watch Jews of all different political orientations lambaste the decision. It ain't just, or even primarily, folks known as particularly left-wing -- Ed Koch was way out in front on this, and Jeffrey Goldberg was quick to offer his condemnation as well.

Until very recently, there have been three major "camps" of American Jewish thought with respect to Israel. There is a hard left that never really liked Israel much to begin with, finds Jewish particularism embarrassing (if not immoral), is perpetually playing footsie with various anti-Semitic ideologies and social movements to prove that they're "Good Jews", and would rather see Israel go away or absorbed into its neighbors. There is a hard right that is suffused in anti-Arab racism, never saw the Palestinians as truly human, doesn't really care about liberal or democratic values, and is content to live out a biblical/nationalist (take your pick) fantasy whereby a Jewish state permanently occupies all the land "from the river to the sea", with its Palestinian inhabitants either driven out or permanently disenfranchised (it also seems to be in a constant state of furious disbelief that Jews don't vote Republican). Both of these two perspectives have been relatively marginal compared to the third camp -- the one in which most American Jews reside, and most American Jewish institutions reside. These Jews think Israel was and is a good idea, think it is perfectly appropriate that Jews have a national homeland to call their own, and also think that a two-state solution with an Israel and a Palestine living side-by-side is a critical part of that dream. Like Jews themselves, this camp is left-of-center.

The much discussed crack-up within the Jewish community should, by all rights, be described as being internal to this third camp. All the major participants -- from Peter Beinart and J Street, to the AJC and AIPAC, do agree on the broad sweeps I've laid out as crucial to it. All support Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. All support a two-state solution. AIPAC does not prefer an endless occupation, and J Street does not desire an Israel demolished at the feet of Hezbollah. What they do have is a difference in emphasis. And arguably, what we are seeing is a shift from from three camps into four, with the original "third camp" dividing with respect to how aggressively the US and the Jewish community should force Israel's hand with respect to things like settlement policy.

But the first two camps -- the hard right and the hard left -- have smelled an opportunity. They both have a vested interest in portraying the playing field as consisting, not of four camps, but of two. Either you're a member of ZOA, or you support BDS. Obviously, amongst the broad middle band of Jews, there are those who lean left and those who lean right, and each side calculates that -- by playing on the revulsion many feel towards National Union or JVP, they can win new converts. After all, if the only way to support Israel is to be a far-right nationalist, then people who find that doctrine appalling may see no other choice but to join hands with the far left. And vice versa -- if the whole space of (sometimes) critics of Israel is owned wholesale by IJAN, then people who find those activists to be supremely deluded may think themselves homeless except for their hard right peers.

This is a problem. Ameinu and the AJC might have their differences, but there is no reason -- none -- why an Ameinu supporter should think of themselves as closer to the JVP than to the AJC, and no reason why an AJCer should think of themselves as closer to the ZOA than to Ameinu. The difference within the (former) third camp are ones of strategy and of focus, the differences between us and the first and second are ones of ideology and principle.

I am a progressive who supports Israel. I will not cede the "supporting Israel" to Mort Klein, and I will not cede the "progressive" to Naomi Klein. From my vantage point, this is not a particularly difficult ground to hold, but for the loathsome groups on the far-right and far-left who are doing their best to convince everyone it doesn't exist.

It does exist. It exists in TULIP and Engage, Ameinu, and OneVoice. It exists in people like Hussein Ibish, and Peter Beinart, and Jon Chait, and Jeffrey Goldberg, and Harry's Place. These people and groups don't agree on everything, and I don't agree with them on everything. They've been wrong (and I'm sure I've been wrong). But they are part of a center that is still holding, and still has to hold. Because, as painful as the recent divides have been -- and they have been -- a world in which there is conflict amongst persons committed to a just, peaceful solution to the conflict placing a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel, next to a secure, independent, nation of Palestinians, is infinitely preferable to one in which our only choices are between warring camps of racists who differ only in who they wish to see dominating.