Has the President Condemned Marx Yet?

Like Pejman Yousefzadeh and (apparently) the rest of the Jewish community, I'm personally outraged that the Obama Administration has yet to discover time travel, and thus was unable or unwilling "to forcefully speak out against instances of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party" -- namely, a statement by Rep. James Moran (D-VA) from September 2007 (over a year before President Obama took office). One would think if you're going to have one keynote example of Obama's supposed unwillingness to take on anti-Semitism, it would be a good one -- "good" defined here as "not requiring one to violate the laws of physics."

Shifting tactics from examples of Democratic anti-Semitism that occurred before Obama took office, Mr. Yousefzadeh then turns to examples that don't involve Democrats, also mentioning a collection of anti-Semitic cartoons posted on "progressive blogs". Alas, most of them show up on Indymedia, which, as the name might hint at, isn't associated with the Democratic Party (of course, even if some random yahoo who identifies as a Democrat says something anti-Semitic, that doesn't actually obliged the President to issue a response). Perhaps we can merge the two complaints together and inquire why the President hasn't come out against Lenin?

And don't get me started on the ridiculous double-standard wherein we can impute the President's "unwillingness" to condemn cartoons published on a website that 99% of Americans have never even heard is evidence of his contempt for Jews, but dare mention* racism amongst the Tea Partiers and you're playing the dreaded Race Card.

* Or, since Mr. Yousefzadeh, despite his recitation of Jews' apparent fear that we'll be "tarred as racist by a charismatic president who is a gifted orator," doesn't actually give an example of President Obama calling anybody -- much less a Tea Partier -- racist, have a "supporter" do it. Apparently, Obama's oratorical skills are so great that they transmute onto all the faithful.

The Unfriendly Approach

Writing in the WaPo, Reuel Marc Gerecht claims that the problem with America's policy for combating Islamic extremism is that we've been too friendly to Islam writ large:

How do you approach the problem of Islamic militancy in the West and in the Middle East? President Obama, who has had innumerable briefings on the threats posed by al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups, has chosen to dial down American rhetoric (it was actually pretty tame under President George W. Bush) in the hope that average Muslims, wherever they may be, will view the United States as more friend than foe, and help Washington combat "violent extremism."

This friendly approach is probably, unfortunately, counterproductive. So far, it's unlikely that Muslim self-criticism -- our ultimate salvation from Islamic holy warriors -- has improved under Obama. Judging by the satellite channel Al-Jazeera, a vibrant hodgepodge of all things Arab, the opposite current, fed by Western self-doubt, appears to be gaining force. By being nice, we suggest that nothing within "Islam" -- by which I mean the 1,400-year-old evolving marriage of faith, culture and politics -- is terribly wrong. By being kind, we fail to provoke controversy among Muslims about why so many Muslims from so many lands have called suicide bombers against Western targets "martyrs" and not monsters. Worst of all, by being considerate we fail to echo the great Muslim dissidents, deeply religious men such as the Iranians Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, who see that something has gone very wrong within their country and their civilization. The president would do well to be more nuanced in his outreach to the Muslim world, giving more sustenance to those who see its systemic problems.

I think there are several problems with this. First, I think there should be an inherent aversion to the President -- a government actor -- criticizing an entire religion as flawed or diseased (if only on Establishment Clause grounds). Criticize horrible acts done by or in the name of a religion? Yes, of course. But blurring together all of Islam -- Sunni and Shi'ite and Sufi, North African and Middle Eastern and South Asian -- and proclaiming it infected is the sort of sweeping judgment about religious faith that as a constitutional matter we should tread lightly over. Imagine if the President had issued a statement demanding Christianity reform itself after the George Tiller murderer? After all, when it comes to murdering doctors in the US, that's a problem primarily associated with Christian extremists. Putting aside the legal questions, I honestly don't think Islamic terrorism in the United States has manifested so gravely so as to warrant sweeping chastisement of an entire billion-plus-person religious faith.

Second, Gerecht's claim that "some Westerners are having a more vivid debate about Islam's travails than most Muslims are having," is vague to the extreme and gives no guidance about what the statement even means, much less whether it is a positive development. Obviously, it's simply wrong that the Muslim community doesn't have an internal debate going on about what Islam means (maybe they aren't having the debate in Gerecht's living room, but that's what makes it "internal"). And while perhaps the American "debate" is more "vivid", in the sense that it indulges in lurid fantasies about whether Islam is a religion at all or a massive Dr. Evil-esque conspiracy to dominate the world, but it's hardly the case that this is a salutary development.

But most importantly, I think Mr. Gerecht doesn't really get how this sort of criticism works, or what the likely reaction to it will be. Criticism is unlikely to be taken seriously as a genuine, good-faith attempt for mutual improvement when the criticizer has credibility with his or her target. But there is no reason to think that US officials, including the President, possess that sort of credibility in the Muslim world. President Obama isn't a Muslim, much less a Muslim reformer. He is the leader of a country which many Muslims believe is at war with them, personally. More to the point, while Gerecht is correct that the US government has thus far been reasonably consistent in being "nice" regarding Islam qua Islam, that's no longer the case with respect to all American leaders. Folks like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin have had no such qualms regarding the permissibility of attacking Muslims qua Muslims -- Obama would likely be viewed as bowing to pressure from that segment of America, which (needless to say) would be credibility shredding. Pop quiz: Do you think the Goldstone Report helped or hurt the cause of Israeli critics of the occupation? How about the BDS movement? The answer is "obviously not", because neither the UN nor the BDS leadership possesses credibility with the community they are putatively trying to influence.

Mr. Gerecht doesn't explain why President Obama siding with Islamic reformers is likely to be considered credibility-enhancing in that community -- he seems to simply assume that if the US says something, everyone will have an epiphany about how right it is. In the "friend or foe" debate, we can just fiat the "friend" position, with no work on our part whatsoever. This is little more than intellectual Green Lanternism (ironically, a term created to counter an entirely different Gerecht argument).

This isn't to say that the US shouldn't make common cause with Islamic reformers, anymore than the US shouldn't make common cause with elements of any religious tradition (Jewish, Christian) seeking to undermine radical, violent, and/or fundamentalist elements inside its community. There are lots of organizations doing great work on the subject (the Quilliam Foundation out of the UK being a prominent one). But there's no reason to cast such groups as positive exceptions to the infected rule. Why make the concession that such views are exceptional or aberrational within Islam? That's fighting on the extremist's turf.

The Invisible House

CNN asks how it is that 11 Cleveland-area women could have gone missing and nobody noticed. Looking at the pictures, the answer seems obvious: None of them was a pretty White blonde.

And there is another suspicion echoing among Cleveland residents, particularly in the black community: that the lives of poor black women aren't worth much, certainly less than had they been suburban white women.

Gosh, whatever could give them that idea.

They Love Us for Our Freedoms?

A Tea Party acolyte sings the praises of Israel:

Hucke is a Christian who has spent years evangelizing at shopping malls, and by her lights, our once-godly nation has become so decayed -- so crime-ridden and secular -- that it's time to draw lines. She supports racial profiling, for instance. "We've got Mexican people streaming across the border, and we can't profile that?" she says. "And who's flying airplanes into buildings? Muslims! You know how they treat Muslims over in Israel? They stop and search them. Because they're the ones who are doing it."

Israel, of course, does profile rather aggressively (though I don't think profiling exhausts Israel's treatment of Muslims). Nonetheless, this is hardly the type of praise I think Israel wants, nor is it the reason most American Jews support Israel. Jews want to see a "light unto nations"; (certain branches of) Christians apparently are just marveling at Israel's fine-tuning of a security state.

I accept that Israel faces grave security challenges that it needs to react to. But one of the things I admire about it is the degree to which it has preserved a commitment to human rights in the face of that struggle. Israel's engagement in profiling may be necessary, but it is hardly the element of its society that I'd want to see sung from the rooftops.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors

I'm really glad the Japanese are willing to permanently traumatize their children for my personal amusement.

"Accountable for them First"

The Forward has an interesting story about going-ons in Rockland County, New York, where an Orthodox-Jewish majority on the local school board is accused of short-changing public schools in favor of directing benefits to private Yeshivas (where their children attend). I blogged about a similar story (I don't think it's the same district, but the facts are eerily similar) last year, but the Forward gives a perhaps more cohesive look.

Rick Roll Win

The best I ever did in a college paper was cite to Pirates of the Caribbean as a thesis statement for what law is ("more like a set of guidelines than actual rules").

The Moderate JDL

Continuing his intense, but well-deserved, attack on the ADL, Jon Chait remarks on the occasion of the organization giving an award to Rupert Murdoch shortly after Abe Foxman complained about rising "polarization, rage, stridency and partisanship":

If you're interested in the general principle of tolerance and equality, then awarding Rupert Murdoch is preposterous. But if you define your values in a purely sectarian way, then a figure who advances an illiberal agenda that defines Jews as one of the "good" nationalities is right up your alley. Looks increasingly clear that Foxman has made his choice, and is defining the ADL's agenda not as the universalistic vision of the ADL's founders but as a moderate Jewish Defense League.

It's really sickening, watching Foxman mutate a once-indispensable member of the anti-bigotry coalition into this.

In Good Faith and Bad

David Hirsh is one of those folks who makes me despair of getting tenure, for he's always already said what I was planning to write on. His recent article, Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conflict and about antisemitism The Livingstone Formulation, ‘playing the antisemitism card’ and contesting the boundaries of antiracist discourse, 1 Transversal 47 (2010) is just such a paper (though I'm sure I could have come up with a better title). The piece, which discusses deployments of the "Livingstone Formulation" (basically, that claims of anti-Semitism are bad-faith efforts to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel), is extremely well-done and well-put-together, and is a must-read for anyone who cares about accusations of "card-playing" in racist discourse of any stripe.

It's a Classic!

Sometimes I wonder if conservatives realize Black people have said things other than "I have a dream...."

Obviously unfair -- there are Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell to consider. Still, the power of the conveniently dead civil rights icon lives on -- as does the ease with which the right tends to ignore the substance of other aspects of Black political thought (including Dr. King's).

Orthodox Jews are not Evangelicals in Funny Hats

Yeshiva World has five tips on what not to do when trying to attract Orthodox Jewish votes. Paladino should have read rule #2:

2- Don’t bash gays. This is the major mistake that many politicians outside of Boro Park make. They think that Boro Parkers care about social issues. They’re wrong. Boro Parkers care about social-service issues not social issues. As far as they are concerned, violating shabbos, eating pork and gay marriage are in the same category – transgressions of Jewish law. But Boro Parkers aren’t trying to convert the world, they’re only trying to improve theirs.

That doesn't mean the Haredim support gay marriage, they just can distinguish between the spiritual and the secular. As one Lubavitcher put it with regards to Cuomo's gay marriage stance: "He's not running for Rabbi".

Should be required reading for conservative NY pols who still can't figure out why their red meat conservatism isn't getting them the Jewish vote.

The Reasonable Christian

While I had to put my two cents into the comments regarding the problematic use of "Judeo-Christian", Caroline Mala Corbin's post on Texas' recent (2007) addition of "under God" to its own state pledge is well worth reading.

The Fifth Circuit recently rejected an Establishment Clause challenge, relying on a "reasonable person" test to conclude that the Pledge remains primarily patriotic, rather than religious, in connotation. Professor Corbin adopts from feminist theory to argue that the court is implicitly adopting a "Judeo-Christian" [sic] standpoint in making this assessment of reasonability.

Israel Invites Chilean Miners To Visit

Savvy move by the Tourism Ministry.

The Problem with "Pro-Israel"

Walter Russell Mead has a fabulous post up entitled "The Problem with J Street", but which would be far better titled "The Problem with 'Pro-Israel'". Mead's basic thesis is that the entire premise underlying J Street is wrong. J Street exists to mobilize a pro-engagement, pro-peace, "anti-Likud" (though I find that phrase to be aggravating) American Jewish polity in hopes of affecting US policy towards Israel and, ultimately, foster peace between Israel and Palestine. The problem, Mead says, is that this fails to understand what's actually driving American mid-east policy. Hint: It's not the Jews:

J Street fundamentally misreads the politics of America’s Middle Eastern policies, and as a result it is essentially irrelevant to the real debates that will decide what America will do in the region. Globally, one of the most common (and idiotic) assumptions about American foreign policy is that “the Jews” control it. Virtually everyone in the Middle East, a deeply depressing number of Europeans (who cling to anti-Semitic myths about Jewish power and clannishness even while claiming to be completely free of prejudice), and even a handful of misguided Americans think that American gentiles are so weak and so foolish that a handful of clever, rich and unscrupulous Jews have led us around for decades with rings through our noses when it comes to the Middle East. The allegedly awesome mindbending power of Jews in the media and the allegedly irresistible power of Jewish money (through AIPAC and other organizations) bribed politicians and bamboozled the public. How else, these theorists of occult Jewish power ask, to explain America’s stubborn and stupid support of the Jewish state?

Everything I know about the history of American foreign policy, the state of American opinion, the nature of American ideology and theology, and the state of American politics tells me this is wrong. Support for the construction of a Jewish state in the Holy Land has been an important part of American Christian and political thought going back to colonial times. The ideas of Jewish exceptionalism and American exceptionalism have been bound together in the American mind for more than two hundred years. During the Cold War, Americans gradually got into the habit of considering Israel one of our most valuable and reliable allies. In recent years this longstanding association has been substantially strengthened by the widespread public belief that the same people who most hate Israel and want to bring it down are the bitter enemies of the United States and will stop at nothing to kill as many American civilians as they possibly can.

AIPAC’s power, which is real, is a bit like the power of the National Rifle Association. The NRA has a lot of influence over American gun legislation, and few politicians want to take it on. It spends plenty of money and mounts plenty of PR campaigns, but if large numbers of Americans didn’t care about gun rights, the NRA would be a much less important and relevant organization. The NRA mobilizes an existing public consensus, and it increases the impact of the public support of individual gun rights, but its power flows from the public’s belief that gun rights are good — and that the NRA is a reliable watchdog. Politicians quake in their boots and obey because they know that if the NRA labels them ‘anti-gun’, the voters will believe the NRA on an issue that matters to them — and in most races the politicians who cross the gun lobby will pay a heavy political price.

AIPAC’s power works the same way, but it needs to be stressed that the politicians who fear it aren’t thinking much about the Jewish votes it allegedly commands. Less than two percent of the US population is Jewish, and Jews aren’t exactly swing voters. Next to African-Americans, Jews are the most reliable (and most liberal) bloc of voters in the Democratic Party.

AIPAC’s political power ultimately comes from its ability to influence non-Jewish voters. If AIPAC and related groups call politicians anti-Israel, the tens of millions of non-Jewish voters who connect Israel’s security with American values and interests will believe them. (A recent poll found that 53% of voters were more likely to vote for a candidate who was ‘pro-Israel’.) AIPAC is powerful because it is the accredited watchdog on an issue the non-Jewish public cares about; if the dog barks, something is wrong.
[...]
Non-Jewish Americans aren’t listening to AIPAC because they are prepared to give “the Jews” whatever they want when it comes to Israel policy. Still less do they worry that defying AIPAC will bring down the awesome power of “the Jews” on their heads. They listen to AIPAC because they believe it is a reliable advocate for the approach to the issue they want American policy to take. A sturdy majority of non-Jewish Americans support Israel for reasons that have nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the generally more liberal and nuanced views of American Jews. Back in the 1920s, when most American Jews were still anti-Zionist, both houses of Congress unanimously supported the Balfour Declaration, the British statement that it would support the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Generalizations are always tricky, but from where I stand Jews in the media are also, on balance, if anything perhaps a bit less likely to take hard-line pro-Likud positions than non-Jews. Yes, there is Commentary and a relative handful of highly visible Jewish conservative and neoconservative writers at places like The Weekly Standard. But William Kristol and John Podhoretz are not exactly typical figures among contemporary journalists who happen also to be American Jews. Roger Cohen, Joe Klein, and Tom Friedman are, for example, considerably more critical of Israel than, say, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. David Remnick’s New Yorker doesn’t read much like a Likud PR outlet. The New York Review of Books stands, if anything, a bit to the left of J Street on Middle East issues.

The mainstream American Jewish journalistic establishment is firmly anti-Likud; the Jewish side of Hollywood is almost vituperatively anti-Likud; the predominantly liberal financiers of Wall Street — like George Soros — feel much the same way. To the extent that there is an American Jewish establishment, that establishment favors J Street style ideas. If the Jews of Hollywood, Wall Street and the mainstream media were as powerful and clannish as European anti-Semitic legend has it, Europe would actually like America’s Middle East policies much more than it does.

It can’t be repeated too often: the American Jewish community is not responsible for the popularity of hard line views among American non-Jews on Middle East issues. Individual Jews and predominantly Jewish organizations like AIPAC derive their influence over American foreign policy not from their Jewishness, but from the affinity of their policy agenda with the views and priorities of America’s non-Jews. When American Jews say things about the Middle East that resonate with the views of American non-Jews, they are influential. When, as in the case of the persistent agitation to free convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, Jewish conservative supporters of Israel deviate from the gentile consensus, that influence suddenly disappears. When, like the many liberal Jewish journalists and pundits who think hard line policies in the Middle East are bad for both Israel and the United States, they say things that American non-Jews don’t like — their views and their insights are largely cast aside. In none of these cases is the Jewish identity of the writers the key to the reception accorded their ideas.

J Street, in other words, is trying to mobilize a community that already agrees with it -- under the false presumption that largely Christian America cares what Jews think. I think Mead is correct at the shortcomings of the strategy, though I don't think the problem is with J Street so much as it is with the broader American populace which treats Jews so cynically and instrumentally. J Street remains important simply for expressive reasons -- if America wants to take a hawkish line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fine, but it shouldn't be allowed to hide behind the skirts of "the Jews" to do it. And, by the same token, I think Jews have a clear right to prevent a reformulation of "pro-Israel" that would act to exclude most Jews! It's hardly a knock on J Street that it thinks that Jewish opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should carry actual, as opposed to mythological, weight, in our political discourse.

As you might expect from the sustained block quote, Mead's entire article is spectacular, and (title notwithstanding) I recommend it without reservation.

Abbas Admits Peace Could Have Come Long Ago?

In the course of reiterating his flat rejection of ever recognizing Israel as a Jewish state (I really don't think this is a preparation for a counter-offer), PA head Mahmoud Abbas appeared to make a startling admission:

"If we showed flexibility on these issues the peace agreement would have been signed a long time ago," Abbas said.

It would be one thing if Abbas believed, as Mr. Ibish apparently does, that this "Jewish state" thing is just a distraction to delay final resolution of the conflict. But Mr. Abbas does not seem to believe this. Indeed, much the opposite -- he seems convinced that the conflict could have ended years ago had Palestinians been willing to compromise on points such as this, but apparently recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is such a grave affront, such a impregnable red-line, that contra Ibish, it is "worth continuing the conflict and the occupation to refuse to try to find a reasonable formula" for characterizing Israel's Jewish status.

More Unfortunate Typos

Rich Whitney, The Green Party candidate for governor of Illinois will show up on electronic ballots as "Rich Whitey". But not in every precinct, mind you. Just a few heavily Black ones in Chicago.

Poser

I've always felt like Rabbi Yehuda Levin -- the Orthodox Rabbi behind NY Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paldino's anti=gay remarks at a synagogue -- was part of a particularly obnoxious branch of Jews who seem to desperately want to be Christian. Sometimes, when we talk about "marginal figures" within a religious group, we mean those whose views are more extreme manifestations of the general norm. For example, there are preachers whose homophobia and hatred towards gays is so extreme that embarrasses Christians as a whole, but it's perfectly fair to say that anti-gay prejudice is mainstream in political Christianity. Levin, by contrast, doesn't even seem like an "extreme Jew", so much as a Republican operative/Jerry Falwell wannabe who likes to play dress up. I mean, look at this:

“I was in the middle of eating a kosher pastrami sandwich,” Rabbi Levin said. "While I was eating it, they come running and they say, ‘Paladino became gay!’ I said, ‘What?’ And then they showed me the statement. I almost choked on the kosher salami.”

Something about the way he's repeating "kosher" here seems awfully defensive -- like he himself feels the need to defend his Jewish bona fides. Which, in a way, he does -- since his views are so far out of the Jewish mainstream as to make him a laughable figure. Laughable, that is, if he weren't professionally devoted to tying the holy name to hatred of others.

UPDATE: Assuming I understand the meaning of "cooning" (unlikely), Ta-Nehisi Coates agrees.

Ethics are for Chumps Roundup

I just found out that Maryland doesn't require one to take the MPRE. Guess where I'm taking the bar?

* * *

Interesting study out in the Journal of Social Issues on the conscious versus subconscious value people place upon their race (full text here, may be behind a pay-wall).

Howard Jacobson's "The Finkler Question" has won the Man Booker prize.

Mormon leader's comments on gays and lesbians spark an outcry. The church is responding with the usual pablum about how -- support for institutionalized discrimination notwithstanding -- they love and respect everyone, and it inspires the usual mix of bile and contempt in me.

Jon Chait is convinced a GOP-controlled Congress will attempt to impeach Barack Obama.

Harry Reid may finally be putting some space between himself and Sharron Angle.

Alex Knapp fisks the "education" Pam Geller (and, presumably, many others) have received about Islam.

Dropped Letter

Here's a correction you never want to write:

This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men.

Ouch.

On the "Jewish State" Demand

The US has officially backed -- or at least expressed its sympathy -- for Bibi Netanyahu's demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for a settlement freeze. Hussein Ibish, on the other hand, thinks that it demonstrates Netanyahu isn't serious about negotiations at all. What gives?

I think Ibish's position, though characteristically well-argued, is not quite right. The strongest argument against Netanyahu's request is that it exchanges something effectively permanent (recognition as a Jewish state) for something temporary (a settlement freeze of indeterminate duration). That's a fair point, but, as I think we'll see, it is something that could be worked around.

Ibish's other arguments, however, are unpersuasive. First, he claims that Israel's Jewish character was never a sticking point in Israel's negotiations with Egypt or Jordan. But that's primarily because Israel's Jewish character did not touch on any core claims of Jordanian or Egyptian nationalism. By contrast, it is a significant thread of the Palestinian national project that all of what is now Israel should really be Palestine -- "a Palestine next to a Palestine", as BDS founder Omar Barghouti described his ambition. The "greater Israel" project has the same ambition in reverse, which is why any permanent settlement has to be phrased as two states for two peoples. Otherwise it will have the feeling of but a temporary cease-fire in a larger conflict (which, in all honesty, is not particularly far off from Israel's relationship with Egypt and Jordan, whose civil society has always been furious that Israel yet breathes).

Second, he says that the "Jewish state" declaration is not merely symbolic, but has tangible impacts on the final resolution of concrete status items like refugees and Jerusalem. The latter is left essentially unargued, and the former is an area upon which everyone understood Palestinians will have to make significant concessions anyway. Palestinians demanding a total right of return is like Israel demanding to keep every settlement in the West Bank -- it's beyond a non-starter, it's a joke.

But the biggest problem is that Ibish's entire argument doesn't warrant what the PA actually did -- wholesale rejection of Netanyahu's gambit, accompanied by accusations of racism. What it warrants, as the US intimated, is a counter-offer. Ibish already concedes that President Bush's rendition of the "Jewish state" (that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people). So why not say that? Or better yet: "We are open to recognizing Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people as a product of final status negotiations." Then they don't even have to make the permanent-for-temporary-concession trade. But the PA didn't even look for something that, which indicates what many have long suspected: They're opposed to this sort of deal as a matter of kind, not degree.