Occasionally I find information – in this instance, a case of law – at the beginning and the end. I wrote, in July 2009, on facebook about Hal Turner, using a post of this same name. Let me quote what I wrote then, using a First Amendment lawyer as my source.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” reads the first Amendment to our Constitution. What is free speech? In the article below a radical blogger suggested that three judges be killed for limiting the use of handguns (against the Second Amendment, after all). Is Mr. Turner allowed the right to suggest, apparently seriously, that a judge, or any citizen be killed?
Free speech and its limits are not the classic example of not being allowed to yell “fire” in a public place. Free speech means you can look at someone, anyone, and tell them “I most respectfully disagree” without being prosecuted, followed, monitored, or suspected of being a terrorist. You can even say “I hate you and am ceasing all diplomatic relations with you” and make it clear you have no intent to hurt the person, merely to disengage your social contract with them, and what you say is legal and fair. You have the right, according the First Amendment to say “I disagree with your policies”.
It is quite possible to disagree with a citizen, a judge, or an inanimate object without issuing a death threat and infringing on that person or object’s right to exist. It is not quite easy to disagree with a person and maintain favorable relations. Indeed, the impulse is maximize our gain, and minimize our loss, in all relations — and we need not learn of minimax in political and economic theory to pursue this end. What, then, of people who, seeking a short term minimax strategy, find their gain to be to issue threats against the existence of another? In short, we have failed. Yet that does not excuse the act of a person, nor their responsibility to conceptualize acceptable and unacceptable, as the state of their own social contract agrees.
We have doubtless failed Mr. Turner in his education, as we each fail or lack in necessary qualities. It is nonetheless our bounden duty to disagree, under the full protection of the law, without resort to violence or threat of violence.
“touching our person seek we no revenge, but we our kingdom’s safety must to tender that to her laws we do deliver you” Shakespeare, Henry V; in which our laws are the greater good and our person are threats only. It is the duty of the state to see that laws are followed, so that we each may maximize our gain. Mr. Turner, you do misunderstand the need for firearms. It is not for you, alone, but for our collective security.
Why mention this now, almost eighteen months later? Well, that’s about how long it takes for things to go through our legal system, and there was a resolution. “A right-wing New Jersey blogger has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for making death threats against three federal judges in Illinois.”
What is equality? It is a long, hard, struggle that does not end in legal recognition. The Magna Carta gave landed gentry some rights; rights that they had to fight to maintain over many centuries. An end to slavery in the Americas meant what? That former slaves could easily become rich landowners? That was never the case. What of suffrage for women? Are they now equal to men? In pay, in social value?
Every 365 days we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. Today is not that day, but it worth remembering every day what he and many other men will tell us. Our calm president from Illinois – the living one, not the one who built a log cabin – remembered King well a couple years ago.
“Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice….”
It does not bend on its own. There are causes left to fight. The Civil Rights Act did nothing except create a law. The Americans with Disabilities Act is just a law. A wise man, long dead, once told an audience of lawyers that the law is to protect and help people. If it is done right, that is what law is for. That alone does not make all laws good, but it reminds us that we are the ones who fight for equality.
Interestingly, I just wrote about European Values, mostly immigration and religious or ethnic purity; now I’m writing about American Values.
For the past decade we Americans have been terrorized by fear of terror. For the incoming 112th congress, there seems to be little difference between immigration and terror.
Foreigners and terrorists: Really, what’s the difference? That the nation has grown and prospered precisely because of adaptive immigration is beside the point, an obvious reflection of someone caught in the old mindset of the September 10th world. Interestingly, though, only about 8 percent of those who cast ballots in the 2010 election cited immigration concerns as their primary motivator. Of those who did, however, nearly 70 percent were Republicans.
Somehow, that doesn’t exemplify the fear our government and populace bounce off one another well enough. Society is a collective, and that includes our state of mind.
The American collective state of mind has become incapable of making the elementary, basic distinction between personal preference and law. To raise the matter with colleagues and friends is to elicit responses dictated solely by what one thinks of Wikileaks, Assange and their doings. That is a logical non sequitur and ethically obtuse. My personal feelings about them have nothing to do with my judgment about the illegality and arbitrariness of what our government is doing. Nor should it. One should be fierce in denouncing this violation of our principles and laws whatever/whomever the object of the abuses. We used to understand that….
How have we reached this point? The obvious answer is fear — fear exploited by self-serving elected officials whose own political interests trump their oath of office to protect and obey the constitution of the United States of America. Fear and the craven behavior it spawns. Supposedly we are a people whose bravery keep us free — supposedly.
When did Europe begin discriminating against immigrants? For that matter, when did history begin? This idealistic notion that Europe, or America (the ‘America’ that thinks it has ‘European Values’), is a non-discriminatory land-of-the free, red-white-and-blue, enlightened and tolerant society doesn’t hold valid under scrutiny.
Europeans have always come from somewhere else. The French came to France from Armenia and Georgia. The Saxons, themselves scattered and multi-ethnic after wars between the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, invaded Anglia at about the same time the Danes did. And now they all call themselves English. Spain wasn’t Spain at all until its disparate kingdoms were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Germany was never a united entity, and people moved from one European principality to the next without much thought of identity other than fealty to the lord who protected them.
The European Union hasn’t changed any of that. People say they belong to larger entities now – a county, a state – but there is still a flow of people – some forced, some voluntary – from one area to the next. So, historically we can agree with the European Union’s President, Herman van Rompuy, when he said, “”Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe.” But for tens of centuries, the people that comprise what is now Turkey have been flowing, voluntarily and involuntarily, into what is Europe. So Europe – Bosnia, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland – has Turkish immigrants. Even more scary for them, they have Muslim residents.
Herman van Rompuy thinks that Europe is a land of Christians. He forgets that in the flow of time, all Europeans once came from Turkey
If you were brave enough to read my long article on Israel you may remember that US-Israeli relations was described in terms of drug dealing. I strongly doubt that Thomas Friedman had a recollection of that article – if he ever read it – since his comments on the same topic come several months later.
Oil is to Saudi Arabia what unconditional American aid and affection are to Israel — and what unconditional Arab and European aid and affection are to the Palestinians: a hallucinogenic drug that enables them each to think they can defy the laws of history, geography and demography. It is long past time that we stop being their crack dealers.
It’s time to stop offering incentives to countries that don’t act in their own interests. That’s you, Israel. And you too, Palestine.
Oh Jason Linkins, you are so huge, and so good! He has survived battle with the almighty blogging gods, and has the nerve, the vivacity, the very life-force to walk away unscathed enough to use media to tell the media that they are suffering from WikiLeaks denial.
My blunt-force trauma takeaway from the most recent WikiLeaks document dump of diplomatic cables is that our diplomats seem to be very sharp and candid and detailed in their reporting, and that people of great stature seem to have mean things to say about other people of great stature when their backs are turned. The latter phenomenon is not alien to anyone who had the misfortune of attending an American high school, circa 1919-present, but because the people involved in the WikiLeaks dump are all ranking members of the global aristocracy, Julian Assange must obviously be hunted down and gutted with all deliberate haste!
Or as Glenn Greenwald critqued the media, or those who are allowed to speak as media with no definable credentials, definitely isn’t finished.
Those who demand that the U.S. Government take people’s lives with no oversight or due process as though they’re advocating changes in tax policy or mid-level personnel moves — eradicate him!, they bellow from their seats in the Colosseum — are just morally deranged barbarians. There’s just no other accurate way to put it. These are usually the same people, of course, who brand themselves “pro-life” and Crusaders for the Sanctity of Human Life and/or who deride Islamic extremists for their disregard for human life. And the fact that this mindset is so widespread and mainstream is quite a reflection of how degraded America’s political culture is.
Frankly, I’m not terribly concerned over who called who ineffective, or a sissy. I’m sure that some of these people who report on diplomacy never studied international relations as they marched through the wonderful ranks of American schools. That’s okay, I found international relations less than fascinating, and view it as an unsatisfying career choice thanks to frequent changes of administration. But maybe, just maybe, some of these people who write all day long about affairs should realize (I hope they already have) that diplomacy works through backhanded comments and interpretations (or perceptions) of the other player.
As I said, I’m not concerned that these comments leaked out. These aren’t the only comments we’ll hear about the incompetence of foreign leaders; there’s a lot more to come. There’s also going to be lots on banks – and, like most of the other information, with the exception of name-calling, that was leaked, is already known information (but information that the traditional media has conveniently forgotten to comment on) – mostly dreadfully exciting information like whether a CEO knows what a derivative is, or which bank director was calling which other bank director a sissy. But we’ll see.
But what of the exciting, non-Jason Linkins types, who are hired to report information to us, a desiring public? “Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S….as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon,” according to a member of the blogging (and hence non-traditional) media, Greenwald. Those “authoritarian” minds aren’t Korean, or Iranian, or whoever else is left in the Axis of Evil; the authoritarians are Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin again, John Hawkins, Marc Thiessen, Seth Lipsky, Jeffrey Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, Rep. Pete King, The Wall Street Journal, and others
Thanks to Greenwald for the sources, and for this; “after a decade’s worth of American invasions, bombings, occupations, checkpoint shootings, drone attacks, assassinations and civilian slaughter, the notion that the U.S. Government can and should murder whomever it wants is more frequent and unrestrained than ever, ” and that includes stateless and non-governmental organizations such as WikiLeaks, whose primary goal is part of America’s First Amendment, Free Speech.
In fact, what should be a scathing of US policy has turned into a castigation of the US media. And only the media can be blamed for this, for they grovel as if they had no idea that policy and communique were occurring while they reported news.
And they deserve it.
William Robert “Bob” Holcomb, my great-uncle whom I am named after, died this 29th day of November.
It’s not easy to write an epitaph; nor will laugh lines suffice.
When you know someone only when they are old, you envision them as old, and not young. Such is the case when we look at a relative much older than ourselves. But Bob Holcomb wasn’t always old. There was even a time when he wasn’t deaf (flying bombers in WWII without anything to deaden the sound or protect the ears didn’t help). Bob may have been one of the many unsung heroes across America; coming from the Greatest Generation, he believed in family, he believed in service, and he believed in justice and the law (he was a member of the California Bar Association for more than fifty years). He didn’t receive praise until far after his eighteen years of mayor of San Bernardino were over.
My memories of Bob may be similar to your memories of kindly family members from the Greatest Generation. Those memories often involved Thanksgiving or a holiday, and always involved family stories that changed through the years. Like many of your relatives with the means to do so, Bob opened his home to many people in need of assistance over the years. He supported countless individuals, gave them means, and gave them hope. In return, and it was not demanded, those many people devoted themselves to him. Such a character will be greatly missed. I’ll miss you, Uncle Bob; the world will miss a character such as you.
I used to play KingsofChaos, an online mmorpg (massively multiplayer online role playing game). As far as games go, it fulfilled its purpose, or at least was quite addictive and consumed time that could have been spent on academia. But it’s been around since 2003, and is currently in “Age” 14. I played “Age” 1-7, or thereabouts, and when after more than four years of dedicated interest to a game where I knew about three people in ‘real life’ the challenges of the game had not changed past the first week I played, I finally – about four years later – lost interest. The “Age” always lasted more than six months; the overworked high school nerds (about my own age) who created the game probably didn’t have enough time to dedicate to it.
Another nerd about my own age, within several months of the creation of KingsofChaos (KoC), created facebook. I was just complaining about how slow KoC was to change; facebook changed too quickly. When facebook was created, it was for American college students, exclusively. The purpose was to connect with other students – and as far as I could tell, the purpose even more specifically was to connect to students you otherwise wouldn’t see every day (friends from high school, for instance). Then facebook opened networks in other countries -fine. Then it opened it up to high school students. Now – and it has been for a while – facebook is open to anyone with an email account.
I’m not complaining that there are hundreds of millions of people on facebook; I’m complaining that facebook changes happened too fast. I used to know how facebook worked; when I joined, it was simple. You found someone with the search function, and could narrow it down to a network (a school). You could write on their wall. You had to remember whose wall you wrote on, because the only way to continue the conversation was to remember to go back and look. And you had to check your own profile often to see what people had said – facebook never informed you of responses. And it kept getting more and more confusing.
I still use facebook; I still like it for the original purpose it was created for – to stay in touch – but I don’t understand half of its functions anymore. I’m not that worried about security – I have my phone number written down in so many places that I don’t mind it on facebook. I just wish I could understand some of the options on facebook now. KoC didn’t change at all; facebook changed much too quickly.
You might remember an issue at the end of May involving a Gaza aid fleet, Israel, and eventually the US press corps. If you don’t remember that incident, I don’t blame you; the amount of information we are bombarded with is extraordinary and we quickly forget news. Why am I writing about something that happened in May? I meant to write about it long ago, but it is not a topic that happened once and should only have been written about as a live, immediate, occurrence. I hope to wrap up my thoughts and bring them, albeit disjointedly, to the present day.
On May30, 2010 – not so ancient history – Israel vowed to stop a fleet, headed by the MV Mavi Marmara, from delivering aid to Gaza. I need hardly remind you that Gaza needs aid. Why stop the fleet? This BBC article will tell you why. In part:
The Gaza Strip has been under a heightened Israeli blockade since the militant group Hamas seized control in June 2007. Israel wants to weaken Hamas, end its rockets attacks against Israeli towns and get back captured soldier Gilad Shalit.
That is some reason as to the origin of the blockade. To continue… you can find a BBC article with the synopsis, “There is widespread agreement in Israel and around the world that, whatever the rights or wrongs about the Gaza flotilla, something went badly wrong with the operation to stop it.” Something went badly wrong? On May 31, 2010, the commandos of the Israeli Navy said that activists “tried to lynch us.” Generally, that doesn’t sound like something to do, even in wartime. For instance, I haven’t heard of any Somali pirates trying to lynch Americans or British – some captives even make it home. That same <a href="BBC article will inform you that the’ interception’ took place about 40 miles off the Gaza coast, about 25 miles beyond the formal limits of the maritime blockade Israel is maintaining on Gaza.
So far, we are at the point where something went badly wrong as British rappelled in by helicopter in the early morning to prevent a convoy of supplies from reaching Gaza. You’ll have to trust me – or remember – or read the sources to know that hundreds of activists were taken captive in by the Israelis. At least nine activists died on board, and seven Israeli commandos were wounded. (I don’t mean to make light of the deaths and injuries, but since I have to choose what to write about I’m going to not concentrate on this part of the incident.) As I said, hundreds of activists were seized by Israel. ”
Israel was holding hundreds of activists incommunicado in and around the port city of Ashdod, refusing to permit journalists access to witnesses who might contradict Israel’s version of events.
The emphasis was in the original article. Perhaps I’m not the only one that thinks it strange, then, that if Israel said something went badly wrong and activists were being held incommunicado, that something doesn’t add up. Glen Greenwald suggests that. And he adds,
when Israel seizes ships in international waters and kills anyone who resists (and others standing near them), that is an act of noble, plucky self-defense. But those who fail to submit completely to this lawless and barbarous act of aggression are the Real Criminals who will be prosecuted and imprisoned “to the fullest extent of the law.” In other words, not only is Israel — which seized ships in international waters and killed civilians — the Real Victim, but the Real Criminals are those on the ship. But doesn’t the victim of a crime usually want media coverage of what the criminal did? How odd for the victim in this case to take such extreme steps to ensure that the world cannot hear from the witnesses.
I could almost use Greenwald’s article, and the sources he provides, to make a case in point about Israel. I encourage you to read his article, his sources, and the events I’m describing. I’m not just going to use Greenwald and his sources, though, and I don’t want to mention the fact of hundreds of imprisoned activists – and not granted communication – and make nothing of it. It is a central part of this story. But you might have been wondering earlier why people died in a mission that defied logic.
[The commandos] were sent on a mission that defies logic. A helicopter dropped them, one by one, onto a vessel with a mob on it. Regardless of the activists’ intentions, the IDF’s method of interception was perceived as an act of aggression…. Every military and political leader in Israel knows that when under threat to his life, a soldier is ordered to open fire.
As Mickey Bergman points out, commandos could have easily disabled the rudder of the ship and towed it to port. Or engaged in discussion in daylight, and not landing in the pre-dawn hours by helicopter – I’d feel threatened too. But the conclusion of Bergman – not so much as justification as a fact – is compelling.
Israeli public opinion is likely to rally behind the soldiers, the military and its government. This is not because the Israeli public likes what happened. The Israeli public’s instinctive reaction, justly, is to show support and solidarity with the soldiers risking their lives for the country’s security. What is painfully missing is political leadership that is brave enough to stand up and make the nuanced argument on why this was not about the individual soldiers’ behavior, it is about the political leadership that sent them on a bad mission. Israel’s government has gone beyond bad politics here. They have demonstrated that the life of a soldier is no longer as sacred as it had always been held.
According to an emmigrè rabbi (now living in Israel):
There seems to be a lot of passing-the-buck here and and a great deal of finger-pointing when looking for people to blame for what was obviously an ill-conceived operation…. Hubris on the part of this government played a big role is this tragic drama to be sure. But Israel is a democracy with a free press and already serious questions are being raised from diverse perspectives.
I would accord hubris the reason this and many other devastating historical events have occurred. However, finger-pointing and accusations of hubris, though possibly true, will not solve anything.
It is not for me to decide when history begins. If I begin Israeli history in 1880, or 1933, or 1947, or 1967, or 1973, or in the depths of recorded history, or in the 7th century, I do so because I cannot here write an exhaustive history of Israel, or the peoples of Israel in the Diaspora. I must choose a point at which to begin explanations and historical comparisons and what precisely is relevant to the moment and what is not. Therefore, when I cite a paper that begins a story in 1967, that is because the author of that story too must make a choice. For a discussion on Israel, which involves conversations on hope, and hubris, and many intangibles, it is not necessary to know the complete story of Maimonides, fascinating though it is. There will be much left out, and I am aware of many of the things I will not say here.
What does Israel want? Is it acting for, or against, its own self interests? It’s a state founded in the modern history of the Holocaust (or HaShoah – calamity) and Nakbah (catastrophe). Israel, the modern state, has had very little peaceful history. Israel has convinced America – and America has convinced Israel – that there’s a very serious threat posed by Iran. What did Israel want in carrying out a commando raid? I am not surprised that in this regional conflict – a conflict that affects us all – the Prince of Jordan, El Hassan bin Talal commented,
perhaps Israel is seeking total isolation to justify continued violence leading to further pre-emptive strikes and a regional war.
Don’t misunderstand His Royal Highness. His message to us is “let us not surrender to hatred.” His closing comment is “I am fully aware of the fact that the Near East, once known as the Cradle of Civilisation, has become a tinder box of war; but in losing sight of peace and humanitarian law, we are surrendering one-by-one to the crushing power of the opportunist ‘hatred industry’.” Nor is HRH bin Talal the only royal to comment on Israels actions. Queen Rania, also of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, asked rhetorically, “what do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, and goats have in common?”. The answer is that Israel forbids Gaza from importing any of these objects.
The failure here is political. Israel is not a state in the middle of emptiness; I mean that Israel is subject to influence and to flaws, and if its most powerful ally doesn’t object, why would Israel? For Greenwald,
the real question for Americans is our own country’s responsibility for what Israel does; as virtually the entire world vehemently condemns Israel’s conduct, the U.S. — as usual — acts to protect the Israelis at the U.N. and joins it in heaping blame on its victims.
It seems to me, occasionally, that Israel responds to ultra-Zionist ranting, including that of neo-conservative Americans, but ignores the (unprofitable?) desire for peace. And if we Americans – neo-conservative, ultra-liberal, and everything in between – want to help Israel listening to James Zogby is a good place to start.
So what should the US do with Israel? If they are a friend and an ally we value, we tell them the truth. Tell them that their behavior is unacceptable and is only making the world more dangerous for us all. Demand that they submit to an independent investigation (since the attack was on a Turkish vessel in international waters). Demand that they end the blockade of Gaza (since this is something the White House has called on Israel to do since the President’s second day in office). And demand that they recognize the consequences of their reckless behavior, not only for their interests, but ours as well.
Or we can, as we have done too many times in the past, jump in the hole they’ve dug and wallow around with them, until we’re both a mess and then spend the next year or so trying to clean up.
All of these opinions and recommendations I’ve cited happened between May 30 and June 2, 2010. On June the 3rd, activists described Israeli raid on Gaza aid convoy. Bulent Yildrim of Turkey, a member of IHH, which organized the flotilla, admitted activists using guns in self-defense, and added, “I took off my shirt and waved it, as a white flag. We thought they would stop after seeing the white flag, but they continued killing people.” Norman Paech, a German, said he saw only three people – activists – resisting the soldiers rappelling onto the deck. Dimitris Gielasis, a Turk, said “they came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used.” Perhaps that sounds normal to you. After the many years of preemptive war and torture that the US has engaged in recently this sound par for the course. But it is no less inhumane than before, and except by those who execute these actions is generally condemned. Israel could have reverted to other courses of action.
We’re living in a high-tech world. Computers record every site you’ve visited, phones can record a video of everything you do. It shouldn’t have surprised Israel – they showed that they expected it, and thus kept the activists incommunicado – that there were videos of Israeli commandos landing on the convoy vessels. The videos weren’t immediately released, of course, thanks to the Israelis, but it should be clear it’s becoming harder to hide all pictographic evidence of an event like this. It doesn’t matter who you’re supporting here – the Israelis, the activists, or both – a video shows Israeli commandos landing and the ensuing battle.
Of course, Israel has a right to an opinion too, and it has a right to defend itself. Amidst all this discussion of he-said she-said politics it shouldn’t be forgotten that real entities and states are involved, and real people lost their lives. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed Israel’s opinion. “If the blockade had been broken, it would have been followed buy dozens, hundreds of boats,” he added. “Each boat could carry dozens of missiles.” But this isn’t just an Israeli affair. Countries responded,
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, meanwhile, announced his country was breaking diplomatic relations with Israel. British Prime Minister David Cameron urged Israel to lift the Gaza blockade, calling the raid “completely unacceptable.”
Pope Benedict XVI urged both sides to resolve the problem with dialogue, not violence, telling pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square that he was worried the raid would have “dramatic consequences and generate more violence.”
Let’s return to the question of Israel’s interests and Israel’s actions. Mark Levine is hoping the US will understand that, “it has never been about security. Not for one day. It has been about land and power. And this is where it has led. And we have [the US] made it possible.” We have feigned love of Israel while sane Israelis, Palestinians, and everyone else have begged us to stop the bleeding. Instead,
we have pretended to be its friend, but we are the friend in the way your drug dealer is your friend, sitting with you late at night listening to your problems while hooking you up with your next fix – only in strange twist, the American people rather than the Israelis are paying for the habit their government and corporate elites grow richer sustaining.
We are the ultimate facilitators of this insane and immoral arrangement, which is part of our larger addiction to war that now reaches $1 trillion per year.
What the US – and Levine efficiently blames the US – has allowed to happen to Gaza is sheer madness. It appears increasingly that this issue is not an Israeli issue alone, nor an Israeli-Palestinian issue. Both Israel and the political capacity of Palestine may want to refer to this as an internal issue, but clearly that has been a large international outcry, and a pointing of the finger at countries and organizations well beyond Israel or the Mediterranean.
There are many more knowledgeable than myself about the internal workings of Israeli politics. I do want to point out, though, that they have a system of proportional representation in the Knesset. Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, the former US Ambassador to Morocco, wrote on June 2,
[that] in less than six months, under its truncated Likud government, Israel has managed to alienate its most important regional Muslim ally, Turkey; angered the United Arab Emirates with the botched assassination saga in Dubai; endured expulsion of diplomats from Australia and the United Kingdom — two of Israel’s greatest friends.
They did all that -and more. I’m sure you’d forgotten some of those incidents. Here I am writing about a forgotten incident, and there are several relevant parts I had forgotten of until now. I won’t say more on the subject than to point out how easy it is to forget these things quickly…. I wrote briefly about Iran’s involvement in this, and I’ll take an ambassador at his word that “Israel’s actions may undermine efforts to muster sufficient international support to have the United Nations impose the type of crippling economic sanctions against Iran that could mean the difference between a chastised Iran or an Iran with a nuclear bomb.” Ginsberg agreed, at the time that he was writing this, that the Israeli response – sending in commandos – was partially justified since the convoy had signaled that they would not stop, but also an unnecessary show of force since a ship can be peacefully stopped. There’s also a point I’d like to put emphasis on.
The facts are under investigation, and time will tell which side was “legally” within its rights under international law. But legality rarely trumps public perception, and perception, not legal treatise, influences public opinion.
The far-right ultra-nationalist party- that’s strange, there’s also a far-right, also ultra-nationalist bloc in the US – of Israel has done a good job (a very good job, at the end of May) of making clear to other countries – including the United States – that outside opinions can and should be ignored. With that indictment leveled at Likud and the Israeli far-right, Ginsberg points out the recklessness of Hamas and the inability of Fatah. They are to blame for the plight of their people as well, and an indictment of Israel is neither complete nor valid unless reasons for Israeli behavior are put into context.
I wrote earlier about how the time frame of a conflict is created by writers. Henley calls this conflict between Israel and Palestine a “Sixty Year Mortgage … Of Blood!” Obviously, that’s meant as humor. And sixty years is an estimate. Still, the facts are correct enough, and the analysis sounds good enough.
For all practical purposes, Israel has its original goal, formal control of all of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan, within its grasp. Because it’s not completely insensible to global political reality, it can’t just annex the West Bank and be done with it, but it can plainly add any given piece of the West Bank to itself at any time. Roughly ten percent of Israel’s Jewish population lives in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. They’re not moving back. Israel does have to finesse the public-relations of the process, but the public relations are subordinate to the process.
And on the international level, or at least a broader view of the region,
Turkey is not going to war for the Freedom Flotilla. It took all of a day for the United States to conclude a deal whereby Israel gets to investigate itself. The Iranians are either not trying to get nukes, or if they do get nukes will be very careful with them. The Iranians will fuck you up, but never at any substantial cost to themselves. Israel can levy a substantial cost on Iran any time it wants. The Palestinians can’t do more than annoy and neither can Hezbollah.
First of all, there’s the demographic issue here. If ten percent of Israelis live in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, and you want them to move, that’s like asking every resident of the state of California to leave California. There are logical alternatives, of course, that don’t involve asking one of every ten Israelis to move. How about integration (the opposite of segregation)? Or a freeze on new housing? There are many solutions, and none of them are easy. But if it was easy, it would have already happened…. Secondly. there’s the international response to Israel’s action. I’ve already written some about this, but it’s worth remembering that Israel is a superpower in the region with substantial military force and support. And we keep returning to Israel’s intent. Andrew Sullivan wrote that he did not believe,
and have not written, that Israel intended this slaughter. I do think that disabling the vessel would have been far smarter, and the decision to assault it was reckless. I also think that if you believe that the blockade is illegal (and that’s a perfectly legitimate position), and that you are attempting to break it, and you are then assaulted in international waters by shock-troops, self-defense is an option. Especially when your ship contains building materials, toys and wheelchairs and has on board a host of activists from many countries. There was a clear element in the raid of making a show of force – pour decourager les autres. This was a “Don’t Fuck With The Jews!” moment. It was unnecessary, and a sign of Israel’s increasingly erratic behavior.
Several times I’ve cited authors here who suggest that Israel is increasingly erratic, committing politicide, or acting irrationally and disproportionally. For those who criticize Israel, it is because they care. I would dare say that those who criticize Israel and take it to task for erratic or self-destructive behavior care far more about Israel than those people – in America they are the neo-cons – who unswervingly praise Israel and use its military might for their own gain. But most of us would agree with Andrew Sullivan.
And let’s not delude ourselves: the reason so many of us find the policy toward Gaza repellent is that it is quite obviously an attempt to collectively punish the people of Gaza for voting for Hamas, and then for lobbing missiles after Israel’s withdrawal. That was the element of the 2009 war that was so horrifying to those of us on the outside, and that is why this blockade, designed to maintain total control over 1.5 million people (and to benefit various Israeli economic sectors), is so disconcerting.
And it is, of course, self-reinforcing. Has the war and the blockade hurt the idea of Hamas? Au contraire. It has legitimized it. When you end up killing civilians to prevent access to toys and wheelchairs, you have lost any desire to win the war of ideas and have retreated instead to the logic of force. The Bush-Cheney administration is, in other words, alive and well … and in Jerusalem, and backed by the opposition, because it is backed by the people. This is one of the problems with democracy….
The question we have to face is whether Israel is now too far gone to be rescued. The enormous opportunity offered by the election of Obama has been thrown in the face of the US and the world. The alienation of Europe and Turkey seems driven by willful obstinacy and near clinical paranoia. And the knee-jerk response of the AJE has only made matters worse. I’m not sure, as Millman notes, that the US could do much good anyway. Pressure backfires; diplomacy doesn’t work; and the truth is: Israelis cannot really absorb the fact that they have to give up the dream of Greater Israel or become a pariah state.
That’s why, in my view, the settlement question was the right one to start with. A temporary freeze on construction was the minimum necessary to see if the Israelis are serious about some kind of resolution. The Israeli public simply isn’t. And no Israeli government can over-ride such a massive consensus, even if it wanted to (which it doesn’t). At some point, the US will have to decide how to deal with this. We should, of course, do all we can to be reasonable and argue for a comprehensive deal. But we should not delude ourselves into believing Israel will ever accept it.
I don’t expect that Israel’s raid of a convoy at sea will lead to peace with Hamas. The point of this critique is not to find a solution to an age-old conflict – although that would be wonderful. So far I’ve simply recapped events and described reactions to them. Now, describing the reactions and needs of Israelis, we’ve seen a dichotomy, in which people pursue interests that lead them farther away from peace. One possibility that is not compatible with a good reality is,
[that] the proposition that the State of Israel, which was conceived as a way of normalizing relations between Jews and all other peoples, might instead be normalizing anti-Semitism is not one we can simply close our eyes to in the forlorn hope that it will go away of its own accord.
Why would there be increasing anti-Semitism? Is it extremist Muslims? Large-scale immigration? The Qu’ran? Western governments that never liked Jews anyway? ‘Self-hating’ Jews? These are all possibilities put forth by Tony Klug in the Tikkun article. And as for ‘self-hating’ Jews, “a novel recent addition to those labeled as members of the ‘self-hating’ community are the Israeli government officials responsible for overseeing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s partial construction freeze, whom disgruntled West Bank settlers have greeted as ‘anti-Semites.'” Perhaps I just put my finger on the problem; settlers who think any version of Judaism that is not their version must be wrong. Of course, that’s a perfectly natural human sentiment, but it doesn’t help that the Israeli government follows the wishes first and foremost of settlers. “There are still plenty of authentic anti-Semites around, doubtless rather enjoying the moment. But maybe some introspection on our part is also warranted. Is it possible that we ourselves have in some way contributed in recent times to the overt rise in Jewish unpopularity?” However, anti-Semitism is not the same as it once was. Still from Tikkun,
The Jewish reality has changed dramatically since the end of World War II, with the establishment of a Jewish state and the entrenchment of equal citizenship rights in most if not all countries that Jews inhabit. Whichever way you look at it, there simply is no comparison in reality between past trumped-up accusations of abusive power leveled against a downtrodden, defenseless community that time and again was made to pay a heavy price for these baseless smears, and the current accusations of improper use of power against an advanced, nuclear-armed state which, for the past forty-two years, has enforced a harsh military rule over the lives of another downtrodden, dispossessed people, while relentlessly colonizing their remaining land.
The comparison Jewish shtetl of the Middle Ages to the current Palestinian plight is common, and sadly accurate. The subjugation of the Palestinians is the reason anti-Semitism is increasing. However, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are very different. Anti-Semitism might be the hatred of anything Semitic (at least, by definition, but usually it’s just dislike of Jews. Anti-Zionism would be dislike of anything of the Zionist cause, which is promotion and retention of the ‘Holy Land’ of Israel. Sadly, Helen Thomas, the fifty-year veteran of the White House Press Corps, found that the difference doesn’t matter much to those who rush to defend Israel. She was forced to retire after a video surfaced -within days of the Israeli commandos assaulting the convoy – in which she said that the Jews should leave occupied Palestinian land. That may be anti-Zionist (in much the same way self-proclaimed pro-Zionist author Noam Chomsky is called an anti-Zionist) but it is not anti-Semitic, which is what Helen Thomas was accused of being.
The point is not to solve an age-old conflict in a jiffy. That will take time and effort. A wide area of human interests came together because of Israelis raiding a convoy. While morally that may have been the wrong move, it’s probable that you already forgot it happened, and so the damage to Israel is not great. However, it’s was the wrong move that could have prevented several incidents, ranging at least as far as Helen Thomas. The solution could have been moderation. With Israel’s action, according to Queen Rania,
moderates around the world lose out: people like me, who dared to believe that the road to peace doesn’t have to be a lonely and desolate one. That a two-state solution is not the figment of a naïve idealist’s imagination. And those whose ethical responsibility it is now to deal with the science of reality, to form a coalition of humans that question and confront the assumptions of those on their far right, and to reaffirm the ethos of moderation.
After all, isn’t moderation where most of the living is done?
Well, speaking as a moderate, I fear if the tides don’t turn in our region, moderation will be amongst the most painful casualties of continued aggression and hard line policies. As someone who lived through the late King Hussein’s fight for peace, until his very last breath, and watches his son, my husband, King Abdullah, continue that fight, it actually breaks my heart to see us moving further and further away from peace.
Peace. People. Moderation. I would have thought that those were too heavy a price to pay for sustaining a hardened stance.
So, when flotillas came to break the blockade, they came to help the people of Gaza. But, just as important, they came to break the blockade on the Israeli mind.
Why do we care? What do I mean, we care? I mean that the issue at hand produces some noticeable emotion with us,and continues to direct our attention to the issue; we expend emotion on the issue. Why do we care (not about one topic, but about any)? Humans have great potential to improve our world. Someone, somewhere, is going to ask what ‘improvement’ is; it is a conviction that what we now have is better than what we had before (less racism, less slavery, automobiles, automobiles that run on alternative fuels — these things are improvements). Improvements, the improvements that humans have, with their potential, created thus far, are not perfections. They are steps forward, in which a positive outcome has occurred (to use game theory terminology). However, our capacity and capability to improve our world will not happen if we don’t care. “‘The act of pronouncing it (the machine — any ‘machine’) wrong’s a form of caring (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig; Chapter 14).’” Yes, if we don’t know it’s wrong we won’t fix it. So what, we’ll never know it’s wrong, right (I mean, correct)? True. And we can never move forward. We have great potentiality to create a more perfect world. We cannot improve our world if we don’t care. It is dangerous not to care. It produces only stoicism and regression. It is also dangerous to care. It produces emotional connection and denies contradictory views.
Let us be determined to care. It is not unusual that one event will grab our (collective) attention, and it shall be in that direction that most effort is spent by all parties building a case to garner even greater attention (and thus more caring). This does not negate worry or appreciation, in short, emotion spent, on other causes or in other places, though I believe such energy is finite and waxes and wanes for each particular topic as it gains or decreases in the collective interest. A case in point, Israel. There is no shortage or caring about Israel, though each side (are there nearly seven billion sides?) has its own view. Are those views irreconcilable? That should not prevent us from caring; it should make us care the more, so that progress might be made.
The Dole Blog 