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.
Two years ago I wrote a post called post-election thoughts, just after Obama was elected. I have been remiss in not commenting on this most recent election.
Every two years we have a midterm election, which makes it sound like an exam. Democracy is not academics, although it’s nice to have an educated electorate. So, in this election that happens midway between one election and the next one, it’s a normal state of affairs – 2002 was an exception – for the House of Representatives to switch party control. Although Democrats would like to run around after this most recent election complaining about loss of an agenda, and politics-not-policy of their opposition, this was to be expected and normal.
I did not stand in front of my television, excessively glad that we had an intelligent president-elect as I did two years ago. However, I would like to be just as glad that we have the same president. Van Jones reminded us recently that “the slogan was not ‘Yes He Can’,” about Obama. I did, however, watch as House and Senate races came in across the country. I was watching with Jefferson County Democrats at a very nice underground coffee house, since my own Clallam County was not organized to host any gathering. As we watched Clallam’s election results on the Secretary of State website the the results were mostly anti-incumbent rage – but what was true for Clallam County was not true to Jefferson County or Grays Harbor County.
The media as it calls itself – that glorious box that squawks 24/7 and adds in extra noise when it can – will continue to tell us, I’m sure, that we’re a center-right nation. That doesn’t seem correct. It is not necessary to be right-of-center to reject the status quo, which will be what the media means this time it says we are center-right. When we elected Obama perhaps we were center-left; when we finished this election perhaps we were center-right. Back and forth and back and forth. That’s what they tell us. We’re certainly still where I said we were two years ago; to the right of a left world.
So what did I think of the election? It was as expected. In California it was good to see a man who has a chance to rebuild the state elected governor. In Washington state a Democrat, Patty Murray, beat Dino Rossi (really now, who names their kid Dino?), by a much larger margin than perpetual candidate lost in his two bids for governorship, including a 2004 election decided by less than 250 votes. Contrary to the notion of a ‘permanent majority,’ though, politics is cyclical and one party doesn’t maintain control forever, despite redistricting that will be happening soon. So, regardless of party, you can have hope. Or hate. Whichever suits your current political needs.
Some people say that the two parties (at least, the two that the media allow to exist by covering them) are the same party with the same greed and the same self-protective interests. That’s an interesting and somewhat valid view, but there are differences between the parties – and the differences are not just political.
Democrats think in terms of programs, policies, and particular pieces of legislation. It’s easy to reverse course by compromising more and giving up on legislative goals. Bill Clinton never mentioned the words “health care reform” after the 1994 midterms.
Republicans think in terms of simple ideas, themes, and movements. It’s far harder to reverse course on these (look what happened to the first George Bush when he raised taxes), and easier to keep them alive: Republican presidents just continue looking for opportunities to implement them.
Republicans are also more disciplined (ask yourself which party attracts authoritarian personalities and which attracts anti-authoritarians). This makes it easier for them to stay the course. Their base continues to organize and fulminate even after midterm defeats. Democrats, on the other hand, are less organized. Electoral defeats tend to fracture and dissipate whatever organization they have.
Republicans are cynical about politics from the jump. Political cynicism fuels them. Democrats are idealistic about politics. When they become cynical they tend to drop out.
If you’ve studied, you know that there’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, based on socioeconomic and educational standing – and if you haven’t studied, you might be more inclined to take me at my word. Candidate Obama had a point when he said that people stick to their guns and religion; what he didn’t mention is that other people stick to their education and their books. That’s a dichotomy.
In general, Democrats look at the big picture – how can I help my neighbor – and Republicans look at a different picture. I would guess, and I hope I’m not biased, that Republicans often look for short-term, immediate, satisfaction and Democrats look at the long-term possibilities of getting to the same place – trying to achieve the same end – as Republicans. Trying to reach the same place, in a different way, and often unable to see that the final intent is the same.
I think Andrew Sullivan says it best.
As for future politics, Americans overwhelmingly trust the Dems on healthcare, favor the GOP on debt reduction (go figure) and split between the parties on creating jobs. But here’s the critical thing: a whopping 78 percent want the Republicans to compromise with Obama rather than stick to their positions in the next two years; 76 percent want the Dems to do the same; and a slightly lower percentage, but still overwhelming, wants Obama to compromise too: 69 percent.
…72 percent say that Obama will compromise; but only 46 percent say the Republicans will. I’d say that gives Obama clear edge in future politics, and helps explain why he remains more popular than anybody else in politics, has a solid 46 percent rating even in a deep recession and has higher favorables than anyone else.He is right and the lefties are wrong. He will be a much stronger and more transformational president if he sticks to pragmatism, avoids culture war fights, and keeps his focus on policy as much as politics. This is the GOP high-point; and as you survey the attitudes of Gingrich, Pence, Palin and McConnell, you can’t help but think they are walking directly into the same hubristic trap as Gingrich before them.
They have campaigned on no compromise; yet the public wants them to. If they don’t, they look obstructionist; if they do, they lose their base. As long as Obama keeps his cool, and the economy continues to recover, he’s looking good.
Despite what I cited earlier about Republicans wanting to destroy Obama personally and politically, I think it’s also true that the public (in general) wants compromise. And I would hazard a guess that both the destruction and the compromise will occur.
I don’t have much else to add. This was wonderful writing by Andrew and I suggest you read it all (it’s short).
Thanks to the wonderful Deborah Geffner (the one who reminds us “You get to vote! You don’t even have to fight anyone to do it”) I once again have something I’d like to share with all of you about politics. I’d really suggest you read the whole article, but it’s a bit lengthy so I’ll do some of your work for you. The politics I’m writing about might be considered destructive politics – or, if you agree with them, you might consider it constructive and good politics. Who?
With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars….The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products.
Well! there’s nothing wrong with that, in terms of good, successful Capitalists. If you’re not a Tea Partyer (I’ve never figured out the correct suffix) you might be worried though, because
Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
That’s not enough to generate any strong feeling about the Kochs’ politics, perhaps. But,
Rob Stein, a Democratic political strategist who has studied the conservative movement’s finances, said that the Kochs are “at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. But it’s not just about Obama. They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.”
I don’t know if it matters what party you’re from – I imagine it does (and that’s part of the point) – but that doesn’t sound like good politics to me. It does sound like politics, but it sure isn’t constructive, compromise politics. And these people funding the Tea Party (that’s what the Kochs do) should be smart enough to realize that progressivism can’t be destroyed more than fascism can be destroyed, or libertarianism, or anger or hope. Progress, and it’s counterpart, conservatism, are both inherent natural qualities, in the same person, at the same time.
However, all hope-and-changey Buddha politics aside,
In 1958, Fred Koch [father of the Koch’ who own the current conglomerate] became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent. In a self-published broadside, Koch claimed that “the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties.” He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement. “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” he warned. Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that prefigures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret socialist plot, Koch predicted that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
That might sound somewhat familiar. That’s the point, of course. The Communist Scare is returning, being brought back by a few dedicated individuals who find fear advantageous. The Koch family is not closed off to the outside world; not quite. A friend and age-group peer who was inspired to study politics by the family and became a professor said,
that the Koch brothers have followed a wayward intellectual trajectory, transferring their father’s paranoia about Soviet Communism to a distrust of the U.S. government, and seeing its expansion, beginning with the New Deal, as a tyrannical threat to freedom.
Which could be considered an isolated fear-ridden family but for their money with which they are able to -and obviously do – fund the Tea Party. As David Axelrod said, “what they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.” Or, as the article describes it,
[by 1979 the brothers] had become supporters of the Libertarian Party, and were backing its Presidential candidate, Ed Clark, who was running against Ronald Reagan from the right. Frustrated by the legal limits on campaign donations, they contrived to place David on the ticket, in the Vice-Presidential slot; upon becoming a candidate, he could lavish as much of his personal fortune as he wished on the campaign. The ticket’s slogan was “The Libertarian Party has only one source of funds: You.” In fact, its primary source of funds was David Koch, who spent more than two million dollars on the effort.
…The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights.
I’ll leave it up to you to figure out whether they’re talking about 1980 or now. My guess is 1980; and things haven’t changed. No party has only bad ideas. If you go far right you end up left, and then center again. Ideas like ending war (in Afghanistan), less dependence on brute strength of arms, legalization of drugs or prostitution, and ending Social Security are not bad ideas. I am inherently for some of those ideas, and inherently against others. It still seems bad to me to eliminate government. Have the Koch’s convinced you? …They hadn’t convinced voters in 1980. “That November, the Libertarian ticket received only one per cent of the vote.” Let’s skip to modern times:
Tax records indicate that in 2008 the three main Koch family foundations gave money to thirty-four political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct. The Kochs and their company have given additional millions to political campaigns, advocacy groups, and lobbyists. The family’s subterranean financial role has fuelled suspicion on the left; Lee Fang, of the liberal blog ThinkProgress, has called the Kochs “the billionaires behind the hate.”
…[T]he company’s political-action committee, KochPAC, has donated some eight million dollars to political campaigns, more than eighty per cent of it to Republicans. So far in 2010, Koch Industries leads all other energy companies in political contributions, as it has since 2006.
In 1977, the Kochs provided the funds to launch the nation’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. According to the Center for Public Integrity, between 1986 and 1993 the Koch family gave eleven million dollars to the institute.
And in terms of global warming,
[The] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently issued a report concluding that the evidence for global warming is unequivocal, more Americans are convinced than at any time since 1997 that scientists have exaggerated the seriousness of global warming. The Kochs promote this statistic on their company’s Web site but do not mention the role that their funding has played in fostering such doubt.
…The key for opponents of environmental reform, [a Republican political consultant said], was to question the science—a public-relations strategy that the tobacco industry used effectively for years to forestall regulation.
The Dole Blog 