The Sixth Anniversary of the Hebrew U. Bombing

My friend Esther Abramowitz reminds me that it was six years ago today that the Frank Sinatra cafeteria at Hebrew University was bombed. Esther, who works at the Hillel on the Mt. Scopus campus, across a small plaza from the Sinatra cafeteria, called me moments after she heard the bomb. I asked her not to run outside, but she did, and she found many of her friends injured, or dead.

I happened to be in Gaza at the time, leaving an interview with Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the late, unlamented Hamas leader. "The Jews are put before us as a test," he told me. "Allah has sent you today to me as a test. We have failed a test, which is why we are being punished today. We are not true enough to Allah. But Allah has promised that He will bless us."

It was a Hamas bomb that killed nine people in the Sinatra cafeteria. Some of them were Americans, students at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. The murdered: Marla Bennet, Ben Blutstein, Janice Ruth Coulter, Revital Barashi, Daphna Shprug, David Diego Lidovski, David Gritz, and Levina Shapira.

Esther sent this note to her friends today. She gave me permission to publish it here:

Shalom.  I hope you are having a beautiful day wherever you are.

Today is July 31, the 6 year anniversary of the bombing here at Hebrew U.  The Hebrew date is the 22nd of Av, which falls this year on Shabbat, August 23^rd.

Memories and images are rushing in and out of my day and night dreams these past few days and weeks.  The horrors of that day, of bearing witness to pain, of death, strength, human dignity, angels dressed in human clothes, devastating sadness, fear and overwhelming kindness are always with me.  And the incredible bracha (blessing) of being here in this place is also always with me.  I for sure will be at Frank Sinatra for lunch today at 1:30.  The schnitzel is still the best in town!  I wish you could join me.

 I found something that I wrote one week after the pigua (attack) that still feels very real to me today.  Thank you for letting me share it with you and please forgive me if you have already read this. Know how grateful I am that you are in my life.

 Hi. I am so sorry that I have not been in touch sooner. I lost track of time and realize that I have been out of touch for a few days. Thank you, m'kol halev, (with all my heart) for being in touch and sending your love. It has given me much needed strength and is much appreciated.

I walked back into Hillel a while ago from the university ceremony outside of Frank Sinatra marking one week since the bombing. They did it at 1:30- the exact time that it happened last week. They put up a tarp to shade us from the strong sun. I kept on thinking about how hot it was last week and that there was no comfort for the wounded from the sun then.

I have learned so many life lessons over the past week. I am not sure that I necessarily needed to learn them all at once or that I did not already know them, but I have been thinking about them over the past few days and wanted to share them with you.

I learned about the incredible gift one is given to be with someone in the midst of their pain; I learned of the power & the comfort of community; I learned of the wonder of meeting strangers and instantaneously becoming family because of circumstance; I learned of the importance of simple kindness from my dearest friends; (Like one friend who cleaned out my fridge because I was too overwrought to deal with it, or others who invited me to sleep at their place the second night after the bomb because I could not sleep at home, or the friends who just let me talk and talk and it does not matter.) I learned of the gentleness of caretakers in the hospital; the honor of meeting people who share their story with you, and the overwhelming generosity of the Pardes community. I learned of the compassion of great teachers, the wisdom of psychologists, and the deep raw pain of mourning. I learned about the ripples upon ripples upon ripples of people that are touched by death and pain. And I learned of the strength of the human soul.

I pray for comfort for those in mourning and some light for those in pain.

A Great Moment in the War on Drugs

Two dogs die because someone left a package of pot on a doorstep. 

This Should be Interesting

Ha'aretz is reporting that Bibi is by far the most popular of the leading candidates for prime minister of Israel.

So, No Peace Process Then?

Ehud Olmert is leaving the building. Slowly. Which nevertheless means that the Middle East process is frozen. It's amazing to think that someone of the stature of Morris Talansky could bring down an Israeli prime minister. But he's a Long Islander, and us Long Islanders have an infinite capacity for mischief.

In any case, please enjoy my story from earlier this year about, among other things, the tortured life of Ehud Olmert.

Pete Wehner on Joe Klein

"The interview is quite a journey into the angry and emotional world of Joe Klein," Pete sez.

Joe Klein on Neoconservatives and Iran

My friend and former colleague Joe Klein has made himself quite the figure of controversy over the past few weeks. First, he suggested that Jewish neoconservatives have "divided loyalties;" then he called John McCain desperate for arguing that Barack Obama is willing to lose the Iraq war in order to win the election. Then, a few days ago, he argued that McCain has surrounded himself with "Jewish neoconservatives" who want war with Iran. He's gotten a lot of pushback, including criticism from Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League.

I called Joe with a bunch of questions. He stands by his criticism of Jewish neoconservatives, and explains Iran's nuclear ambitions this way: "Given the level of threats that they've been getting from the United States, and from Israel, it's a logical thing for Iran to want nuclear weapons as a deterrent." No one can say that Joe is afraid of the arena. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Jeffrey Goldberg: What did you mean when you used the term "divided loyalty" to describe neoconservatives?

Joe Klein:  I did not mean to imply that they were disloyal to the United States, but I think that, in some occasions and in some instances, especially this incredible push for war with Iran, they aren't thinking about the consequences.

JG: Do you think this push is coming out of the American Jewish community, or from Israeli leaders at this point?

JK: I think it's coming out of both.  But I think that if you look at, for example, the Commentary blog, if you look at Joe Lieberman - and McCain is reflecting this quite a bit in what he said, and I think until he was called out on Afghanistan a few weeks ago, he was talking about Iran almost exclusively and he was doing it in the most flagrant way. My big problems with McCain began with a simple question that I asked him at a press conference: "Why do always talk about Ahmadinejad as if he is the leader of Iran when he isn't?"  And he said, "I beg to differ with you, he is."  I said, "But you know, the Supreme Leader controls the nuclear policy and the foreign policy," and McCain said, "But Ahmadinejad is the guy who shows up at the United Nations and the average American thinks he's the leader."

JG: Go back to this divided loyalty issue.

JK: Listen, people can vote whichever way they want, for whatever reason they want.  I just don't want to see policy makers who make decisions on the basis of whether American policy will benefit Israel or not.  In some cases, you want to provide protection for Israel certainly, but you don't want to go to war with Iran.  When Jennifer Rubin or Abe Foxman calls me antisemitic, they're wrong.  I am anti-neoconservative.  I think these people are following very perversely extremist policies and I really did believe that it was time for mainstream Jews to stand up and say, "They don't represent us, they don't represent Israel."

JG: You wrote something that suggested you were skeptical about whether Iran actually wants to destroy Israel. You don't think Iran poses a mortal threat to Israel?

JK: They pick Ahmadinejad specifically because he's the guy making the wildest antisemitic  statements. I think that's being done for political purposes, to scare the shit out of my parents. It's a Broward County strategy, it's a Florida strategy. On Iran, I think that it's a love/hate relationship, since Iran and Israel are natural allies.  You know, when I was in Iran, I'd talk to people.  I was talking to one right-winger, and I said, "You know who your natural ally is?" and I was thinking the United States and he said, "Oh, yeah, Israel."  I think that my reading on the nuclear issue is, given the level of threats that they've been getting from the United States, and from Israel, it's a logical thing for Iran to want nuclear weapons as a deterrent.  I don't think they'd ever actually use it.  First of all, they don't actually have it, but if they did have it, they'd contaminate at the very least the third most holy site in Islam, and they'd kill a hell of a lot of Muslims.  So I think that they want it as a matter of deterrence and a matter of prestige. When you look at Iran's behavior, it has not been irrational.

JG:  Go back to the issue of the Jewish blogosphere, the Jewish conservative blogosphere.

JK: I just get very, very angry at them.

Continue reading "Joe Klein on Neoconservatives and Iran" »

Obama: The New Sadat?

No, I don't mean he's going to make peace with Israel. He's already done that. I'm referring to his ostensibly private conversation with Tory leader David Cameron, in which the two men discussed their over-scheduled lives. "Actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you're doing is thinking," Obama said, wisely.

This brought to mind something one of Anwar Sadat's aides once told me. He said that Sadat would often spend his afternoon walking alone along the Nile. His staff had things for him to do -- staffs always do -- but he insisted on having time to think. And it was on these walks, the aide told me, that Sadat decided to go to Jerusalem, and change the world.

Daniel Benjamin on Terrorism Complacency

Earlier this month, Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer who served as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats, published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post arguing that Americans, and certain Republicans in particular, vastly overstate the threat from al Qaeda:

We must not delude ourselves about the nature of the terrorist threat to our country. We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.

The piece is interesting, but it left me worried, in part because it reminded me of Larry Johnson's infamous July, 2001 op-ed in The New York Times, in which he argued that Americans have nothing to fear from Osama bin Laden, and it followed by several weeks a Fareed Zakaria column that downplayed the threat posed by terrorism. I tend to grow concerned when right-thinking people all seem to be simultaneously agreeing that the terrorist threat is diminishing. Success in the war against terrorists, of course, breeds complacency, and so the question is, is this complacency justified? To answer that question, I turned to Daniel Benjamin, one of the smartest people I know on the subject. He is, with Steven Simon, author of one of the best books on Muslim terrorism, The Age of Sacred Terror. Here are four questions I asked him, and his answers:


Jeffrey Goldberg: Glenn Carle argued in The Washington Post recently that America has overstated the threat from al-Qaeda. He writes, "We have allowed the specter of that threat to distort our lives and take our treasure." Do you agree?

Daniel Benjamin: I've got a lot of respect for Glenn - he is a serious, highly regarded analyst.  That said, we're not in exactly the same place on the dimensions of the threat.  I don't fully agree, for example, with his assessment that "Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears." 9/11 was an extraordinary event, and several of the key individuals involved are free to operate, so I don't think we can write them off that way.  But I do concur that the nation has overreacted to a dangerous extent, particularly in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and in making the terrorist threat the lens through which we conduct our foreign policy.  That has meant not only a huge waste of blood and treasure but it's also been counter-productive.

JG: Do you believe that al Qaeda still has the capacity to stage a spectacular, 9/11-sized, terror attack on American soil?

DB:  Probably - and if not today, then it likely will soon, given the safe haven it enjoys in the Pakistani border region and its ties to radicals in different parts of the world. There are a lot of variables to consider: technical skills, the state of their network, our own much increased vigilance.  But they have some smart operators, and as a matter of prudence, we can't rule out a major attack.

JG: Fareed Zakaria suggested recently that the number of deaths caused by terrorists proves that al Qaeda is a diminishing threat. In a response published on Slate and on the Brookings website, you argued that Americans are becoming complacent about the threat from terrorism. Do you believe that we have reached 9/10 levels of complacency?

DB: No. We're more alert to the threat - inevitably - than we were before 9/11, and the government machinery has accepted that catastrophic terror is a threat in a way that it could not before 9/11.  But I worry that the "policy class" and some parts of the population look at statistics or at the fact that there hasn't been an attack in the U.S. and draw the conclusion that the threat is much diminished or gone.  Among other things, you need to look at the plots that fail, like the 2006 Heathrow conspiracy, which would have been appalling had it succeeded, to take the measure of the terrorists. You need to consider the issue of safe havens, recruitment, continued popular and financial support.  There is no simple calculus - and statistics certainly only give a small part of the story.

JG: Many experts believe that there is a good chance, as high as 50 percent, that an American city will be attacked by terrorists armed with a nuclear device sometime in the next 10 years. Is this a plausible scenario?

DB: I don't think the chance is anywhere near that high, but an attack with an improvised nuclear device is plausible. When you interviewed Michael Chertoff in Aspen, he said he thought that threat would be real in a couple years, right?  I ran a study a few years ago that brought together nuclear weaponeers and terrorism experts, and the conclusion, in essence, was that if al Qaeda could get the fissile material - the hardest part of the process, but by no means impossible - they would likely be able to build a weapon.  I'd put the likelihood of that happening at a small fraction of the 50 percent you cite, but the impact would be so devastating that we need to allocate lots of resources and effort to ensuring that doesn't happen. 

Sixth Fleet Commander: Iranian Missiles Could Overwhelm Israel

A fascinating article by Vice Admiral James "Sandy Winnefeld, Jr.  Key quote:

Perhaps most worrisome of the threats in the region is Iran's increasing ability to quickly launch ballistic missiles in an attempt to overwhelm Israel's organic defensive systems. This is, in my opinion, by far the most likely employment of ballistic missiles in the world today, and it demands our immediate attention in the event of a need for a U.S. or NATO response. This unpredictable adversary could be provoked by an isolated, and perhaps seemingly unimportant, event. Deploying land-based defensive assets is a necessary option, but it is costly and time-consuming. Meanwhile, sea-based missile defense has proved its capability, flexibility, and responsiveness in this arena. While U.S. Navy missile-defense capability need not be on-station all the time, it needs to be present in the theater conducting other missions, ready to respond quickly as needed. It would be wise for several of our very capable European partners to consider achieving this capability as well for their own defense against this threat.

Marc Ambinder, Blogging Hero

So I'm sitting in the basement holding room of some dark, dreary hall in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., waiting for John McCain to finish fundraising so we can go on to Columbus, Ohio, the next stop on his world tour, and Marc Ambinder is typing away across from me (yes, the Atlantic had two reporters with the McCain campaign today, because no one is going to accuse us of shorting McCain just because Obama has brought peace to the Middle East and walked across the Sea of Galilee while whistling Hatikvah) when I realize that Ambinder has a broken wrist. A broken wrist -- and yet he still blogs! Incredible.

As soon as I get back to Washington, I'm going to put him in for a commendation with H.R. 

McCain at the Western Wall

Double this for Obama, I suppose:

Chalabi's Revenge

Two sources, one in Iraq, the other in Washington, told me that Ahmed Chalabi was key in Maliki's decision to rather ostentatiously endorse Barack Obama's Iraq withdrawal time-line. Chalabi, of course, has been in and out -- mostly out -- of favor with the Bush Administration, but it's not merely revenge that motivated his advice to Maliki. "Chalabi knows American politics better than nearly every other Iraqi politician, and he knows it's time to line up with the candidate who has the better-than-even shot of becoming President," one source told me.

I can't imagine that Obama will be adding Chalabi anytime soon to his roster of 300 foreign policy advisers, despite the favor Chalabi has apparently done on his behalf.

UPDATE: My paisan Eli Lake had this story before I did, though I didn't know. This happened mainly because I'm so slow to blog, of course. Though he's a hell of a reporter.

Obama at the Western Wall

It appears that Barack Obama has a busy day tomorrow in Israel, including the obligatory visits to Yad Vashem and Sderot, and, as a nightcap, a visit to the Western Wall, where, a friend of mine suggests, Obama will undoubtedly spend his time praying for the Jews to leave him alone.

Lion Love as Mideast Metaphor?

Here's a touching video of lion/human love. I suggested to my friend David Ben-Gregory that this might be a metaphor for what could happen in the Middle East. But David, who screened the video on the "Today" show this morning, suggested that, in the next, unreleased, video, the lion probably eats his friend's head. I think that David might be a cynic about peace.

OTOH, Maybe Chandra Levy is Just an Interesting Story

The Washington Post and race, part 476.  Sometimes it seems like a joy not to work there. Not that anyone has asked lately.

Finally, a Reader Who Understands

This anonymous reader has finally made the connection between two of my obsessions, Wal-Mart and Israel:

I agree with half the letter that man wrote about your Jewism. You write off everything you hear as if Jews are never to be criticized. The part I disagree with him about is the Marxism. It's not Marxist "liberal" Jews causing another world war. It's the neo-cons-passing-and-co-opting Jews who are mafiosos destroying beautiful cultures so they can have a Walmart Nation State like Israel and then acting like they don't really care what happens in "the homeland" (might I add of, of Palestinians too...)

What? No Masada?

If Barack Obama really cared about Israel, he'd climb Masada at dawn, and go to Afula for falafel.

Here is the Israel tour from Hell:

8 A.M. Breakfast at the King David Hotel with Defense Minister Ehud Barak

8:45 A.M. Meeting at the hotel with opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu

9:45 A.M. Visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, wreath-laying at Hall of Remembrance

11 A.M. Meeting with President Shimon Peres

1:30 P.M. Meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Muqata, in Ramallah

2:45 P.M. Meeting with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni

4:15 P.M. Visit to Sderot with Livni and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter

5:10 P.M. Press conference at Sderot police station

8:30 P.M. Dinner with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

10:10 P.M. Visit to the Western Wall

Jewish Swimsuit Reax Special

A reader writes:

I was thrilled to see you champion the Jewish Swimsuit issue, which was suitably inspiring (the Roth was a brilliant touch). Me, I was a little disappointed that they only managed six pictures! What kind of Swimsuit Calendar can't get a hot girl on every page. All they would have had to do is walk down to the beach in Tel Aviv, picked the first six women (minus all Russians over the age of 25) and they could have had a full issue.

Dear Barack Obama: A Letter from an Israeli

Yossi Klein Halevi has an excellent piece this week on what Israel hopes for from Obama:

I am convinced that you regard a nuclear Iran as an intolerable threat, as you put it to AIPAC, and that, under your administration, negotiations with Iran would be coupled with a vigorous campaign of sanctions. And you've made the convincing argument that you could summon international goodwill far better than the current administration. No nation would be more relieved by an effective sanctions campaign than Israel. We know what the consequences are likely to be of an attack on Iran--retalitory missiles on Tel Aviv, terrorism against Jewish communities abroad, rising anti-semitism blaming the Jews for an increase in oil prices.

Why Zionism Has Succeeded

From the latest edition of Heeb Magazine, the supermodels of 5769. On the left, Donna Feldman, of Zohan fame, reads Philip Roth; on the right, Esti Ginzborg prepares, I'm guessing, to read A.B. Yehoshua, but without a shirt:

A Few Seconds of Panic

Stefan Fatsis, sportswriting genius, and, by the way, my first news editor at The Daily Pennsylvanian three thousand years ago, has a new book out, A Few Seconds of Panic, in which he goes Plimpton on us and becomes a Denver Bronco at the age of 43. It's a great book. Stefan's specializes in explaining weird sports subcultures to the rest of us, and he does a remarkable job in this book. So buy it. Reading is optional, but buy it.

Free Ryan Lizza!

The Obama campaign gets its revenge. This is not the change we've been waiting for.

Giving Memory a Place to Live

Erica Brown, the great Jewish scholar, might be one of the smartest people I know. In this column, she puts the return of the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers into proper Jewish context:

“Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, ‘When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here.’”

Genesis 50:25

This week, all eyes turned to the Middle East as a prisoner swap shook Israel and Lebanon. The remains of two Israeli soldiers abducted in 2006 – Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (may their memories be for a blessing) – were exchanged for 5 living Lebanese prisoners. The word “swap” communicates an evenness of exchange. Nothing could have been more uneven. There are people on every side of the political spectrum arguing about the controversy of this painful arrangement. Will it stimulate more kidnappings? Was it fair? Was Israel too soft? Too harsh? Too late? Did they hold out long enough?

All of the politics may mask some of the profoundly human questions we ask about death at times like this. We may get lost in debate and lose sight of the respect owed the actual body and the last wishes of those who can no longer communicate them to us. We often wonder, as we contemplate death, where we will go in the fullness of time. Some people take great comfort in buying burial plots simply because it is a small way to control that which is beyond our control. It is a way of envisioning some physical end when we have little understanding of what spiritually lives after us.

The idea of having one’s remains brought back to Israel for burial is as old as the book of Genesis itself. Abraham and Sarah and their children are buried in Israel; they also died in Israel. Jacob, however, bemoans the fact that he is to die in Egypt. He feels himself unworthy of the legacy of his ancestors because he did not live out his days in the Holy Land. Consequently, he makes a request of his sons: “Bury me with my fathers…” and then enters a lengthy description about the burial plot of his father and grandfather.

In a remarkable act, Joseph asks Pharaoh for permission to return to Canaan with his brothers to bury their father with dignity following Jacob’s last wish. The text conveys the formality of the procession; “all the officials of Pharaoh” came with Joseph on this mission. The group stays in Canaan for seven days and returns. This trip is striking on many fronts, not least of which is that they make this journey there and back so quickly; in only one chapter’s time, we begin the book of Exodus that presages the same return. This time, it takes forty years.

Continue reading "Giving Memory a Place to Live" »

"The Wire," Snubbed Again

I would say that I'm going to boycott the Emmys over the refusal to see the "Wire" for what it is -- the second-greatest show in the history of television (I used to believe that it was the greatest show in the history of television, per Weisberg, until an fMRI cleared that up) -- except that I don't think I've ever watched the Emmys in the first place.

And Speaking of Ari Shavit

Here he is, with James Bennet, the editor of this fine magazine, and yours truly, at the Atlantic-co-sponsored Aspen Ideas Festival:

Ari Shavit on Israel's Mistakes

And they are many.

"A Level of Sadism That is Astonishing"

Bradley Burston on Hezbollah.

The Murderer Samir Kuntar

Has anyone noticed something awry in the lede to Craig Smith's New York Times article on Samir Kuntar?

Perhaps Israel’s most reviled prisoner, Samir Kuntar, will return to a hero’s welcome when he crosses into Lebanon this week, 29 years after he left its shores in a rubber dinghy to kidnap Israelis from the coastal town of Nahariya.

That raid went horribly wrong, leaving five people dead, a community terrorized and a nation traumatized. Two Israeli children and their father were among those killed.

If the raiders had succeeded in kidnapping Israeli civilians without murdering children, in other words, would it have gone just fine, by Craig Smith's standards?

Hasn't the point of anti-Israel terrorism always been to kill Israeli children?

I'm at a loss. As I am about this whole horrible day.

A Terrible Day

And a victory for Hezbollah. Veteran Body-Parts Seller Hassan Nasrallah hates Jews to such an extent that he could not bring himself to let the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev know that their loved ones were dead. For two years.

It's hard to deny the measure of peace this prisoner swap will bring to the families of the fallen Israeli soldiers. It's also hard to deny that Israel will pay for this swap, with more kidnapped soldiers.

Sane Words about That New Yorker Cover from the NY Sun:

Lubricant of Laughter Editorial of The New York Sun | July 15, 2008

Senators Obama and McCain mightn't agree on much, but it turns out that one thing unites them — the opinion that the cover of the latest number of the New Yorker is "tasteless and offensive." Drawn by Barry Blitt, it shows Mr. and Mrs. Obama, she with an Afro and dressed in fatigues like a 1970s radical with a sub-machine gun slung on her shoulder, and he in the kind of robes and head gear normally associated with Islamist-type radicals. They're doing a little fist-bump in what we take to be the Oval Office, as an American flag burns in the fireplace. Is that Osama bin Laden's portrait over the mantle?

Well, there hasn't been such a tumult since the New Yorker's editor at the time, Tina Brown, ran cover drawing of a Hasidic man kissing a woman whose hairdo is of dreadlocks. The idea of the latest cartoon — and, for that matter, of the years-ago cartoon of the Hasid — is clearly a sly joke on the kind of stereotyping in our society. And that Mr. Obama has brought out. Mr. Blitt's drawing is one of the most wryly, thought-provoking pieces of New Yorker cover art in memory, and no doubt people will be reacting to it throughout the campaign.

Who, after all, is being made fun of here? The Obamas? Their stereo-typers? Or the reader who is trying to figure out why it is exactly that he or she is chuckling about the drawing even several minutes after regarding it? The perplexity of politicians at all this tickles us to no end, and we've often told our children of the showdown in World War II between Sergeant Bill Mauldin, the GI cartoonist of the Stars and Stripes, and General Patton, who ordered the GI cartoonist to report to Third Army headquarters for a dressing down.

When the sergeant was ushered into Patton's palatial office, the general pulled out from the center drawer of his gilt-edged desk a cartoon that he held as if it were infected with bacteria. It turned out to be a drawing of low-ranking GIs lined up to try to get into a USO show at a local opera house adorned with a marquee that said "Girls, Girls, Girls," while, at the stage door, officers were lined up to escort girls out after the show. Patton just couldn't grasp Mauldin's point — that this actually helped our cause by letting the GIs vent their frustrations.

Which, it seems, is something Mr. Obama is still learning about his own cause. He is, after all, aspiring for not only a political but a racial, generational, and cultural breakthrough. We ourselves are not immune to the idea that these elements might be a positive dimension to a campaign with which we otherwise have political differences. Surely some Americans are more comfortable with it than others. The more such there are, the more it can be said that if Mr. Obama is to slide into the White House, it will be with the help of the lubricant of laughter, including the kind that he might want to learn, as Roosevelt, Reagan, and Kennedy did, to enjoy at his own expense.

The Times Violates the Kann Rule of Lede-Writing

Via the great sage of journalism, Seth Lipsky, I learned a long time ago Peter Kann's rule concerning the first-person pronoun: "No reporter may start a story with the word 'I' unless he's been shot in the groin."

The New York Times reporter Campbell Robertson violated the rule yesterday:

I WAS late to "Rent." Late to the show, and late to the city it portrays. When I arrived in New York, in the fall of 1998, bistros and boutiques had already infiltrated the East Village, gentrification was spreading into the Lower East Side, and northwest Brooklyn had largely fallen to the forces of the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, sitting through "Rent" is more painful than a scrotal nick. Robertson is newly-assigned to the Baghdad bureau of the Times, which has its hardships, but I'd take Baghdad over "Rent" most days of the week.

Amusing anti-Semitic Nutjob Letter of the Day

This one in reference to my story on brain research. I'm withholding the name of my correspondent because I feel like it:

Why is it that I have to endure hearing about a person's frickin' Jewism every time I hear a story from a Jew,be it on TV or in print? Is it an inferiority complex? class envy? cronyism? a Holocaust pity party? I mean, when was the last time you heard a Catholic or a German or any other person integrate their religion and/or nationality with their telling of a story? I can't think of a last time.

Now, Jeffrey,I know you've been indoctrinated to write me off, and
any other person who scrutinizes your Jewism,as being anti-Semitic
but,if you did, that would be wrong. If you did, I would have to
conclude that the problem is more of your ethnocentrism than my
anti-Semitism.

And,if you ever come to Denver,you're apt to see me on the street
corners with my large sign telling passers-by that we need to get
American money the hell out of Israel and let the Marxist Jews go
it alone before their liberalism causes another world war.I get an
ever-increasing number of thumbs-up.

Obama, the New Yorker, and the Death of Humor

The New Yorker cover this week is exceedingly funny. If people don't get it, screw 'em. It's not a magazine's job to protect presidential candidates from misinterpreted satire.

I know I'm biased here, as a former New Yorker writer. I love the Atlantic, too, by the way (I guess this is what people mean when they accuse me of "dual loyalty.") As someone who appreciates a good joke, as well as bad joke, it bothers me that people are reacting so dyspeptically to the cover, and it's a shame Obama's campaign couldn't have laughed it off. In my limited experience, Obama is capable of humor, though he's not as funny as John McCain, the funniest person in the Senate, except for those times when Orrin Hatch goes blue. Also, Dianne Feinstein, who does one of dirtiest interpretations of "the Aristorcrats" I've ever heard.

Obama's people could have rolled with the pro-Obama sentiment behind the cover, just as Obama himself could have laughed off Bernie Mac's lame jokes last week. That was actually a more depressing episode than the New Yorker kerfluffle, if only because Bernie Mac was actually recruited by the Obama campaign to introduce the candidate. What did they expect Bernie Mac would do? Read excerpts of the Magna Carta?

The next time this happens -- say, when Cedric the Entertainer is hired to introduce Obama's newest thoughts on the earned-income tax credit, and he talks about ways in which bitches, as well as hos, can take advantage of the credit to offset their Social Security tax burden -- Obama could come out and say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Cedric the Entertainer." Someone has to stand up for comedy.

No Nuts, Please, We're The New York Times

Do the editors of The New York Times believe that their readers are too delicate to view Jesse Jackson's actual words without fainting? As bonkers as this seems, what with today's unexpurgated Internets and all, it is apparently so. What we have then is a story about a controversy concerning Jesse Jackson's words that refuses to print the most relevant word. Even though I'm a member of the MSM, I sometimes see why people might go elsewhere for news. At least bloggers believe that their readers are emotionally equipped to handle the presence of the word "nuts" in a sentence. "Balls" too, probably.

Wild and Wonderful Wal-Mart

A very thoughtful reader, William Moore, sent me this message:

I have lived in the Hedgesville-Martinsburg area all of my life and so it comes as a shock when something is written that seems to be detrimental to those who live here; however, much of which you write in this article is probably true.

I believe the Wal Mart in Martinsburg is dirty and that management does not
seem to care about how it serves the public. There have been stories about
how it treats its employees that circulates from time to time that are not
positive.

We are a community experiencing a sociological transformation. As one of
the fastest growing counties in the east, there are vastly more numbers of
people that are attracted to the area. We have not seen the rise of the
"gated community" in any numbers yet but perhaps that is coming. There is a
huge divide between those who work in better paying areas and only reside
here than those who make their living locally and have always lived here.

The poor are having trouble finding affordable housing while it seems that
farmlands are passing into McMansions built almost on top of each other and
the gap between those who have and those who do not are more apparent.

What you saw at Wal-Mart was the collection of the "underclass" as you refer
to it in one spot at one time. The children see images of a consumer
society on TV and they want what they see. Wal Mart has the symbols of that
identity if not the actual thing. The children set up a howl for all of
that and parents who are having trouble providing food, clothing, and
shelter react in ways they have been taught to shut the kids up. I think
that the way the kids dress is reflected upon the fact that parents buy
those things for them and the TV and mass media push those images as being
acceptable. The tattoos are a product of rock stars and media images and in
the rush of being daring as a status thing, people get these things and then
realize that they are on there for life.

That West Virginia Wal-Mart (cont'd)

I seem to have set off a bit of a wave of resentment among some residents of Martinsburg, West Virginia, concerning my observations about the local Wal-Mart. It's interesting to me how many people conflate an attack on Wal-Mart with an attack on their community. I suppose this just how the malevolent merchants from Bentonville, Ark., would have it.

One thing that is particularly surprising is the quantity (though not quality) of the anti-Semitic attacks directed at this modest blog. To wit:

Dear Mr. Jewberg:

Why don't you Jewish asshole (sic) leave West Virginia and go back to Isreal (sic) were (ditto) you can steal from Arabs and not the people in America.

And so on. Such e-mails came without signatures, of course. The reason I'm surprised is that I've spent quite a bit of time in West Virginia and find the people, particularly of the Panhandle, very tolerant.

Then there was this one from a Katie Hageny, in Martinsburg:

Your article is going around the federal government offices in Martinsburg. Best you should stay in D.C. Like Thumper says....don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

Katie seems not to grasp the role of a free press in American society, but at least she didn't call me, as another correspondent did, a "dirty Kike."

(By the way, is "kike" meant to be capitalized? Someone help me out here.)

I'll post some of the more considered reactions soon.

Aspen Without Ideas

We're still in Aspen, though the Ideas Festival is over. As delightful as it was, it's also delightful not to hear anything about catastrophic global climate change for a couple of days.

Bill Clinton On Unstable ex-POWs

Bill Clinton is speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and he said just now, apropos of almost nothing (actually, during a long peroration on Nelson Mandela): “Every living soul on this planet has some highly-justified anger. Everyone. If you know anybody who was a P.O.W. for any time, they can be going on for years and all of a sudden something will happen that will trigger all those bad memories.”

Not too subtle. Astonishingly, his interviewer, former Clinton Administration official Jane Wales, didn't follow-up. One subject Clinton didn't talk about at all: Barack Obama. He seemed to go out of his way, in fact, not to mention Obama's name. Which, when you think about, calls into question whether the P.O.W. shot was actually an intentional shot at all. On the other hand, I believe that Bill Clinton doesn't say things by accident.

Will the Monster Go Free?

As unbelievable as this sounds, Israel is actually thinking of swapping Samir Kuntar in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. Kuntar is perhaps the most terrible person held in an Israeli prison, a man who crushed the skull of a Jewish child against a rock. Sometimes, these prisoner exchanges don't seem worth it.

"If Iran Goes Nuclear, Evil Will Win"

Ari Shavit, bringing it strong:

A nuclear Iran will endanger Israel's existence, the stability of the Middle East and the welfare of the West. An Iran stripped of nuclear ability will allow the Middle East to become more moderate; it will enable the West to uphold its values and perpetuate its way of life for a long time to come. In the short term, however, the wild scenario is multi-risk. There might be an intelligence failure or a military one. In any case, the Iran of the ayatollahs is a sophisticated and strong religious power. If it is backed into a corner, Iran, too, will prefer to go out with a bang and not a whimper. No one today knows for sure what the nature and impact of such a bang would be.

Ambinder and Chevron

I'm also obsessed with my Chevron water bottle.

Michael Gerson Blasts Saddam, Gets Booed

A small indication of the political leanings of some Aspen attendees: At a session with Jim Wallis, Michael Cromartie and our very own Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson pushed back against Wallis's contention that the Iraq war was immoral because it caused the loss of innocent life. Gerson noted that the previous regime in Iraq was responsible for terrible human rights violations, including genocide, and he went on to say that Saddam was "comparable to Pol Pot." This was apparently a controversial assertion, because it provoked boos and grumbling in the audience. I would note for the record that there seemed to be no Kurds in the audience.

Who Is Allowed to Interpret Islam?

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz has an interesting write-up of a panel I moderated yesterday (rather moderately moderated, I think), on which Dalia Mogahed and Irshad Manji disagreed about just about everything having to do with the modest subject of the interpretation of Islam. The best moment, for me, at least, came when someone complained about the lack of men among the panelists. Not a complaint you usually hear.

The Diminishing Threat from Al Qaeda

Why do I get nervous when everyone sounds like Fareed Zakaria?

It is by now overwhelmingly clear that Al Qaeda and its philosophy are not the worldwide leviathan that they were once portrayed to be. Both have been losing support over the last seven years. The terrorist organization's ability to plan large-scale operations has crumbled, their funding streams are smaller and more closely tracked. Of course, small groups of people can still cause great havoc, but is this movement an "existential threat" to the United States or the Western world? No, because it is fundamentally weak. Al Qaeda and its ilk comprise a few thousand jihadists, with no country as a base, almost no territory and limited funds. Most crucially, they lack an ideology that has mass appeal. They are fighting not just America but the vast majority of the Muslim world. In fact, they are fighting modernity itself.

All of this makes perfect sense, of course. But at yesterday's Aspen panel on nuclear non-proliferation, the general consensus was that there's a reasonably high likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city, New York or Washington most likely, at some point in the next ten years. And the experts on the panel, John Holdren and Joe Cirincione among them, are not exactly attached to the Bush Administration worldview. After such an attack, we'll look back -- those of us still around, obviously -- on our efforts to combat al Qaeda and judge them inadequate to the task, just as we look back now on the Clinton Administration's pre-9/11 preparations (and the Bush Administration's, as well) as thoroughly inadequate. So I suppose I'm convinced of two things simultaneously: Al Qaeda is fairly weak, and not very popular at all, and that this might not matter as much as people think.

We're All Gonna Die

That, at least, is the impression I took away from a panel I just moderated on nuclear non-proliferation. I'll blog on this later, when I remember just what it was my panelists said (this is the problem of moderating panels -- you have no idea, as soon as they're over, what just transpired), but three of the four experts on the panel said that there is a 50-50 chance that there will be a nuclear attack on an American city in the next 10 years. An Adam Sandler movie it wasn't.

Untested and Untried

I note that Wesley Clark accuses John McCain of being "untested and untried." It doesn't strike me as smart for Barack Obama's advocates to be floating the term "untested and untried" out in the campaign ether.

An Addendum to the Shelby Steele Question

Now that I've heard the Big Ideas of the Big Thinkers showcased in the opening session of the festival, I think Shelby Steele should get credit for bringing an inflammatory, controversial idea to a public discussion. I say this after having listened to Sandra Day O'Connor speak about the importance of civic education. "We have to use technology to teach our young people about government structures," she said. I agree!