How to Stay Alive in a Terrorized Hotel

Four hotels I've stayed in recently have now been blown up, so count me an expert on where not to stay. But I've also thought a bit about how to stay alive in hotels - I'm sort of the TSA of hotel security, except that, unlike the TSA, I recognize that most of my advice is utterly without value. Also, my personal security guru, Bruce Schneier, says it's foolish even to worry about hotel safety, because the chances of something happening on any particular night in any particular hotel are vanishingly small.  The taxi ride to the hotel is invariably more dangerous than the hotel itself. But: Here are six ways to minimize your chances - already remote - of dying in a hotel besieged by terrorists. I'm not including in this some of the self-inflicted mistakes people make, such as allowing Russian prostitutes into your Baku hotel room and believing that they have your best interests at heart.

1)   Avoid big hotels. I stopped staying at the Marriott in Islamabad years and years ago. It was fairly well-protected, as hotels go - not like the hotels in Amman, though not terrible - but it was an obvious target, a supersized American hotel in a country boiling with anti-American feeling. Terrorists tend not to waste time on small  targets; they're trying to maximize the body count and hit targets of maximum symbolic value at the same time.

2)    If you can't help but stay at a behemoth, order room service whenever possible. This minimizes your exposure to restaurants located off the lobby.  Obviously, the lobby is the most dangerous place in a hotel; it is akin to the security lines at American airports, which are prime targets for suicide bombers precisely because they're entirely insecure.

3)    Ask for a room on the 4th, 5th or 6th floors, unless you're reasonably sure the fire department in the city you're visiting doesn't have ladders that reach up to six. I try to be high enough to escape whatever chaos might occur on the ground floor, but not so high that I can't be reached. I'm always of two or three minds on this question; it's also not a bad idea to stay on a floor close enough to the ground that a jump will leave you with broken legs and nothing more.

4)   Make two plans the moment you set foot in your room. Figure out how you're going to escape, and figure out, alternatively, how you're going to survive a siege. If escape isn't an option - say, you believe that men are roaming the floors with automatic weapons - try to figure out what you're going to use to fortify your room. In certain parts of the world - well, two - I'll barricade myself in my room at night, using a desk or dresser.  This is dangerous, of course, in the event of fire. But I measure the risk. In dodgy places, fill your bathtub, if you have one, with water; it will come in handy if you can't leave (and, of course, if there's fire outside your door). Always travel with a flashlight, utility knife (they're easy to sneak past TSA), matches, and a few energy bars. Know where your shoes are, as well as your passport and money, just in case you have to get out in the dark. Also, identify a lamp or other piece of furniture that could be used as a weapon of last resort.

5)   Set up tell-tales in your room before you leave for the day; I use a discreetly-placed length of dental floss to make sure no one's tampering with my laptop.  It's always good to know if somebody's been poking around your stuff.
 
6)  Stay in hotels that have already been bombed or otherwise attacked. Mumbai is a fairly safe place for travelers right now. And visiting India soon sends a message that civilization cannot be defeated by terror. But that's another subject.

If you have other tips, please send them my way and I'll post them.
 

Anger = Terrorism = No Fly List

US Airways, my least favorite airline except for all the others, threatens to ground a passenger because he expresses anger at airline ticket pricing. I'm glad the TSA is there to help the airlines deal with consumer terrorists.

Lee Abrams Wants Reporters to Dress Like Columbo

Via Romenesko, the genius of journalism shares more ideas:  "We've heard what the experts think, lets open it up to REAL people. This could be red hot. What the average citizen's take on the topics is."

Yes, this is why people watch the news and read newspapers, to learn about the financial crisis, or about the growing anarchy in Peshawar, from their uninformed, thoroughly average neighbors. Lee Abrams is the advance guard of ignorance.  Just as a reminder of who Abrams is, here's a brief excerpt from my interview with him from earlier this year:

Question: When I was coming up, there was an expression that the role of the newspaper is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Does that ring true anymore?
Answer: Probably not as much as it did.

Zach Braff Does Some Jewish Thinking

One of the strange things about Hollywood is that it is simultaneously very Jewish and also not: The Holocaust is an acceptable topic of conversation, but Israel is not much discussed; Jewish victimhood is easier to process than the complexities of Jewish power. On the other hand, there's Zach Braff:

"As an American Jew it's an amazing feeling to come to a place where you feel you belong. You know we're such a minority in the U.S. Even though I grew up in New Jersey, which was very Jewish, and then I went to school in Chicago, which was Jewish, and then I moved to New York, which is very Jewish, and then I went to Hollywood, which is very Jewish. But they say we're only 2 percent of the population and shrinking because of intermarriage."

More TSA Stupidity

From Effect Measure, some interesting observations on the futility of behavioral detection protocols at airports:

Suppose that behavioral detection were so sensitive that you picked every single terrorist trying to get on an airplane. There are about 750 million passenger trips this year, so let's say one in ten million involves a terrorist, or 75 terrorist trips. Let's also say that the behavioral test IDs them all (highly unlikely) but also makes a mistake in about one in a ten thousandth of a percent of passenger trips. That's 750 false positives. That means for behavioral detector whose skills are 100% sensitive and 99.9999% specific (meaning he tags the wrong person only once per million times) the positive predictive value would still be only 10%. So it isn't at all surprising that the PPV of the current system is functionally zero and probably exactly zero. It's a fool's errand.

Settlers Behaving Badly

Now they're pouring turpentine on Israeli soldiers in Hebron. I've said it a million times, so let me keep saying it: These people represent a severe threat to Israel's future as a Jewish democracy. Maybe Hillary will help the Israeli government see that. 

Jon Voight and Rashid Khalidi

Thank you to everyone who has written in so far with their nominations for the Goldblog Top 50 Philo-Semites Competition, but those of you who keep nominating Rashid Khalidi, you can stop now. I get your point. I defended him against charges of anti-Semitism, but let's not push this too far.

Also -- and this is directed at a different political crowd, quite obviously -- you can stop nominating Jon Voight now, as well. Message received:

An Anti-Semite Writes in to Make a Point about Philo-Semites

In reference to our contest to name the top 50 Philo-Semites, a reader calling himself exposer99 sends in the following:

Jeffrey,

You're seeking Philo-Semites? How about...

1. Absolutely every cable news pundit except Pat Buchanan.

2. Absolutely every print columnist except Pat Buchanan and, briefly, Robert Novak.

3. Absolutely every congressman except Ron Paul and Jim Moran.

4. Absolutely every senator.

5. Absolutely every newspaper and magazine editor except Scott McConnell of The American Conservative.

6. Absolutely every television news executive, editor and producer.


Does that help?

(name withheld because I like to work)

Hillary's Middle East Understanding, and Mickey's Dissent

Mickey Kaus criticizes me (and derivatively, Andrew) for talking up Hillary Clinton, in particular her Middle East expertise. He argues that the statement I quote is an "unremarkable politician's statement that either tells Goldberg what he wants to hear or makes Hillary someone Goldberg might like to promote for either political or beat-sweetening reasons." The relevant statement, by the way, is this: "You do not get people into a process... unless the other side knows that your commitment to Israel is unshakable."  Mickey asks: "Does it reflect Hillary's 'uncommon knowledge'?" 

I plead guilty to the charge of political promotion (though not to "beat-sweetening")  -- I would like to see Hillary as secretary of state because I think she's best-equipped (especially considering the group of putative finalists, Kerry, Richardson, Hagel, for the job) to engineer the comprehensive peace plan that I (and Scowcroft and Brzezinski!) believe is absolutely necessary right now, because at some indeterminate time in the very near future, it will be too late. I think Hillary's insight here -- one that Brzezinski doesn't share,  I think -- is that this comprehensive peace will come about when the Arab side understands clearly that America has red lines of its own. The Palestinians suffer sometimes from the irrational hope that America's support for Israel is mutable, and that the key to success is to bring about direct American pressure on Israel. This won't happen for any number of reasons, and I think Hillary Clinton understands that American pressure will only encourage Israeli politicians to descend into the bunker.

The new secretary of state should plan on giving two speeches almost right away: One to the Palestinian parliament (or even better, to the Arab League) explaining exactly why most Americans tend to side with Israel. It should be, in essence, a speech that justifies the original Zionist idea. Then, the secretary of state should speak to the Israeli Knesset, and lay out, in very clear terms, the U.S. vision for Israel's borders, and talk very specifically about the need to bring about the end of the settlement project, and the birth of a viable Palestinian state -- and to speak of that birth as a direct American national security interest (and a direct national security interest of the State of Israel). Neither speech will be popular, of course, which is the point. But the hope is that these speeches, which would lay out in very specific terms the way things must be to ensure the survival of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, will shock the two peoples into an awareness of reality. Hillary Clinton, based on what she's said and done so far, understands this issue better than most anyone, and I think she is smart, savvy and energetic enough to, just maybe, pull this off.


 

Malcolm Gladwell's Top 50 Philo-Semites

So, as you have undoubtedly heard, the Forward has chosen me as one of its 50 most influential American Jews. Me, Rahm Emanuel, Sarah Silverman, and Lipa Schmeltzer, among others.

This honor has changed my life, especially the magnificent gift of 1,000 shares of AIG stock from the finance committee of the Elders of Zion. It has also caused heartache. Friends are envious, even non-Jewish friends. For instance, Malcolm Gladwell is very upset. When we were roommates a very long time ago, Malcolm used to listen to the klezmer stylings of Giora Feidman on his record player. He is, in other words, very Jewy. He is also deeply wounded. "I am so jealous," he wrote. "Shouldn't there be a parallel list for wanna-bes?"

Yes, there should. If the Forward can publish a list of the top 50 Jews, then Goldblog can publish a list of the top 50 philo-Semites. I don't have a philosophical problem with this, by the way: I dissent from the line, first passed on to me by Frank Foer, who, tragically, is not a top-50 Jew (though his mother is!), that philo-Semites are anti-Semites who like Jews. So, a list, and one loyal readers can help me assemble. I already asked Malcolm to provide me names of other philo-Semites, but he said: "How do I know philo-Semites? I'm such a philo-Semite I only associate with the real thing."

Here are a few names, just to get us going:

1) George Eliot
2) Barack Obama
3) Harry Truman
4) Emile Zola
5) Malcolm Gladwell

Please send your entries to Goldberg.atlantic@gmail.com, and I'll post them as they come in.
 

One Reason Hillary Could be Extraordinary at State

Her understanding of Middle East peacemaking is second-to-none, IMHO. Two years ago, I interviewed the front-runners for the Democratic nomination on a range of foreign policy issues. Obama was smart and savvy and reasonable and seemed to have, generally speaking, excellent judgment, but he was still unsteeped in some of the issues; Edwards was a dope; Clinton, however, was something of a wonder: her simultaneous mastery of the smallest details and of the biggest themes was beyond impressive. Her uncommon understanding of the Middle East could truly revive peacemaking. Here's a brief excerpt from the interview.  This answer came in response to the question, "Would you have a different approach to peacemaking in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and would you think it necessary to put some light between the U.S. and Israel?" Please, note, in particular, her acute understanding of what makes negotiations work, at the end of her answer:

"I reject that. It's fallacious logic. I don't think you reject the commitments and relationships that are rooted in common values. Israel is a democracy and it is an ally. It is a beacon of freedom and it is a historical necessity.  For me this is a given. But that doesn't mean you have to present solid support for Israel in a a way that alienates and rejects the feelings of other peoples in the world. And I thought my husband did a pretty good job of that. I thought he had a rock-solid commitment to Israel, a guarantee of Israel's security. The Israelis believed it. We were last there in November and people were saying to him, "Come and run for President here,' because he has such a deep connection and empathy, and I feel it and share it.

When he had a process going that kept Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other, people didn't die. There are those who say that that doesn't resolve the issue, so big deal, people didn't die, big deal that for a couple of years not a single Israeli was killed, big deal that the Palestinians were actually starting businesses. Well, I think it was a big deal.  A process is better than no process, as long as everybody knows going into it where you stand. We stand foursquare as a guarantor of Israel's security and in making common cause with Israeli democratic human values.

We would love to see a two-state solution where the Palestinians could actually be living and planning for a future in a way that would enhance their prospects. That would be great... I have said over and over that I support the decisions that are made by the government and the people of Israel who are on the front lines. I have said that during Labor governments, Likud governments, Kadima governments.  I think that's the level of commitment we need to show. You do not get people into a process or to the table to make any kind of tough decisions, including compromises, unless the other side knows that your commitment to Israel is unshakable.

Noah Pollak: Daniel Levy Doesn't Understand Hezbollah

Noah writes in to say that Daniel Levy, in his interview with me, gets more than a couple of things wrong:

There actually is a decent argument for giving Shebaa Farms to Lebanon, in order that it would be one item that could be crossed off the list of things Hezbollah cites as reasons for the maintenance of its militia. It might weaken Hezbollah politically in Lebanon. But the problem is that Hezbollah (as it proved in May of this year) does not depend on public opinion for its political strength. That era is long past.

And we also know how groups like Hezbollah respond to territorial concessions -- they are strengthened and encouraged by them, not the opposite. But that's not even the real problem with Daniel Levy. The real problem is that he thinks Hezbollah has limited grievances. If Israel gave Hezbollah the Shaba, and handed over the Golan to Syria, and closed down Dimona, and sent bouquets of flowers to Nasrallah, Hezbollah would still want to destroy Israel, and it would still want to dominate Lebanese politics and act as an Iranian platform. There is no connection between anything we can do for Hezbollah and what Hezbollah wants. There is only a power relationship, what the group wants versus what it's capable of accomplishing. Silly gestures like Shaba will not affect that.  Hezbollah simply moves the goalposts every time one of its ambitions is realized, or looks like it might be realized.

Twitter and Middle East Peace: The Secret Connection

Venture capitalist Todd Klein came to a talk I gave with David Gregory this past Sunday and drew some unusual conclusions. 

Be-More-Lame-Than-The-TSA Contest Finalist

Here's a good contest entry from Jack Nutting, who tries to out-lame TSA chief Kip Hawley. You'll recall that Hawley stated, in response to my article on airport security idiocy, that "most bombers are not, in fact, clever. Living bomb-makers are usually clever, but the person agreeing to carry it may not be super smart. Even if 'all' we do is stop dumb terrorists, we are reducing risk."

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced today the DOT's new policy for dealing with widespread defiance of speed limits on interstate highways.  According to a new directive dubbed Let the Fast Ones Go (LEFOGO), local police and state troopers are being asked to focus on the slowest offenders, and simply let the fastest speeders get away.  "In these times of rising gas prices and sinking police budgets, we as a nation cannot afford to waste fuel in high-speed pursuits," said Secretary Peters.  "Not only is it a more efficient use of fuel to go after the slower speeders, it's also a better use of officers' time.  Under LEFOGO we can therefore catch a greater number of speeders, making the roads safer for everyone."  The directive encourages police to ignore any vehicles exceeding the speed limit by more than 20 miles per hour.
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Obama: Distressingly Pro-Israel?

Ali Abunimah thinks so (with a couple of caveats):

Obama's positions are remarkable only for their conformity with long-standing U.S. policies. As Obama told AIPAC in June, "I have been proud to be a part of a strong bipartisan consensus that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats. That is a commitment...both [Senator] John McCain and I share because support for Israel in this country goes beyond party."11

Daniel Levy On Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Daniel Levy, the director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation (which is run by a blogger, it should be noted) and the director of the Prospects for Peace initiative at the Century Foundation, is one of the smartest analysts of the Middle East conflict in Washington, or anywhere else. He often veers too left for my taste (on only one occasion, I believe, I veered too left for his taste), but he's a rigorous thinker and is steeped in the painful and complicated details of the ongoing crisis. Levy, who keeps his own blog, of course, has been a player in negotiations through the 1990s, and brings real-world experience -- and real Israeli experience -- to the conversation. As we enter the Obama era, it seemed worthwhile to send Levy some questions:

Jeffrey Goldberg:  Are you a Zionist?

Daniel Levy: The answer is a yes, albeit a more complex yes than I'd like it to be.  I would describe myself as a Zionist on at least three levels.  First, and at the most practical level, having made aliyah to Israel from the U.K., taken up citizenship, and made my life there, my Zionism meets the more classical and exclusionary definitions.  Second, I do consider the Jews to be a people, and support that people's right to self-determination in a nation-state, Israel.  Finally, and in many ways derived from both of the above, I consider Israel to be central to my own Jewishness and my identity--more than a religious affiliation, it's a national and cultural affiliation to modern Israel, the language, to Tel Aviv, etc.
 
Where it gets complex is this--sixty years after the establishment of the state, and alongside all its accomplishments, the onus is now on Israel and its founding ideology, Zionism, to demonstrate in practice that it can be non-expansionist in territorial terms toward its neighbors, and that it can confer genuine equality on the non-Jewish citizens of the state.  Most troubling of course is that for more than two-thirds of its existence, Israel has imposed a hostile occupation on another people, the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and to be blunt, that occupation will have to end for Israel to survive.  To the extent to which a Zionist narrative has been used to drive forward and justify the post-'67 settlement enterprise (and the discrimination within Israel), it is a Zionism that actually works against the interests of Israel, and not, of course, the Zionism that I am signing up for.

JG: You write about the occupation in a way that suggests you believe it was Israel's fault from the outset.  Whose fault do you believe it is?  Put another way, do you think the Khartoum declaration of late 1967--the so-called three noes--set the stage for the tragedy that followed, or is it not relevant?

Continue reading "Daniel Levy On Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements" »

The Art of the Lift, New York Times Division

So I'm reading Rachel Swarns' Times story yesterday about all the Obama-related private school excitement here in Washington, and I'm thinking that much of it sounds familiar to me, in particular the highly amusing anecdote about one-time Hillaryite Beth Dozoretz's lobbying efforts on behalf of Sidwell Friends. You know why it sounded familiar to me? Because I read it a week ago right here on the Atlantic website. Gabriel Sherman had the story first, and the Dozoretz story in the Times seems to have been appropriated, without a hat tip, from the Atlantic.

That's the thing about these Internets; they might be destroying society, but they also make it harder to boost other people's scoops.

Is Our Arabs Hating?

From the mail, in re: What Obama and Rahm Emanuel know, or do not know, about the intentions of Israel's adversaries:

Does they know that the Arab in Israel dance and sing when Jewish blood is spilled?
Does they know that Mr. Pres of Iran calls in a loud voice for the destruction of Israel?

Where does these people come from?

Chuck Norris, Meet Rahm Emanuel

True Rahm Emanuel facts:

"Israel is my middle name" is something Rahm Emanuel can actually say.

When donors offer Rahm Emanuel $5,000 checks, he hangs the fuck up on them.

Rahm Emanuel refers to Washington as "Fucknutsville."

Rahm Emanuel did not fight in the Israeli army as rumored but he probably would have been awesome at it if he had.

Rahm Emanuel's rabbi lets him work on Rosh Hashanah.

In Defense of Ink-Stained Wretches

Ron Rosenbaum delivers a scorcher in defense of us poor content-making shlubs. I tend to think that after the world has forgotten Jeff Jarvis, it will still remember Ron Rosenbaum. Why? Because Ron actually makes something:

Look, there's nothing wrong with Jarvis doing all this thinking and decreeing. He's said some savvy, if unoriginal, things about journalism (advocating looking at the article as an ongoing process, not a product, for instance). He's among the most rational of the new thinkers. But it's the callous contempt for working journalists that grates. It's a contempt for the beautiful losers who actually made journalism an honorable profession for a brief shining moment--well, longer than that--before it became a platform for "reverse engineering."

The U.S., Israel, and the Constitution

Roger Ailes lists his priorities. I'd probably put the Constitution in second place, but that's just me.

Not So Impressed With Rahm

From one reader, who actually believes -- well, read it for yourself (the helpful italics are mine):

You are showing exactly what kind of Jew the new chief of staff is.  Obama is out to hurt Israel. I believe that this is a main mission of his life. It shows from the people that he surrounds himself with to the parties he has attended. It shows from his failures to submit his birth certificate to his throwing off reporters that didn't agree with him all the time. Our new president likes to hide the whole truth. This is not change. This is the same old hidden agenda. This is a case of masked lies.

This hiring of a  Jew to cause destruction either intentional or not to the land of Israel happened  in biblical times and continues today.. When this stops people will see the Jews as a strong nation and stop trying to destroy us. This election sadly did nothing to help the Jews of the world.

Why the Jews Should Rule Jerusalem

To stop those crazy Christians from killing each other:

Monks from the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations were preparing for a ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City when a disagreement led to a full-fledged fistfight.

The photo accompanying the CNN story is priceless: An Ethiopian Jewish border policemen in a knock-down drag-out with an Armenian monk inside Christianity's holiest site. It's days like this one that make me miss living in Jerusalem, if only for its awesome weirdness.

The End of White Civilization

Ta-Nehisi has details. You should pardon me for saying this (and Ta-Nehisi will, because he feels my people's pain) but from my tribal perspective, the Poles have not always done entirely great things for civilization.

Rahm Emanuel and Israel

The news that Rahm Emanuel has accepted Barack Obama's request to be his chief of staff is fascinating on many levels, not least of which is Rahm's deep Israel credentials. First, in the interest of full disclosure, I've known Rahm for a long time, and he's yelled at me for no good reason on many occasions. This, of course, is the way he expresses affection. I do believe, despite the yelling, that Rahm is an excellent choice to run the White House, and I'll get into that later.

 But for now, a couple of comments about the Israel connection:

1) This choice makes the entire "Does Obama secretly hate Israel?" conversation seem a bit ridiculous (Though the vast majority of Jewish voters seemed to have figured that out by the election). Rahm did not, despite the rumors, serve in the Israeli Army, but he is deeply and emotionally committed to Israel and its safety. We've talked about the issue a dozen times; it's something he thinks about constantly, and his appointment gives me further reason to believe that the Obama Administration will not wait seven years to address the Israeli-Arab crisis.

2) Peace-processors take heart: Rahm, precisely because he's a lover of Israel, will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making, so when the next Prime Minister tells President Obama that as much as he'd love to, he can't dismantle the Neve Manyak settlement outpost, or whichever outpost needs dismantling, because of a) domestic politics; b) security concerns, or c) the Bible, Rahm will call out such nonsense, and it will be very hard for right-wing Israelis to come back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew. This is not to say that he's unaware of Palestinian dysfunction, or Iranian extremism, but that he has a good grasp of some of Israel's foibles as well. All in all, it's a very heartening choice.

TSA-Style Foolishness, Chicago Division

A reader writes about a presumably Obama-related piece of federal security non-think:

I work for the Federal government in the same office building in Chicago where the Illinois Senators have their offices--the Kluczynski federal building at 219 S. Dearborn Street.  Prior to this week all Federal employees could enter the building by simply showing identification from the agency for which they work.  Members of the public had to show ID, walk through a metal detector and have their belongings X-rayed. 

Starting on Monday, ALL individuals entering the building have to go through the same process as the general public.  My boss was prevented from bringing in a 2-inch pocket knife and I've heard that scissors are banned as well. 

What's the logic of this?  I have no idea since almost every employee in my office has a pair of scissors in his or her desk.  I have a pocket knife in my desk and we have standard kitchen knives in the office for birthday cakes, etc.

I suppose that, as a Federal employee, I shouldn't be surprised at the stupidity.  But this is one of the stupidest things I have seen in my almost 30 years in the government.

Bush's Plans Before 9/11

A reader writes:

Your statement "If I recall correctly, George W. Bush was pretty
much uninterested in dropping bombs on Arab and Muslim countries until
a large, diverse group of Arabs, operating out of the Muslim country
of Afghanistan, attacked the United States on September 11th, 2001,
murdering more than three thousand people." is wrong. As we know now
(and as is documented in many good books), Bush/Cheney had plans drawn
out to attack Iraq even before 9/11, and the first thing they wanted
to find out on that day was whether Iraq was behind it (to give them a
convenient excuse to attack the country).

Point taken, though I don't entirely agree. Bush, in particular, was not focused on Iraq before 9/11 (much less focused, in fact, than Bill Clinton, who actually did drop bombs on Iraq before 9/11).  Plans? Everyone had plans to attack Iraq.

On Forgetfulness and 9/11

There's a disconcerting moment in one of the many triumphalist stories today about the world's Obama-inspired jubilation. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for jubilation, and like Andrew, I think that Obama's popularity is an important (though perhaps ephemeral) weapon in the war on terror. But Ethan Bronner's piece in today's Times contains this odd, unknowing passage:

It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few -- Israel, Georgia, the Philippines -- favoring a victory for Senator John McCain.

"Since Bush came to power it's all bam, bam, bam on the Arabs," asserted Fathi Abdel Hamid, 40, as he sat in a Cairo coffee house.

Bronner doesn't call out Fathi Abdel Hamid, so allow me: If I recall correctly, George W. Bush was pretty much uninterested in dropping bombs on Arab and Muslim countries until a large, diverse group of Arabs, operating out of the Muslim country of Afghanistan, attacked the United States on September 11th, 2001, murdering more than three thousand people.

There are many in the Muslim world who find America's actions over the past seven years inexplicable. Some of our actions have indeed been inexplicable, but they're all rooted in a trauma that many people seem to have forgotten.

Advice for the New President

Last weekend, at one of the many soccer games that fill up my family's schedule, the talk on the sidelines was of a sermon delivered that Saturday morning by Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Temple Micah, on Wisconsin Ave. in Washington. Correction: Since this was Washington, some of the parents on the sidelines were on Obama campaign conference calls, and others were actually watching the game. But Zemel's sermon was still a topic of discussion.

Temple Micah is a liberal synagogue (How liberal? Put it this way -- Sy Hersh left my synagogue to join Micah), but Zemel gave a non-partisan sermon, in the form of an answer to a question posed by a Bat Mitzvah, Lila Klaus, who asked if politics and religion should mix. I asked Rabbi Zemel for a copy, and here's part of what he said. It's definitely worth reading (and it's worth hearing him live, as well):

How can our Judaism not inform the way we feel about the questions we face each day, questions large and small? 

The challenge for religion is to keep politics focused on issues and not let it degenerate into campaigning for particular candidates, thus making synagogues and churches into hotbeds of political activity.  Advocating for candidates in the context of prayer would run the risk of pitting worshiper against worshiper.   

      I have thought about your question for a long time, Lila, and I did so against the backdrop of this historic election.  As I thought about this, a kind of fantasy question popped into my mind: it is the Shabbat after the election and the newly-elected president is in Washington to begin the work of transition. He decides to go with a Jewish advisor to Shabbat services. In my fantasy, in walks the President-elect to our Shabbat services at Micah. What would I tell them -- what would my Jewish voice have to say to a newly elected president? 

      1. Honesty. Please, Mr. President-elect -- simply tell us what you think, what you want to do and why. Try and shed yourself of the handlers and spinmeisters and doublespeak.  There is nothing that so destroys the morale of our nation as this.  The Talmud explicitly legislates against a kind of speech where the speaker is counting on being misunderstood. On the contrary, we are commanded to speak so that we can be clearly understood, ant not to use the power of words to mislead the listener away from our real intentions. Doublespeak is the equivalent of putting a stumbling block before the blind.  Cynicism corrodes the heart and the American heart has become depressingly cynical.  Ultimately in life, all we have is who we are. Please, I would say--- be yourself with us. That is, model yourself on Buber -- I-Thou.  Speak to our dignity as full human beings. 

      2. Then I would perhaps reflect on Jewish models of leadership and simply remind the new President that Moses was always under attack and always lonely. His greatest moments came when he was alone -- the burning bush, Mt. Sinai, in the meeting tent where only he could enter, Mt. Nebo at the end of his life.  The nature of the leader is to be lonely -- don't try and be popular, because seeking popularity is what gets us golden calves. Serious leadership results in the Ten Commandments. Do what you think is right.

      3. Finally, I would say that there is nothing more important than hope. You can go without food for several days, but without hope, our lives are lost. Hope in Hebrew "tikva." I learned from a colleague, Rabbi Michael Marmur, about the different opinions about the origin of the word. Some say it comes from "mikva," a ritual bath. Hope then is a resource, a pool, a solace, and a support. Pools of hope are what we all need.

      There is a second view on the derivation of the word, that it is connected to a cord or thread. The famous red thread which makes an appearance in the Book of Joshua is called a Tikva. If the first meaning of the word looks to sources of support, the second kind of hope is symbolized by a thin thread leading from a complicated present to a possible future. This is also a great need in our time for a thread of hope that can lead us to a strong bridge.  Nachman of Bratzlav taught that the entire world is a narrow bridge and the important thing is to not be afraid.

  

On Electing an African-American President

My hometown, Malverne, on the South Shore of New York's Long Island, is all white and mainly Catholic, but it shares a school district with a mostly African-American neighborhood called Lakeview. The house in which I lived (after we made the exodus from Brooklyn, that is) was near the dividing line - the appropriately-named Ocean Avenue. The public schools, when I was a child, were about half-white and half-black, but blacks were often poorly represented on the school board and in the school administration.  There was a great deal of fear in certain white quarters of black empowerment; at one point, black parents, and their white supporters, notably, my parents, had to sue in order to get buses to take black students across Ocean Avenue to the district's two elementary schools, both of which were located deep in the white zone. Everything, it seemed, was a fight.

These are my memories of those tumultuous days: Friendship among students across the color line, and bitterness and suspicion among the adults. For all the obvious reasons, then, today seems to me a new story.  Once, the fight was to elect African-Americans to serve on a local school board; now, the country seems ready to choose an African-American to be president. This upsurge of memories prompted me to call a dear friend of my mother's, a woman named Rener Reed, who was and is, a stalwart in the civil rights struggle in our school district, and well beyond.

Mrs. Reed, who was born in Mississippi, is a leader of the NAACP (I think it was she who signed me up for a lifetime membership), a large-hearted person and generally a tough cookie.  I asked her how she felt about today, against the backdrop of her long struggles. She laughed and said, "Well, you know, the school board is back to one black member." But then she reported that she has seen Obama signs in the white parts of town.  "We're living in a time when white people can look past color," she said, almost as if she were describing a dawning messianic age. "I always had faith that this could happen."  She said she could not wait to vote. "I'm going early," she said. "My vote is going to count."

It will. That's a small miracle for a black woman born in Mississippi. The whole day, in fact, is an astonishment. It's worth remembering that.

The Czar is Dead (Or, Joe Klein Responds)

Joe Klein, in his response to my earlier post, cedes the point I make about the misuse of the term "anti-Semitism," and I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful that he's out there selling my book (there's no better way to soften a writer's heart than to praise his books, except maybe handing over cash money). But Joe goes on to say that I'm "truly foolish" for writing the following:

 I know that Joe derives great pleasure from criticizing Jewish supporters of the Iraq War -- the Wolfowitzes, Perles and Feiths --in specifically Jewish terms, while never seeming to use the Christianity of other supporters of the war, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and other such marginal figures, against them. I don't like the double-standard, but it's part of the rough and tumble.

This is his response to my statement:

No, Jeff, I don't derive great pleasure from it. I'm pretty anguished about it. As a Jew, I'm embarrassed by these extremists and outraged by their assumption that they represent mainstream Jewish opinion in this country. Furthermore, I don't use the Christianity of Bush et al against them because their Christianity had nothing to do with their support for the war. For people like Doug Feith et al, their Jewish identity--their ethnic nationalism, not the religious part of it--had an awful lot to do with their plumping for war with Iraq and, more recently, Iran. Feith et al advised Binyamin Netanyahu, in a paper called "A Clean Break," to go to war with Iraq when he was Prime Minister in order to protect Israel. I find the conflation, by some Jewish neoconservatives, of Israel's interests and America's--and their truly dangerous misreading of both--to be appalling. But much worse is their rush to pin the tag of anti-Semitism on anyone who disagrees with them, including me.

There is much to unpack here. First, there is Joes's assertion that Bush's Christianity has "nothing to do" with his push for war. I think this will surprise a lot of people, including George W. Bush. Second, I think Joe is essentializing, to employ an unwieldy term, the Jews who supported the war. There's no denying - nor should it be denied - that American Jews, and American Christians as well, worry about Israel's security. (That Christian bit is important, by the way; I know this drives Mearsheimer and Walt crazy - and I know that Joe is no Mearsheimerite - but polls show the majority of Americans are sympathetic to Israel, despite the best efforts of the Mearsheimers and Walts of this country to blame Israel for America's woes. No Jewish lobby would be powerful enough to influence American foreign policy if it worked in opposition to the feelings of a majority of Americans.)

I think Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, were worried about Saddam Hussein for many reasons, including and especially his record of genocide, and I think that many advocates of the war, myself included, were eager to see Saddam overthrown because he was a uniquely evil figure on the world stage. And if the Jewish advocates for the defeat of Saddam argued the way they did because they were sensitized to the issue of genocide by the Holocaust, well, so what? In a different context - Darfur, say - they would be praised for their sensitivity. I would imagine - I certainly hope - that non-Jews who were mobilized to oppose Saddam were motivated by his record of genocide as well. But put aside genocide: I tend to believe, and the record bears this out, that men like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith had five or six or seven different motivations in this war, just as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did, as well.
 
This doesn't absolve the Jews in the Bush Administration of incompetence and negligence, but it doesn't absolve the non-Jews either, especially because, and I know Joe doesn't want to hear this, the Jews were not quite the all-powerful figures in the White House and Pentagon that people imagine them to have been.

But this brings me to a deeper question: Why is it illegitimate for American Jews to care about Israel's security and argue for American measures that would strengthen Israel's security? In a conversation earlier this year, Joe told me the following: "I just don't want to see policy makers who make decisions on the basis of whether American policy will benefit Israel or not."

Why not? American policy makers make decisions that benefit other countries all the time. American troops are in harm's way in South Korea and Japan, serving as tripwires against North Korean aggression. American troops are in Western Europe, in Kosovo, and dozens of other places, all with the aim of providing security to friends and allies. American troops died liberating Kuwait and defending Saudi Arabia, and those who argued for the first Gulf War were seldom accused of putting Kuwait's interests before America's. So why, exactly, shouldn't American policy makers consider the security of Israel, an American ally, when they're making decisions about Middle East policy? Support for Israel is a question that's worth debating, of course, just as support for Egypt and Kuwait and South Korea and a dozen other countries around the world is worth debating. But this country has been committed in a most bipartisan way to Israel's security for more than sixty years. Now Joe Klein comes along and suggests that American decisions should be made without consideration for Israel, and he argues that those who take Israel's security into account when making decisions - at least those Jews who do - are somehow disloyal to the United States. (By the way, just so we're all clear here, I'm not arguing for or against the Iraq War now; I, for one, believe that the war has set back, among other things, Israel's security. I'm only talking about the rights of American Jews to participate in the formulation of American Middle East policy. Even stupid Jews.)

But let's come to the final issue, the question of ethnic "embarrassment." I find Joe a little bit unfathomable on this question, actually. I tend to be unembarrassed by the actions of other Jews. I don't feel that the idiocy or immorality of other Jews reflects negatively on me, just as the great achievements of other Jews don't really redound to my credit. I have a visceral distaste for cringing (this is the Zionist in me, I guess), because it's a very unflattering, very ghetto sort of Jewish behavior.  It seems as if people like Joe, whose anger at a handful of Jews for advocating the Iraq War is so outsized (he seems to spend more energy attacking neo-conservative Jews than he does the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) are saying to the rest of the world, "Those Jews over there, the ones you don't like? Well, I don't like them either! In fact, I like them less than you like them! So just remember, I'm not them."
 
But here's the thing: The czar is dead. A little Jewish self-confidence wouldn't be a bad, or inappropriate, thing. 

Back in the Real World, of Real Horrors

A gruesome discovery on a beach in Yemen.

Jerry Nadler Won't Be Serving in the Obama White House

My goombah Jake Tapper sends word of this strange Nadler performance in Florida. If Nadler  keeps making gaffes like this one -- and I don't necessarily mean "gaffe" in the full Kinsleyan sense of something that is obviously true but not meant to be spoken aloud -- he'll find himself under a gag order from the entire New York delegation.