I'll respond later to Andrew's long and thought-provoking Amalek post, if I can muster up the will (suffice it to say that one cannot understand the meaning of Amalek, or anything else in the Jewish Bible, without understanding the two-thousand-year-old religion called Rabbinic Judaism, the successor to Biblical Judaism, and the one we practice today) but there's one technical point that needs to be cleared up here, and that is that Netanyahu himself has never, to the best of my knowledge, invoked Amalek in talking about Iran. He's invoked Hitler, of course, but not Amalek. In his column today, Roger Cohen condemns Netanyahu's "attempts to liken Iran to Amalek, the Biblical enemy of the Jews," except that Netanyahu never likened Iran to Amalek. I don't know if this is sloppiness on Cohen's part, or something worse, but in the op-ed I wrote that got this particular meme started, it was one of Netanyahu's advisers who invoked the specter of Amalek, not Netanyahu himself. So far as I know, Netanyahu has never mentioned Amalek. If he has, would someone please let me know?
In any case, this whole debate is a perversion, and not only because genocide is the specialty of other religions, and not Judaism. Iran has called for the elimination of the Jewish state, and seems to be building nuclear weapons that could make that a reality; Israel simply seeks to protect itself from a country that wants to exterminate it. If Israel does strike Iran, it would bomb military targets while trying to minimize civilian casualties. Iran, through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, already has a long and distinguished record of murdering Jewish children. There's simply no equivalence here. Yes, Israel does various idiotic and immoral things. But it isn't, even on its worst day, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
"Hateful and Disgusting and Profoundly un-Jewish"
A Goldblog reader writes in reference to the anti-democratic legislation now making its way through the Knesset:
"Even after years of watching the Arab-Israeli conflict, with
all the ugly behavior it engenders, after "Who Is a Jew," after the corruption scandals,
and the sexual harassment by Israeli officials and all of that, this is first
time I have read about something going on in Israel to which I have immediately
reacted, "I don't want to have any association with a country that
does that." I would not be able to say that "Prayer for the State
of Israel" in the Shabbat service. I would not want my kids to sing
Hatikvah. It would be acquiescence to and association with something hateful
and disgusting and profoundly un-Jewish."
Israel Edges Toward Thought Control
I don't like the term "Nakba," or catastrophe, what Arabs have taken to calling the events of 1948, mainly because it didn't have to be a "nakba" -- much of the catastrophe was self-inflicted. The UN, after all, offered half of mandatory Palestine to the Arabs, and the Arabs refused, and launched a war of extermination that they then managed to lose. And wallowing in suffering only gets in the way of achieving real advancements for Palestinians, who have been badly served by their national liberation movement for as long as it has existed. (Yes, of course, wallowing isn't so healthy for Jews, either).
But now comes a group of Knesset members who want to make the term "nakba" illegal, and who want to make the "negation" of Israel as a Jewish democratic state illegal as well. According to Ha'aretz, this second bill would outlaw the publication of any 'call to negate Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state, where the content of such publication would have a reasonable possibility of causing an act of hatred, disdain or disloyalty' to Israel."
In other words, anyone who says that Israel isn't a democracy will go to jail. I understand Israeli Jewish fears about the extremism found in certain sections of Arab Israeli society, but is outlawing expressions of dissent the way to battle this extremism? In the countries that border Israel, many thoughts are held to be illegal. But is Syria now the model for Israeli democracy? Gershom Gorenberg asks, "What could possibly be more undemocratic and more utterly, insanely un-Jewish than banning disagreement? What could cause greater disdain for the state?" Might I add, "What could undermine the justness of Israel's cause among Jews and non-Jews than the introduction of fascistic legislation?"
Further investigation by Goldblog reveals that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel played a key role in prompting Bruce Springsteen to play forty-five seconds of "Hava Nagila" at last week's Verizon Center concert. This news will undoubtedly fuel more conspiracy theories about Jewish domination not only of the White House and Wall Street but of the E Street Band as well (Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan counting, obviously, as the Semitic leading edge).
Goldblog reader Clifford Mendelson, who made the now-famous "Hava Nagila" sign, was seated two rows behind Emanuel (and near David Brooks and Andrea Mitchell and other such luminaries in an apparently all-Jewish section of the Verizon Center), courtesy of Bruce himself, who met Mendelson at the Arizona Biltmore hotel a few weeks back (I'm omitting some of the shaggy-dog qualities of Mendelson's story in order to get to the heart of the matter). In any case, Mendelson, a Springsteen fanatic, knew that Bruce would probably play Stump the Band, and, like many other concert-goers, he decided to bring a sign with him. "Hava Nagila" was chosen in deference to his daughter, a 14-year-old student at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md.
"My daughter didn't want to go because of homework, so I figured she needed a Jewish excuse to go to the concert. I made the 'Hava Nagila' sign - I'm in the mortgage credit market, so there's not a hell of a lot for me to do these days - and we brought it to the concert," he said. "I made it like the Torah, two sticks on each side."
He went on with his tale: "I didn't have the sign up when Bruce came to our side of the stage, but I held it up and Patti (Bruce's wife) sees it, and Roy Bittan sees it - he's Jewish - and he gives me a fist pump. But I've got to get it up to the stage. Bruce then looked our way and saw it and he points at me. Rahm Emanuel turns around and sees it and he loves it and grabs the sign. He hands it to a Secret Service agent who handed it up to Bruce and then they played it."
He continued, "I turned to Rahm Emanuel and I said, `The least I can do for you as a great public servant is buy you a beer,' and he said `I'll take a light beer.' I mean, what a night."
There are those in Israel who say that Rahm is insufficiently zealous in his Jewishness. I think Mendelson's story is an appropriate response to such a charge.
"Sorry, Fareed, but I don't see the messianic equivalence here. Let's say Netanyahu does attack Iran, something I doubt, but let's say he does: Is he attacking Iran in order to kill all Iranians, or to wipe out Iranian culture, or to end Iran's existence and replace it with an Arab country, or a Jewish country for that matter? No. He would be attacking a handful of Iranian nuclear sites, and he would be trying, for reasons of self-interest that are quite obvious, to minimize the damage to civilians. Netanyahu doesn't seek Iran's destruction. Iran, however, has made it clear that it doesn't believe there is room on the planet surface for one small Jewish country, even in its ancestral homeland. Its leaders over and over again refer to the Jewish state as a cancer and a tumor, and they pray for its elimination. So where is the equivalence?"
Aspirations reflect historical experience. For Israel's Jewish population, this includes displacement, persecution, the life of the ghetto, and the horrors of the Holocaust; and the long, frustrated quest for a normal, recognized, and accepted homeland. There is a craving for a future that will not echo the past and for the kind of ordinary security--the unquestioned acceptance of a Jewish presence in the region--that even overwhelming military superiority cannot guarantee. There is, too, at least among a significant, active segment of the Israeli population, a deep-seated attachment to the land, all of it, that constitutes Eretz Israel.
For Palestinians, the most primal demands relate to addressing and redressing a historical experience of dispossession, expulsion, dispersal, massacres, occupation, discrimination, denial of dignity, persistent killing off of their leaders, and the relentless fracturing of their national polity.
These Israeli and Palestinian yearnings are of a sort that, no matter how precisely fine-tuned, a two-state deal will find it hard to fulfill. Over the years, the goal gradually has shifted from reaching peace to achieving a two-state agreement. Those aims might sound the same, but they are not: peace may be possible without such an agreement just as such an agreement need not necessarily lead to peace. Partitioning the land can, and most probably will, be an important means of achieving a viable, lasting, peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. But it is not the end.
Does Zakaria Misinterpret Iranian Intentions?
I'm not questioning Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek piece this week because he lifted quotes from my articles without attribution (though this sort of behavior is certainly ungentlemanly), but because some of his interpretations and assumptions strike me as obviously wrong. And I write this -- I feel a need these days to make this point over and over again -- as someone opposed to a military strike on Iran, either by the U.S. or Israel, because I can't see how such a strike would be in the American national security interest. As I've stated before, I don't think a nuclear-armed Iran is in America's best interest either, but the costs of a strike clearly outweigh the benefits.
In any case, two quick points about Zakaria's piece. First, his misunderstanding of Amalek. He writes, "One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, 'Think Amalek.' The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic."
This is a grossly unfair interpretation of what Netanyahu's adviser meant (and I should know, because he said it to me) and an unfair interpretation of Amalek in Jewish thinking. It is true that the Bible calls for the smiting of Amalek. It is also true that this is a Jewishly inoperable commandment, never carried out, and never to be carried out. Amalek stands for the vicitimizers of Jews. The Nazis represent, in modern history, the archetypal Amalek, a force committed to genocide. But Judaism doesn't allow the extermination of those who seek to exterminate the Jews. Just look at relations today between Germany and Israel. Germany wiped out a third of the Jewish people, and yet the Jews, or their nuclear-armed Jewish state, have sought nothing but constructive relations with Germans. The same, by the way, holds true for Iran. Iran's leaders seek the elimination of the Jewish state; the Jewish state seeks, in the best of all possible worlds, diplomatic relations with Iran. Israeli thinking about Iran is not motivated by blood-curdling thoughts of revenge; it is motivated by justifiable fear.
The second point: Zakaria writes that "over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were 'un-Islamic.' The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral."
When ayatollahs start talking about Islamic morality, I run for the exits. Their ideas about what constitute moral acts are not, generally speaking, ours. Here's one obvious example, from the Iran-Iraq war, courtesy of the German writer Matthias Kuntzel:
During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.
At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."
These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan - or "mobilization of the oppressed" - was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. "The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies," one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander's orders, everyone wanted to be first."
How do I say this as bluntly as possible? A leadership that could murder its own children in such a horrible way is capable of absolutely anything. Including lying about its nuclear intentions.
Especially the Jews and the Blacks
I'm late on this, but Ta-Nehisi points me to this news about a newly-ordained African-American woman rabbi. V. exciting. I think we're about to enter an age of black-Jewish harmony. I always think that, but more now. We have a black-Jewish White House (Deputy White House Chief of Staff Mona Sutphen is both at once!) And we'll always have Lenny Kravitz. And Joshua Redman.
What is interesting to me is that Duss' comment represents something I find fairly common among folks who criticize Israel at the existential level, especially the smart writers (Duss is very smart and while he may not be against the existence of the State of Israel, his writing sure gives no evidence that he supports it). That is, if an argument is misused by right-wing extremist then that entire argument is illegitimate. E.g. The fact that Israeli politicians use apocolyptic scenarios re: Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah to justify failed policies re: the Palestinians means that those arguments are in and of themselves illegitimate.
But the facts are that Hamas has not yet reconciled itself to Israel, that Ahmadinejad has repeatedly spoken of the destruction of the state of Israel, and Hezbollah is in the process taking over the government of Lebanon. Just because extremists misappropriate the argument doesn't mean it isn't real.
Duss' point (and I don't mean to pick on him, but he brought is up) also is a useful catalyst to bring up another point. The rise of the right in Israel has been explained to death but the collapse of the left has not. And I think one of the key things is that commentators like Duss are extremely attuned to the psychological issues involving the Palestinians (the humiliations at checkpoints, loyalty oaths, Nakba Day bannings, the idea of honor and respect for the loss they suffered to be acknowledged) but ignore it among Israelis Jews (that there is always another Amalek out to destroy the Jews - if its not Hitler it's Nasser. If not Nasser than Arafat If not Arafat then its Nasrallah etc). The failure of the political left in Israel and its supportive commentariat throughout the world to acknowledge and deal with that psychology has been critical to its utter evisceration as an force in Israeli politics - and not for the good.
May 26, 2009
McCain on Obama and North Korea
Sorry to microchunk this McCain interview, but when I talked to him last week, the subject of North Korea came up -- this was before this most recent nuclear test -- and I thought I should post his comments on the subject right away. When I asked McCain to assess the Obama Administration's record so far on Iran and North Korea, he said:
I really believe that reality is going to strike with this (Administration). I don't think you're going to get progress by quote-unquote talking to the Iranians. I don't think you're going to get the progress they think they're going to get with some of these countries, with North Korea.
What has North Korea done since Obama came to office? And we were going to have a new dialogue with them. God Almighty! You know? Two journalists are now in prison. They announced they're reprocessing, proceeding with the fissile material. They were threatening or did shut down that town that the South Koreans funded for them. I mean, I think reality's going to hit the Obama Administration.
Touchy Roger Cohen Writes Me a Letter
Roger "Thin-Skin" Cohen wrote me yesterday in response to my post about his apologia for Vietnam's ruling regime:
Jeffrey,
In light of your deep concern about human rights, not least in Vietnam, a country you clearly know well, I thought you might find these two messages of interest.
Roger
It's undoubtedly true that I don't know as much about Vietnam as I do about, say, Iran, but I also believe that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International aren't completely fabricating their reports about gross violations of human rights by the Communist regime in Hanoi.
By the way, has anyone ever seen a New York Times columnist behave so defensively?
In any case, here are the two messages Cohen forwarded. His sharing them proves that... Roger Cohen takes inordinate pleasure from e-mails that don't excoriate him. I'm looking forward, by the way, to his next column: Misunderstood Myannmar.
Dear Mr. Cohen, I am just writing to say how much I appreciate your articles on Vietnam. I work with a Paris-based Vietnamese organization monitoring human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam (our President, Vo Van Ai is international spokesman of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam led by Thich Quang Do). When I first came to work with Vo Van Ai, the first thing he said was, if you are really oncernhed about helping for human rights in Vietnam, then learn Vietnamese and read books about Vietnamese culture. Then you can truly help. It did, and it was one of the best lessons I've ever learned, because since then, I have begun to appreciate the Vietnamese people in a completely different way. This is why I appreciate your articles, for you are not imposing "white skinned" values and concepts on the Vietnamese people, but you analyse their strengths and their weaknesses, their pride as well as their complexes and fears. So thank you, sincerely, We are in close contact with the Vietnamese dissident movement and especially the Buddhists, and we produce frequent news releases. I would like to send them to you if you could give me your E-mail. In your recent article, I was very interested to hear your comment that a Russian delegation had visited Vietnam to teach hanoi how to comntain NGOs. I have worked on a report on "Defending Civil Society" where the backlash in Russia against NGOs was very clear. Vietnam has no independent civil society as yet, but if it learns from Russia, it never will. I would be happy to have your E-mail if you agre, so that we can exchange and send your our information on Vietnam. I also double as an Edditorial Consultant of the Washington-based Radio Free Asia, which broadcasts to Vietnam. I think I am their only blond, "white skinned" correspondent. It's fun. With very best regards, Penelope Faulkner Vice-President, Vietnam Committee on Human Rights
Dear Mr. Cohen, I've been a fan of your column for some time now, and I read your last two on Vietnam with great interest. I'm a Viet Kieu who has been working in the NGO sector in HCMC for the past three years, and in that time I've come to similar conclusions as you on the country's future. I currently work for a private foundation that is supported by Vietnam's largest investment fund, and it's been an interesting perch from which to observe all of the changes. Your last column on the evolution of the political system in Vietnam is spot-on. It's one of those two steps forward, ten steps back situations, but the overall direction is positive because Vietnam has such a single-minded focus on moving from its identity as a war-ravaged country into a true global player in all arenas. The time will come, sooner rather than later I think, when the country will have to decide which direction it will follow, and that push will come from the inside. You can feel it already. Vietnam is in its extreme nouveau riche stage, to put it crudely, but at some point people will stop caring about fancy cars and designer labels and seek something more existential. As for NGOs, I think it's a more complicated situation than your column implies. Yes, NGOs are less welcome here than, say, Cambodia, but they are still welcome if they know how to play the game. The government knows that it needs outside help in order to reach all of its development goals; however, this chafes because they have to admit that they can't do it on their own. It's a constant struggle between swallowing their pride and accepting help, or losing face. I find that it's always a delicate dance between NGOs and the government, but generally if you cross your i's and dot your t's and are completely transparent, it'll be fine. There are just too many poor people in Vietnam, and again, progress is king. My own experience working in the NGO sector has been very positive. Most people's reaction when they find out my professional and ethnic background is one of wonder (why would I leave America and all of its riches), gratitude (I've left all of America's riches to help poor people), and pride/condescension (of course I would leave America's riches to come back to Vietnam because it's the best)--it all depends on if I'm speaking to an ordinary person on the street, one of my beneficiaries, or an official. In the end, everyone approves. It's very important to me that Vietnam develops well. I am fearful that HCMC, a reflection of the rest of the country, will turn into another messy and generic Asian city like Bangkok with its open sewers, thousands of power lines among the designer shopping malls, and extremely poor people living on the fringes. Part of it is because it's my job to worry and find solutions, but the other part is my Vietnamese pride that knows no nationality. It's the pride that my parents drummed into my head every time they reminded me to never forget my heritage, that made the government open up the country and markets to drag millions of Vietnamese out of poverty, that makes them accept the help of NGOs. This pride has been with the Vietnamese for 2000 years, beyond ideology or religion and through countless foreign invasions, and it's the single driving force that is propelling this country forward. I have a lot of hope for Vietnam, and I'm happy to see that you've had a positive outlook on its future as well. Warmest regards, Mimi Vu
The New Newsweek, Now With Less Reporting
I think Fareed Zakaria just friended me. But it is the friendship that dare not speak my name.
Zakaria's cover story today on Iran contains the following sentence: "In an interview last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as a `messianic, apocalyptic cult."
In an interview with whom, exactly? Zakaria's wording makes it seem as if the interview was conducted by, oh, Fareed Zakaria, but as best as I can tell, the interview was conducted by yours truly, for The Atlantic. And not, by the way, "last week," but in March.
A few paragraphs later, Zakaria writes, "One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, `Think Amalek.'" Said it to whom? Again, yours truly, for a New York Times op-ed piece that did, indeed, run last week.
The question is, How do I reciprocate this new friendship? By stealing his shit? Maybe Goldblog readers could help: Are there any good quotes from Zakaria's interviews with world leaders that I could lift for the Atlantic?
Temperate Letter of the Day
From the Goldblog inbox:
Since when does a group have a 'right' to steal land, steal water, ethnicaly cleanse a territory, burn the homes, orchards and livelihoods of the residents, kill them their children and then cry victimhood?
Your Zionist allies are the most evil scum on the face of the earth. Sieg Heil, Zionism! Crush the Gaza Ghetto like your forebearers did in Warsaw!
May 23, 2009
The Pessimism of Benny Morris
My review of his new book in the Sunday Times Book Review is here. The man is dark. Sometimes he's appropriately dark, and not at all wrong about the Palestinian (and Muslim) unwillingness to see Jews as people with a right to their historic homeland, but sometimes I think he's giving up too soon:
Morris ignores the possibility that recent Israeli mistakes have
marginalized the lives of Palestinians who might in fact have been
ready for compromise. Take the Palestinian reaction to the withdrawal
of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005. The Morris camp would cite the
rocket fire that followed the withdrawal as further proof of unyielding
Arab rejectionism. But the empowerment of Hamas was inevitable, given
the foolish way Ariel Sharon,
the prime minister, engineered the withdrawal. He could have negotiated
the pullout with the more moderate Palestinian Authority government,
which would have then been able to prove to its constituents that it
could extract concessions from Israel. But Sharon handled the pullout
unilaterally, which allowed Hamas to claim -- not wrongly -- that it
pushed out the Israelis by force, while the Palestinian Authority stood
by impotently.
The relevance of a "23-state solution" approach, as it was termed
recently by British foreign secretary David Miliband, to promoting the
"two-state solution" will depend on whether the Arab contribution to
peacemaking is connected to political realities. In the early Oslo era,
Israelis were smitten with the idea of economic conferences in
Casablanca and water desalination projects with Oman. Today, in the
jaded era of suicide bombers, Qassam rockets, and the Hamas coup in
Gaza, Israelis are far more concerned with basic security matters than
with peripheral political achievements. If Arab states can contribute
on that front -- by taking unprecedented action to cripple Hamas,
strengthening the Palestinian Authority, and working with Israel to
prevent smuggling of weapons, money, and technology to anti-peace
elements -- then a regional initiative has a real chance of bolstering
peace prospects.
May 22, 2009
The Abuse of Amalek
Matt Duss asks why I didn't mention, in my op-ed on Bibi and the Iranians, that right-wingers, especially the messianists of the settlement movement, often invoke the specter of Amalek -- and the (thank God widely-ignored) biblical commandment to wipe out Amalek -- as a way of demonizing all Palestinians:
Interestingly, as Goldberg himself has reported in the past
-- but for some reason neglects to mention in his article -- invocations
of "Amalek" are a feature of extremist Israeli settler propaganda
against Palestinians and Arabs, something which I'm sure is not lost on
Israel's more right-wing American supporters.
In a 2004 New Yorker article on the Israeli settler movement, Goldberg
asked Benzi Lieberman, the chairman of the council of settlements "if
he thought the Amalekites existed today." Lieberman responded:
"The Palestinians are Amalek!" Lieberman went on, "We
will destroy them. We won't kill them all. But we will destroy their
ability to think as a nation. We will destroy Palestinian nationalism."
The shorter answer to the question of why I left out this aspect of Amalek in the op-ed is lack of space. The longer answer is, I should have included it. The existence of Amalek is empirically true: Hitler certainly filled the historical role of Amalek. But the idea of Amalek can be abused, as I have noted. In the case of this op-ed, I was trying to provide a window into the thinking of Netanyahu and his people. But I should have mentioned the danger of what we could call, for lack of a better term, Amalek-abuse. In the case of Ahmadinejad, by the way, I think the analogy is appropriate. He preaches of a "world without Zionism," which means, essentially, a world in which Jews are not granted their right to exist as a nation.
"(Jon) Meacham--a very smart and thoughtful guy, which in my experience is not
necessarily true of all newsmagazine editors (all two, that
is)--actually says that his model is "the great monthlies of old" like Harper's and Esquire."
I stopped by to see John McCain this afternoon in his Senate office. I haven't seen him for several months, and was glad to see that he seemed rested and ready, if not tan. He was in high spirits, and we talked for a while about the Obama Administration's embrace of realpolitik, Pakistan, Iran, the whole nine yards. But first I asked him about Dick Cheney and his defense of Bush Administration torture policies. He told me of his fundamental disagreement with Cheney: "When you have a majority of Americans, seventy-something percent, saying we shouldn't torture, then I'm not sure it helps for the Vice President to go out and continue to espouse that position," he said. "But look, he's free to talk. He's a former Vice President of the United States. I just don't see where it helps."
And then he got acerbic: Cheney, he says, "believes that waterboarding doesn't fall under the Geneva Conventions and that it's not a form of torture. But you know, it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition."
I'll post more of what McCain said -- including his critique of Obama's speech -- tomorrow.
A Clarification Regarding the GDS Pick-Up Line
In a previous post, I mentioned that the Springsteen audience the other night looked like the pick-up line at Georgetown Day School. Some readers were confused by this formulation; I meant the car-pool pick-up line at GDS. As in, everyone in the audience looked like parents at GDS. This got me thinking, however, about what a Georgetown Day School pick-up line would actually sound like. Probably something along the lines of, "Hey, you want to come upstairs and see my etchings of the continued persecution of Native Americans?" Or, "Hey, after I finish acquiring 501(c)3 status for my NGO that will rid the Congo of viral hemorrhagic fevers, do you want to come upstairs and see my etchings of Congolese people living with viral hemorrhagic fevers?"
Any other suggestions from GDS parents out there?
Synagogue Security
In the wake of the troubling news from the Bronx, I'm hoping Jewish leaders take the threats to their institutions more seriously than they do now. Here are a couple of sites that might help them think through the challenge: The Secure Community Network from the UJC has a wide range of resources for synagogue security, and the ADL's site on security awareness for Jewish communities is a useful resource -- especially its comprehensive 132-page guide, "Protecting Your Jewish Institution."
Roger Cohen's Vietnamese Paradise
Roger Cohen, the John Mearsheimer manque of The New York Times, has an on-line column (the Times doesn't seem to be publishing him on the op-ed pages anymore, for reasons unknown) on the glories of foreign policy realism, Vietnam edition. Vietnam, Roger writes, has "peace, stability and independence. It also has Communism, but of a form
that allows a Vietnamese leader to ring the opening bell on Wall
Street."
That's the Vietnamese regime's version of life in Vietnam. For an alternative view, I turned to two leading human rights organizations. Here is Human Rights Watch on the state of worker freedom in Vietnam:
Since 2006, at least eight independent trade union activists have
been sentenced to prison on dubious national security charges. All have
been held under Vietnamese laws that violate fundamental freedoms.
Those who have been tried have not been afforded internationally
recognized due process rights. Other labor activists have been
harassed, intimidated, and forced to cease their union activities or
flee the country.
Amid double-digit inflation and the global economic downturn, labor
unrest continues to soar in Vietnam. Thousands of workers, primarily at
foreign-owned factories, have joined strikes to demand wage increases
and better working conditions. Though permitted under international
law, virtually none of these strikes are considered legal by the
Vietnamese government.
Workers are prohibited from forming or joining unions - or
conducting strikes - that are not authorized by an official labor
confederation controlled by the Communist Party. The minimum monthly
wage was increased to 650,000 dong (US$36) for most workers, but it
still fails to provide an adequate standard of living, especially given
racing inflation, and the increase has failed to stem labor discontent.
On 30 March Father Nguyen Van Ly, a former prisoner of conscience,
was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for "conducting propaganda
against the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam" under Article 88 of the
Penal Code. He was manhandled by guards as he tried to challenge the
court. Two co-defendants were sentenced to six and five years'
imprisonment, and two women were given suspended prison terms. Father
Ly was a founding member of Bloc 8406 and the Viet Nam Progression
Party (VNPP) in September 2006 and had spent 15 years in prison for
peacefully criticizing the government.
Two human rights lawyers, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, were
sentenced to five and four years' imprisonment respectively in May,
reduced by one year each on appeal. Nguyen Van Dai was among the
founding members of Bloc 8406. Le Thi Cong Nhan is a spokesperson for
the VNPP. Both had held human rights workshops and documented human
rights violations. At the appeal hearing in November their lawyers
argued that Article 88 of the Penal Code, under which they had been
charged, was unconstitutional and did not conform to international
conventions that Viet Nam has signed, and should be reviewed.
Truong Quoc Huy remained detained without trial since August 2006.
He was charged under Article 258 of the Penal Code with "abusing
democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, the
legitimate rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens". He
was accused, among other things, of joining an internet forum and
disseminating anti-government flyers.
In November six people were arrested in Ho Chi Minh City, where
they had been meeting to discuss peaceful democratic change. The police
claimed to have found "subversive" leaflets and stickers, and official
media stated that they were being investigated under Article 84
(Terrorism) of the Penal Code. The six comprised two Vietnamese
nationals; Nguyen Thi Thanh Van, a French citizen and a journalist and
activist; two US citizens and a Thai national, all of Vietnamese
origin. Nguyen Thi Thanh Van and one US citizen were released and
deported in December.
Roger Cohen is at least consistent: He always lines up on the wrong side.
Only a Matter of Time
Until an American synagogue is blown-up. I'm sorry to say it, but there it is. These four alleged bombers picked up in New York this evening were "aspirational" anti-Semitic murderers, according to the police, but one day someone will plant a real bomb outside a synagogue. And you know what? The American Jewish leadership knows this, and yet does virtually nothing to help prepare for the inevitable.
More to come on this case, undoubtedly, but let's contemplate for a moment the unique nature of anti-Semitism: These plotters are evidently upset at America for its actions in Afghanistan. So they target the U.S. military -- this makes a perverted kind of sense -- and they target synagogues. This makes no sense at all unless they believed that Jews are Satan's representatives on earth. Which a frighteningly large number of people apparently do.
May 20, 2009
Engagement with Iran is Going to be Interesting
I'm for engagement, by the way, and I'm not too much the skeptic. There are parts of the Iranian regime that I think might be susceptible to Obama's outreach. But then you read news like this, and think that there's no way it's going to work.
Courtesy of MEMRI. I'm sure they don't mean "wipe out" as in "annihilate." They probably mean wipe out as in, "We'll come by and scrub your kitchen counters." I'll wait for Juan Cole's translation.
May 19, 2009
On Getting Old at Springsteen Concerts
My first was at the Spectrum in Philadelphia (or maybe at the Nassau Coliseum. Yes, it was the Nassau Coliseum. And it was more than five years ago. Possibly more than 25.) Springsteen shows used to feel slightly (okay, really slightly) dangerous; now they feel like the pick-up line at Georgetown Day School. I mean, I bumped into Peter Orszag at the Verizon Center last night. I thought it was uncool to be at a concert with the head of OMB, but then my friend Laurie Strongin said that it would have been uncool to bump into the head of Bush's OMB (quick, for five bucks, name Bush's last OMB director) but not Obama's. Anyway, I think Springsteen sang "Outlaw Pete" for him. Or maybe not. He shouldn't have sang it at all.
But he did sing Hava Fucking Nagila! And as a segue to "Blinded By the Light," which was incredible. I'll have more later on the concert, and the set list, but suffice it to say that if you have to grow old, you might as well grow old with Bruce. The audience seemed mainly older than I am (this might be a delusion) but it was mainly younger than Bruce, who seems, from the semi-distance, mostly ageless.
May 18, 2009
Great Moments in Democracy
I was just by the White House when I came across this inadvertently-joint demonstration by Sri Lankan Tamils, in support of the now-finished Tamil Tigers, and Kach and the Lubavitchers, who were yelling words of encouragement, or possibly excoriation, to Bibi Netanyahu, who is staying at Blair House across the street. The LTTE flag is red; the yellow flag, which reads "Moshiach," messiah, is Lubavitch.
The two different groups were actually mingling. Just another example of Obama bringing people together.
Would Israel Commit National Suicide?
Jackson Diehl is probably the smartest foreign affairs columnist writing today, but he misses something crucial about Israel and Jewish history in his current column. He writes:
Contrary to what it would like Iran and the rest of the world to believe, Israel would not attack Tehran's nuclear facilities without U.S. consent. Militarily, it would be next to impossible; politically, it would be suicidal to flout the United States on a matter of such strategic importance. If there is armed action against Iran during the next several years, it will be because Netanyahu somehow persuades or compels Obama to overrule the prevailing judgment of the U.S. government, which is that an attack is not a viable option.
But national suicide is a Jewish specialty! For instance, those schmucks on Masada, and Bar-Kochba. Not to mention the settlement movement. I'm not sure that wanting to protect yourself from the Iranian nuclear program qualifies as national suicide (and I'm not sure an Israeli attack would bring about a permanent rupture in American-Israeli relations), but I'm reasonably sure that settlements are self-destructive. Here's why. For more on the general subject, I recommend reading Yehoshafat Harkabi.
Ben-Gurion on the Threat from Amalek
Worrying about Amalek isn't a recent phenomenon. From the April 16, 1956 New York Times:
Grim as an Old-Testament prophet, Mr. Ben-Gurion welcomed the ninth year of the Israeli republic by reminding the people that the war against the Arabs had never really ended. He charged that Egypt, Jordan and Syria had been conducting a guerrilla war since the defeat of their "criminal attempt to invade Israel."
"It may be," he said, "that in the ninth year of our renewed independence we shall have to face a supreme test, graver and more difficult than that which we faced successfully eight years ago.
"Now our enemies are concerting their designs against us, saying, 'Let us go and cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.' There was no helplessness or fear in our hearts when we faced our enemies, nor will there be if we shall have to face them again.
"We shall not be terrified by the ambushes of a galaxy of murderers sent here by the Egyptian dictator nor will the hosts of Amalek from north, east and south, who are now concentrating on the other side of our border, be able to subdue us."
As with parents who become more and more indulgent the more clueless they realize they actually are - and the more out of control their kids get - Washington and the world have allowed Israel and the Palestinians both to run off the rails in whatever direction they happen to see fit at the moment.
Why? For the same reason that bad parents spoil their children:
They're afraid of them.
For generations, both Israelis and Palestinians have been snowing their respective allies, who have been afraid, either electorally or physically, of being perceived as not loving them enough.
Obama Violates Boiled-Frog Ban
Shocking news from the redesigned Newsweek (now with even more Meacham!): President Barack Obama, the smartest man in the history of the world, doesn't understand basic frog biology. As I mentioned in my first blog entry a little more than a year ago, debunking the myth of the boiled frog -- the false notion, advanced by countless writers, that a frog in water will happily die, if only the heat is turned up slowly -- is a mission I share with James Fallows, the Strunk and White of the boiled-frog-cliche opposition movement.
Did you consult any former presidents or celebrities about the fishbowl effect in raising the girls?
Well, you know, the truth of the matter is that the campaign was the equivalent of me being the frog in the saucepan of water and the temperature slowly being turned up. By the time the inauguration had taken place, we had pretty much gotten accustomed to it.
Gerecht on Iran's Intentions
The whole piece is worth reading, but I was struck by this unearthed quote:
Shmuel Rosner asks me via e-mail why I left out Haman from the list of Amalek's successors in my Times op-ed today. Amalek is the eternal, symbolic enemy of the Jews, the adversary who seeks Jewish annihilation. Haman, the villian of Purim, the Persian vizier whose plot to murder the Jews was thwarted by Mordechai and Esther, is considered to be the model of Amalek-like behavior, so Rosner asks, justifiably, why I didn't include him, but did include Nebuchadnezzar, Hitler, Stalin and all the rest. The reason is simple: Haman probably didn't exist. The story is a metaphor, as best as anyone can tell. The Amaleks on my list were real.
There's a group of people who argue that Jews are unjustifably paranoid about anti-Semitism. I think the paranoia is more-or-less a rational response to historical reality. Since Haman isn't part of historical reality (though he is a part of the Jewish narrative reality) it seemed appropriate to leave him off the list.
Amalek's Arsenal
My op-ed on Netanyahu -- and how Obama might want to interpret Netanyahu -- is in the Times today. Here's a brief excerpt:
To understand why Mr. Netanyahu sees Iran as a new Amalek, it is essential to understand two aspects of his intellectual and emotional development: The scholarship of his father, and the martyrdom of his older brother.
His father, Benzion Netanyahu, 99, is a pre-eminent historian of Spanish Jewry. "The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th-Century Spain," his most notable book, toppled previously held understandings of the Inquisition's birth.
Over more than 1,300 pages, Benzion Netanyahu argued that Spanish hatred of Jews was not merely theologically motivated but based in race hatred (the Spanish pursued the principle of limpieza de sangre, or the purity of blood) that reached back to the ancient world.
The elder Netanyahu also argued that efforts by the Jews of Spain to accommodate their adversaries were futile, in part because the charges against them were devoid of logic or fact, and, perhaps most important, because the written or spoken expression of Jew hatred (his preferred term for anti-Semitism) inevitably led to physical persecution. "What emerges from our survey," he wrote, "is that the Spanish Inquisition was by no means the result of a fortuitous concourse of circumstances and events. It was the product of a movement that called for its creation and labored for decades to bring it about."
May 14, 2009
Gone Campin'
I'm blogging from the woods. Except that I'm not really blogging. My 2nd-grader and I are on a class field trip on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for a couple of days, so bug-collecting takes precedence over blogging. And everything else, except hygiene. It's amazing how much Purell Washington parents can carry into the woods. It's just too bad that Blackberries can't dispense Purell. This would represent a much more efficient use of pocket space.
May 13, 2009
Philadelphia to New York in a Half-Hour
We can dream. Richard Florida on the bright future of fast, effective rail travel:
Philadelphia becomes a veritable suburb of NY, its commute time shrinking from nearly two hours to slightly more thana half hour.Washington-NYC and Boston-NYC become hour-and-a-half trips.San Diego becomes a bedroom suburb of Los Angeles.
Kevin Youkilis and the Dual-Loyalty Problem
This just in from Goldblog reader John Youkilis:
I have to thank you for mentioning my first cousin once-removed, Kevin Youkilis, in your recent post. Kevin has miraculously converted me into an erstwhile Red Sox fan, a radical departure in light of the abuse I endured as a Reds' fan in October 1975 while a freshman at Brown. I still shrivel at the mention of Carlton Fisk. I do have an anecdote you might appreciate. In August 2001, my wife, a New Yorker, and our three sons saw Kevin play for the Lowell Spinners against the Brooklyn Cyclones in their fantastic new ballpark near Nathan's. We sat behind two young men wearing kipot who rooted mightily for the Cyclones. I have always respected Kevin's privacy in this celebrity-crazed world but I succumbed to instinct and told them he was Jewish. They switched allegiances instantly. Unfortunately, my fellow Jews who are Yankee fans have not behaved accordingly.
Al Manar, Hezbollah's TV station and website, purveyor of Roger Cohen columns and wacked graphics, trumpets nutjob stories every day. This one is particularly over-the-top: Dick Cheney killed Rafik Hariri. Abu Muqawama translates:
Dick Cheney, the name that always pops up whenever there is talk about
a serious crime someplace in the world. Well, Cheney had his own death
squad CIA unit which he ran from the white house. By Cheney's orders,
the assassinations unit killed former Lebanese minister and Lebanese
Forces chief Elie Hobeika on the 24th of January 2002 and former Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri on the 14th of March 2005...
The argument for talking to a government that includes Hamas is that Hamas is more like the Taliban and the Baathists than like al-Qaeda. First, Hamas is deeply rooted in Palestinian society and thus very difficult to uproot by force. It operates a vast social-welfare network and according to many polls is now the most popular Palestinian political party. For 22 days beginning last December, Israel pummeled its institutions in Gaza, but the war hasn't turned Palestinians against the group. To the contrary, it is more entrenched than ever in Gaza and on the verge of seizing power in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon as well.
I'm not quite so ready to give up on the secularists and moderates (I know, I know, they're neither terribly secular nor terribly moderate by our standards, but everything is relative). And I also tend to think that power will not moderate the extremists. Khaled Meshaal and company are saying what needs to be said in order to make Hamas the undisputed leader of the Palestinian national movement. Once Hamas gets there, I tend to think its leaders will interpret their victory as a sign from God that He is with them, and behave accordingly. Which is to say, no participation in interfaith seders, for starters.
Osama Hamdan, the organization's top leader in Lebanon, said in an interview in Beirut that Hamas had in recent weeks established "solid, direct contacts" with four European Union countries, and that there had been unofficial talks between Hamas and the team of President Barack Obama's Middle East special envoy, George Mitchell. Hamdan refused to elaborate.
May 8, 2009
Next Week's Doubleheader: Aryan Nations v. Hadassah
Bill Francis, a research librarian at the Baseball Hall of Fame, passed this article on to Michael Chabon, who passed it on to me. It's from the September 1, 1926 edition of The Washington Post:
Is Jerusalem Dead?
Yehudah Mirsky, who just had a day from hell there, thinks so.
The Philip Gourevitch-Title-Concept-Rip-Off Award Goes To....
When Philip first told me that he was thinking of calling his Rwanda book "We Wish To Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," I said something akin to, "WTF?" It seemed very... long. Of course, the title turned out to be a stroke of genius (the actual book was pretty damn good as well).
So, of course, the great temptation when writing a book about atrocities in Africa is to steal the Gourevitch model. Which is fine, except that this Uganda title doesn't have the same lyricism, or the same blood-chilling juxtaposition of high manners and the forecast of imminent murder. On the other hand, I'm not going to judge a book by its title, and Rice is on to an important story. Uganda, where I used to spend a lot of time, is a fascinating place, today a more-or-less functioning (well, sometimes less) country that was not long ago the scene of unparalleled horror. Rice is a very good journalist, so I'm looking forward to reading it. Despite the title.
May 6, 2009
Shimon Peres on Iran: Overreaction Is Better Than Underreaction
Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, was in town this week, and I went to his hotel to talk to him about Iran and Israel and Obama and the Sunni-Shiite split and the future of the Jews; all the good stuff, in other words. The most interesting moment came when I asked him, in reference to Iran, if he thought that Israel had over-learned the lessons of Jewish history. He said: "If we have to make a mistake of overreaction or underreaction, I think I prefer the overreaction to underreaction." Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
Jeffrey Goldberg: While there is a perception that Prime Minister Netanyahu is particularly hawkish on the Iran question, listening to you in recent days, and listening to the Labor Party defense minister, there seems to be something of a national consensus on the Iran question.
President Shimon Peres: I want to make the following point about Iran, starting with the United States. The greatest asset for Israel, both moral and strategic, is our relationship with the United States. We should not permit any rift, any rupture. This remains our top consideration. And since Iran is a world problem, we should participate in facing its dangers, but without trying to monopolize it. Now there are many options. Whatever can be achieved diplomatically or economically is better. But if there will be a guarantee that these are the limits of our options, the Iranians may make the wrong call. The Iranian danger is composed of two parts: The weaponry and the character of its rulers. And I don't think that the present rulers of Iran are the permanent answer to the Iranian destiny. There were (government) changes in the past and maybe changes in the future. I don't suggest that other countries will introduce the changes, but others can call upon the Iranian people to come back to their own history.
JG: Is there a chance that Israel is over-reacting to the language that comes out of Tehran? Let me ask this another way: Is it possible to over-learn the lessons of Jewish history?
SP: If we have to make a mistake of overreaction or underreaction, I think I prefer the overreaction to underreaction.
JG: That's a lesson of Jewish history?
SP: This is a lesson of world history, not Jewish history. Because if the world had correctly read Hitler at the time, it would have saved 50 million lives.
JG: Are you equating Ahmadinejad or Khamenei with Hitler?
SP: No. I am equating the danger. I don't say they are the same. I'm talking about estimations. I think one of the greatest mistakes in history was to underestimate the danger of Nazism. All of us paid heavily for it. To prevent is better than to regret.
JG: Talk about this more in the specific Jewish context.
SP: One of the Jewish lessons is to have a state. Both to prevent the world from looking upon the Jews as a sort of helpless people. And because a state is a guarantee for Jewish life.
Zionism started, in fact, at the Dreyfus trial, 100 years ago. And in the Dreyfus trial you had Herzl as a journalist. You had two different reactions to Dreyfus. Jewish journalists asked questions: "Why is that? Why are they hating the Jewish people? What are the reasons?" And there were two different answers: One is, the world is wrong, the other is the Jews are wrong. The ones that say the world was wrong became Communists or revolutionaries. They said, we have to change the world to one without nations, without classes, without religion. They say if there won't be those differences, the Jews won't be different. The others said: "There's not a chance to change to the world. The right thing we have to do is change ourselves." They became Zionists. Let's go back to our land, let's return to our history. Let's go to normalcy. And this is the real lessons of Jewish history in the last 100 years.
JG: Isn't there a negative side to the subsequent ingathering? You have a situation in which you face a threat to your existence from a neighbor, and so many million of Jews lives within this small portion of land. Isn't one of the ironies of the success of Zionism that you've gathered too many Jews into too small a place?
SP: No. I'll tell you, it fell on us to make an army and to win seven wars. And not only did we face the threats, but we have advantages as well. Israel today is a very strong people. Don't judge us by the size. Judge us by our level. Today, physical sizes are inferior to spiritual, scientific capacities. And as we say, it does not matter how many square miles you have, what matters is how many scientists you have per square mile.
JG: There's a growing feeling in some quarters that Israel is not a strategic asset to America but sometimes that it drags down America's reputation in the Middle East. How do hope to counter that?
SP: Israel is the only country that has destroyed two generations of Russian weapons. Completely. I know that to produce weapons is an advantage, but to destroy competitive arms is also an advantage. We did it. Even today, strategically, I don't say that Israel is part of the American defense, but as an ally, politically and militarily, I don't think that we are passive or unimportant concerning information, intelligence, understanding the region. Imagine the Middle East without Israel. And imagine that Iran is a problem for us, but it's a greater problem today for the Arabs. So they have to think. The President has decided to try engagement. Okay. But he says he doesn't cross out other options.
JG: Do you believe engagement could work?
SP: I have my doubts. But I don't suggest that my doubts should become American policy. The President thinks differently. Let him try.
JG: Is the danger, in your mind, that Iran would use a nuclear weapon against Israel or allow someone access to a nuclear weapon to use against Israel -- or is the danger Iranian hegemony of the region? When I spoke to the Prime Minister a few weeks ago, he said he believes that Israel could be in a situation where it will actually fail to thrive as a state in a Middle East in which Iran has a nuclear weapon.
SP: My only answer I can give you is that we shall do what is necessary and possible to prevent it from happening. And we feel that we are not alone.
JG: Do you think the Iranian leadership means what it says about Israel, Jews and the Holocaust? Or is this simply a kind of propaganda directed toward Arab populations that Iran is trying to alienate from their own Arab leaders?
SP: Look, I cannot put myself in the mind of Ahmadinejad. Frankly, I don't know the answer. Since I don't know the answer, I have to consider the dangerous part of it, not only to the promising part of it.
JG: You mean you can't afford to assume that he's not serious?
SP: If there is a threat, if there is a danger, and we ignore it, we lose. Now I don't suggest that we shall lose our mind, but whatever is reasonable to do. Start with the preferred option, which is engagement and economic pressure
JG: Put this threat in the context of other threats that Israel has faced in the past. Is this comparable to pre-'67 in terms of existential danger?
SP: Nothing is the same. But the greatest danger was in the early '50s when the Russians started to supply the Arabs with the smaller weapons and we didn't have a reply.
JG: You're not just talking about the Egypt rocket programs, you mean the whole?
SP: Yes, I mean the heavy tanks, the anti-tank missiles, the anti-air missiles, modern planes, plenty. And we were empty-handed. We didn't have an answer. And I went to France to try to break the embargo.
JG: So you're saying the bigger danger is when Jews are defenseless.
SP: Right.
JG: You hear this more and more, people talking about the one-state solution. It used to be a radical idea to suggest a two-state solution, now we're moving toward a discussion -- at least on the left, obviously -- of a one-state solution. Do you think that the Palestinians and their supporters would ever agree to an end of claims --
SP: There is not a one-state solution; there is only one-state conflict instead of two-people conflict. Look, you have a conflict in Iraq; it's one state. You have a conflict in Lebanon; it's one state. You have a conflict in Sudan; it's one state. Who says that one state puts an end to the conflict? On the contrary, it makes it more dangerous. You have one state in Pakistan. You have one state in Afghanistan.
JG: But what I'm asking you is this: If you came tomorrow to the Arabs and said, "Fine, you want 100 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as your capital, fine here it is, and Gaza too." Do you think that the Palestinian/Muslim side would ever say, "that's enough," and stop making claims?
SP: It will make a difference on the Arab side. I don't think all of them without exception, no. There will be exceptions, but it will clearly change the proportion of Palestinians (ready to compromise) once we shall have it.
JG: It will tip over --
SP: Tip over and not only that. You know, there is an Arab poet that I admire very much, Nizar Qabbani. He said, "The time has come for the Arabs to get rid of the yoke of imperialism. Thousands of years we live under the imperialism of words. We are victims of our words." So I wouldn't understand the Arab position by words alone. So I think, to be fair, I wouldn't judge everything said as though it is everything they think. I think many of them are sick and tired of war, of backwardness, of stagnation. I think there is a young generation, that watches television -- even their television -- and they see there is a different world.
You know, today, we have in Israel close to 1.1 million Arab citizens. Sixty thousand of them are university graduates. Where are they? Many of them are doctors. There is no hospital today in Israel that doesn't have Arab doctors and Arab nurses. Now look, an Israeli who would be reluctant to employ an Arab is not reluctant to enter the hospital, to lay on the bed and an Arab doctor will come with his knife and open his stomach. And he'll say, "Thank you." My hope is that what happens in a hospital with sick people will happen in the land with healthy people.
A Big Scoop on Israeli Nukes
Eli Lake is reporting that the Obama Administration may force Israel out of the nuclear closet:
President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to
expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield
Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and
current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.
The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu
is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the
U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for
Iranian ones.
Philo-Semites: Anti-Semites Who Like Jews
In the three or so weeks since my cover story on the financial crisis appeared in the Atlantic (subscribe now, and you're guaranteed a place in heaven when you die, and also possibly a tote bag), I've received more than two hundred solicitations from financial advisers and brokers looking for my business. I'm touched, but I'm now in a steady relationship with a new guy who's going to manage my vast wealth. More on that later.
I've also received a fair amount of anti-Semitic mail (big surprise there). One letter links me to Madoff and Pollard and Menachem Begin. Go figure. Then there are letters like this one, which fall into a gray category. Read it carefully, and you'll see why:
Dear Jeffrey,
I enjoyed your article so much that I sent it to a dozen or more friends and family.
My investing experience is similar to yours except that it is longer (I retired at age 71, 3 years ago) and it probably involved more money due to my long career. But the losses, observed unhelpfully by my advisors and custodians, sound similar.
I decided to fire Fidelity Professional Advisory Group and put much of our savings into investment grade bonds maturing in 1-5 years. I entrusted $200K into the care of a professional bond manager with a Jewish name, low fees, and good reputation. Besides all that, she buys flour in 50-lb bags for baking at home. My kind of business person.
In 5 months her small firm has grown my account to $210K, while avoiding junk and without putting more than 5% into any one issue. I doubt that they can duplicate that indefinitely because there were some rather unusual opportunities in the midst of the recent debacle, but even if the performance drops in half from 1% gain per month to 0.5%, I will be happy. And I'll sleep well at night.
1. "Israel has to work toward a two-state solution". That's in the Road Map, that Israel
accepted. In fact, Netanyahu has already achieved something. if he now
says he agrees to a two state solution the Obama team will be able to
show some success without him giving anything that wasn't already
given.
2. "not build more settlements". Israel
doesn't build "more settlements". The question is whether it can build
more in existing ones - to which Labor Party leader Ehud Barak just
responded with a resounding yes (see here).
Hamas's New Message
Is not so new, actually. The Times is reporting that Khaled Meshaal won't recognize Israel and won't make peace with Israel, but won't get in the way of Palestinians who do. Or something. The only thing this interview proves is that Hamas finds President Obama truly flummoxing, which is a good thing. But it doesn't mean that Hamas is going to make itself useful to the peace process anytime soon.
What Rahm Emanuel Really Said at AIPAC
According to my in-box, which is an acute gauge of Jewish anxiety, Rahm Emanuel crossed a red line the other day at a press-free session at the AIPAC conference, by linking American efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program to Israel's willingness to create a Palestinian state. This is how The Jerusalem Post put it:
Israeli TV stations had reported Monday night that
Emanuel had actually linked the two matters, saying that the efforts to
stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. The remarks were
reportedly made in a closed-door meeting previous day with 300 major
AIPAC donors on Sunday.
Rahm apparently did no such thing. I have it on good authority that Rahm told the audience that Obama believes that it will be easier to enlist Arab allies in the confrontation with Iran if visible progress is made on the Palestinian front. This is inescapably true. But he did not suggest a quid pro quo. That would be blackmail, and in any case, a quid pro quo would suggest that Obama believes that Iran's nuclear program constitutes a threat only to Israel. And he's never said anything to suggest that he believes this to be so. He's certainly heard from America's Arab allies -- most notably King Abdullah of Jordan, who in his visit here let Obama know exactly what he thought of Iran -- that they too consider Iran a dire threat to their security.
May 4, 2009
A Couple of Observations About Michael Oren
As I've said, Michael and I are friends, so take this under advisement. But I think it's an uncharacteristically clever move by the Israelis to make Michael their ambassador in Washington, not only because he will be able to explain Israel on American television without all the "ehhhs" and the "Look, rubber bullets aren't fatal except if they hit you in the brain" kinds of explication that we've grown used to from certain Israeli "diplomats." It's a clever move because there is no one who understands the American-Israeli relationship better than Michael -- why, he's written part of a whole book on the subject! -- and we're heading into a difficult moment in the bilateral relationship.
It's also a clever move because Michael is not Likud. Maybe technically he is, I don't know, but his roots are in Labor Zionism. It is the idea of Israel that is most important to him, rather than every last square inch of land Moses may or may not have eyeballed. He believes in Israel because it marks the Jewish return to history. Even when Israel makes mistakes -- and he believes Israel has made many mistakes, of the rubber-bullet variety, and others -- he finds joy in the fact that the Jews, after 2,000 years, have been given the chance to make their own mistakes, that their destiny is not in the hands of others.
He is not-so-much enamored of the settlers. He was, years back, I think, but that was before he took part in the evacuation of the Gaza settlements. He was shocked by the behavior of some of the settlers -- I remember him calling to tell me that some of the more fanatical settlers were calling the soldiers "Nazis." The settlers lost much of Michael's sympathy right then. So, for this, among other reasons, he is clear-eyed on issues related to the West Bank. And no, he is not for another unilateral disengagement from the West Bank. He knows Israel must separate from the Palestinians of the West Bank, but it is a mistake to think, as some have alleged, that he wants to repeat the experience in Gaza.
You can read why here, in an excerpt from an article I wrote a couple of years ago, after the 2006 Lebanon War, for The New Yorker. You'll also see in this piece strong hints of Michael's cleverness:
In July, I visited an artillery battery on a dusty field in Israel's far north. The ceasefire was three weeks away, and the soldiers, reservists, were firing 155-mm. howitzer shells into south Lebanon. I had driven up with the historian Michael Oren, who is a fellow at the center-right Shalem Center but has also been a critic of the settlers. Oren had been drafted into active service--he is a reserve major in the Army spokesman's office--and his task that morning was to guide the "Today" show news anchor Ann Curry to a front-line position so that she could interview soldiers. At a checkpoint, Oren explained Curry's mission to the commander of the artillery battalion.
"Hem antishemim?" the commander asked, half jokingly. "Are they antiSemites?"
"No," Oren answered. "They're from NBC."
Oren was accompanied on his rounds by the screenwriter Dan Gordon, who wrote "The Hurricane," and who served in the Israeli Army as a young man. He had come to Israel this summer to help the Army explain itself to the foreign press, but he was having a hard time understanding Israel's strategy--an air campaign that was simultaneously aggressive and ineffectual, and a stop-and-start ground campaign conducted by ill-equipped and poorly led troops. "If you can figure out even the tactical goals here, let me know," Gordon said, as we drove down Katyusha Alley.
Oren, like Gordon, was depressed by the events of the summer. "I don't lament leaving Gaza, not for a second," he told me. "I'm mourning the fact that we didn't respond the first time they fired Qassam rockets at us. That's when we began to hemorrhage the benefits of the unilateral disengagement. It's a very simple calculus--you can shoot the Jews out of Lebanon, you can shoot them out of Gaza, why not shoot them out of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? It's a logical syllogism. I don't fault them for making that syllogism at all."
Oren said that among the victims of Israel's unimpressive response to Hezbollah would be the Palestinian moderates. "The way this war is being understood will kill whatever minuscule chance remains for talks with moderate Palestinians," he said. "Hezbollah is a hero. The thinking among the Palestinians would be: 'Hezbollah beat you guys and you ran away, and now I'm supposed to sit down at the table and make concessions to you?' We hurt the Palestinian moderates when Barak unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. The proof of the failure of the policy is in the rockets Hezbollah is firing at us. We did more damage to the Palestinian moderates from our lack of strength than from our lack of magnanimity."
This was long overdue. The problem here was not just that court rulings
had made convictions impossible. It was that there was no case to begin
with. The idea that the government could prosecute two private
individuals under the 1917 Espionage Act for passing along government
leaks was absurd. The whole point of the exercise was obviously an
attempt on the part of some people in the FBI to embarrass the
pro-Israel lobby. ... A shameful chapter in American judicial history is closed but the
recriminations over this outrage should just be getting started.
In general, this is fairly good news for anyone who receives classified information -- like journalists -- and then publishes it in some form. (There are several types of classified information -- if the defendants had passed signal intelligence or evidence about collection systems to Israel, they'd have been tried under a different statute). Had the case gone to trail, the government was facing a loss, as its efforts to keep information out of the discovery process failed and its contention that the two AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, broke the law was challenged by U.S. government classification experts.
But Washington is not a normal world, and this prosecution needs to
be understood in the context in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and
the swirl of conspiracy theories about "neocon" and Jewish influence
over U.S. policy. In this bizarro reading of events, President Bush,
Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice chose to invade Iraq
due to the influence of Jewish officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug
Feith, Scooter Libby and Richard Perle. One sign of those times: In the
immediate aftermath of Mr. Franklin's arrest, CBS's Lesley Stahl asked
whether "Israel [used] the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on
the war in Iraq?" In other words, the Aipac case resembled a political
hit more than a legitimate "espionage" case.
...
Mr. Holder should also re-examine the Aipac case from start to
finish. The real scandal in this case starts with the attempted
criminalization of policy differences and legitimate lobbying, and ends
up in the wiretapping of Congress and the wrecked careers of Messrs.
Rosen, Weissman and Franklin. This smacks of abuse of power, and
somebody at Justice should be held to account.
From what I've read, this investigation involved long-term phone taps, surveillance, and a sting operation, and they only managed to catch the staffers in [arguably] illegal activities once Franklin told them that he had classified information that the lives of specific Israeli agents in Iran were in danger. This seems like rather thin gruel given the scope of the investigation, which could mean that (1) the hearsay [that AIPAC staffer were engaging in wrongdoing, leading to the investigation] was wrong or exaggerated; (2) as the commentator above suggests, someone was out to get AIPAC; or (3) that the staffers had become more careful about not stepping over the legal line than when the feds got their original information. We are left to wonder whether 1, 2, or 3, or some combination, is correct.
Air Force reservists who operate the Arrow and Patriot missile defense systems have recently begun spending one day a week on duty to sharpen their skills, amid fears that in a conflict with Iran, dozens of long-range missiles would be fired at Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned. ... "We are working hard to be ready for the Iranian threat," a top IAF officer said. "We are preparing for barrages, split warheads and other surprises and therefore we need to retain a high operational level by everyone, including reservists."
May 1, 2009
Steve Rosen E-Mails With Some Thoughts
I just received this e-mail from Steve Rosen, the now-vindicated ex-AIPAC official who was about to stand trial for passing classified leaks to reporters and to an Israeli embassy official. Here is what he wrote: "Thank God we live in a country
where the courts can correct injustices like this. I have written a book
on the truth about classified information leaks. The manuscript goes to
publishers on Monday morning."
The End of the Ridiculous AIPAC Case
The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to dismiss all charges against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in the AIPAC leak case. It's about time. It was an idiotic case to begin with; the men were being prosecuted (under an ancient, seldom-used law) for receiving classified information passed orally -- not even on paper -- from a government stooge, and then passing it on to a reporter and to an official from the Israeli embassy. I'll gather up some reaction later, but suffice it to say that this day was long overdue. Rosen and Weissman did what a thousand reporters in Washington do everyday, hear about information that's technically classified. The only difference is that these two worked for a demonized lobby.
It's a sad day for the Walts and Mearsheimers of the world, who believe that AIPAC is a treasonous organization, and it's a sad day for AIPAC too, because it abandoned the two men to the fates when it should have stood by them. More to come.
