Over at Shrinkwrapped, some criticism of my belief that there exists a cohort of Palestinian moderates with whom Israel can do business:
Leaving aside the fact that the current Palestinians are spiritually indistinguishable from their predecessors, Jeffrey Goldberg makes the typical error of the well meaning liberal. Liberals see the best in people at all times, even when the best does not appear obvious to any other observers. For Jeffrey Goldberg and other liberals, it is an article of faith that Palestinian moderates exist. I have a great deal of sympathy with this position, which I held for many years. Tragically, this has proved to be an unwarranted assumption, for several reasons.
Parental Melancholy, Late July Edition
Not that I didn't know this already, but Michael Gerson can write like very few people can write. My oldest daughter is away for an overnight camping trip -- one night! -- and I'm in a terrible funk. And then I read this, from Michael:
So this is the independence we seek for our children -- to turn our closest relationships into acquaintances. Of course, I knew this getting into parenthood. But the reality remains shocking. For a time, small hands take your own -- children look upward, and you fill their entire universe. They remain, to you, the most important things in the world. To them, over time, you become one important thing among many. And then an occasional visit or phone call. And then a memory, fond or otherwise.
The memory of my own father, gone these 17 years, is fond and blurry. He shrank in my mental universe from sun to star, bright and distant. With every season of camp, I dim to my sons as well. It is the appropriate humility of the generations. It is also harder than I thought. And I don't know how to let go.
Business Ethics and Orthodox Piety
Goldblog reader David Starr, a genuine Jewish scholar up at the Hebrew College, wrote in with an interesting insight about a disturbing trend in the American Orthodox community:
You're getting at something re. Orthodoxy. Many years ago Haym Soloveitchik wrote an article about the increasing prevalance of humrot in post WWII Orthodox communities-the desire to impose ever-greater strictures upon oneself. He viewed this increasing strictness as a response to migration and acculturation and the need for greater boundaries demarcating Orthodoxy from non-Orthodoxy. At a talk he gave at Harvard Hillel, someone asked him about whether this tendency applied to the realm of ethics as well as ritual strictness, since his piece dealt only with the latter. He replied no, it applied only in the field of ritual. The reason why it didn't apply to ethics, including business, owed to the market. That is, if one competes in a market, one follows the standard of the market. To behave more stringently than the market standard is to engage in an act of market suicide, in effect. I offer this not as justification but as explanation. I take all this as further evidence of what Mark Twain I think said of the Jews, they're like everyone else, only more so.
Via Gershom Gorenberg, Yoram Kaniuk on what it means to be a Jewish state:
While inside the Knesset fortress I thought that maybe it is still possible, before my death, to turn this state into a Jewish State - not one populated by zealous masses called Jews, but rather, Jews like we used to be; a state where we respect those who fought against us and were defeated. When that will happen, we will see the establishment of an Arab state alongside us, and the city of Jerusalem, also known as al-Quds, will become the capital of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. And then peace will come to Israel. Amen.
July 30, 2009
On the Hitler-Loving-Mufti Photo
Seth Lipsky thinks it's actually a good thing that Avigdor Lieberman is encouraging Israeli government officials to circulate a picture of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the late mufti of Jerusalem, palling around with Hitler in 1941. Lipsky laments that Lieberman's decision was greeted with ridicule inside Israel's own foreign ministry -- and by me, by the way -- but then cites a piece I wrote in 2008 to make a semi-reasonable sound argument that the mufti's ties to Nazi Germany actually had a pretty significant impact on the rampant anti-Semitism seen around the world today. It is true that the Mufti was a terrible genocidal Nazi; it's also true, however, that he's dead. In the interest of encouraging Palestinian moderates -- the sort of people who scare Lieberman the most -- I think it's not overly useful to equate the Palestinians of today with their long-gone leader.
The news has gotten a bitheavy this week, and though I welcome the onslaught of name-calling clogging my inbox, it seemed like a good time to talk about beer, especially because Sgt. Crowley and Henry Louis Gates are supposed to be drinking heavily just now at the White House. Slate has compiled a list of the top five "bonding over brewskies" moments in movie history. Here's number four, proof that beer helps catch criminals and create unlikely friendships -- even if you're Jewish!
On What I Know and Don't Know About Sgt. Crowley
Goldblog reader Brad Smilgin writes:
I read this whole article and I think the most important phrase you wrote in that piece is, "I don't know Crowley."
Point taken.
Quote of the Week
This is just an extraordinary statement. I've covered politics off-and-on for a while, and I've never heard anything like this. From Sarah Palin's farewell speech to the state of Alaska:
I say it is the best road trip in America, soaring through nature's finest show.Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice-fogged frigid beauty. The cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime, such extreme summertime, about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska, that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.
White Cops Are Always Right
That's been my experience as a citizen and as a reporter. Back in the day, I used to write about the subject of racial profiling a bit, and and I'm reasonably sure, based on my reporting, that Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department a) is a self-righteous man who was enraged when his authority was questioned, and b) set-up Gates for an arrest because of these feelings of rage. By set-up, I mean he that he made at least a semi-conscious effort to gaslight Gates, that he went out of his way to make sure that Gates would be so angry at his treatment that he would be, by Crowley's standards, a plausible candidate for arrest.
I don't know Crowley though, and since I have family members who are serving, or have served, in various police departments, I know I shouldn't generalize, but Crowley strikes me, after days of watching this story, as a type I've met over and over again. There is one specific cop -- a very good, if flawed cop, I once profiled who seems very much in the Crowley model. This is from a New York Times Magazine story I wrote ten years ago that was about, in part, a Maryland state trooper named Mike Lewis, who was a brave cop but one who was consistently sure that he was right, and consistently sure that any complaints directed against him by black people were rooted in prejudice against white cops. He was so sure, in fact, that even when black people didn't accuse him of racism, he knew that they were thinking he was a racist:
As we drive, Lewis watches a van come up on his right and pass him. A young black man is at the wheel, his left leg hanging out the window. The blood races up Lewis's face: "Look at that! That's a violation! You can't drive like that! But I'm not going to stop him. No, sir. If I do, he's just going to call me a racist."
Then Lewis notices that the van is a state government vehicle. "This is ridiculous," he says. Lewis hits his lights. The driver stops. Lewis issues him a warning and sends him on his way. The driver says nothing.
"He didn't call me a racist," Lewis says, pulling into traffic, "but I know what he was thinking." Lewis does not think of himself as a racist. "I know how to treat people," he says. "I've never had a complaint based on a race-based stop. I've got that supercharged knowledge of the Constitution that allows me to do this right."
In the old days, when he was patrolling the Eastern Shore, it was white people he arrested. "Ninety-five percent of my drug arrests were dirt-ball-type whites--marijuana, heroin, possession-weight. Then I moved to the highway, I start taking off two, three kilograms of coke, instead of two or three grams. Black guys. Suddenly I'm not the greatest trooper in the world. I'm a racist. I'm locking up blacks, but I can't help it."
His eyes gleam: "Ask me how many white people I've ever arrested for cocaine smuggling--ask me!"
I ask.
"None! Zero! I debrief hundreds of black smugglers, and I ask them, 'Why don't you hire white guys to deliver your drugs?' They just laugh at me. 'We ain't gonna trust our drugs with white boys.' That's what they say."
Mike Lewis's dream: "I dream at night about arresting white people for cocaine. I do. I try to think of innovative ways to arrest white males. But the reality is different."
Is Obama Evenhanded?
Over the last week, the Economist tasked Daniel Levy and David Frum with debating whether President Obama is an "honest broker" in the peace process. Levy, who serves as director of the New America Foundation's Middle East Task Force ("task force" sounds so martial, but whatever), argues that Obama's no-nonsense handling of Israel is a refreshing -- and hopeful -- approach, while Frum, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, argues that Obama's role as mediator here is detrimental to Israel. The two do agree that, for better or worse, Obama's strategy and attitude is sharply different from Bush's, and perhaps from any president in recent American history. Here is a glimpse of their back and forth, the winner of which will be declared on Friday.
On previous attempts to broker peace:
Daniel Levy:Aaron David Miller,
who advised six secretaries of state on Middle East policy, in his "The
Much Too Promised Land" describes the three "bad boys" of Arab-Israeli
peacemaking: Kissinger, Carter and Baker. ... Under Kissinger's guidance, when Israel dragged its
feet on Sinai redeployment talks with the Egyptians, President Ford in
1975 announced a "reassessment" of the US-Israel relationship and froze new arms agreements. President Carter brokered Israeli-Egyptian peace at Camp David that included a full Israeli withdrawal from
the Sinai to the 1967 lines and full settlement evacuation. This happened
despite the fact that Israel's
prime minister Menachem Begin was committed to keeping the Sinai and to
personally retiring to the Yamit settlement there. President George H.W. Bush
and Secretary Baker imposed
loan guarantee penalties on Israeli settlements' expansion in 1991.
David Frum: Messrs. Kissinger and Carter achieved successful and enduring
results. One, Mr Baker, did not. What made the difference? The answer
is obvious: Messrs. Kissinger and Carter were brokering disputes between
Israel and Egypt; Mr Baker between Israel and the Palestinians. By
1973, Egypt had very finite demands upon Israel: It wanted the Sinai
back and in return it offered a permanent end to hostilities. But Mr Baker tried to mediate with the Palestinians. The demands
presented by the accepted leaders of the Palestinian polity are not
finite. Nor can Palestinian leaders safely offer a permanent end to
hostilities. (The Israeli, prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has
again flushed out this unwillingness by his demand for the recognition
of Israel's Jewish character.) The result was that Baker's much vaunted
toughness led nowhere. ... If Mr. Baker's approach does not work, why repeat it?
"Absent Israeli Action, Prepare For a Nuclear Iran"
John Bolton thinks Israel might strike Iran before the end of the year. So do I, for what it's worth. I sense a growing feeling among some Israeli analysts that a strike is almost inevitable.
On Repenting with Goldblog
Rabbi Naftali Tzi Weisz, a prominent rabbi in the Hassidic community -- also arrested for money-laundering in 2007 and again last week for tax fraud -- addressed a Borough Park symposium Tuesday to repent and assume responsibility for his crimes:
"Unfortunately we have to admit in public that things happened that
were not supposed to happen," Weisz told the men in attendance (women
were not invited to the forum). "We must have to express our wish that
these matters will never happen -- we have to commit that in the future
this will never happen again." Weisz spoke in great
detail about the compliance program that [his] board has entered
with the government and he said, "Our community, baruch hashem, (thank God) is not lacking in smart experienced lawyers and accountants that are willing to teach the tzibur [community], how to conduct their communal affairs in a manner that is in compliance with the law in all respects."
The meeting was called in response to all the unfortunate publicity surrounding the apparently never-ending reality show, "When Orthodox Rabbis Go Bad." Those in attendance were seemingly receptive to Weisz's call for responsibility, though several demonstrators protested outside the building about the Jew-baiting media, calling last week's massive corruption bust a "pogrom." On the other hand, Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel read actual excerpts from my earlier post about this crisis -- and no one booed. I'm big with the Hasidim, apparently.
Self-Hating Jews and Other Sad Cases
I've received a lot of mail already in reaction to my post about the crisis in Israel -- a crisis caused by the willful disregard of settler extremists to Israeli law, and by the Israeli government's impotence in the face of such law-breaking -- and I'll post some of it throughout the day, but here's one sample:
Mr. Goldberg,
I've decided your a self-hating Jew. You would rather have the approval of Barack Hussein Obama and the self-hating Jews that are his lapdogs than of your own Jewish people. You want to make Israel Judenrein, and Heaven will punish you for that. Shame!
Shame is right. By the way, if I'm a self-hating Jew, then anyone who is not a rabid, land-stealing settler is a self-hating Jew. I believe such a category exists -- though in my experience, the Jews who hate being Jewish and afflict the rest of us with their hatred generally tend, in an overall way, to love themselves very much. But what you have in this debate over self-hating Jews -- remember, there's a report out that Bibi himself has called Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod self-hating Jews -- is the hijacking of Judaism by a group of extremists who have conflated support for the settlement project with love for Israel and the Jewish people.
Here's Another Way to Raise Money for Journalism
Via Romenesko, police arrested a New Hampshire sportswriter yesterday for allegedly running a prostitution ring. If I were to start a newsroom-based prostitution ring -- and I'm not, but if I were -- I would at least try to build a clientele of politicians and other potential sources, and I would offer discounts in exchange for secret documents. A full-service journalistic whorehouse, in other words.
July 29, 2009
The Crisis in Israel
One of the chief complaints leveled against the Palestinian Authority in the years of the Oslo process was that it did not, or would not, control the people who lived under its rule. The Palestinian government had no monopoly on violence, in other words; anyone with a gun had power. This was a legitimate complaint. It went to the seriousness of the Palestinian regime, and to its competence.
Well, the government of Israel today is facing a similar crisis. The building of new "illegal" outposts by West Bank settlers -- building accompanied by racist slurs directed at Israel's main benefactor, the President of the United States -- is a direct challenge to the legitimacy of Israel's democratically-elected government. If these outposts are allowed to stand, it will mean that the government of Israel is incapable of enforcing its own laws, or unwilling to do so. Israel and the United States demanded of the Palestinian Authority that it jail those who defied Palestinian law and threatened the Palestinian national cause. Israel should treat these settlers in the same manner. They are criminals who undermining the sovereignty of the Jewish state. If they are not stopped, then we might as well face the harsh truth, that the settlers are in open revolt against the government of the State of Israel, and that their fanaticism may destroy the 2,000-year-old dream of Jewish independence.
In an interview with the BBC, the group's leader, Mohammed Yusuf, said such education "spoils the belief in one God"...There are prominent Islamic preachers who have seen and understood that the present Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam," he said. "Like rain. We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.
The Israeli foreign minister is enjoying a 10-day tour of Latin
America, including stops in Rio, Lima, and Bogotá. Officially, his
mission is said to be a long-scheduled effort to strengthen ties with
South America. Unofficially, Israeli wags suspect, his mission is to
stay out of the way. The foreign minister, who is considered an
embarrassing loose cannon by large swaths of the Israeli public, has
never been taken particularly seriously in diplomatic circles. Western
officials complain that his hard-line policy proposals, which include
transferring some Arab Israeli communities to Palestinian control,
undermine Arab-Israeli coexistence.
Department of Bad Ideas
Newsweek is suggesting that President Obama make George W. Bush his Mideast envoy:
During the Bush years, Israelis were consistently among the few
foreign populations that gave the American president high approval
marks--often in far greater proportion than Americans themselves. Senior
officials in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, where I worked, spoke
on their cell phones daily with their White House
counterparts--circumventing the State Department and the Israeli Foreign
Ministry entirely.
That closeness paid off. It's no
coincidence that, during the Bush years, Ariel Sharon had political
cover to suggest "painful concessions" for peace--a euphemism for
withdrawal from territory. The unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip--followed by preparations to withdraw from large parts of the West
Bank that were interrupted only by the Hizbullah war of 2006--almost
certainly would not have happened with anyone else in the White House
less trusted to ensure Israel's safety.
The inbox runneth over. Goldblog reader Thom Seaton writes:
There are many Zionists
who do not support the settlement project but who believe that Obama's
approach has essentially provided Palestinians with a free ride. Settlement
expansion can be verified; attempts to curtail incitement cannot be verified
and Abbas can escape responsibility for the continued failure of Palestinian
leaders to accept the existence of a majority Jewish state. ... If American leaders and
many Jews among J Street,
Brit Tzedek, et al were quick to condemn Bibi's reluctance to embrace a
two-state solution, why did not the administration find fault with Palestinian
refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state. If this is to be a matter
for final negotiations, why is not the settlements also a matter for such
discussions.
Many thanks to Jeffrey Goldberg,
both for taking a reader's question "paraphrasing" me as to whether
there is "any red line for [him] vis-a-vis Obama and Israel?" and for
again demonstrating that there is apparently nothing Obama can do that
would offend a certain segment of American Jewry....
I have many red lines, of course, when it comes to the question of Israel's survival, and readers of this blog know this. I want Israel to remain a Jewish-majority democracy, I don't want it to be a pariah, in part because pariahs don't survive, and I want Israel to protect itself from the threat posed by Iran. I think Israel must be ready to compromise on questions related to the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and to settlement expansion on the West Bank, precisely because these other issues are so important.
What Sonia has done Is so very impressive So I am impressed
Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa:
Pit in my stomach Ricci, Maloney, Didden Too biased to judge
Michael Oren on Settlements (Cont'd)
People are making such a big deal about settlements, I figured I'd ask Michael Oren to help me calculate their ultimate importance to the peace process. This is a continuation of our discussion held at the Aspen Ideas Festival:
Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you think if settlements were frozen right now, that the Arabs would
reach out to Israel for peace talks?
Michael Oren: Very difficult, very difficult. They'd maybe reach out to peace talks.
I don't know where those peace talks would run, but I'll tell you several weeks
ago, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu, gave a speech. And in
the speech he recognizes the need for an independent Palestinian state. He
wanted the state to be demilitarized because we've had some nasty experiences
with Palestinian entities that shoot at us. And he also had another demand. It
wasn't a precondition but it was a demand, that at some stage before the final
treaty is signed, that that Palestinian state is going to have to recognize
Israel as the Jewish state, as the nation state of the Jewish people. And many people
in the Arab world, many people in Europe, were sort of scratching their heads
and saying 'why do you need this, isn't this just an obstacle to peace?'
A.B. Yehoshua,
who's a very good friend of mine, called me up on the phone screaming, saying 'why
do you need this? It's just another obstacle! The prime minister doesn't want
peace.' And I explained to [him], I said what you see as an obstacle, I see as a
door. And this is a notion that I have held for many, many years, well over 15
years, that without recognition of the legitimate existence of a Palestinian
people with an historic land, the right to an independent state in that land,
without the reciprocal recognition of a Jewish people with an historic tie to a
land and a legitimate claim to a state, there will never be an end to the
conflict. That is, only on the basis of that reciprocity can we actually end
the conflict, because if you don't have that, if you only have the Jewish state
recognizing the Palestinian state, then they will always regard the Jewish
state as illegitimate, foreign and temporary.
And there, to me, lies the
essence. So Israel can freeze settlements tomorrow -- we plucked up 21
settlements out of Gaza two years ago, and you know I was there, it was the most traumatic
event of my military career, was pulling Jews out of their houses -- we did
that, and we turned around and got 7,200 rockets fired at us. Settlements are
not the issue. The issue is the recognition of the mutual legitimacy of these
two peoples, the legitimate claim to these two states.
JG: There are so many ways to go with this, but let me go with a very
specific point. You say settlements are not the issue. The Obama Administration
believes that settlements are a clear issue, in a way that very few administrations
have, they have made this the early centerpiece of their move, their desire to
reignite peace talks. Do you think they are making a mistake?
MO: I never said that settlements aren't an issue. I cant speak for the Obama Administration, but I think
that they understand as well that the settlements are not the issue, that it's one of many issues. Another issue is the
degree to which the Arab states are willing to embark on a process of
normalization with us and that process is right now moribund. I think that both
sides - the Israeli side, the American side - are working earnestly, ardently,
to try and find a compromise over the question of the degree to which construction
can continue in the settlements to accord for what we call normal life, and I
think, I'm fairly confident, that in the coming period, we will find a solution
for this.
JG: You've been studying this for 30 years. Do you actually believe that
there's a moment in time, in the near future, when the Palestinians will
recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state?
MO: I think there is a time in the future, but that moment is the
culmination of a process. It's a process that begins with the schools, it
begins with changing textbooks, which deny Israel's legitimacy and right to
exist. Two weeks ago, I watched public service announcements by the Palestinian
Authority -- paid for, by the way, with American taxpayers' dollars -- and the
PSA said 'Welcome to PA television, we are going to liberate not only Tulkarem... but we're going to liberate Haifa and Jaffa and Tiberias.' Now that is not the
way to go. That does not lead to mutual recognition to the right of two people
to their independent states. And that process has to start now. We have
recognized our obligations under previous agreements. One of those agreements
talks for a sequential process in which Israel will find a solution for the
settlement issue, but the Palestinians have to begin to end what we call hatred
on their television sets and in their textbooks. Without that, you are raising
generations to regard Israel as an alien hostile temporal state. That's not a
prescription for peace.
On the Madoff Scandal
Goldblog reader Zev Klagsbrun writes, in reference to a previous post on the morality crisis in Orthodox Judaism:
I found the following language in regard to the Madoff scandal misleading and unfair: "I mean, just in the last year, we've had the scandal of Agriprocessors, and the Madoff scandal (admittedly, he wasn't leading even the facsimile of an Orthodox life, but the scandal has involved some prominent Orthodox Jews and institutions) and now this." This sentence implies that Orthodox Jews and institutions were involved in perpetrating the scandal, while in fact they just featured prominently amongst the victims.
As an Orthodox Jew, I am all too well aware of the ethical disdain exhibited by many of my coreligionists. We have enough scandals actually perpetrated by Orthodox Jews to be ashamed of without having the Madoff scandal thrown into the mix.
On the Other Hand, Things With Syria are Looking Up.....
The U.S. is easing export restrictions previously placed on Damascus. Anything that helps bring Syria out of Iran's orbit seems useful, the realist in me says.
He preaches that we need to rethink our positions while demonstrating very little understanding of the complexities we've long since worked through; he assures us public bilateral agreements made a mere four years ago never happened; he seems incapable of distinguishing between settlements even when the Palestinians have already recognised such distinctions, and his position is empowering them to renounce positions they've already accepted.
Shortly after I posted a link to Aluf Benn's New York Times op-ed on President Obama, I spoke to two senior administration officials who seemed to feel fairly strongly that Benn doesn't understand what the President is trying to do. In his piece, Benn argued that Obama has spoken to most everyone in the world except to the Israelis -- the Cairo speech to the Muslim world being the most obvious example of Obama's desire to re-set relationships -- and that until he allays Israeli fears, and explains his vision for the Middle East and for Israel's security, Israelis will mistrust him, to generally deleterious effect.
These two senior officials -- sorry, those were the ground rules -- made the plausible argument that the Cairo speech was, in fact, directed at Israelis as much as it was directed at Arabs. "The President went before a Cairo audience in a speech co-sponsored by Al-Azhar with Muslim Brotherhood members in the audience and spoke of America's strong, unshakable support for Israel," one of the officials said. "He could have gone to a million different venues to say this, but he went to Cairo, and it wasn't exactly an applause line. Isn't it more important to say this to the Muslim world than it is to say it to an audience of Israelis or American Jews?"
These two officials pointed out something that I forgot about the speech, which is that it contained strong condemnations of the cynical Arab ploy to use the Palestinian issue as a diversion (in other words, to keep the focus of unhappy Arabs on Israel and not on the weaknesses of their own anti-democratic, corrupt governments), and of course it contained an unequivocal denunciation of terrorism committed in the name of resistance.
For what it was worth, I mentioned my worry that in all of the noise about settlements, the pro-Israel message of the Obama Administration wasn't being heard -- not only the left-sounding message that a Palestinian state is in the best security, demographic and moral interests of the Jewish state, but the message that Obama believes in the core ideas of Zionism (as he expressed them to me during the campaign) and that, because he's a believer, he sincerely wants to protect Israel from true existential threats.
I asked these two officials when Obama might visit Israel, or at least speak at length about his positive vision for a secure Israel, but they were non-committal, but I'm obviously hoping that this happens soon. Otherwise, the forces that seek to exploit the growing unease in some Jewish quarters with Obama in order to advance their own pro-settlement -- or pro-recalcitrance -- agendas will only be strengthened. The Obama Administration doesn't help its own cause when it condemns the so-called "natural growth" of settlement blocs that everyone from Abu Mazen to Hosni Mubarak knows will wind up as part of Israel in a final deal, but you're not going to get too many complaints from me, and, my guess is, from the majority of American Jews, when the Obama Administration questions the motivations of those who seek aggressive settlement expansion right now, at a time when the Palestinian leadership of the West Bank is actually fighting terrorism, and building a functioning economy.
To be continued, I'm sure.
Could the Arabs Ever be Satisfied?
Goldblog reader James Wynn writes, in reference to my statement that time is running out for Israel to achieve permanent, internationally-recognized borders and diplomatic relations with the bulk of Muslim-majority countries,"
Why do you think this is possible? If Israel relinquished all territories gained since the start of the 1967 war (which would include the WHOLE of Jerusalem, not just East Jerusalem), the Palestinians will a) prohibit Jews from entering those areas --certainly from entering them safely-- and the Palestinians will begin drumming about the "right of return" to all areas of 1948 Israel. And the Muslim states and the European will reflexively nod their heads. Wishing something doesn't make it so.
I don't know that it's possible or not. I do know that the status quo is untenable. I also believe -- not so strongly anymore, but still believe somewhat -- that a so-called "end of claims" by the Palestinians, recognized internationally, is not something that could so easily be thrown away.
iPhone Induces Guilt
A new iPhone application, aptly titled Synagogues, directs users to nearby congregations, replete with their denomination, rabbi's contact information and, presumably, a place to hide the device once you actually get to synagogue, or a place to hide outside the synagogue. It's a little late if you consider the tech company RustyBrick -- which, among other things, locates nearby kosher restaurants and mikvahs -- but all this so-called convenience does make guilt that much more inevitable.
Another Message for Rahm
This one from Bradley Burston, in the form of a letter to Rahm's boss:
You are in danger of losing critical support for
progress toward a two-state solution. Though you have been president
for only six months, you are fast running out of time. Your primary
enemy here is not the extremist hoping to blow up or gun down or
forcibly squat a prospective peace to death. Your enemies are the
clock, a culture which allows peacemaking only at the unlikely opening
of a series of windows of opportunity, and, if you do not move quickly,
your own inaction... Simply stated,take your campaign directly to the Israeli people,
and soon. Fail to do this, or wait too long, and you'd be well advised
to leave the table while you still have chips.... In your open and generous dealings with the Muslim and Arab world,
you have demonstrated the one quality which underlies all emotional,
political, and cultural transactions in this part of the globe:
respect.
A Message for Rahm
From Aluf Benn, asking why President Obama hasn't spoken to the Israeli people yet:
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has
succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian
state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a
freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about
the merits of one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr.
Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli
left, desperate for a new agenda, has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
July 27, 2009
The Morality Crisis in Orthodox Judaism
Last week saw another eruption of alleged immorality
in the American Orthodox Jewish community. Five rabbis were arrested as part
of an investigation into political corruption in New Jersey. Is it just
a coincidence that Orthodox Jews keep showing up in handcuffs on the
evening news? Is there an ethics crisis in the most religiously observant corner of
American Jewry? I called my friend Erica Brown to ask these questions.
Erica is one of the leading Jewish thinkers in America today. She runs
the adult education branch of the Partnership Jewish Life and Learning in Washington, and she's wicked smart. So to speak.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Is there a crisis of morality in the Orthodox Jewish community today?
Erica Brown: I don't believe that there is a moral
crisis specifically in the Orthodox community. I believe that there is a crisis
in the Jewish community at large that reflects a larger moral vacuum in society.
And here I would make a critical distinction. Judaism upholds certain ethical
values grounded in the book of Deuteronomy -- "And you shall do what is
just and good in the eyes of God" -- that some Jews choose to ignore. That's
a human problem, not a faith problem. In other words, there are Jews and there
is Judaism, and they are not the same thing.
The fact that observant Jews can
turn away from the Talmudic dictum that the "law of the government is our
law," namely, that we are bound by the jurisdiction of whatever country we
are in, shows a moral failing on their part. As you know, Jeffrey, I grew up in
Deal, New Jersey.
I feel ulceritic at what I read and saw yesterday. As my daughter said loudly
when she heard, "How can the paper report that they're Orthodox?
There is nothing Orthodox about them."
JG: I'm not going to let you off that easily. Your daughter is right, of
course -- there's nothing Orthodox about them (assuming, of course,
that the charges are true). But what is the failure in Orthodox
education, or in the Orthodox rabbinate, that lets this happen over
and over again. From a non-Orthodox perspective, I would hazard a guess
and say that insularity combined with a hyper-legalistic approach to
life -- i.e. I eat kosher, and I observe the manifold laws of the
Sabbath, so therefore I'm right with God -- might lead to these kinds
of moral failures. I'm not arguing against legalism, but can observing
the ritual so fastidiously blind someone to the fact that there are a
whole set of other laws governing the way we're supposed toward our
fellow man?
EB: Ideally, legal nuances make people more fastidious
in their observance of the bigger moral picture. I think it has in my own life.
For example, I would venture to say that traditional Jews are more scrupulous
about returning a lost object than others may be because Jewish law demands
diligence in this area. However, I think you're right that for some, strict adherence
to law without an underlying spiritual compass can result in forgetting what
the law is there to enforce. Maimonides had unkind words for such individuals.
He called them scoundrels within the framework of the law.
JG: Is the problem we're seeing getting worse, or is it just that we
remember, for obvious reasons, photographs on the front page of The New
York Times of Orthodox Jews being led away in handcuffs. I mean, just
in the last year, we've had the scandal of Agriprocessors, and the
Madoff scandal (admittedly, he wasn't leading even the facsimile of an
Orthodox life, but the scandal has involved some prominent Orthodox
Jews and institutions) and now this. Not to mention the famous story of
the Bar Mitzvah party held in a New York jail a couple of months ago.
Is there a crisis?
EB: There is a crisis and the images of the
black frock against the black newsprint have understandable staying power. The
Orthodox community and the Jewish community in general -- remember, Bernie Madoff
is not an Orthodox Jew -- have to do their own spiritual reckoning. There is a collective
chest beating that must take place. The idea that many prisons have daily
minyanim is not a statement of pride for us. It's a statement of shame. There
must be more personal and collective accountability.
JG: What is about Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox culture that has convinced
or that has led some people to have contempt for non-Jews? Or am I imagining
that there is a lack of respect for the non-Jewish majority (or the
non-Orthodox Jewish majority) among the Orthodox, or at the very least,
the ultra-Orthodox?
EB: I think that's a loaded question, Jeffrey,
and I suspect this has more to do with avarice than race or religion. I think
every minority is suspect of the majority culture, largely because there is a
history of marginalization and persecution that virtually every minority
suffers to some extent in a majority culture. That is certainly true of Jews,
and we don't have to look far back in time to appreciate that Jews may be
suspect of non-Jewish motives and behaviors. A look at Jews in medieval Christendom
is a real awakening if you've never studied that period of history. Even today,
without persecution, victimization may consist largely of feeling ontologically
unworthy in the eyes of the other. Look at the whole Gates debate.
JG: I often feel ontologically unworthy. Especially next to you. It's a bit
of a loaded question, but not much. In my own experience writing about
the Orthodox communities of New York, I noticed a tendency on the part
of some people to treat the federal government, or their local
governments, as variants of the Czar's government. Which is to say,
they transferred their attitudes from Europe to here, never
contemplating for a moment that government here is fundamentally
different. In any case, tell me what's being done in Orthodox circles
to address these sorts of moral and reputational catastrophes.
EB: Jeffrey, you are ontologically worthy, of
course. Now enough about you. I think what you say is very true. In
non-democratic countries, or at times that pre-date citizenship for Jews
throughout Europe, Jews often had an unpredictable relationship with the monarchy
or ruling power and sought both appeasement, on the one hand, and circuitous
routes to achieve particular ends, on the other, especially in the financial
arena. If you don't give people an easy route to be good or accepted, then
they often look for loopholes, special dispensations, black market dealings,
etc. This begs the question of why today, when we live with material ease and
under the freedoms that we do, that we are all not more ethically upright and
scrupulous in all of our dealings.
The incident in New Jersey shows a level of disrespect for
the law, a posture of disdain, a certain condescension toward normative legal
behaviors that's deeply troubling. It used to be that scholarship and piety
were status symbols in the Jewish community. For centuries that was the case. In
our society, prestige is determined largely by money, and we're seeing the
ugly result of that change of orientation. Morality is not a natural and
assumed set of values, and we make a mistake as leaders or parents if we think
that our charges will know how to do right and why on their own. Isaiah, in the
very first chapter of "his" book says: "Learn to do good. Devote
yourselves to justice. Aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend
the cause of the widow." Isaiah makes no assumptions. He tells us
straight-out - learn to do good. And so we must.
JG: So Erica, do you feel that you need to do something about this problem
personally? What I mean to say is, if you feel that all of these
controversies reflect poorly on Judaism, what can a Jew do to make it
better?
EB: I feel an enormous responsible as an educator, writer and
parent to speak to these issues directly. For a while, I thought one of the
biggest challenges facing the Jewish community was boredom. So I tackled it
last year and in a few weeks my book, Spiritual
Boredom, will be out (Jewish Lights). But this year's series of
crimes with Jews at their center has showed me that some of us may be bored and
some of us have turned to transgressive behavior to relieve the boredom. I
could use a little less excitement myself. I'm currently working on a new book -- When Jews Do Bad Things -- because we need to
think about collective shame and strengthening our ethical base. I hope that
will be some small contribution to facing these ethical challenges more
authentically. As a group, I believe that the best way to combat the ethical
morass that's landed on our doorstep as a minority is to go out of our way to articulate
our own distance from this behavior and to go out of our way to do acts of
kindness for others that show us to be a moral light in the world.
Bizarre Jewish Solipsisms
Noah Pollak writes me to tell me how my priorities are all screwed up:
If it's really true that Israel needs Arab recognition to survive, what
rational argument can you make to Syria and Lebanon and the
Palestinians that they should make peace? Here you are offering the
Arabs the choice between glorious victory and a humiliating
U.S.-brokered peace, and you think they're going to take humiliation?
If you really believe that Israel can't survive without recognition,
then you should also argue that Israel is doomed, because neither the
Palestinians nor most of the Arabs are going to give it -- especially
not when the Goldbergs, Olmerts, and J Streeters keep saying that
Israel will perish without Arab approval. This entire line is like some
kind of bizarre Jewish solipsism.
Me, I think it's the other way
around. I've spent all summer over here and what I see is a strong,
young, vibrant, flourishing nation. And what I see on the West Bank and
Gaza are societies that have made themselves so dysfunctional and
self-hating that the UN collects their garbage for them. Somehow, the
weaker and more divided the Palestinians get, the more powerful they
become. And the more economically and militarily mighty Israel gets,
the weaker it becomes.
I specialize, of course, in bizarre Jewish solipsisms. I don't disagree with many of Noah's conclusions, particularly about the strength of Israeli society, but I continue to believe that the best way to short-circuit the international campaign to deny Israel legitimacy is to make reasonable compromises with Israel's reasonable adversaries. And I continue to believe that Barack Obama could help that process along. And yes, I do believe that some of Israel's adversaries are reasonable.
The Rise of the Israeli Mafia
A Tablet investigative series, written by my old goombah, Douglas Century, looks at the Israeli mafia. The author is guided by Ilan Benshoshan, who grew up on the street of Shchunat Hatikvah, "a breeding ground for Israel's toughest mob bosses," and today's introductory piece offers background and context to this subculture:
As the economic opportunities contract--this year, according to
Israel's Central Bank, marked the country's worst recession in its
61-year history--and as more and more of the market in this formerly
socialist country is privatized, Israel's underworld, once a dangerous
if quaint West Side Story-like demimonde governed by its own
code of honor, has rapidly morphed into a hellish landscape, similar to
the blood-soaked world of the Camorra and Sicilian Mafia as rendered in
the book Excellent Cadavers and the film Gomorra.
As long as the mobsters stuck to that age-old social contract to
keep homicide within the mishpochah, the mob killings of the Holy Land
generated considerable tabloid sensation but little public
condemnation. Bosses like Yehezkel Aslan were known more for their
patronage and protection and, among the general public, inspired more
awe than terror. ... Today's breed of Israeli mobsters, however, are far more violent,
ruthless, and young--many still in their 20s and early 30s. Obeying
none of the boundaries of the older generation and harboring few qualms
about killing innocent bystanders, the new crime tycoons are making
many Israelis feel an acute sense of crisis and insecurity, as if the
country is being swept by a wave of organized crime.
Where Will Hamas Network?
Ha'aretz reports that Facebook has
removed a group supporting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. The group boasted 10,000 members before it was shut down.
"Numerous users and groups have been barred,
and surfers fear the next to be removed could be Khaled Meshal's
17,000-strong fan page, dedicated to the exiled leader of the Islamic
organization. The network has not imposed a comprehensive ban on
Hamas sympathizers, though, and several other Haniyeh fan groups
continue to operate."
I suppose this is what makes blogging fun. From the inbox:
Dear Goldberg
You are in favour of apartheid for Jews in Jerusalem.
You are in favour of appeasing Moslems.
You would give the Arabs the Jewish homelands heartland.
And you say you are a Jew.
Shame on you!
"Do You Feel Like You Were Fooled by Obama?"
A Goldblog reader writes:
Since this was so obvious to me, I can't help but wonder about your opinion now. Do you feel like you were fooled? Or do you agree with Obama that Jews should be forbidden to build in certain areas of Jerusalem? Or do you disagree, but think it's really not a big deal that Obama thinks so? To paraphrase Jennifer Rubin from Commentary (you may snort about "neocons" here), is there any red line for you vis-a-vis Obama and Israel?
Snort about neocons? Some of my best friends are neocons. Yes, there are red lines, and no, Obama hasn't crossed any of them. Do I agree with Obama that Jews should be forbidden to build in certain areas of Jerusalem? My Judaism will survive my inability to live in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem (which, last time I checked, have no particular holy significance for Jews). What matters in Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. Everything else is commentary, and not Jennifer Rubin's commentary, btw. I'm hoping that the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem become the capital of the independent state of Palestine. I would expect that Jews will be allowed to visit these places (I'm sure there's some rock or stone in one of these places that matters to some Jew or other) and even live in them. But Israel's future depends on disengaging from Arab population centers acquired in 1967.
According to The Lede, this video of Charlie Chaplin addressing a fascist rally, while impersonating an
Adolf Hitler-like leader and denouncing militarism and dictatorship, is all the rage in Iran.
July 24, 2009
In Defense of J Street
Jamie Kirchick wrote this week, under the headline, "Obama's Jews," that the "constellation of far-left 'pro-Israel' organizations put a kosher stamp of approval on Obama's bizarre hectoring and moral equivalence." Well, count me - a genuine warmongering fascist, according to some on the Interwebs - as a person who also puts his kosher stamp of approval on Obama's approach to Israel. I don't think his approach is bizarre or hectoring, or represents an exercise in moral equivalence. If he equated Hamas and Israel, then he would be making a moral equivalency argument, but he didn't. And I don't think there's anything bizarre about an American president asking Israel to end its addiction to settlements. And I don't think there's anything bizarre or marginal about a group of American Jews forming an organization like J Street to press for a different vision of Israel than the one advocated - or acquiesced to - by so-called mainstream groups like AIPAC and the ADL.
I agree with Jamie - J Street has made some dumb mistakes in its brief history; its knee has jerked to the left when it shouldn't have, and it needs to grapple with the Iranian threat in a sophisticated way, and not simply stand in opposition to whatever AIPAC happens to be advocating at the moment. But all knees in the organized Jewish community tend to jerk, and when they do, they jerk in the direction of the status quo, and the status quo is untenable. The Zionist vision of a Jewish democratic state won't survive the demographic and moral realities of the current situation. Some people in J Street, I think, are motivated by animus to the idea of a Jewish state, but most, in my limited experience with them, want to preserve both Israel's democratic and Jewish character. That's more than I can say for some people in the "mainstream" pro-Israel community, who blind themselves to the coming crisis.
I'm not naïve about Arab intentions - or should I say, I'm no longer naïve about Arab intentions. I don't automatically believe that the creation of a Palestinian state will lead to an end of claims, or an end to the conflict. But I know that Israel's continued entanglement with the Palestinians, an entanglement deepened and exacerbated by its addiction to settlements, will eventually lead to the demise of the Jewish state. So I'm glad that "Obama's Jews" support his demand for Israeli self-reflection (are we so wonderful that we couldn't use a little self-examination now and again?), and I'm surprised that people are surprised by Obama's modest demand. He said in his campaign that he would hold up a mirror to Israel, and he is. He's also holding up a mirror to the Arab side, and that's all for the good as well. Time is running out - if Israel doesn't achieve permanent, internationally-recognized borders and diplomatic relations with the bulk of Muslim-majority countries soon, the campaign to delegitimize the very idea of Israel will become even more ferocious than it's been. In my humble opinion, J Street is trying, in its own way, to prevent this from happening, and this puts it in the mainstream of American Jewish political life.
CORRECTION: Jamie Kirchick's piece was e-mailed under the title "Obama's Jews," but the piece itself is headlined "The Obama Lobby."
First Person to Invoke Hitler Loses
That reductio ad Hitlerum rule certainly applies now to Avigdor Lieberman, who has ordereddiplomats to distribute an old photograph of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late Nazi-loving mufti of Jerusalem, sitting next to Hitler in 1941 Berlin. The idea is that world leaders will see the picture, think of Nazis, and let the Israeli foreign minister build apartments in East Jerusalem. Or something.
It's true that the Mufti was an outrageous Nazi. It's also true that he's dead. The Palestinians of the West Bank are not Nazis. Lieberman is going to have to get used to the idea.
The Talmud tells us that when Resh Lakish -- Rabbi Simeon
ben Lakish -- died, Rabbi Jochanan was inconsolable. No one else challenged
Rabbi Jochanan's conclusions so vigorously or engaged him in such sharp
argument. Repeatedly the Jewish tradition emphasizes that disagreement,
even fundamental disagreement, need not be the same as personal
hostility.
I have engaged in debates with some very sharp antagonists
over the years, including with some noted atheists -- Christopher Hitchens,
Sam Harris, Steven Pinker. The differences were deep and fundamental. Yet
in no case was the exchange, however charged, tinged with personal
animosity. The relationships remained cordial and even friendly, although
our disagreements could not have been more pronounced.
Throughout Jewish history argument has been elevated as a
means of discovering truth. Every student of Talmud grows accustomed to
the exchanges across centuries, as claims and debates contend for primacy.
At times debate can indeed become heated; but in the end, the aim is
truth.
Edmund Husserl once said of his fellow philosopher Lev
Shestov, "No one has ever attacked me so sharply as he. That's why we are
such close friends." I like to think that the Jewish background of both
philosophers had something to do with their willingness to argue and
remain friends. Resh Lakish and Rabbi Jochanan would understand.
July 23, 2009
Michael Oren at Aspen: Has Zionism Succeeded? (Cont'd)
Jeffrey Goldberg: It seems that it's safer to live as a Jew in America than it is to live as a Jew in Israel, but the basic Zionist urge was to create a place where Jews can live in physical safety. And yet today we see, and I don't think you could deny this, that it is dangerous to be Jewish in the state of Israel, and it is not dangerous to be Jewish in the U.S. How do you square that and do you think that Israel has failed in that particular mission to date?
Michael Oren: I think Israel hasn't achieved that goal entirely
yet. But let's put it this way: it was one
of the goals of Zionism. One of the goals of Zionism was to secure a place
where Jews could live out their lives free of threat, but I think the
overarching goal of Zionism was to create an environment where Jews could take
responsibility for themselves as Jews.And it's the only place in the world where you do take responsibility
for yourself as a Jew. You take responsibility for your lamp post and your
sewage system and your education systems and your wars and your successes and
your failures -- we take responsibilities for them as Jews, and I think that is
the great accomplishment of the Zionist dream -- [it] was to transform the Jews
from passive actors in their history to active agents in their history, to
transform Jews from the role of victims, which is a very fundamental
transformation for ourselves, people who take responsibility for all of their
actions -- look at how many commissions we have after all of our wars to examine
how well we did in the war and how and why we failed in those wars if we failed.
JG: Let's talk about something that the philosopher Avishai Margalit called
the 'Immaculate Misconception of Zionism' -- that there was no one in the
ancient land of Israel, in Palestine, when the Jews decided to go back. And
that, he sees, and many people see, as the essential tragedy of the Middle East
-- that you have two people with compelling claims to the same piece of land. Is
there a solution to that original misconception? Was that a misconception of
early Zionists?
MO: Well it was certainly a misconception of some early Zionists, including
some non-Jewish early Zionists. The aphorism 'a land for a people for a people
without a land' was actually coined by a British lord in 1848, a non-Jew. A
Jewish Zionist in the latter half of the 19th century believed that
Palestine was largely uninhabited, and if you travel the literature of the
period, for example Mark Twain's piece from 1867, "The Innocents Abroad,"
everybody remarks, all these writers remark, about how under populated Palestine
was, and it was at the turn of the 20th century, there were roughly eight hundred, nine hundred thousand people in all of Palestine and that is less than the population of
Washington, D.C. It was roughly unpopulated for all sorts of reasons, not the
least of them were ecological.
But, nevertheless, there was another people
there. A people, which, at the time of Zionism's form of stage, didn't
necessarily think of itself as a people. You don't find the term
Palestinian-Arab in any of the literature well into the 1950s. There's a reason
why the partition of 1947 calls for the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab
state, not a Palestinian state. The term Palestinian, before 1948, referred
almost exclusively to Jews. The Palestine exhibit at the 1930 World Fair in New York was a Zionist exhibit, not an Arab exhibit. You could have gotten great Palestinian schnitzel. A genuine Palestinian meal you could have had there -- schnitzel. Falafel then was unknown.
Having
said all that, at the end of the day, you're absolutely right. The tragedy, not
of the Middle East but certainly of Israel, and its relationship with the
Palestinians, is that there is another people that calls itself the Palestinian
people, and we can't define for the Palestinians what they think of themselves.
They think of themselves as a people who also inhabit the land.
That
fact does not in any way diminish our right to this land. The Jews have an
inalienable right, an irrevocable right, to settle in what they regard as their
ancestral biblical homeland, and anywhere in it, because if you can't settle in
Hebron, you can't settle in Tel Aviv. And if you can't settle in Bet El, you
can't settle in Haifa. This is the land of Israel. But we recognize that we must
resist the urge to realize our right. ... We recognize that we can't actualize
our right fully because it conflicts with the rights of another people, so we
have to find a way to make our rights accord with their rights.
Cambridge and Racial Profiling
Ambinder, who, before he dove into the muck of political journalism, was the Crimson's police reporter, knows a thing or two about the apparently mean streets of Cambridge:
"What happened to Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. is hardly
unique and in my reporting experience, these clashes tend to involve
young white students being strung out by overaggressive cops on
generally bogus "disorderly conduct" charges, which is the Cambridge
police officer's catch-all charge for "generally just pissing me off
and acting holier than thou." Indeed, college kids in Cambridge often
showed disrespect for the cops, so it's not surprising that the cops
felt disrespected by the students.
I remember listening one night to a report of a loud party in the
Kendall Square neighborhood near MIT. A single cop arrived. He was
white. The partygoers, about a dozen of them, were black. It's sensible
in 1 on 12 situations -- even for something as relatively minor as a
quality of life complaint -- for the cop to call for back-up. The cop
did. At some point before the back-up arrived, a scuffle began. Who
touched whom was unclear, at least to someone listening over the police
radio. Within 5 minutes, more than a dozen Cambridge officers were at
the scene -- most of the entire city's night shift deployment. 12 on
12. The cops are thinking that one of their guys is in trouble, and the
partygoers are thinking that the cops have shown up because they are
black. More scuffling. People are arrested. Lawsuits are filed."
"In an ever escalating competition of appropriation, Iranians are
finding new and clever ways to turn the Revolution inside out. Most
compelling of all is the exquisitely subversive "Death to Russia!" and
its companion "Death to China!" "Marq bar Russi-e! Marq bar Chin!" For
30 years, ever since the Revolution, Iranians have been chanting "Death
to America!" with the regime's encouragement. It has long been a
convenient outlet for any domestic discontent. Somehow the protesters
have collectively decided that from now on, the U.S. will be left
alone, all chants against that nation must cease. "Death to Russia" has
become the new "Death to America.""
The Worst Airport Transportation System Ever
Slate explains the origins of those horrible "people-movers" at Dulles. It was all Eero Saarinen's fault. I much prefer the cowboy-music train in Denver. Or really anything except Dulles.
Unhappy Iran News, Part 48
Israel's Arrow missile defense system was designed to intercept Scud missiles with a
range of 300-400 kilometers. After it became clear that the Iranians --
with aid from North Korea and China -- are increasing the range of
their missiles, Israel was forced to regroup and cope with the new reality, leading to the development of the Arrow 2 System. But it's not working out so well. Ha'aretz says that after a missile test failed to reach even the direction of its target on Wednesday night, Israel must develop a better way to defend itself against an attack from Iran, whose Shihab 3 missile's range exceeds 1,000 kilometers -- more than enough to reach Israel.
It gets worse:
"Iran is about to incorporate a missile
with a range of 2,000 kilometers into its arsenal. Not coincidentally,
even though there has been little media attention on the subject,
Israel is mulling the purchase of the U.S.-made THAAD missile defense,
which is still in the development phase. ...
This mishap will be thoroughly examined in Iran. There is no doubt
that Tehran's director of its missile program will be rubbing his hands
with satisfaction. Beyond the technical glitch, this failure is also a
psychological blow for Israel and the U.S, its partner in the project."
Oh, and it doesn't help that Israel, at least in public, is calling all of this a "partial success" for its missile defense strategy.
Despite the endless and
baseless propaganda to the contrary, getting tough with the Israelis
on settlements or on other elements of the Israel-Palestine agenda
will actually do precious little to address our greater concerns in
the region while accepting a nuclear-capable Iran because we don't
have the will to stop them from getting will damage U.S. interests in
great and lasting ways.That's not to say we shouldn't seek to
actively advance a two-state solution for the Israelis and the
Palestinians. It doesn't say we should agree with Israel on
everything and we shouldn't pressure for change where we disagree.
But as a potentially unprecedented rift looms and as a shift in the
politics of the relationship seems to be taking place, it's
probably worth taking a deep breath and asking ourselves if we have
fully thought through the consequences of what might come next.
A new Web site offers those seeking to have their prayers answered a chance to "Tweet at the Kotel." The non-profit service, launched two weeks ago, allows people to submit their prayers or wishes, which are then printed on small notes and placed in the wall's cracks. Through other services, it is already possible to send notes via fax, email and text messages to the Western Wall.
Me, when I'm writing to a big rock like the Western Wall, I like to write long (it's my magazine training, I guess) and quote a lot from the sources, to show God, who reads the notes the very same night (or so I'm told) that I'm keeping up on my Jewish learning. But how to quote the Bible in so short a space? Twitter only allows 140 characters. The Christian Bible has some short, pithy lines -- the best, of course, being, "Jesus wept." But Jesus isn't weeping at the Western Wall, so I asked David Wolpe, the Chief Rabbi of Goldblog, for some similarly short passages I could tweet to the Wall. This is what he came up with: "Let there be light." He pointed out that in Hebrew, it's only two words.
A Note About The Atlantic
From the Times:
I agree with the advertisers who think that The Atlantic is a great magazine. And I should say -- because it doesn't get said on the editorial side very often -- that I appreciate the people who sell advertising for our magazine in this adverse climate. They help support some very good journalism. In other words, they're on a mission from God. And you, Goldblog readers, can get right with God by subscribing to The Atlantic, here. Subscribing doesn't guarantee you a place in heaven, but it can't hurt.
July 22, 2009
Are Birthers the New 9/11 Truthers?
Bob Cohn recently tweeted the idea (I can't believe I just wrote that) that the new hip nutjobs are the birthers, and compared them to the now-out creationists. I get the point, but the more appropriate comparison might be to the 9/11 "truth" movement. Creationists don't believe in conspiracies; they just believe that dinosaurs are 5,000 years old. Birthers and 9/11 truthers (or, alternatively, "birfers" and "troofers") both believe that the government is out to get us.
McKinsey Draft Report on Rethinking Conde Nast
Conde Nast recently hired McKinsey and Co. to "rethink" the magazine businessafter a year of advertising turmoil. I've managed to get my hands on a draft memo written by one senior McKinsey consultant after his first three days at 4 Times Square. Here are excerpts:
To: Chuck Townsend, CEO, Conde Nast From: McKinsey and Co.
In the interest of vertical interconnectivity and maximum impactfulness, we just wanted to share some of our initial observations/questions with you. We hope these don't seem too obvious:
1. The role of writers in the magazine production process seems worthy of examination. What do they do? Why are there so many? 2. Some of the writers -- we're thinking Jon Lee Anderson, George Packer, William LagewisheLangeswishce Langewiesche -- spend a lot of money traveling to foreign countries such as Afghanistan and Baghdad. The Week covers these countries at a fraction of your cost. Could The Week be a model for your news coverage? 3. Old Sushi. Could the cafeteria's uneaten sushi be used for Gourmet photo shoots? 4. Has the company considered using the World Wide Web as a platform for its magazines? "Weblogs" and other websites could then "link" to Conde Nast articles. This would surely generate significant advertising income. 5. Two words: Salon dinners. 6. Does Big Apple use pedicabs as well as Town Cars? Might be worthwhile for short trips. 7. Is "A. Leibovitz" the accounting code for a corporate jet? 8. We enjoy The New Yorker, but could you make it more like Cookie? Also, is Sasha Frere-Jones a black woman or a white male? Not sure who to look for in the cafeteria. 9. In re: Central services efficiencies, could Wired editors staff the "Help Desk"? Might be big downstream upside here. 10. Whatever happened to Dan Baum? He was a good writer. 11. We think Graydon Carter was mocking us in our first meeting. Not sure. Could you check? 12. We're having difficulty making Anna Wintour talk to us. Is there something you could do about this?
July 21, 2009
Michael Oren on Zionism and the Diaspora Jewish Experience
My interview with Michael Oren,
the new Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., was quite lengthy (but fascinating throughout!), so I've broken it up (actually, Goldblog Deputy Managing Editor for Transcription Tali Yahalom has broken it up) into smaller pieces, and by topic. Below is our exchange on Zionism and the American Jewish experience.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you think that the Jews who stayed in America, who didn't pick up and move to Israel, are living in exile today? Do you think of this country as a form of
exile for Jewish people?
Michael Oren: No. ... The Zionist movement, as it was conceived in the 19th
century, and as it was formulated by the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl,
never came to grips with the realities of American Jewry. American Jewry didn't
fit the Zionist paradigm. In the Zionist paradigm, Jews cannot become major
figures in a government; they can't have more than a minyan in Congress, or in
the Senate -- that would be inconceivable. To be a powerful Jew in a Zionist
universe, you have to become an apostate. You have to be an Israeli.
JG: Is the American Jewish experience, then, a reproach or a critique in a
way of this Zionist idea? I mean, Herzl ignored American Jewry because he
couldn't explain American Jewry. So is the fact that American Jews, that Jews
in America, have found a kind of promised land in a Christian majority country,
does that mean that the Jewish state is somewhat superfluous?
MO: No, it means that it forms an alternate utopia for the Jewish people.
And just as Zionism never came to grips with American Jewry, American Jewry
never came to grips with the Zionist experiment. I'll give you a personal
example: in the 90s, the then-president of the state of Israel, Ezer Weizman
... decided to hold a conference of the Jewish people at the president's house
when he became the president of Israel. And he gathered Jewish leaders from
around the world and he offered them a deal. He said 'Let's make a new
covenant.' And the covenant would be based on two concessions: the Diaspora
Jewish leaders would agree that aliyah, moving to Israel, constituted a
possible solution for Jewish continuity. The Zionist state, the state of
Israel, would have to recognize that life in the Diaspora was a legitimate
choice for Jews. The two sides sat, debated for three days and, in the end,
neither would agree to these concessions. There was no concession.
So the two utopias
exist side-by-side and, over the years, we have developed a more or less
confluent and peaceful interaction with one another. And at the end of the day,
we find that we really need one another. Israel needs the political and
economic support of American Jewry, and American Jewry increasingly needs the
spiritual infusion of the Jewish state. ... In recent years, we have found that
a 10-day visit to the state of Israel by American Jewish youth does more for
Jewish identity than seven years in Hebrew school. In fact, seven years in
Hebrew school, as one poll shows, does some damage to Jewish identity.
JG: I'm looking at my 12-year-old daughter.
MO: She's nodding furiously.
JG: But you're supposed to hate Hebrew school. People don't understand
that. That's part of the American Jewish experience.
MO: In order to get us to Hebrew school, my parents used to give us a
dollar, which in those days could buy a lot of candy, so you'd stop off, you'd
buy the Milk Duds, you'd buy the jujubes, and then you'd sit there and have ADHD
attacks while this guy was trying to teach you the alphabet.
JG: No wonder you couldn't read Hebrew.
MO: We need each other.
There's No Such Thing As Too Much Garlic
If only Paul Cicero had this spectacular device in jail:
Hezbollah: We Do What Iran Says
Despite unleashing a global wave of controversy and criticism -- and political turmoil in the region -- Iran continues to draw loyal support from Hezbollah, which not only "subscribes to that nation's ideology of theocratic leadership" but also accepts the conduct and outcome of last month's elections. As such, "the outcome of current debates there over the way theocratic authority is wielded, and
the secular question of how Iran should manage its external relations, is sure to reverberate inside Lebanon." Sheikh Naim Qassem, the militant group's second-in-command, told the Christian Science Monitor that Hezbollah looks to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's hard-line supreme leader, for religious rules
and sets the guidelines for the party's general political performance.
Other than that, Hezbollah is an authentic Lebanese resistance group.
July 20, 2009
"Loud and Tumultuous Behavior"
Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,is arrested in his own home in Cambridge by police, who then accuse him of "loud and tumultuous behavior." Let's see -- if the police were arresting me in my own house -- for breaking and entering into my own house -- I might become both loud and tumultuous. Word fail when you read stories like this. I'm sure Pat Buchanan will be on television tomorrow arguing that it wasn't, in fact, Gates' house.
Will It Ever Be Okay to Dress like a Nazi?
Today marks the 65th anniversary of Operation Valkyrie, so it is fitting that Radu Mazare, the 41-year-old mayor of Constanta, Romania, went with his son to see the eponymous film, which features Tom Cruise as the unsuccessful Hitler assassin. Here's the twist: father and son left feeling so inspired that both decided to wear Nazi uniforms to a Romanian fashion show and goose-step on the runway over the weekend. Mazare is not sure why people are outraged, or why some are calling for an investigation of his eligibility to be mayor. Perhaps he should have worn an eyepatch.
Haifa police on Monday arrested four people on suspicion of attempting to smuggle 1,000 ecstasy pills in a shampoo bottle. The
bottle arrived at the Haifa customs offices, and when one of the
suspects came to pick it up, he was arrested. His three alleged
accomplices were subsequently detained.
More on the KKK vs. Hebrew All-Stars Baseball Game
A belated follow-up to my post a while back on the world's strangest baseball game, the one between the Hebrew All-Star Nines and the Ku Klux Klan. Goldblog Special Baseball Correspondent Joshua Miller looked into the game further and found that one of its more curious aspects -- could the "Povich" listed on the Hebrew squad as playing right-field have been the great sportswriter (and father of Maury) Shirley Povich? -- has a most interesting answer. It turned out that this particular Povich was Shirley's brother, Abe. But more on him in a second.
It also turns out that the September, 1926 game between the Hebrews and the Klan wasn't the only time Abe Povich played against an anti-Semitic group. Larry Povich,
one of Abe's sons, reports that he was often told about a game
against a group of racists that the Hebrews actually won. After the last out,
the opposing team turned serious and the Hebrews -- especially Abe's
friend and teammate, Vinney the catcher -- began to worry. "They felt
that they were in trouble because he said [the racists] had
picked up their bats at, what they thought was, an inappropriate time.
And they were coming after them," Larry said. Turns out the white
supremacists were sore losers.
"It's
very vivid in my mind in terms of how I imagine Vinney getting in this
old truck, firing it up as they had to do in those days, and driving
across a field on the mall, not too far from the Lincoln
Memorial," Larry recalled. "The story that stuck in my mind was dad running across the infield
towards the outfield and Vinney sweeping through the field picking up
the Jewish guys -- dad and the other
players on their team -- who were being chased the racists."
His family remembers Abe, who died in
1991, as an extraordinary athlete from an early age. He was an
all-state player in high school in baseball, basketball and football,
even though he only stood 5'3". When he moved to Washington, D.C.,
as a young man in the early 1920s, he joined a number of club teams and
was a huge baseball enthusiast. "He often went to spring training with
Uncle Shirley," Larry remembered, "and mom didn't expect to see him
until after spring training." Beyond being remembered as a
great athlete, Abe's family recalled him as a very good man. "My father was an expansive, magnanimous person who was
always willing to help somebody out," Ron Povich, Abe's other son, said.
But
his athleticism was one of his defining characteristics. Even after he
lost his youthful ability to play football and baseball, Ron said, he
was still an expert sportsman, bowling and playing golf long into his
retirement. "It was legendary that he was such a fine athlete," Maury Povich said. "And my father Shirley
insisted, even after watching Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Sammy Baugh,
and all the great athletes for 75 years, that the best athlete he ever saw was his
brother Abe."
America's Newest Weapon is Tryptophan
I'm trying to unpack the message of this cartoon, published last week in the Palestinian Authority's newspaper of record, Falastin. The point of the cartoon is that the Palestinians are being lulled into complacence by Barack Obama's soothing words. But what does the turkey mean? After considering the options, I've come to think that the turkey symbolizes tryptophan, a chemical that induces sleep and which is apparently found in turkey in great quantities. But I don't know. Any ideas?
Whatever Israel's faults, there is something deeply wrong about a human
rights organisation trying to raise money in a religiously oppressive
monarchical state out of criticising a liberal democracy. It does make
one wonder how people committed to human rights can get it so wrong.
The first Israeli in the N.B.A., Omri Casspi, is busily trying to adapt to life in the United States. For starters, he needs a cellphone with a local number. He just received a $4,500 bill for about two weeks of calls, which is expensive even by N.B.A. standards. He needs new chargers for all his gadgets. But he is struggling most to find comfort food.
"Hummus," Casspi said, with a hard h and a long u, stressing the first syllable in a way that conveyed utter seriousness. "You don't have that here, though."
A reporter insisted that the chickpea spread is widely available in grocery stores in the United States, but Casspi -- who was drafted last month by the Sacramento Kings -- smiled dismissively.
"Man, I tried it; that's all I can say," he said last week during a break in the Kings' summer league schedule. "I will bring some from Israel, maybe. I'll let you taste it and you tell me."
July 17, 2009
Attack of the Penis-Melting Zionist Robot Combs
Thanks to Goldblog reader M.S. for reminding me that Zionist sex gum is nothing compared to the penis-melting combs that briefly plagued one Arab capital.
What Wolpe describes as the "essence of being human" are characteristics that we gained from eating of the tree of knowledge. Desire comes after the Fall. His explanation is therefore anachronistic and, ironically, reveals how allegorical the Torah really is: Adam and Eve have to be a representation of who we are "in essence", otherwise the story makes no sense. Yet the story says explicitly that they were some other kind of people, then they ate, then they became like us. A better question: why did God create the Tree knowing how he had created (or would create) Adam and Eve as he did (without knowledge of good and evil and, therefore, desire)? How much do we really learn about His decisions by pondering our own decisions?
"If you actually come across any strawberry-flavored gum that simultaneously (1) drives women wild with desire, and (2) serves as a contraceptive, well....name your price, sir..
A Challenge for Human Rights Watch
From David Bernstein, who has been asking the hard questions:
So, HRW acknowledges that it used its reporting on Israel and its
battles with Israel's supporters as part of its pitch in Saudi Arabia.
The only remaining question is how prominent this was. Given HRW's
constant refrain that it believes in "transparency,"
HRW should release a transcript of the remarks made before the Saudi
elites, or, better yet, a video. And while they're at it, how about
releasing data on how much money comes from citizens of repressive
regimes, how much of that money is earmarked, and for what?
"German prosecutors in Nuremberg have launched an
investigation into whether an artist's gold-colored gnome giving a
stiff-armed Hitler salute violates the country's strict laws against
the use of Nazi symbols.
The gnome, standing 35 centimeters (14 inches) tall, is one of 700
made by German artist Ottmar Hoerl that were displayed in Belgium and
Italy. ...
Giving the outlawed Hitler salute or using Nazi symbols is a crime in Germany punishable by up to three years in prison."
Hoerl's defense: "I'd have been executed by the Nazis if I had portrayed the 'super race' as gnomes in 1942." Fair enough.
It turns out that 12 years ago, Palestinian Supply Minister Abdel Aziz Shaheen accused Israel of selling strawberry-flavored gum laced with hormones that drove women "wild with desire" while simultaneously serving as a contraceptive -- so a lot of premarital sex that didn't even help procreation. Very genocidal. At the time, officials said that the packs of gum, decorated with stickers of Disney's Pocahontas exhibiting "sultry" expressions (because clearly cartoons for five-year-olds tempt young adults), were sold at "suspiciously low prices near schoolhouses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
Can't the Israeli army think of something new? If any Goldblog readers have tasted said gum, please write in with your experiences. Or let me know if there's a sugar-free bubblemint variety.
If God wished Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree in
Eden, why create the tree?
One among many possible answers: all real life is
deciding. Wanting, weighing and choosing are the essence of being human.
The fruit dangles from the tree, and even the choice not to decide is a
decision.
The essayist Gilbert Highet quotes "'a wise man' who said
the Greeks' greatest legacy to the world's welfare was 'on the one hand
and on the other hand.'" The constant weighing of options can be
maddening; after listening to his advisors offer him conflicting economic
advice Harry Truman burst out in frustration, "Can someone get me a one
handed economist!" Of course not. If there were one choice, one path,
vitality would be drained from the world. The gift of possibility entails
arguing, failing, reevaluating, feeling the constant frustrating yearning
to do better.
God could have fashioned a garden without a tree. Eve and
Adam would never have eaten and never have left. Eden would be their
permanent, perfect address. It would have been a beautiful place to exist.
But it would have been no place to live.
July 16, 2009
So a Baptist from Oklahoma Walks into a Mosque...
The U.S. military is placing American religious mentors throughout the Afghan National Army with the task of encouraging the troops to exaggerate their adherence to Islam -- an unusual effort that has led people like James Hill, a "baby-faced" 27-year-old from Oklahoma, to befriend a 51-year-old mullah who has never shaved, and do things like give soldiers prayer rugs to distribute in villages and set up loudspeakers on checkpoints so locals can hear soldiers being called to prayer.
The theory behind this plan is that if nearby villagers realize that their country's army is, in fact, Muslim, then they will be more likely to support it instead of Taliban insurgents, who regularly ride through isolated villages on motorcycles, "spreading the word that the Afghan army is led by godless communists working to urge the country of Islam."
On Human Rights Watch's Saudi Fundraising
Goldblog reader P.F. writes, in a hostile though respectful e-mail:
"Are you suggesting in your criticism of Human Rights Watch that its officials shouldn't talk to Arab audiences about Israel?"
No! Of course not. What I'm suggesting is that they shouldn't fund-raise in Arab countries, especially un-free Arab countries -- by bragging about their opposition to Israel, and by invoking the greatest bogeyman of all, the Jewish lobby. It's just so tacky it's hard to believe Ken Roth, the group's director, would ever endorse this practice. It's absolutely fine for Human Rights Watch to talk to Arab audiences about the universe of its work (it would have been nice, of course, if Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director of Human Rights Watch, had seen fit to mention, you know, beheadings in front of her Saudi audience), but perhaps there should be a rule that Human Rights Watch not raise funds in its main target countries. I would argue that Human Rights Watch shouldn't raise funds in Israel, either. Imagine if one of the group's fund-raisers got up before an audience in Tel Aviv and bragged about how tough her group has been on Saudi Arabia. You can just imagine the outcry in the Arab world.
Esther Klein's Brooklyn Porno Adventure
Don't you hate it when you go to your local library to rent a copy of "Austin Powers" for your barely Bar Mitzvahed-grandchildren, only to find that someone has recorded porn over the end credits?
This sad series of events happened to Brooklyn grandmother Esther Klein, and when she realized that some putz foiled her plan for an evening of wholesome family fun, she contacted a higher being, Assemblyman Dov Hikind. Hikind, who was "fuming" over the incident -- I know him, he's very good at fuming -- blamed the local library, calling it a potentially "unsafe" place for "young children" and demanding the banning of VHS tapes, or something.
Not to belittle this problem, but if Esther Klein is anything like the 3,000 or so bubbies in Brooklyn I know, she really wasn't that fazed. You can't live in Brooklyn and be upset by much. My own late dear grandmother Cyd, who spent 89 or so of her years in Brooklyn, would have laughed. I was once with her in Brighton Beach buying herring from the Russians, and right in front of us, four police cars screeched to a stop, multiple police officers jumped out, guns drawn, and emptied a Cadillac of four or five hookers and a man I assume was their pimp. There was a great deal of cursing and yelling. It was an enormous spectacle. My grandmother was oblivious. I asked her what she thought of the events that had just unfolded before our eyes. She said: "I think the store across the street has the Bismarck herring."
Jim Fallows is a Very Polite Man
Really, he is. I wish everyone in journalism would be as polite as Jim. He seems to be having a disagreement with our mutual friend and colleague Bob Kaplan about China's future, but it's initially hard to tell because he's so careful to be respectful. He first writes movingly about the Atlantic community, and its spirit of respectful disagreement (we'll see how that goes, now that the Atlantic on-line seems to be adding fifteen or twenty new "correspondents" a week, some of whom might even be experienced practitioners of journalism!). Then he carefully lays out his disagreement with Bob. You should read it for yourself; I have no idea who is right, though I would say that this Fallows line strikes me as pertinent and true (and certainly true in my own area of interest):
Arguing for uncertainty, or for many possible futures that will in fact be shaped by real choices by real human beings, may seem weak and unsatisfying. On the other hand: it conforms to the facts...."
This is something I learned the hard way in Iraq; it's also the reason I'm open to the idea that Iraq might conceivably have a brighter future than it once did. This is also something I've learned about the Israeli-Arab conflict. As I told Michael Totten in our recent conversation (yes, I know I'm quoting myself -- sorry, I live in Washington, it's one of the local diseases), but anyone who acts like they've figured out the entire Middle East doesn't know anything.
July 15, 2009
Hamas: Israel Uses Sex as a Weapon
I think they might mean Jewish wives, not Israel. But don't let me interrupt a good story:
Islam Shahwan, a Hamas police spokesman in the Gaza Strip, is accusing
Israeli intelligence operatives of attempting to "destroy" the young
generation by distributing libido-boosting chewing gum in the Gaza area. Shahwan said that "a Palestinian drug dealer admitted that he
sold products that increase sex drive" after getting the goods from Israeli sources near the Karni crossing. The official investigation began after a Palestinian man reported that his daughter got her innocent hands on said gum and couldn't shake the "dubious" side effects.
Me, I prefer Orbit sugar-free Bubblemint, to which I was introduced by Nicole Kidman, which wasn't the aphrodisiacal experience you might think it would be.
Fundraising Corruption at Human Rights Watch
An on-line Wall Street Journal op-ed posted two days ago alleged that Human Rights Watch officials went trolling for dollars in Saudi Arabia, and that the organization's senior Middle East official, Sarah Leah Whitson, attempted to extract money from potential Saudi donors by bragging about the group's "battles" with the "pro-Israel pressure groups."
This is a serious allegation, and one I found difficult to believe, because Human Rights Watch has always been moderately careful about the optics of its fundraising efforts. The group's credibility, of course, rests on its neutrality; playing traditional enemies off each other as a way to collect money from one (or both) sides in a conflict seems beyond the pale. (Let's put aside for now the queasy-making image of a human rights organization venturing into one of the world's most anti-democratic societies to criticize one of the Middle East's most democratic states.)
Another problem here, of course, is that Sarah Leah Whitson, if the allegation against her is to be believed, trafficked in a toxic stereotype about Jews in a country that bans most Jews from even crossing its borders, and whose religious leadership often propogates the crudest expressions of anti-Semitism. The term pro-Israel lobby, of course, means something very different on the Arabian peninsula than it does here. Here, even to critics of AIPAC, it means a well-funded, well-oiled political machine designed to protect Israel's interests in Congress. In much of the Arab world, "pro-Israel pressure group" suggests a global conspiracy by Jews to dominate the world politically, culturally and economically.
I'm not one of the people who believes that Human Rights Watch is reflexively anti-Israel, and I think the group has done admirable work exposing Israel's human rights violations (and admirable work, of course, exposing human rights violations across the Middle East). But this allegation, if proven true, would cast serious doubt on whether Human Rights Watch's Middle East division could ever fairly judge Israel again.
I asked Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, if Bernstein's allegation was true. He forwarded me the following letter, from Sarah Leah Whitson, that was sent to the Wall Street Journal:
It's a pity that David Bernstein
didn't bother to do the most basic fact-checking before posting his
opinion piece today (Human Rights Watch Goes to
Saudi Arabia," July 14, 2009), where he alleges that Human Rights Watch
"said not a word about the status of human rights" in Saudi Arabia
during our recent trip there, where one of our supporters hosted a dinner for
us. Had he asked me, and not just "someone who claims to have worked for
HRW," the only source he ever cites, he would know that we did indeed
spend much of the time in serious discussion about Saudi violations, including
its troubled justice system and the lack of women's rights, as well as
our work in the region, including Israel. Mr. Bernstein implies that our work
on Saudi has gone soft, focusing only on foreign domestic workers; had he
checked our website, he'd know that Human Rights Watch in recent years
has published more reports and press releases on a variety of rights problems
in Saudi Arabia than any other human rights organization in the world.
What's really at the heart of Mr. Bernstein's gripe is his
misconception that efforts to raise support among Saudis are unseemly because,
well, if they live in a totalitarian country, they must be bad people too.
Human Rights Watch accepts funding from private individuals and foundations the
world over, which we never allow to affect the independence of our work; we are
proud to have a Saudi on the Middle East Advisory Committee and look forward to
building an even stronger support base throughout the region. Support from
citizens of Arab countries for the work of Human Rights Watch - including
our vocal, public criticism of rights violations by their governments -
is something to be applauded, not denigrated. Believe it or not, some Arabs
believe in human rights too.
I don't think Mr. Bernstein thinks that no Arabs believe in human rights -- he certainly doesn't state that -- but let me note the salient fact here, which is that the Whitson statement doesn't address Bernstein's main charge, that she used her organization's battles with the "pro-Israel pressure groups" to raise money among Saudis. I sent Ken Roth the following e-mail in response to the Whitson statement:
A couple of questions: Were you there? And, this letter doesn't
address Bernstein's contention that Ms. Whitson "highlighted HRW's
battles with 'pro-Israel pressure pressure groups in the US, the
European Union and the United Nations.'" Did she in fact attempt to
raise money from Saudis by highlighting such "battles"? And do you in
fact have "battles" with "pro-Israel pressure groups." And, were any
of the people at this fundraising event associated directly or
indirectly with the Saudi government?
Here is Roth's repsonse:
I wasn't there. I've been told that we talked
about the range of our work in the region, including Israel, Saudi and
elsewhere. The stereotype that Saudis (or other Arabs) are interested
only in Israel, not their own government, is completely false. They are
eager for us to work on their government, know of the extensive work we have
done, and support it. As you may know, we don't seek or accept government money
from any government, directly or indirectly. We never have. So we
certainly weren't soliciting Saudi government funds and would never take
them. As for whether any government people were there, the closest was a
guy from the national human rights commission and someone from the Shura
Council; not sure whether you'd consider them government or not. No
one senior, if that's what you mean. I have met with quite senior
Saudi officials -- ministerial level -- but to press our human rights
issues in Saudi.
As for whether we have battles with pro-Israel pressure groups:
all the time. There's a cottage industry out there devoted to
criticizing anyone who criticizes Israel. You must have seen that. Every
time we publish something on Israel they target us. The fact that we
publish far more extensively on other Middle Eastern governments (as well as
the PA, Hamas, etc) is irrelevant, apparently.
Still no answer, just the revelation that a member of the Shura Council was at the meeting. The Shura Council is the state-appointed religious leadership of Saudi Arabia. I wrote Roth again:
On your last point, understood. What I'm getting at is whether or not
your person talked specifically about the need to raise funds to fight
back against pro-Israel pressure groups. Did she or didn't she frame it
the way Bernstein has it?
Or to put it another way, has HRW ever raised funds in Israel by
advertising its work exposing human rights abuses in Arab countries?
Either way it seems wrong.
This is what Roth wrote in response:
In SA we were mainly stressing the need for support to add to
the credibility to our SA work (as well as their contacts with the government,
etc). The Saudis obviously are aware of the systematic attacks on us by
various reflexive defenders of Israel. Everyone is. That comes up
quite often in discussions about our work, including I presume in SA. But
we don't get any Saudi funds for work on Israel, if that's what you're
driving at. We do have some funds from Jews for work on other Middle
Eastern countries (and some for work on Israel), but the vast majority of our
funding is for our work as a whole. It's been a great strength of
the organization that most people attracted to us believe in the importance of
applying our principles even-handedly to all countries, and give
accordingly.
Again, an evasive answer. I wrote back: "That's not what I'm getting at. I'm simply asking the question, did
your staff person attempt to raise funds in Saudi Arabia by advertising
your organization's opposition to the pro-Israel lobby?" Roth responded:
That's certainly part of the
story. We report on Israel. Its supporters fight back with lies and
deception. It wasn't a pitch against the Israel lobby per se. Our
standard spiel is to describe our work in the region. Telling the
Israel story--part of that pitch--is in part telling about the lies and
obfuscation that are inevitably thrown our way.
In other words, yes, the director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division is attempting to raise funds from Saudis, including a member of the Shura Council (which oversees, on behalf of the Saudi monarchy, the imposition in the Kingdom of the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law) in part by highlighting her organization's investigations of Israel, and its war with Israel's "supporters," who are liars and deceivers. It appears as if Human Rights Watch, in the pursuit of dollars, has compromised its integrity.
Does J Street Spend Too Much Time Criticizing Others?
Goldblog Reader Adam Block emails in:
"I wanted to be supportive of J-Street when it came out, but it seems to
me that most of their activity has been wasted on just criticizing
other people (however wrongheaded they may be) who are advocating for
Israel, and relatively little seems to be spent on building support for
another set of ideas."
Block goes on to say that, though the 15-months-old J Street has become increasingly influential, its attention-seeking, hyper-critical approach "only makes sense if you think that
the biggest problem facing Israel is overzealous advocacy by
right-wingers, and while that's a logically feasible position to take,
I just don't see how someone could say that's the biggest issue facing
the country."
The TSA Pulls a Goldblog
The TSA, taking a page from yours truly, decided to investigate how ineffective its employees might actually be. So last week, security officials, in partnership with Delta Air Lines, planted a laptop, an iPod and two cell phones in a Miami-bound suitcase to see if two Delta luggage handlers would fulfill every passenger's worst nightmare and snag the goods for themselves.
And, of course, they did. The two 20-somethings have been charged with grand larceny, possession of stolen property and falsifying business records -- for some reason, they thought it would be effective to swap luggage tags in attempt to throw everyone off -- and now face up to four years in prison if convicted. Yet another reason to carry everything you have on-board, even if it means fighting with surly flight attendants.
July 14, 2009
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Herring
From Goldblog Deputy Managing Editor for Smoked Fish Affairs Tali Yahalom: As the New Yorker learned at last month's annual Herring Festival, even prominent neurologists can appreciate the timeless kiddush snack:
"There are certain passions--one wants to call them innocent, ingenuous
passions--that are great democratizers. Baseball, music, and
bird-watching come immediately to mind. At the herring festival, there
was no talk about the stock market, or gossiping about celebrities.
People had come to eat herring--to savor them, to compare them. In its
purest form, this meant seizing the new herring by the tail and
lowering them gently into the mouth. The sensation this produces is
voluptuous, especially as they slip down the throat."
J Street's Ben-Ami on the Big Obama Meeting
It must have been quite a sight, Jeremy Ben-Ami from J Street sitting with Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Really Major Jewish Organizations during yesterday's big White House palaver on the Middle East. There's a lot of resentment of J Street among New York professional Jews, but they're going to have to get used to J Street's presence at the table. I asked Goldblog Deputy Editor for Global Jewish Affairs Tali Yahalom to put a few questions to Ben-Ami about the meeting, where attendees discussed everything from the Bush administration to how good President Obama looks in a kippah. Here is their conversation:
Tali Yahalom: What was the
atmosphere like during yesterday's meeting?
Jeremy Ben-Ami: The president sets the tone and the president is sort of
serene. There's very much a sense of calm and thoughtfulness and it makes for a
much more harmonious feel even when there's disagreement. I think the president
sets the tone of 'we're talking within the family.' He even referred to this several
times as an 'intra-family discussion.'
TY: Was there any tension
in the room?
JB: I don't think any of that contentiousness really came into
the room. The few comments that were made that were pushing the president were
made in a very respectful and calm manner. And the president then respectfully
and calmly pushed back. The whole conversation was done in a very appropriate
tone and manner.
TY: What kind of
comments?
JB: One is Malcolm Hoenlein's, and he's said this publicly, that he feels that history shows us that progress is made on the peace front
when Israel and the U.S. are in lockstep and there's no daylight between them
on their position publicly. And the president said 'With all due respect, I
would disagree. For eight years under the prior administration, there was no
daylight between the two sides and there was no progress on the peace front, and
no hard decisions were confronted, no progress was made.' He very politely, but
very clearly, disagrees with the notion that there shouldn't be a public space between
the Israeli government's and the U.S. government's position. I think
that's a very important point.
And the second example would be a question of tone, where
there are those in the room who would say that the president has been one-sided in
his demands. And that he is only asking things of Israel, and the president
really again pushed back, very calmly but firmly, and said no, that he has on
every occasion, where he has spoken out publicly, and where the [U.S.] government
has taken a position, made it clear that there are obligations and steps that must
be taken by Israel, and obligations and steps that must be taken by Palestinians
and the broader Arab community. If we're going to make progress, both sides
have to live up to commitments and both sides have to take some steps.
TY: Was anyone who
disagreed with the President tense or annoyed at all? Was anyone muttering
under his breath?
JB: I felt none of that. The majority of the people in the room
are folks who were supportive of the president's campaign. There were people in
there who were lay leaders of organizations that are very supportive publicly
of the president. People in the room who have had long relationships -- not me
-- but people in the room who have long relationships with him, so it sort of
set a tone of congeniality. So you know, even within the top leadership of the
Jewish community, there are those like Eric Yoffie, on behalf of the Reform
movement, who just come right out and say 'we are deeply supportive of what you're
trying to do on settlements.' You got that tone in the room.
TY: What was it like to
be in the room with so many right-wing leaders? Was anyone resentful of your
presence?
JB: Certainly none of our inter-community discussions entered
the room. It was not the place or time to be airing that out in front of the
president. Statements made were of people's positions. The president got to
hear a diversity of opinions that are held by Jewish Americans when it comes to
Israel.
There are some in the community who'd like to maintain that the Jewish community
should speak with a unified voice on all things related to Israel. That simply
isn't possible when there are serious disagreements within the community.
TY: Is Obama speaking
differently about the Jews and Israeli-Palestinian issues? Has there been a
change in tone?
JB: I didn't hear any difference yesterday. I've heard a real consistency
from the president throughout the campaign and throughout the early stages of the
administration in his public speeches and again yesterday. A real consistency. I
don't know that I hear a difference in tone. He is very clear that the relationship
between Israel and the U.S. is a solid fundamental relationship and the
security of Israel will
always be a paramount interest to the U.S.
-- he even said it in Cairo.
TY: The meeting was
called in response to concerns from different Jewish leaders. Was there a sense that this was a meeting to do some
crisis control?
JB: I would disagree
on that notion. There is a small handful of Jewish
leaders ... who are publicly voicing their skepticism.
There's a much broader array of people who are providing support. I think the purpose
of the meeting was to allow a range of leaders and a range of groups to hear
directly from the president what his strategy is, what he's thinking and what
he's trying to accomplish.
TY: What is the
significance of Obama using the word 'pressure' rather than something milder
like 'encouragement'?
JB: He's talking about the very strong role for the U.S.
and it grows out of a recognition that when parties have a dispute, it often
requires an outside hand, and it's not enough to say to the parties --as we've said in prior
administrations -- that you talk amongst yourselves and figure it out. It's not
enough. They'll ultimately have to agree. There can't be a solution which parties
don't buy into, but the president, and the feeling among many scholars and
diplomats, is that without an active U.S. leadership in achieving a
resolution, it's not going to happen.
TY: So is this the new
paradigm for how Obama is going to deal with Jews on issues related to Israel?
JB: The Bush administration spoke primarily to and drew support
from a very limited portion of the community. I think what the president and the
White House did yesterday was try to broaden the tent and bring to the table a
set of voices that do reflect the diversity and the range of views within the Jewish community.
TY: Do you think the concerns
of Jewish leaders who worry about Obama's stance are alarmist?
JB: I
think the concerns about Barack Obama's support for Israel are misplaced. He clearly is
approaching the issue from a deep sense of concern over the future of Israel,
and in our opinion at J Street, and many others in the Jewish community and in
Israel, he's correct in having that concern. The alarmist issue describes views
of some of the more right-of-center leadership. They have been alarmist about raising
concern about the president's support for Israel, which in our opinion is
simply unquestionable.
I'm Beginning to Despise Southwest Airlines
We fly Southwest whenever we can because we're a family of five and the Greyhound of the skies makes economic sense. Anyway, Southwest flies out to Denver more-or-less non-stop, and I'm a Rocky-Mountain-high kind of guy, and not just because of the subsidized family vacation known as the Aspen Ideas Festival (actually, it's not much of a vacation for me -- or, to put it another way, it's a vacation, but with half the State Department and a good portion of the Middle East diplomatic corps).
I used to like Southwest very much; it was honest in its cheapness, and its flight attendants were actually quite charming. But now they seem to have become very surly. On our flight back from Denver the other day, they were mean, short-tempered and dismissive. I know it's a hard job, but they don't make it easier by alienating their customers.
A house in Aspen just sold for $43 million. The thing I like about Aspen is how it keeps everything real. I mean, last year, a house like that would have cost $50 million.
July 13, 2009
"Pervert Travels in the Muslim World"
There seems to be a translation problem -- masking a deeper problem, obviously -- with a guide for gay travelers.
While United Makes Their Guitars Gently Weep
The flaws in TSA security have become bizarrely familiar. As it turns out, though, TSA excels at customer service when compared to United Airlines. After a United luggage handler allegedly destroyed one of their $3,500 guitars, the band "Sons of Maxwell" decided that this was the best way to cope. (Apparently, it worked.)
What if the U.S. Won the War in Iraq and No One Noticed?
The United States has basically won the war in Iraq. No insurgent or
terrorist group can declare victory or claim Americans are evacuating
Iraq's cities because they were beaten. America's most modest foreign
policy objectives there have been largely secured. Saddam Hussein's
toxic regime has been replaced with a more or less consensual
government. I doubt very much that Iraq will seriously threaten the
United States or its neighbors any time soon. It isn't likely to be
ruled by terrorists as it probably would have been if the United States
left between 2004 and 2007. It's a relief. A few years ago, I was all
but certain the U.S. would withdraw under
fire and leave Iraq in the hands of militias. Even so, many have a hard
time feeling optimistic about the future. Iraq remains, in some ways, a
threat to itself.
The US. Should Worry When Israel Gets Quiet
An Israeli nuclear attack on Iran is
actually not going to happen in the near future. Maybe. According to Michael Weiss in the suddenly-indispensable Tablet Magazine, Bibi, despite periodic speculation to the contrary, will wait to see what, if anything, Obama can accomplish in the coming months:
No one doubts that Israel is willing to take unilateral action if
U.S.-led talks with Iran--direct or otherwise--fail to stop its march
toward nukes. And they agree it's clear that Israel has the capacity to
strike what's known as the three nodes of Iran's nuclear
infrastructure--the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the nuclear
research center and uranium conversion facility at Esfahan, and the
heavy water plant and future plutonium production reactors at Arak--with
either Israeli Air Force bombers or land-based missiles. But it's
unlikely, they say, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reach
that conclusion in the coming weeks or months.
I'm
referring, of course, to the proverbial frog that, placed in a pot of
cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it's in
and is boiled alive. Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot --
but never mind. The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a
very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep
up on you a bit at a time.
Even the President of the United States doesn't seem to understand that real frogs jump out of boiling pots. Score one for Krugman.
Was it Me That Shot Him Down in the Cantina?
Speaking of Durango, loyal Goldblog reader D., like many Goldblog readers, is
a partisan of Mr. Robert Zimmerman, and he passed along this clip from Mr.
Zimmerman's incomprehensible movie "Renaldo and Clara." It's best to
ignore the white face and enjoy the song. (I happen to think that Desire is Dylan's best album, but that might be because "Joey" inspired me to become a mob reporter). So, as Hyman Roth once said, enjoy:
July 8, 2009
Durango Blogging
I don't think this is the Durango Bob Dylan was singing about. There aren't any hot chili peppers in the blistering sun, just a really crappy Best Western motel and a tourist railroad that runs to Silverton that seems like a nightmare to someone such as myself, who is always looking for an exit from crappy tourist adventures. In any case, there won't be much blogging this week -- we're heading to Monument Valley in search of the ghost of John Ford. I'll let you know what we find.
July 7, 2009
On Those Atlantic Salon Dinners
Marc Ambinder has interesting thoughts on the big boss's note to us employees on the suddenly-controversial salon dinner business. I myself have never attended one of these underwritten dinners, so I can't say for sure, but I see no crime here committed against journalism. In fact, I'm glad David Bradley is busy searching for legal and ethical ways to keep the Atlantic funded. In double-fact, he seems to be branching out in all sorts of unusual directions.
The head of Mossad, Israel's overseas intelligence service, has assured
Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind
eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran's
nuclear sites. Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad's director since 2002, held secret talks
with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.
Here's my interview with Michael Oren, the new Israeli ambassador to the U.S., at the Aspen Ideas Festival. I asked Michael various deep questions about the relationship between the Diaspora and Israel, Israel's morality, and so on. He did very well, according to the audience:
July 1, 2009
What a Putz
Ruth Marcus has a great column today on the unforgivable Mark Sanford (though, man, would I like an interview with that guy, because pure-bred, hi-test, four-square narcissists always make for the best interviews). Ruth argues cogently that it is not Jenny Sanford who has been humiliated here:
I admire, too, her practical vision of real love and what it takes to make a marriage work. "It wasn't exactly love at first sight," Sanford recalled about meeting her future husband at a beach party in the Hamptons. "It was more like friendship at first sight."
Now she still has her feet on the ground even as her husband is head over heels -- with another woman. "I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal," Jenny Sanford said in her statement.
And I admire her investment-banker steel. "He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her," she said in an interview with the Associated Press last week about her husband's pleas for permission to visit his mistress. And, on his decision to defy her: "You would think that a father who didn't have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit."
