Worst Wal-Mart Website Idea

Tali Yahalom pointed me to this site, which features photos of fat, ugly and poor people who shop at Walmart. The creators of this website miss the point, entirely: The people who deserve society's scorn are not those who shop at Walmart because they can't afford to shop anywhere else. The people who deserve our criticism are the people who run Walmart. 

Pakistanis Evidently Think We're Bloodthirsty

We read in the New York Times that:

Last week, during a visit to Pakistan by Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama's special envoy, Pakistanis told his entourage that America was widely despised in their country because, they said, it was obsessed with finding and killing Osama bin Laden to avenge the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Yes, we Americans are a bit obsessed finding Osama bin Laden. (Though the Bush Administration wasn't overly obsessed, obviously). Americans believe that there is no statute of limitations on murder, and that murderers should be caught and punished. Apparently, it's different in Pakistan, which is a place well-known for turning the other cheek.

This story points to the limitations of public diplomacy, and to Adm. Mullen's efforts to reform our public relations efforts in the Muslim world. At the end of the day, Bin Laden is most likely hiding somewhere in Pakistan and it is America's duty to catch him or kill him. If Pakistanis don't like that, well, our choices are two: Continue the hunt anyway, or stop the hunt and hope that Pakistanis like us more. I am doubtful about the second option, for the simple reason that in the late 1990s, when I traveled in Pakistan quite a bit, many of its people already hated America rather intensely. There is not a lot we can do to make Pakistanis like us, I'm afraid.

Now at the Atlantic: Watermelon Recipes

Ta-Nehisi's loyal band of followers has much to say about my advice column on watermelon and black people. Including recipes!

The View From Chappaquiddick

We went canoeing yesterday, as we do every year, on Poucha Pond and in Cape Poge Bay off Chappaquiddick, the beautiful, commerce-free little island connected to Edgartown and the rest of Martha's Vineyard by the world's shortest ferry ride. We launched the canoes near the Dike Bridge, the site of Ted Kennedy's most ignominious hour. I was glad to note, when we paddled under the bridge, the lack of sardonic or nasty graffiti on the bridge's underside. I don't know if someone had erased the recent graffiti, in honor of Kennedy (and in honor of Mary Jo Kopechne as well) or that ugly people don't bother leaving their thoughts anymore.

Next to the bridge, the flag was at half-staff outside the shack run by the Trustees of Reservations:

On Racially-Charged Barbecues

My September advice column is up on the website (but really, subscribe) so I thought I would share one summer-related question:

I'm having a fight with my wife over a seemingly stupid issue. We're having friends over soon for a barbecue, and in planning the menu, I said we should have watermelon for dessert. She objected because some of our guests are African American, and she thought they might take offense. I said it's not racist to serve watermelon to black people, and she agreed. But she thought that, to avoid making our guests uncomfortable, we should be sensitive to stereotypes. Is she being hyper-politically correct, or is she right that people might think we're projecting racial stereotypes onto our guests?

H. R., Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear H. R.,

Well, it sounds like we're in for a very relaxed barbecue. Are you serving existential angst for an appetizer? To borrow from Freud, sometimes a watermelon is just a watermelon. My suggestion, though, is for you to serve cantaloupe, or honeydew, or another member of the melon family, or perhaps a selection of berries, not because watermelon would necessarily offend your guests, but because its presence would destabilize your excessively thoughtful wife. And we'd like her to enjoy the barbecue too.

Light Blogging

On the Vineyard, battling traffic and the humidity. Then off on a trip with limited Internet access. So the blogging will be light for a while. 

Waxman, a Dissent

A disgruntled Goldblog reader writes, in reference to my post on Henry Waxman:

Why are you plugging Waxman without applying even a modicum of Goldbergian skepticism (which is why I read you every day)? Do you buy Waxman's line that his Judaism informs his liberalism? Either his theology is expansive, or his politics are irreducibly theological and therefore beyond the pale of civic discourse.

Since he does not seem to observe the impulse to halacha in a great deal of public policy matters (such as abortion or homosexuality, to name two obvious ones), one must assume he waves the flag of tikkun olam only as it befits his political theology and policy goals. That's fine -- it's no shock to see a politician grab the scripture when it suits him. But why pretend that it's nothing other than opportunistic when it happens. I doubt seriously that the major sources of Judaism -- especially the paleo-liberals of their day, the major prophets -- would have anything to say in the current health care debate, other than "heal the sick, ask questions later." Nobody disputes that goal -- the question is how to do it best. Does Waxman speak for the Judaic sources when he says we have to have a public option?

Bottom-line: You wouldn't give a free pass to a conservative politician claiming that scripture informs his/her policies. Why does Waxman get one? (And I say this all with great respect for the man, who is a devoted public servant, albeit incredibly misguided. I've also seen him in shul regularly, so at least he's not a total poseur.)

Wal-mart Doesn't Care about American History

The good thing about Twitter (there's a sentence I never thought I'd write) is that, occasionally, strangers will update me on topics that I follow, which in this case involves that mecca for all Chinese-made crap, otherwise known as Wal-mart. This week we learn that officials in Virginia approved the construction of a giant Wal-mart (because there really just aren't enough) in a town minutes away from the Wilderness Battlefield, right where "generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee first met in battle 145 years ago and where 145,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought and more than 29,000 were killed or injured," according to the AP. Historians, politicians and diehard Civil War scholars protested that erecting a shopping site there will undermine the historical sanctity of the field. It probably didn't help that most of these people attended the board meeting dressed in 19th century garb, but the company's signature indifference all just reiterates one thing: Wal-mart has some serious issues.  

Henry Waxman on How Faith Informs his Politics

Henry Waxman, the mustache of justice, always seemed to me to be the sort of legislator who was motivated by that typical and highly-useful Jewish trait, dissatisfaction -- dissatisfaction with the way things are, which is, at bottom, the motivation of so many Jews to who try to change the world (for better and occasionally for worse, of course). Waxman recently published a book, The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works, with my next-door neighbor, the telegenic Joshua Green. The book is half-memoir, half-expose, about a Jewish congressman from a Los Angeles community of immigrants who came to believe that government could fix problems too big to be fixed otherwise. I dispatched Goldblog Congressional Affairs Correspondent Tali Yahalom to interview Waxman about his work and about how his faith informs his legislative agenda.

Tali Yahalom: You are quoted as saying that many of your American values are "synonymous" with your Jewish values. Can you talk about that?

Henry Waxman: Jewish values place a great emphasis on compassion and trying to help other people, and the doctrine of tikkun olam, trying to repair the world -- this of course is a requirement on individuals but also on the community. One way for people to act in a communal sense and to respond to the needs of the less fortunate is through government.

TY: Do you believe that you are doing tikkun olam through a career in government?

HW: I do believe that I am very close to the ideals of the Jewish religion as well as American values -- to try to use my position in public office to better the lives of millions of Americans.

TY: How do you apply your Jewish values to your current legislative initiatives, namely health care?

HW: I take seriously what the objectives are in the legislation and try to keep a clear and disciplined focus on trying to move in the direction of the necessary accomplishments. I think it's easy for people to get sidetracked and to think that compromise may not be worthy, even though it could produce a move in the direction of helping people.

TY: In the beginning of your book, you write, "nearly every worthwhile fight in my career began with my being badly outmatched."  Do you still feel like that today? And is it a constructive mindset?

HW: I often feel that special interest groups have more clout than they should in Washington. I think that a lot of times, powerful interests try to bully their way into their point of view, but if you stand up to them, and they don't have a really solid argument to make, they're not going to ultimately prevail.

TY: That's a pretty Jewish mindset.

HW: It's hard to sometimes know what's Jewish and American -- they're so close together.

Harvey Weinstein on Those "Amazing" Holocaust Survivors

Earlier this week, I dispatched Goldblog Deputy Managing Editor for Supercilious Party Coverage Tali Yahalom to New York, from where she hails in any case, to attend the advance screenings of "Inglourious Basterds," in order to gather up interesting comments from genuine Jewish leaders about the film's more controversial (which is to say, sadistic) qualities. In any case, Holocaust scholars were fairly scarce (unless you count Harvey Weinstein as a Holocaust scholar). On the other hand, she met Padma Lakshmi.

At the first screening of the week, Quentin Tarantino introduced his work by asking attendees if they were ready "to see some Basterds fuck up some Nazis," and at the second, Harvey Weinstein assured the room that a group of Holocaust survivors really liked the Basterds.

Below is a round-up of what the actors and Weinstein said about the production:

Christoph Waltz, who plays a Nazi colonel known as the Jew Hunter:

TY: Do you think that there is too much Jewish vengeance in the film?

CW: No, because the vengeance in that respect is not entirely Jewish. If you would have been at the premiere in Berlin, you would have felt the relief that goes through the audience to finally see this thing. This is the third generation after the war, and the topic is really overburdening - for good reasons. And the responsibility is still there. That's my point of view. But the guilt is a different story. It's not only a Jewish vengeance story -- it is what kind of world we could have if things were sort of inspired by that kind of energy.

Diane Kruger, who plays a German movie-star working as a secret agent for the British:

TY: As a German actress, how did you prepare for the role and research the time period?

DK: Trust me, we learn about [the Holocaust] very early on. This is not a historically correct movie, so it was actually fun to take little pieces of what actually happened and then have an entirely new story made up. ... We all know what happened, and there have been so many movies about WWII -- important films -- and this is sort of the wishful thinking one. We all wish it would have happened like this.

Melanie Laurent, who plays a theater owner named Shoshanna, who plots to avenge her family death after they are slaughtered by the Nazis:

TY: Are you nervous about how your Jewish friends will react to the film?

ML: I wasn't worried. I think it's amazing ... [and] I met a lot of reporters from Jewish magazines and they just love the movie. They just love the idea of finally changing the story. We met that dream.

Eli Roth, who kills Nazis in the movie and in sort-of real life, via the videogame he created:  

TY: You were raised Jewish and your grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Is this movie a longtime coming for you?

ER: Well, let me put it this way: there weren't a lot of Holocaust survivors in my family. My grandparents go out but my distant relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. So it was a very intense experience doing this. Something I'd grown up thinking about and fantasizing about was killing Nazis, and what was so great was that the German actors had fantasized about the same thing. And when we were filming, they'd go, 'Isn't this great? We're killing them together. We're killing these basterds together.' It was very cathartic for all of us.

Harvey Weinstein:

TY: Is there too much Jewish vengeance in the film?

HW: We understand some of that. You understand the [film's] humanity and you start to understand how far vengeance goes and when it should stop. The film makes you understand when it's too much.

TY: Does the film make viewers sympathetic to Nazis?

HW: No, not sympathetic with the Nazis, but just understanding what vengeance really means and how far to go.

TY: Were you worried about the Jewish reception, especially among Holocaust survivors?

HW: Yes. Not worried, but concerned, because that's tough territory to tread on. I did Life is Beautiful and that was initially received by the French press, not great, but then the survivors all saw it and loved the movie. Survivors never surprise me with their incredible resilience, their ability to understand that art is an interpretation of events, and they're just so amazing.

On Stereotyping Provincetown

A Goldblog reader wrote to ask me if I thought I might be stereotyping Provincetown by calling it rambunctious and high-spirited and lively. I think if I had used the word "flamboyant" -- which is to gays what "articulate" is to blacks and "aggressive bagel-aficionado" is to Jews -- I might have been caricaturing the place, but high-spirited? That's a good thing. In any case, the presence of gay people, just like the presence of blacks and Jews, makes a place cosmopolitan and enlightened and interesting. I have a friend who argues that cities, in order to reach greatness, must be at least 10 percent gay, 10 percent black and 10 percent Jewish. Someone has to organize poetry slams and start galleries and dance companies and fund the ballet and argue for libraries and generally make a disproportionate amount of noise. You know what they call a city without enough gays, blacks and Jews? Boise.

Whale-Watching with Andrew

It does seem that Andrew Sullivan is the mayor of Provincetown, though his husband, Aaron, appears to be even more popular -- he's starring in two plays this summer alone. Provincetown is lively and high-spirited and rambunctious in part because it is extremely gay. (I have terrible gaydar -- at least when compared to my Jewdar -- but even I noticed that Provincetown makes Key West look like Colorado Springs. Maybe it was the shirtless muscle queens holding hands on Commercial Street that gave it away, I don't know).

But this post is not about gay Provincetown, it's about gay whales. No, strike that, it's just about whales. Aaron and Andrew and my family went out on a whale-watching trip, and it was awesome. I don't mean "awesome" in a juvenile way, I mean "awesome" as in, "if God did indeed create the earth, he did a bang-up job in the large mammal department."  We saw eight humpbacks and a bunch of minkes (as well as an enormous pod of dolphins). But the highlight for me was the finback whale, the second-largest living creature on earth, after the blue whale, which came so close to the boat I thought he would flip it over. It's impossible to describe the sight of a finback whale forty feet from where you stand. I'll say this -- you and your problems shrink in significance. 

I think it was Andrew who first observed that the presence of these whales, so close to Cape Cod, suggests that it is not too late for the planet. The fact that they still exist -- precariously, obviously -- means that humans haven't yet destroyed everything natural and beautiful  (though as Aaron pointed out, there's still time). These enormous and graceful creatures fill you with hope. I'll post pictures when I can figure out how Mrs. Goldblog's camera works.

And no, Andrew and I didn't discuss the Middle East. Provincetown seems very far from the Middle East.

Quote of the Day: Nazi Killers in Hollywood

From my article on Quentin Tarantino's new movie, "Inglourious Basterds," from his producer, the Hollywood Jewish liberal Lawrence Bender. Bender is explaining his initial reaction to the script:

 "As your producing partner, I thank you, and as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, motherfucker, because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream."

A Rally Worth Attending

Finally.

This is One Overcooked Quote

Bob Dylan was picked up by a cop in Long Branch, N.J. for allegedly acting suspiciously while on a walk. The cop, a 22-year-old, did not know who Dylan was. According to Britain's Daily Mail, Craig Spencer, a "senior officer" with the Long Branch police, told a reporter:  'I'm afraid we all fell about laughing... 'The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us."

Oh, rilly? I'm falling about laughing at this rather half-piped quote. Unless, of course, Senior Officer Spencer is London-born. I'm calling the Long Branch police to find out.

Before the Tarantino Backlash Begins

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir had some trouble understanding the lede to my piece this month on Inglourious Basterds -- it's a "dream sequence," Andrew -- but he makes an interesting point about Tarantino and his intentions, which is worth considering before the blogosphere explodes when the movie comes out next week.

Quentin Tarantino has no serious opinions or convictions whatever regarding Nazis or Jews or the Holocaust. Beneath all his B-movie genre-worship, Tarantino remains a pomo disciple of Jean-Luc Godard, playing an elaborate game of bait-and-switch with his audience and seeking to disarrange the conventional stories -- or stories about stories -- we've got in our heads. More simply, he's just fucking with us.

Nirvana Is Not the Goal of the Peace Process

Tamara Wittes writes, in reference to the Rob Malley/Hussein Agha op-ed which declared the goal of a two-state solution more-or-less hopeless, to say:

I understand the throwing-up-of-hands impulse you express, and that you think Rob Malley and Hussein Agha are expressing in their op-ed. But there is a significant moral and material difference between throwing up your hands as an individual and suggesting it as a guide for policy on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

Peace processes and peace agreements are not about achieving nirvana. They do not "resolve" conflicts between peoples. What diplomacy does is halt conflicts, stop violence, and create room for the possibility of societal reconciliation, which is admittedly rare but not unheard of. Does anyone think that Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland have stopped resenting each other or being suspicious of one another's intentions? Have they let go of their bitter history? Do they now all believe that the other side is just as right as they are? No on all counts - and they don't need to, as long as they are still willing to settle their issues through shared government instead of through bombings in the streets. That is a high achievement, and a one that is not inconceivable as a goal for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They're So Afraid

Gary Rosenblatt on Sidney Zion's aversion to the hand-wringery of American Jews:

"They're so shreklich, so afraid," he told me. "That fear in them is always there. Always. It's terrible. They worry about anti-Semitism. They worry about what the goyim will think of them. Maybe Jews really believe they're not as good as the next guy. But I sure as hell don't feel that way. Jews shouldn't be scared anymore. Never scared. They should be mad."

Inglourious Basterds, the Video Game

This is getting weird. Courtesy of Eli Roth's MySpace page, now everyone can kill Nazis. Roth, who plays the "Bear Jew" in Tarantino's Jewish revenge fantasy, also directed the Nazi propaganda film-within-the-film, Nation's Pride:

On the Irrationality of Joy-Riding in Helicopters

James Fallows, I'm glad to see, agrees that it's always a bad idea to fly in helicopters when you don't have to:

If you've studied aerodynamics, you know that airplanes "want to stay in the air" -- if the engine fails, they turn into gliders, not plummeting objects. Helicopters "want to fall out of the air" -- yes, despite the limited ability to "autorotate" and avoid a direct plummet. I respect people who fly them, which is harder than flying airplanes. But I keep a respectful distance.

Sid Zion vs. The World

Tablet Magazine is featuring a delightful piece by Sidney Zion's old friend Victor Navasky, which proves that Navasky is, in a manner of speaking, a Zionist after all. Read the whole thing, but here's one irresistible anecdote:

I've already said that Sid had a love-hate relationship with the Times. Let me give an example. In his last years at the Times, Sid got a tip that Judge Henry Friendly, then perhaps the preeminent appellate court judge in the country and prominently mentioned as a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee, many years earlier failed to disqualify himself from ruling on a case in which he had a conflict of interest. Assured by Managing Editor Abe Rosenthal that if he got the goods the Times would print the piece, Sidney spent the next weeks definitively documenting the story. But when the time came to print it, Rosenthal was overruled by James Reston, who was then running the paper. Reston summoned Zion into his 10th floor office, and from behind his imposing desk, explained that if Friendly actually received a Supreme Court nomination, the Times would run the story. But absent that, Reston was not about to run a piece that would cast a dark shadow on Friendly's otherwise distinguished career.

"The difference between you and me, Mr. Zion," Reston said, "is that you were brought up as a poor Jew on the scrappy streets of Passaic, New Jersey, whereas I was brought up in the Church of Scotland outside of Glasgow." At this point, Sidney rudely interrupted. "I thought that the difference between us," he said, "is you are sitting there, whereas I am sitting here."

Protocols of the Elders of Woodstock

It was all a Jewish plot. Jewlicious has the specifics. A highlight:

Abbie Hoffman, who was the head of the Yippies along with Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner and Woodstock's Ed Sanders shook down the concert organizers for $10K, and then exhorted the attendees not to pay the admission price. The head of security was Arthur Schubert, a waiter from the Concord Hotel. Anyone who can handle hungry Jews could handle security of half a million stoned young adults. Speaking of food for half a million... members of the Monticello Jewish Community Center made sandwiches with 200 loaves of bread, 40 pounds of cold cuts and two gallons of pickles.

Tarantino on the Problem With Most Holocaust Movies

My interview with Quentin Tarantino about his new movie, "Inglourious Basterds," is now up on the Atlantic website, though I suggest you read it after you subscribe to the magazine. I don't want to give away too much about my time with Tarantino, but I will share this one, representative quote: "Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims," he told me, by way of explaining why he made the movie he made. "We've seen that story before. I want to see something different. Let's see Germans that are scared of Jews. Let's not have everything build up to a big misery, let's actually take the fun of action-movie cinema and apply it to this situation."

Questions About the Two-State Solution

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, in the latest in their never-ending series of provocative and thoughtful op-eds, make the following statement:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This reads to me like an unfortunate bit of pussy-footing. Events are moving me into the camp of people who believe there isn't an actual solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it seems as if events are moving Agha and Malley in this direction as well. But if they're arguing that the conflict will only end when Israel ceases to define itself as a Jewish state, they should say it outright. It's not an appealing notion -- that there is room in the Middle East for twenty-three Muslim-majority states, but not room enough for one Jewish state , but they should state it if they believe it. 

Goldblog Survival Guide, Part 17

Life is full of risks, and the job I do occasionally entails risk (I don't mean blogging, by the way. Blogging can make you crazy, but it can't kill you). I've kept a running list over the years of ways to keep safe while traveling in dangerous places, and not long ago I posted rules for surviving a terrorist attack on a developing-world hotel. The mid-air collision over the Hudson River between a small plane and a helicopter reminded me of another of these rules, one that applies universally, not just in Pakistan: Never take a helicopter ride for fun. Never. I fly in helicopters when it's part of my job, but sightseeing? Absolutely not. My feelings on this subject were colored by a particularly unfortunate experience in an Aeroflot helicopter over the Caspian Sea a long time ago, but it's not just Soviet-era helicopters that are risky. If you want to see New York from the air, go to the top of the Empire State Building, but only a weekend, when the chance of an airborne attack is substantially diminished.

In the next episode of the Goldblog survival guide: Death by Inner Tubing.

HRW Sez: Don't Teach Terrorists Tolerance

Maybe it's just me, but it seems as if Human Rights Watch keeps losing sight of the bigger picture. I'm not a reflexive critic of the group -- I think its reporting out of the Middle East (including Israel) has been important and useful; its recent critique of Hamas seemed credible, though a bit tepid (and it was accompanied by virtually no publicity, but I suppose that's not entirely HRW's fault -- human rights violations against Jews aren't as interesting to the world as human rights violations committed by Jews). This time, though, the group is criticizing Saudi Arabia -- where it recently boasted about its problems with Israel in order to butter up Arab donors -- for teaching detained terror suspects that Al Qaeda's militant ideology is un-Islamic. HRW objects to this program, saying that "human rights law does not permit the detention of persons to undergo a reeducation program."

Yes, we wouldn't want mass murderers to be convinced that mass murder is wrong, would we?

The #1 Threat to America is... Dennis Ross?

J.J. Goldberg (no relation, except if you're conspiracy-minded) delivers a devastating critique of Roger Cohen's recent piece on the making of Iran policy. Read the whole thing, but here is Goldberg's conclusion:

In a 5,000-word article in the August 2 Sunday Times Magazine, (Cohen) unraveled the tangled lines of authority in Obama's Iran policy-making. The loose thread, he strongly suggested, was veteran diplomat Dennis Ross, an "ultimate Washington survivor," who started at the Obama State Department, left in a "fiasco" and moved in a "bizarre odyssey" to the National Security Council.

Ross's role in the administration raises many questions in Cohen's mind, but the one that comes up over and over throughout the article, "a recurrent issue with Ross, who embraced his Jewish faith after being raised in a non-religious home by a Jewish mother and a Catholic stepfather, has been whether he is too close to the American Jewish community and Israel to be an honest broker with Iran or Arabs." In the crisis atmosphere following the Iranian election, "Can this baggage-encumbered veteran... overcome ingrained habits and sympathies?" Indeed, "Will the Iranians be prepared to meet with Ross?" -- a "reasonable question given Ross's well-known ties with the American Jewish community."

That, in effect, is the dilemma facing American policy toward Iran at this pivotal moment: Is there too much Jewish influence? We've heard the question before in Hamas sermons, in Al Qaeda videos and on some left-wing blogs. Now it's been incorporated into the nation's newspaper of record.

"Tell Her Our Name is Laden and See What Happens"

Yet another hole in TSA protocols, via Bruce Schneier. 

Andrew Sullivan's Zionism, Explained

Andrew writes:

If Jeffrey Goldberg and I ever decide to take a vacation together (look, it's possible), I think I've found the perfect place. Beirut:

The last question came from Bertho, a 28-year-old Lebanese tour operator who was the host of the main event that Thursday night in June: the Bear Arabia Mega Party, at the Oceana resort about 30 minutes south of Beirut. Scores of gay men -- most of them "bears," a term used the world over for heavyset, hairy guys usually older than 30 -- were coming from across Lebanon and the Arab world, as well as Argentina, Italy, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere.

Discussion of Middle Eastern politics with a healthy dash of back hair. What's not to love? I suspect it was seeing beautiful Israeli soldiers as a teenager on a trip to the Holy Land that made me a Zionist. As a troubled teen from East Grinstead, it was quite an eye-opener.

It's completely possible that Andrew and I would, in fact, vacation together, though it would be on the Cape, for a bear-watching whale-watching excursion.

David Makovsky on Iran, Obama, and Settlements

David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute's Project on the Middle East Peace Process, recently teamed up with Dennis Ross, now one of Obama's Middle East gurus, to figure out why the U.S. has consistently failed to broker peace in the Middle East (Dennis was there, after all). Their book, Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, argues that America's strategies have been based on false assumptions and premises about the Arab world, making lasting agreements impossible. I interviewed Makovsky about the book and discovered that as chaotic and messy as things seem now, the real showdown has not even begun.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Has the administration gone down a dead-end alleyway by having so much emphasis in the early days on settlement growth?

David Makovsky: I think the administration is using an ax when it could use a scalpel. The fact is that there was a basic baseline understanding that Israel would not expand settlements. The administration felt that even if the agreement existed, it was insufficient, and that what you needed really was a more kind of undifferentiated freeze of settlements. It seems like in [the administration's] pursuit of the perfect, this has proven to be far more elusive than the administration would have hoped.

JG: I'll give you two broad developments and just frame them in the current negotiations: the negative development, of course, is that Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear capability. The positive development is that in the West Bank, you have, I would say, the first Palestinian leadership in Palestinian history to truly fight terrorism, to truly care about the daily lives of their people.

DM: The irony is that while U.S.-Israel relations is going through a period of considerable strain, Israeli-Palestinian relations are probably better than they've been in many, many years. I think events on the ground are the most encouraging dimension, and I only wish that the U.S.-Israel piece of this would catch up to it in a way that would say enough with the diminishing returns; let's get on with the main event.

JG: If you didn't have Iran sitting there, making the move toward nuclearization, you'd have this positive development in the West Bank, you'd still have Hamas and Gaza, but it'd be weaker because you wouldn't have Iran.

DM: I'm concerned that the strain between the U.S. and Israel over settlements is going to bleed into the U.S.-Israel relationship on Iran. If there's a lot of bruised feelings here, will this have an impact on the highest level of being able to work together on the main event? We need to maintain a sense of proportion and we should reach a pragmatic conclusion, which is, on the settlements, doable: No expansions. You can monitor that --that means no extra land, that can be prejudged negotiations, but keep the good relations for this main event, which is, if the U.S. and Israel don't work together in this Iran crisis, it is more likely Israel will strike out on its own. To the Administration's credit now, I think now they're making a real effort to keep Israel close and keep it updated on its views on Iran.

JG: There are two things that are going on right now. One is an existential challenge to Israel, the other is not. Wouldn't you, as a negotiator, say to the prime minister, 'Look, you feel like you're in a position now that you were in of May 1967, clearly a huge threat is looming. Why don't you just give on this other issue, which is comparatively smaller, so that we can all focus together on the overarching issue?'

DM: I think that ultimately that's where Netanyahu was coming from, but he wanted something much grander. He wanted Obama to commit to striking Iran, which I don't think Obama would do even if Israel would say that it would yield Jerusalem. That's not a linkage that the U.S. wants. Part of the problem is that on the immediate issue of the Palestinians, the administration believes that a deal is very reachable and therefore this is just a bridge to that.

JG: Do you think a deal is reachable?

DM: No. I think a territorial, borders deal is achievable if you want it. But I think Netanyahu doesn't like the borders idea and feels that anything he agrees to in the short-term will be held against him if there isn't an agreement, and it'll become an open-ended precedent, so to speak. That might be something he could do for three months, but the administration wants something that's a year and that's renewable.

Look, we saw this before with the first George Bush, if two leaders aren't talking to each other, it poisons the relations over time. Bush hardly spoke to (Yitzhak) Shamir. So I tend to think each one needs the other on Iran. The U.S. needs Israel too because they don't want the Israelis going off on their own. My feeling is each side knows that but if there are these bad feelings that accumulate, what is rationally in the best interest of both sides somehow won't materialize that way.

JG: Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister -- what does it mean if he goes because of the criminal charges that might be filed against him?

DM: My understanding is that he'll name someone else from the party to his position so that the party remains in the coalition. I don't think it means a lot because the fact is that what is happening is you're having other players today, like Ehud Barak, doing a lot of the settlement negotiations with (George) Mitchell. He's sidelined already and therefore I don't think his indictment is going to be decisive.

JG: Does Obama need to do a better job communicating to Israelis, as Aluf Benn suggested, and to American Jews as well?

DM: Absolutely. This is a President with very formidable communication skills, and he needs to reach out. The question is always,if you feel the issue isn't about communication, it's about policy, maybe there's a way that you could explain your policies in a way that people could understand, but it is certainly feeding criticism of the President that he hasn't reached out. And I think he just doesn't want to do it during this impasse over the settlements because he feels it looks defensive.

Walmart Takes on the Girl Scouts

Apparently, Walmart wasn't satisfied with being the top media-manipulating, union-busting, soul-sucking, Nazi cake-decorating crappy-Chinese-products selling store in America. Now it's preying on Girl Scouts.  Walmart has copied two of the group's signature cookies, Thin Mints and Tagalongs, and will soon sell them nationally at lower prices -- sure to cut into the do-gooders' profits, which are generated solely from cookie sales.

On Society's Moral Obligations to Police Officers

A Goldblog reader writes in reference to my post on white police officers:

I have been very dismayed to see so much commentary revolve around the public's 'right' to basically scream at and demean police officers at will. ... The idea that police officers should expect to be excoriated by the general public on a daily basis without cause is fairly repugnant.  Yes, it is technically legal to yell and hurl insults at the police, but why would anyone want to champion this as if it was some sacred right?  Why shouldn't the default position be that police officers are deserving of respect and that the public, even if it can legally treat police officers in an abusive manner, shouldn't do it because it's wrong?  There is a big difference between "I can" and "I should" that our society seems to be forgetting.

Would You Go to a Hezbollah-Supported Synagogue?

Apparently, Hezbollah doesn't mind if Jews spend thousands of dollars to fix up the 84-year-old Maghen-Abraham synagogue in Beirut. Though the terrorist group's presence in the country is likely responsible, at least in part, for the dimimished size of the Lebanese Jewish community (about 200), a Hezbollah spokesman said last year that they "respect the Jewish religion just like we do Christianity. The Jews have always lived among us. We have an issue with Israel's occupation of land," the L.A. Times reported. Still, the renovations have barely been mentioned in Lebanese newspapers, and if you try to snap a picture of the site, you'll get arrested -- perhaps an effort to keep Iran from finding out.

Michael Oren at Aspen: Iran's Threat to Israel (Cont'd)

The last part of my Aspen Ideas Festival interview with Michael Oren, the new Israeli ambassador in Washington, focused on the most dangerous threat to Israel's existence: Iran.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Existential threats to Israel. Iran, obviously, is at the top of the Prime Minster's list, at the top of most Israelis'.

Michael Oren: And a lot of Arabs' lists.

JG: And a lot of Arabs' lists as well. Go through the existential threats very quickly, if you could, and your view of those existential threats, and talk about the current moment in Iran and the specific question on Iran -- that is, do you agree with the Obama administration's approach to the current crisis in Iran?

MO: Israel has supported the Obama administration's approach of outreach and engagement with Iran. We believe that the president has America's best interest at heart, we believe he has the interests of the region at heart, we are concerned. We are concerned about the timing and the time-line of this engagement. There are clocks ticking all around. One of those clocks is the Iranian enrichment clock, which will show that, by a certain date, the Iranians will have sufficient, highly enriched materials to create a bomb that could literally wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds, that they could accomplish, in a matter of seconds what they deny Hitler did, and kill 6 million Jews, literally. We have that clock.

We are anxious also that Iran, in the course of this engagement, shows a change of policy in the region, [in] its support of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, that are also trying to wipe Israel off the map. Now we are particularly concerned, and the American administration is concerned as well, in light of recent events in Iran. Everyone's waiting, everyone's seeing what's going to come out of this situation in Iran. But while we're waiting, while we're watching, the clocks are still ticking in Iran.

JG: Do you believe that President Obama was strong enough in his support, moral support, for the Iranian people? Do you think there's more that President Obama could do?

MO: I'm not going to second-guess President Obama's positions on Iran. I think his last statement was very clear, very adamant in his condemnation of the regime's suppression of peaceful demonstrators in Tehran and other cities. I think it's very important, again, that we watch carefully what happens in Iran, on one level the events in Iran have unmasked to the world, to anybody whoever doubted the true nature of the regime. This is a regime that's willing to kill its own citizens, that will certainly have no compunctions about killing other peoples in the region, Jews and Sunni Arabs alike. On the other hand, we have to watch and see whether there's a breakdown of rule in Iran, whether a supposedly moderate leadership emerges, which would be welcome, but if that moderate regime does not moderate Iranian behavior, it would further complicate our situation.

Sidney Zion

Yes, he was a jerk, and yes, you couldn't say things like, "Just put yourself in the shoes of a Palestinian for a second," without having him explode, and yes, he was mean even to people he liked, but Sid Zion, who died Sunday, is one of the reasons I wanted to be a reporter. I strongly suggest you dig up a copy of "Read All About It: The Collected Adventures of a Maverick Reporter." If it doesn't make you jealous of the reporter's life, then I don't know what to say to you; move to Hartford and become an insurance executive, maybe. 

Doesn't This Woman Remind You of Tony's Girlfriend On "The Sopranos"?

It's Tough to be Orthodox, Well-Dressed and an Alleged Criminal

Dina Wein Reiss, an alleged Orthodox scamster (not that there's a trend or anything), is out on bail now, waiting for her trial to begin next year. Via Tablet, Fortune reports that, after she was released, Reiss "enlisted her rabbi in her bid to convince a judge that she should not be required to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. Orthodox practice, the rabbi said, forbids women from wearing slacks or pantsuits. Summer was coming, Wein Reis's lawyer noted, and any skirt or dress shorter than ankle length would reveal the bracelet, which would complicate her efforts to get a new job. The judge agreed."

Teddy Roosevelt on that Proto-Nazi Schmuck

Seth Lipsky found this quote about Herr Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semite whose visit to New York in 1895 caused an uproar among the city's appropriately upset Jews. Apparently Roosevelt was ready for the controversial appearance:

"While I was Police Commissioner an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahlwardt, came over to New York to preach a crusade against the Jews. Many of the New York Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to give him police protection. This, I told them, was impossible; and if possible would have been undesirable because it would have made him a martyr. The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous. Accordingly I detailed for his protection a Jew sergeant and a score or two of Jew policemen. He made his harangue against the Jews under the active protection of some forty policemen, everyone of them a Jew! It was the most effective possible answer; and incidentally it was an object-lesson to our people, whose greatest need it is to learn that there must be no division by class hatred, whether this hatred be that of creed against creed, nationality against nationality, section against section, or men of one social or industrial condition against men of another social and industrial condition. . . . "

On the Controversy Over the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem

Cliff May reports over at The Corner that the website of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem mentions nothing at all about Israel, and instead discusses various American-sponsored programs to aid Palestinians:

Here's what you don't find -- at least not at this moment as I'm viewing the site: A word about Israel. Not a single one. No hint that Jerusalem is in Israel or that Israelis live there -- much less that it's Israel's capital.

And while there is a link to an Arabic language version of the site, there is no link to a Hebrew version. What are we -- and what are Israelis -- to make of this? My column this week is on a related theme: the tendency of the Obama administration to "curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends."  Or worse.

There are two problems here: Cliff's insinuation that this has something to do with Obama; and his larger argument that the U.S. is ignoring Israel to its detriment. The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem has for a very long while been devoted to managing American relations with the Palestinians; the American embassy in Tel Aviv -- embassy, not consulate, mind you -- is dedicated to relations with Israel and Israelis. Yes, there is a mention on the embassy website of Hillary Clinton's recent statement concerning American support for the Palestinians (not exactly a radical statement, by the way) and there are also links to sites that aid busineses that want to do business in Israel and that promote American-Israeli cultural events. (All the sites, by the way, are uninteresting, hard-to-navigate and generally crappy.)

There is not much of a controversy here. It would, in the best of all possible worlds, be appropriate to see the American embassy relocated to West Jerusalem, though I would note that not even George W. Bush moved the embassy there when he had a chance.

Roger Cohen, Translated

Roger Cohen's piece in The New York Times Magazine yesterday, on the making of Obama's Iran policy, is not easily understood, so I've run it through the Goldblog Insta-Translator. Here's what was spit out:

The Making of an Iran Policy, by Roger Cohen

Iran is going to get the Bomb. This is okay. Iran's government is not nice. They used to be nice, but not anymore. It doesn't matter. Israel wants to stop Iran from getting the Bomb. One thing is clear: Them Jews is crazy. They must be stopped. Dennis Ross works in the American government. But he's Jewish. Is he too Jewish to talk to Iran? Maybe. But he could make the Jews learn to love the Iranian bomb. It remains to be seen.

The End

The Best Laid Plans...

Via Michael Totten, "Lebanon's Naharnet and Israel's Ynet picked up a report from Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that says the recent plane crash in Iran that killed 168 people was caused by an explosion of ordnance that was on its way to Hezbollah." 

"Nearly All Present Were Hebrews"

Jack Shafer, who seems to spend nearly all his free time in newspaper morgues, sent me this story from the December 13, 1895 edition of The New York Journal. Herr Ahlwardt -- you can read about him here -- was apparently a proto-Nazi-son-of-a-bitch. Note the description of him at the opening of the second graf. It's priceless.

There Are Settlements, And Then There Are Settlements

Yaacov Lozowick takes issue with Tom Friedman's Goldblog-supported argument about  settlements:

A majority of us Israelis would walk away from the settlements in a heartbeat if there was anywhere to walk too. As recently as 2006 we elected Ehud Olmert on a specific platform to disband most of the settlements even without peace with the Palestinians, recognizing how the Palestinians have managed to turn the settlements into their most potent weapon against us. Moreoever, a majority of the settlers themselves would accept leaving some settlements if that would bring peace. (Starting with Avigdor Lieberman). But not Modi'in Illit, not Beitar, and not, I repeat, NOT Jerusalem. As President Bill Clinton recognized in his diktat of December 24th 2000. As the Palestinian negotiators themselves have recognized, repeatedly (though they may have been fibbing, since said recognition was part of not reaching overall agreement).

Obama's credibility and support in Israel is plumetting because of that distinction. Not becasue he's being mean to our prime minster about Nokdim or Itamar. The more I hear (well, read) important American Jewish pundits such as these two talkng the way they do, the more I'm convinced one part of the present dynamic is the distance between American Jews and Israelis. We're really not seeing the same reality at the moment.

The Responsibilities of Police Officers

From the Goldblog inbox:

You write that you know almost certainly that Sgt. Crowley was trying to provoke Gates into being arrested. How can you be so sure? Aren't you being judgmental here? Do you have any idea what kind of pressure cops are under?

To answer the first question, yes, I know what kind of pressure cops are under. Am I being judgmental? I don't think so. I haven't argued, by the way, that Crowley was motivated by racism (though in my experience, white cops sometimes seem to have a problem with black men who are more educated, and wealthier than they are -- but again, I don't know Crowley, so I can't say this is true for him).

But coming back to the issue of the pressure cops feel, let me ask another question: Are cops aware of the immense power they have? The power to arrest someone is awesome; any cop, at any moment, can take temporarily take your freedom. Yes, there are courts to protect the rights of the innocent, but in the meantime, a police officer can still put handcuffs on you, shove you in the back of his vehicle, fingerprint you and lock you up for at least a couple of hours; and lock you up with some pretty mangy people if he so desires. That is real power, traumatizing power. Society grants police officers that power, but in exchange, we must expect certain things -- that the police officer granted this responsibility show more patience, more kindness, and better judgment than the average citizen. Which brings us back to the issue of Sgt. Crowley. Once he ascertained that Henry Louis Gates was the legal occupant of the house, it was Sgt. Crowley's responsibility to apologize, turn around and walk out. It does not matter at all whether Gates yelled at him, mocked him, got loud at him. It was Crowley's responsibility to understand why Gates could have been upset, and it was his responsibility to turn around and leave. Good police officers know how to control their tempers, and know enough to understand why someone might be upset with them. Crowley should have left the house.   
 

Is Madoff a Symbol of Jewish Exceptionalism?

Alana Newhouse asks the right questions:

The question is of Jewish exceptionalism, and it is, to understate it, a thorny one. Hitler designed an entire political philosophy--and attendant death machine--based on the belief that the answer to this question was a resounding "yes." But awkward as this may be, this is, from a different perspective, a view shared by many Jews themselves, like the man who sends me the same e-mail once a month about the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes. ("Remarkably, Jews constitute almost one-fifth of all Nobel laureates. This, in a world in which Jews number just a fraction of 1 percent of the population.") And it's not just kooks and your grandmother: Even liberal, assimilated Jews can't help but believe that there is something special--better, smarter--about their people. Except when their people show up in handcuffs on the news...

The Party's Over

So says Tom Friedman in an important column:

Here's what Israelis need to understand: President Obama is not some outlier when it comes to Israel. His call for a settlements freeze reflects attitudes that have been building in America for a long time. For the last 40 years, a succession of Israeli governments has misled, manipulated or persuaded naïve U.S. presidents that since Israel was negotiating to give up significant territory, there was no need to fight over "insignificant" settlements on some territory. Behind this charade, Israeli settlers bit off more and more of the West Bank, creating a huge moral, security and economic burden for Israel and its friends.