Ever curious about the eschatological implications of that Sarah Palin quote from her interview with Barbara Walters -- the one in which she said she believes that "more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead" -- I called the executive director of the Pre-Trib Research Center at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., Dr. Thomas Ice. The Pre-Trib Center is one of the preeminent evangelical institutions in this country arguing for literal Bible prophecy, and especially for pre-millenial dispensationalism, a complicated belief system that concerns the conditions that must obtain on Earth before Jesus can return ("Pre-Trib" is short for "pre-tribulation.") One of the more famous conditions, of course, is the ingathering of the Jewish people in Israel. There are hundreds of variations of Protestant prophetic belief, but the Jewish role is generally crucial; very dramatic things will happen to the Jews in these prophetic belief systems, including their conversion to Christianity and their mass death in the battle of Armageddon.
I've been writing about these belief systems for a while, and an alarm bell went off in my head when I heard Palin talk about "days and weeks." It's quite one thing to say that Israel needs settlements to contain its growing population (a belief unsupported by the facts, but I'll deal with that another time), but it's something else entirely to predict that Jews in the Diaspora will imminently be flooding the Holy Land. I asked Dr. Ice if he thought that this statement by Palin, who has been exposed to this brand of evangelical thinking in her Alaska churches, was informed by these beliefs.
"I've read that Palin has been part of an apparently unique movement I've heard of -- that her pastor, when she was in the Assembly of God, believed based on some personal revelation he claims to have gotten from God, that the Jews would move to Alaska during the Tribulation. But nevertheless, my understanding from what I've seen is that she holds fairly typical Protestant Zionist beliefs, and one of those beliefs is the regathering of the Jews in Israel."
Ice told me he believes this sort of thinking is supported by the facts. "Over forty percent of the world's Jews now live in Israel. What Sarah Palin probably believes is that this is the first regathering," when the Jews all migrate to Israel. "This is a condition for the second regathering, the regathering in belief, when the Jewish nation is converted. Then there will be the battle of Armageddon, because remember, Satan wants to wipe out the Jews to prevent the Second Coming, but Jesus comes to rescue the beleaguered Jews. We believe that the Jews are going to be converted so that they can call on Jesus to rescue them from Satan."
I asked Ice if he, like Palin, believes that in the days and weeks and months ahead, American Jews -- who make up the only sizable Jewish community still existing outside of Israel -- might move there, in order to establish the conditions necessary for the Second Coming. "The historical reason Jews move to Israel is persecution, so when persecution heats up in a country, then the Jews come to Israel," he said. "She may just have a general geopolitical belief that the world is going to be increasingly anti-Semitic."
But what about America? I asked. "In case you haven't noticed, America is becoming less Christian, more secular, and it's our Puritan roots that have kept this country from being anti-Semitic. But now look at the secular left, it's very anti-Semitic. Look at the people who are surrounding Obama. They're very anti-Semitic. Things aren't as bad as they are in Europe, but it's getting much worse." The worse it gets for Jews in America, of course, the closer we are to the Second Coming.
How common are these beliefs? I asked. "Fifty to sixty million people probably hold these beliefs," he said.
Yet Another Chilean Zionist Rap Containing the Word "Manichaean"
Four years after cartoons of the prophet Muhammad set off violent
protests across the Muslim world, Islamic nations are mounting a
campaign for an international treaty to protect religious symbols and
beliefs from mockery -- essentially a ban on blasphemy that would put
them on a collision course with free speech laws in the West. Documents
obtained by The Associated Press show that Algeria and Pakistan have
taken the lead in lobbying to eventually bring the proposal to a vote
in the U.N. General Assembly. If ratified in countries that
enshrine freedom of expression as a fundamental right, such a treaty
would require them to limit free speech if it risks seriously offending
religious believers. The process, though, will take years and no
showdown is imminent.
The conventional wisdom is that unlike Europe's discontented Muslims, America's Muslims are prosperous and happy, having benefited from the welcoming embrace of our "melting pot" nation. This is basically a complacent fiction. According to a Gallup poll released in March 2009, while Muslim integration in the United States has been more successful than in Europe, Muslims remain less civically engaged in American society and less inclined to view their social position positively than any other religious group.
UFOs or Middle East Peace: Which One is More Likely?
The answer is obvious, no? At least according to participants of a recent poll conducted by Vanity Fair and 60 Minutes:
HBO's Brilliant Documentary on the Mumbai Massacre
Tonight, on HBO, an absolutely riveting documentary on Mumbai. It's hard not to avert your eyes at times. Tunku Varadarajan describes better than I could one particularly horrible scene, one that has embedded in it a deep truth about the genocidal anti-Semitism of jihadists:
This is not a documentary for the young to watch, or even for those adults who crumble easily. How to process the telephone conversation between Wasi and the gunman holed up in Mumbai's Chabad House, where a few American Jews are held hostage? Wasi says: "As I told you, every person you kill where you are"--referring to the Jewish building--"is worth 50 of the ones killed elsewhere." Later, as Indian army commandos close in on the building, Wasi, watching the scene on TV in Pakistan, fears that the last surviving gunman there will be taken alive. So he orders him to shoot the last two Jewish hostages forthwith: "Yes, sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head." The gunman, now weak with hunger and thirst, obliges. We hear a shot. Wasi does, too--he is on the line. What about the second shot, he asks. "I got them both," he is told, by the gunman.
Those who say they are for a two-state solution also somehow always find a reason why, in this case, the US should bow to Israel again. Take my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg who - surprise! - writes this:
"It doesn't matter, then, if the Israelis build 900 housing units in Gilo or 900 skyscrapers: Gilo will be kept by Israel in exchange for a one-to-one land swap with Palestine. All "settlements" are not created equal: Better for the Obama Administration to talk tough to Israel about the settlements ringing Nablus, for instance, because these are communities whose existence makes it impossible to create a contiguous, viable Palestinian state."
In any case, who is talking about bowing to Israel? When any other American ally disagrees with Washington, does Andrew attack it so viscerally? Anyway, he's missing the point: Gilo isn't a settlement; no American administration has ever considered Gilo a settlement. Officials of the Palestinian Authority have recognized that Gilo will be part of Israeli West Jerusalem in a final status agreement, as part of a one-to-one land swap. I'm simply arguing that the focus of negotiations, and of American policy, should be on creating a viable, contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This means, among other things, pressuring Israel to make concessions on West Bank settlements. Gilo is irrelevant to this cause, since it's not even in East Jerusalem.
For a more even-handed and reasonable understanding of what's happening on the West Bank today, see this David Ignatius column today:
I have a suggestion, drawn from a visit here and several days of conversations with Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials: Follow the lead of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and the man who's largely responsible for Ramallah's turnaround. He has drawn up a plan for a two-year transition to statehood. The United States should endorse this goal, explicitly, and call for an immediate start to negotiations about the details.
"Fayyad is the only game in town, but his plan isn't sustainable without a political process," says Martin Indyk, who heads the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and organized a three-day conference in Jerusalem to discuss U.S.-Israeli issues.
Israelis may balk at some aspects of Fayyad's state-building plan, but that's what negotiations are for. It's a better alternative than the recent proposal from Abbas's allies for the United Nations to declare Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu rightly rejects as a unilateral move. And it's certainly a better alternative than just letting the problem fester, which only benefits Hamas, the extremist group that controls Gaza.
Arresting a Woman for Praying (Cont'd)
Goldblog reader Jeffrey Bergman writes:
I read the same article in Ha'aretz yesterday, and had the same disbelieving, angry reaction that you apparently did. So here's my question -- do you think that either the Israeli government, or Israelis in general (most of whom, I know, really don't get or care about American-style "progressive Judaism") understand how bad this looks to many American Jews?
No. I'm overgeneralizing here, but Israelis have never been very good at understanding how they appear to the outside world. I don't think they care very much, to tell you the truth. If they did, they wouldn't allow their police to arrest Jewish women for wearing prayer shawls.
Barbarians at Intel's Gate
The news that 1,500 ultra-Orthodox Jews ransacked a newly-opened Intel factory in Jerusalem over the weekend -- because it stayed open on Shabbat -- is terribly disturbing, especially considering that Intel and companies like Intel are proving to be Israel's economic salvation, as Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in their excellent, "Start-Up Nation," about which you can read more here. Israel-Intel employees described the events as a "pogrom" and had already installed a barbed wire fence around the factory in preparation for something like this. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, who mediated talks with representatives from both sides, has proposed a compromise that would require only 60 non-Jewish workers to work on Saturday, but it hasn't been finalized yet, and the clip below suggests that reason was abandoned long ago.
Why Are All Vampires British?
The UK's ambassador in Washington, Nigel Sheinwald, doesn't know, either, but thinks it's a good thing:
It seems an immutable law of Hollywood that the finest baddies in
American film are always played by Brits. I'm not sure exactly why -
there is nothing inherently menacing, I think, about an English
accent. But whatever the reason, I have spotted a cinematic trend here
that builds on this fine tradition: British vampires.
Order of Mass, the Video Game
A new video game may be the solution for kids who have given up on religion -- and parents who have just given up. Via Boing Boing:
A new video game called "Mass: We Pray," brings new family fun to those
who can't wait until Sunday to go to church. It has a cross-shaped
motion-sensing controller reminiscent of a Wiimote, and you can collect
"grace points" in order to unlock holy mysteries. The release date is
slated for Spring 2010, but it's available for pre-order now.
Police on Wednesday arrested a woman who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit). The woman was visiting the site with the religious women's group "Women of the Wall" to take part in the monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer. Police were called to the area after the group asked to read aloud from a Torah scroll. Police said they arrested the women in the wake of a High Court ruling, which states that the public visiting the Western Wall is obligated to dress in accordance with the site's dress code.
Here in America, of course, Jews are free to pray as they please.
First of all, Gilo is not a suburb of Jerusalem. It's a neighborhood in the city, i.e., within the city limits, forming the southernmost part of the city (not in "east" Jerusalem as a number of ignorant journalists have reported).
Second, the land upon which Gilo sits was largely, if not overwhelmingly, purchased, much of it before 1948 and the balance after 1967. It was one of the earliest neighborhoods built after 1967 and is contiguous with pre-1967 Jerusalem.
Third, there are something like 30-50,000 (or more) residents in Gilo many secular Jews, some religious Jews and some Arabs. As such it is very much a mixed Jerusalem neighborhood. The current planning commission vote to authorize the 900 additional housing units is just the latest, and not the last step, in a process that started a number of years ago and it will likely be a few more years before the first bulldozer moves the first clod of dirt related to these housing units.
How did you get from a headline of whether Israel is fair to religious minorities (based on unequal preservation of holy sites) to a headline "Religious Freedom in Israel"? Those are two totally different things - and if I may say - one is a legitimate issue, the other I would have to question. Even if Israel isn't perfect, I'd like to hear about a single place east of Germany that has better freedom of religion than we do.
Newsweek Fail
I'm with Ta-Nehisi on this. Newsweek's cover -- and incessant focus on Sarah Palin's body -- does seem sexist to me. On the other hand, it's just the ever-evolving Newsweek trying desperately to hang on to relevancy. Joel Achenbach:
First Newsweek had that ridiculous cover "In Search of Aliens" a few months back, a wild exaggeration of a story about the Kepler mission to find Earthlike worlds. Then Newsweek had a cover asking if your baby is racist. Now we have the Sarah Palin cover, using a sexy photo taken for Runner's World.
...In a single editorial decision, Newsweek has called attention to its own editorial judgment rather than to the Bizarro-World rise of Palin as an allegedly credible leader of the world's most powerful nation. That's got to get a flag and 15 yards and perhaps, pending a review by the league, at least a one-game suspension.
H&H, Feh
A Goldblog reader writes:
Not to pile on, but I've always felt that H&H bagels were overrated. Too sweet and they don't have the firm exterior that I associate with the best bagels of my childhood (from Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn). I like the bagels from Ess' a Bagel better.
The famous Upper West Side bagel shop -- and former employer of Cosmo Kramer -- is in big trouble after its owner, Helmer Toro, was indicted for allegedly stealing city and state withholding taxes.
The most emphatic single sentence in the entire constitution of the United States is in Article VI: " . . . no
religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office
or public Trust under the United States . . ." The plain language couldn't be more emphatic: " ... no ... ever ... any ... " One could argue about whether a military post is an "office" or a
"public Trust" but my guess is that it easily fits the bill (notary
public was the big Supreme Court case on the matter).
November 18, 2009
Fairly Dispositive Evidence About Hasan's Mindset
The door never closes to other interpretations of Nidal Hasan's actions at Ft. Hood, but this ABC News story surely suggests that Hasan was motivated by hate for the U.S. military:
Colonel Anthony Febbo at Fort Hood reportedly told investigators he was twice contacted by Hasan, on Nov. 2 and a week earlier in October, about the question of whether he could legally provide information on "war crimes" he had learned in the course of psychiatric counseling he provided soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Col. Febbo told ABC News he could not comment because of the on-going investigation.
His supervisor in the Department of Psychiatry, Captain Naomi Surman, told investigators that Hasan raised similar issues with her in conversations in October, according to documents reviewed by ABC News.
Captain Surman told investigators that Hasan had formally contacted military prosecutors to report patients he was evaluating, according to people briefed on the exchange. She said Hasan signed his e-mails with "Praise Be to Allah." Legal analysts say psychiatrists are strictly bound by the rules of patient confidentiality except in cases where they might become aware of crimes about to be committed.
Enormous Surprise of the Day
The Times is reporting that Iran, on second thought, might not, after all, ship out its enriched uranium:
Iran's foreign minister said in remarks reported Wednesday that he opposes sending the country's enriched uranium abroad under a tentative deal negotiated with the United States and other big powers last month. The foreign minister's remarks cast further doubt on the deal, which the Obama administration had hoped would defuse a standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions
Killing Infidels at the American Family Association
The BBC asked me earlier today to debate someone named Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, which stands for both "decency" and "morality," on whether Muslims should be allowed to serve in the American military. I made the mistake of agreeing to the debate. I'll have more about this when I get the audio to post, but suffice it to say that Bryan Fischer makes me look like Tariq Ramadan. Fischer is a man who wants to ban the military from recruiting Muslims because the Quran instructs them to chop off people's heads. This was the level of his argument. Don't believe me? This is from his blog:
It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. The reason is simple: the more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security. Devout Muslims, who accept the teachings of the Prophet as divinely inspired, believe it is their duty to kill infidels. Yesterday's massacre is living proof. And yesterday's incident is not the first fragging incident involving a Muslim taking out his fellow U.S. soldiers.
Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms.
A sample complaint from one of the 200 women at a gala in Rome, at which Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lectured attendants on the role of women before inviting them to convert to Islam.
Unfair to Andrew Sullivan
Goldblog reader Joshua "Khan" Yunis writes:
In regard to Andrew Sullivan you write: "People who don't like Israel very much hold it to a special standard, created for one scapegoated country alone. On this count -- and only this count, so far as I can tell -- Andrew sometimes fails the test. There are times lately when he seems to single out Israel for special excoriation, and times when he holds Israel to a double-standard."
I don't know about this. Sullivan expends far more energy over America's torture regime and its violation of the Geneva conventions, etc. than he does over Israel. Whatever excoriating he does, he saves the worst for the United States.
Furthermore, he always stresses that his criticisms of Israel are of a Western democracy, which is far different from other repressive regimes in the Middle East. He was (rightly of course) far more obsessive and critical in his coverage of the protests against the Iranian regime.
Yes, sometimes he exhibits some troubling paranoia on the issue of the Israel lobby. But I think criticizing him for holding Israel to a double-standard is off the mark. What he does is far, far different from the intellectual and moral hypocrisy of Naomi Klein and her ilk (see Toronto Film Festival, for example). That is holding Israel to a double-standard, and if not anti-Semitism, its something just as troubling. But that's not what Andrew Sullivan does--he doesn't call for boycotts or use the language of apartheid. For these reasons, I think it's unfair of you to accuse him of the cursed "double-standard."
The State Department's report is just a warning light, showing sincere friendly concern. It should be viewed as a signal from a faraway friend relating the grave state we are in. If we wish to continue existing as a state that belongs in the realm of open and democratic states, while offering a supportive and welcoming home for the various religious currents that exist inside it, the State of Israel must seriously address the grave consequences of the status quo in state-religion affairs that remains in effect.
"I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded
upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and
more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and
months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any
right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."
"More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel"? Who, exactly? Is this her analysis of Jewish demography? Is there a sudden upsurge in Zionist sentiment among American Jews, the only sizable Jewish community left outside of Israel? Or is this an indication that Palin buys into creepy End-Times thinking, in which the ingathering of the Jews, and their mass death, presage the return of Christ? Inquiring minds want to know.
My colleague, Jeffrey Goldberg, has been blunt from the beginning, and nuanced. It is one thing not to blame Moslems for the sins of Hassan; it is quite another to ignore the role that Jihadist theology seems to have played in the twisted mental theater of Hassan's mind. Goldberg posits as a problem that there aren't enough Muslims in the U.S. military. He also acknowledges that the potential for extremist beliefs, when held by members of the military, to cause harm (rather than simply hurt) is high. So his solution: recruit more Muslims AND screen them more tightly for extremist beliefs. Be sensitive and honest about it; certain ideologies are a problem and even when privately held, are not compatible with military service. This discussion does not at all suggest that the case ought to be closed -- that the easiest way to understand what happened is to blame it on Islam -- and that the genesis of this act of terror can be sufficiently proven. And let's be honest: this is discrimination. Goldberg would argue, however, that discrimination in this case is rational.
I'm not sure I would argue that "discrimination" as we generally understand the word is what I'm asking for. The military tests recruits for high blood pressure; those who have it can't serve. Is that discrimination? Or is that simply a form of screening, designed to weed out people who aren't qualified? In the same way the military screens for physical health, it screens for mental health, and I would argue that religious extremism is a form of mental illness. I think the military needs to screen carefully for all sorts of extremism. There are people in the military who hold certain tenets of Christian Identity to be true (I met one of these guys in Iraq, of all places). Adherents of Christian Identity, just like jihadists, shouldn't serve.
On Building Apartments in Jerusalem
It seems that the Obama Administration is missing a chance, again, to leapfrog the settlement issue and move directly to the issue of final borders between Israel and Palestine. The building of apartments in Gilo is irrelevant to eventual disposition of Jerusalem because everyone -- the Americans, the Palestinians and the Israelis -- knows that Gilo, the suburb that is the latest source of tension between Washington and Jerusalem, will undoubtedly end up in Israel as part of a negotiated solution (not that that's ever happening, by the way). It doesn't matter, then, if the Israelis build 900 housing units in Gilo or 900 skyscrapers: Gilo will be kept by Israel in exchange for a one-to-one land swap with Palestine. All "settlements" are not created equal: Better for the Obama Administration to talk tough to Israel about the settlements ringing Nablus, for instance, because these are communities whose existence makes it impossible to create a contiguous, viable Palestinian state. Unless the Palestinians want to grant these Jewish settlers citizenship in their yet-uncreated country. Which also, by the way, isn't happening.
This Game is Rigged
One hundred quotes from "The Wire:"
The Torah Deserves To Be Sold at Costco
Costco plans on selling copies of The Illustrated Torah at select stores later this month. Neal Warnick of the Seattle-based
Wholesale Solutions, which brokered the deal, said: "It deserves to be in
Costco. They know their membership base and have therefore chosen it to
reach those consumers who otherwise may not have the opportunity to
consider it for purchase."
I guess this means that the Torah has truly arrived.
November 17, 2009
Joe Klein and I Argue, Sort of, About Nidal Hasan
My friend and former colleague Joe Klein has had some strong things to say about the Ft. Hood massacre -- and about people who argue that this is a clear-cut case of, in Daniel Pipes' words, "sudden jihad syndrome." I asked Joe a question about his views, and we had the following e-mail conversation:
Jeffrey Goldberg: You wrote last week, "There are today several odious attempts by Jewish
extremists.... to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan
was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs as opposed to a
direct consequence of his insanity." Do you still believe that this
case is primarily about mental illness, or have you seen anything to
suggest that Nidal Hasan did what he did mainly because he is a
self-radicalized jihadist?
Joe Klein: Jeff--I
think my initial reaction last week, in part, was a knee-jerk response
to the "they're all terrorists" line about Muslims I hear so often from
everyone ranging from neoconservatives to close friends and family
members. But my bottom line remains the same. Clearly, Hasan was
attracted to Islamic radicalism and that has to be considered part of
the calculus of motivations for his act. But, the primary motivating
force? I doubt it. There are three other factors that I think are more
important:
1. He was nuts. If this was an act of war, why was the violence
disproportionately concentrated on people he knew--fellow therapists and
mental health workers who were not about to go off killing Muslims. The
act itself has far more in common with a schoolyard shooting spree than
a suicide bus-bombing. There was nothing tactical about it. The
overwhelming majority of terrorist acts are directed against people the
killer does not know. I'm not sure what the appropriate psychiatric
term is, but shooting your co-workers puts you in a different mental
ballpark from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, even if you try to put a more
ideological--and self-deluding--face on it by shouting, "Allahu Akhbar."
It's quite possible that he was a nut who used ideology as a delusional
rationale for his craziness.
2. I think that his actual work with PTSD and traumatic brain injury
patients, hasn't been given sufficient attention as part of the cocktail
of motivations. I've done a fair amount of research in this area,
including a book (Payback: Five Marines After Vietnam) about the
effects of this kind of warfare on human beings. One thing that has
struck me is how much more severe the psychological traumas coming out
of Iraq and Afghanistan are--more severe even than those from Vietnam.
This is attributable, in large part, to the brilliance of field
medicine. Soldiers are surviving after far more serious injuries than
ever before. Indeed, we are on the frontier of brand new psychological
dilemmas: soldiers having to come to terms with multiple amputations,
serious brain injuries. These are horrific wounds and catastrophic
levels of anguish. I can't imagine the strength needed to minister to
these on a daily basis. Clearly, Hasan didn't have that strength.
3. ... No doubt, because of his immediate experiences, Hasan came to
believe a disproportionate number of people who went to war came home
as basket cases. It seems quite likely that he was scared witless by
this, scared beyond the breaking point. It is entirely possible that he
was more terrified than terrorist. But... There remains the attraction of jihadi theology. You can't rule it
out of the calculus. And yes, there is the eternal question of whether
Islam is fundamentally different from other religions because Mohammed
was the only prophet to personally take up the sword. (Our boy, Moses,
had Yahweh take up the sword for him.) You can't dismiss this evil. I
have no patience for those who would deny that we're in a long-term
struggle against some really bad actors who need to be wiped out. I'm
in favor of the campaign against Al Qaeda. I'm in favor of the
Predators. I'm in favor of Israel's right to defend itself, within the
limits of reason, by taking proportionate action against Hamas in Gaza
and by seizing arms shipments from Iran intended to bolster Hizballah. In any case, I find myself too entangled in the horrific complications
of the case to be able to label it, simply, as an act of jihad.
JG: Unlike you, I'm not having too much trouble labeling the Ft. Hood massacre -- at least provisionally -- an act of jihad.
I'm not suggesting that nothing else except some lunatic jihadist
impulse explains the shooting. I don't doubt this man was a misfit, and
though I don't believe in such a phenomenon as pre-traumatic stress
syndrome, I think it is plausible to believe that Nidal Hasan was
afraid to enter a war zone (even though he would be entering it as a
non-combatant). But I'm going to stick with Occam's Razor on this one:
When a devout Muslim who refers to himself as a Soldier of Allah picks
up two handguns, yells "Allahu Akbar," and shoots fifty American
military personnel, I don't think I'm climbing out on a limb to label
him a self-created, self-radicalized jihadist. When a Muslim who is not
in American uniform commits this sort of violence against American
military personnel, we tend to think of the act as a
religiously-inspired act of terrorism. Maybe you're right, maybe it's
far more complicated than this. But right now I don't think so. By the
way, when a Jewish person in Israel commits mass murder of Arabs, we
don't spend a great deal of time looking for alternate explanations.
Baruch Goldstein, the author of the Hebron massacre, was, in fact, a
medical doctor who may or may not have been traumatized by the violence
committed against his fellow Jewish settlers by Palestinian extremists.
But so what? Murder is murder, and political murder is political
murder. I'm sure you would say that Goldstein was primarily motivated
by a hateful ideology. Or am I wrong? Is the Goldstein analogy not
correct here?
JK: Unlike you, I
don't know all that much about Baruch Goldstein, although he walked
into the Tomb of the Patriarchs and murdered a whole bunch of people he
didn't know...which is much closer to a pure act of terrorism than
Hasan's murder of his colleagues (and, yes, others he did not know).
But Jeff, I really don't understand your need for simplicity here. Nor
do I understand the policy implications. If this was, as you say, an
act of jihad--what are they? To me, the only reasonable policy
implication is a narrow one: Even though it is badly in need of skilled
therapists to deal with the tide of PTSD and brain injury cases, the
U.S. military has to be far more vigilant when it comes to who is
treating our troops. A second policy implication seems obvious: No
jihadist fellow-travelers need apply. The military should be open to
the vast majority of American Muslims who are loyal to our country and
abhor jihadism--but those who express suspicious views, as Hasan did,
should be discharged. The politically correct notion that you shouldn't
discharge someone because of his or her views doesn't apply to those in
the military whose views are sympathetic to our enemies.
To sum up: Why is simplicity so important in a situation that is so
obviously complicated? And what are the policy implications of that
simplicity?
JG: Point taken, though I think what I'm asking for is not simplicity so
much as proper ordering, or weighing, of the causes of Hasan's murder
spree. I have no doubt that all men who commit acts of violence like
this do so for multiple reasons, but I suspect -- and, again, we don't
know everything we're going to eventually know about this case -- that
the adoption of Islamism as an ideology by this man explains much more
about his act than any of the traumas he experienced vicariously as a
(not very good) therapist. You ask, what are the policy implications? I
think the policy implications are obvious: Political correctness may
have kept the Army from acting against a man who quite obviously
harbored extreme anti-American feelings. I've argued that what the
American military needs is more Muslims, not fewer Muslims, in the
ranks, for any number of good reasons. But I believe, not based solely
on this case, that the military has been overly squeamish about
screening Muslims for extremist views. (If only Hasan had been gay, he
might have been witch-hunted right out of the Army!)
I also think that a careful study of this case could lead us to learn
more about self-radicalization, which is obviously an important
phenomenon to study, because if what I believe to be true is in fact
true, the Hasan case, along with many others, means that al-Qaeda as
an organization no longer matters; al-Qaeda is now an idea, which of
course is more dangerous. My main worry is that we'll suffer other
attacks like this one if we keep ourselves from looking squarely at the
possibility that Islamist ideology has infiltrated at least some
corners of the American Muslim community.
JK: Jeff, I think we're in basic agreement here, especially on the policy
implications. I do worry about projecting an individual nut into part
of a religious movement (jihadism) that I consider sociopathic to begin
with--because that can be further projected, and has been, into a belief
that all Muslims are closet sociopaths. I think it's also important to
remember that we are actually winning this war: As was made clear in
Anbar Province, your average Sunni would much rather live a moderate
lifestyle--smoking, watching TV, not having their daughter forced into
marriages with terrorists--than live under the control of the
extremists. There has been far too much hysteria about the strength and
reach of the jihadis. We need, obviously, to be vigilant--as the
military will be now. But if you give the sociopaths too much credit,
they achieve their aim: terror.
November 16, 2009
Is Israel Blockading the Egypt-Gaza Border?
I believe it is Egypt that is blockading the Gaza-Egypt border. But according to this AFP photo caption, reprinted on Andrew's blog, it is Israel that is responsible for Egypt's border with Gaza:
Palestinians smuggle sheep into the Gaza Strip through a tunnel under
the Egypt-Gaza border in Rafah on November 15, 2009. Residents of the
poverty-stricken Gaza Strip fear a shortage of sacrificial cattle ahead
of a major Muslim holiday due to Israel's blockade. Eid al-Adha or
Feast of Sacrifice marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and
is celebrated in remembrance of Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his
son to God. By Said Khatib/AFP/Getty.
Is Andrew Sullivan a Zionist?
I've gotten a fair number of hostile e-mails for stating that Andrew, in my understanding, is a Zionist. Here's Andrew on his own understanding of what "pro-Israel," or "Zionist," means:
My own definition of pro-Israel would simply be, I think: support for the existence of a secure Jewish state in Palestine. That's my position, and it is as deeply held as it is open to all sorts of arguments about what is best for its security and the interests of the US. I think it should easily be enough to earn one's credentials as a Zionist, as I proudly and passionately remain.
I would make only two points about this. One is small (but actually consequential); the word "Palestine" was invented by the Romans as a deliberate attempt to erase the word "Judea" from the map. So I wouldn't say that Israel is a Jewish home in Palestine; if anything, the future state of Palestine could be called the Arab state in Judea. I know this sounds like a nitpick, but names matter, and chronology matters.
The second, larger point: Zionists generally hold Israel to the same standard they hold every other country. People who don't like Israel very much hold it to a special standard, created for one scapegoated country alone. On this count -- and only this count, so far as I can tell -- Andrew sometimes fails the test. There are times lately when he seems to single out Israel for special excoriation, and times when he holds Israel to a double-standard. By the way, this doesn't make him an anti-Semite, as some marginal figures claim he is. It makes him, if anything, normal. Most of the world holds Israel to a higher standard than it does other countries. Many Jews do, as well. One of our specialties is self-criticism. But even when it comes from Jews, it isn't fair. Context is everything. I'll continue with these profound thoughts on Andrew later on.
What Happens if Khalid Sheikh Muhammad Isn't Found Guilty?
The
decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a federal courthouse
in Manhattan, where he and his four co-conspirators will receive the full array
of rights enjoyed by American citizens, will show the world that our system of
justice is an enlightened model for the rest of the world. It will "vindicate
this country's basic values" and "stand as a symbol in the
world of something different from what the terrorists represent." We will
be adhering to the "rule of law." Or so Obama defenders argue.
But
imagine KSM being found not guilty, which is a possibility. What happens then?
According to Democratic Senator Jack Reed, "under basic principles
of international law, as long as these individuals pose a threat, they can be
detained, and they will." Come again?
Read the whole post. The thought that KSM could actually get off did cross my mind. Crazy shit does occasionally happen. Especially in New York.
Paul, Not Such a Bad Jew After All?
My friend Judith Shulevitz, now writing for Tablet (like everyone else, apparently -- it's the happening place, Semitically-speaking), has a great piece on Paul revisionism. Judith's new book, "The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time" will be out in March; I just got the galleys and I'm looking forward to reading it, if only I could find a day in the week when I'm not suffocatingly busy.
In any case, read the whole piece on Paul; it's fascinating:
Paul is supposed to be the genius who overcame Jewish particularism and invented religious universalism, but the new Paul didn't do that. He didn't believe that the Jewish God stopped being Jewish. Nor did he think Jesus superseded God's covenant with his chosen people. What Jesus mainly did was die for the goyim: "What Torah does for Jews, Jesus does for gentiles," writes Eisenbaum.
So what are we, as Jews, to make of the Jewish Paul? I instinctively agree that he must have seen himself as a Jew. It belies everything we know about human nature to imagine Paul converting from highly educated Greco-Roman Jew to anti-Jewish Christian who rants about Jewish law like someone encountering it for the first time. But do we have to let him off the hook for anti-Semitism? Was he a Jew whose message was distorted, presumably by the Gospel writers and early church fathers, or was he a demagogue who hurled distortable insults with reprehensible abandon? This is a question that won't be answered easily. Paul was a difficult writer and a non-systematic thinker, dashing off letters in response to crises in his congregations rather than laying out his ideas in expository fashion. Whether you're seen as critiquing lovingly from the inside or attacking coldly from the outside depends a lot on your tone, and even the best scholars of first-century Greek don't agree about Paul's tone.
In order to eliminate the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud,
the United States launched at least 15 missile strikes in Pakistan this
year and killed, besides Mr. Mehsud, somewhere between 200 and 300
people, according to a study by the New America Foundation. At least a quarter of those who died were civilians.
Was that toll "disproportionate" to the threat posed by a single terrorist and therefore a war crime? How about the recent NATO bombing
of hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan, in which a mix of 80
to 120 Taliban militants and civilians died? Justified strike, accident
or war crime?
NIAC: End the Iran Democracy Fund
Politico's Ben Smith comes up with some interesting documents from the defamation case brought by the National Iranian-American Council and its leader, Trita Parsi, against one of the group's critics. (Said Smith: "The reporting, including some embarrassing documents, like an internal email suggesting they register as lobbyists, came from the discovery phase of a defamation case NIAC filed against a critic. Which is a lesson in filing lawsuits, if nothing else.) For Eli Lake's original story on the controversy, click here.
Smith:
According to the documents, George Soros's Open Society Policy Center pays the annual salary of the NIAC staffer who heads the Campaign for a New Policy on Iran, according to an email among NIAC officials. And the minutes of a series of meetings including NIAC and other coalition members offer a glimpse of the strategy and tactics involved in the push for a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic, from an attempt to undermine the appointment of Dennis Ross as Iran envoy to a planned "Send Hillary to Iran" campaign.
The minutes include almost almost no mention of a human rights agenda inside Iran, which has more recently been on NIAC's agenda. Participants in the discussions include NIAC as well as the liberal Jewish group J Street, anti-war groups like Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee, and the business lobby that opposes Iran sanctions, USA*Engage.
The first minutes, from last November 12, laid out an agenda for the group, which "advocates a diplomatic resolution to the conflict between the US and Iran, opposes military action against Iran, and agrees that sanctions are no substitute for diplomatic engagement."
The minutes from the following month add the goal of stopping American funding to Iranian resistance groups by "end[ing] the 'Democracy Fund' as we know it."
On Re-Hebraizing Hobbes
The Shalem Center has come out with a new, unabridged Hebrew translation of Leviathan, and Yoram Hazony, the center's provost, tells the Times why:
What makes the new Hobbes translation so interesting to Israelis?
The word leviathan in Hobbes' title is Hebrew, of course. (It's the
name of a great sea creature mentioned in Job 40:25.) And more
generally, Hobbes is something of a Hebraizer: Large sections of
"Leviathan are devoted to commentary on the Hebrew Bible, which Hobbes
happily invokes while excoriating Christians for "mixing with the
Scripture... much of the vain and erroneous philosophy of the Greeks."
But this "Hebraic" Hobbes is something of a novelty in Israel. Why?
Because the earlier incomplete translation of "Leviathan" had quietly
dropped anything Hobbes had to say about the Bible. For decades,
Israelis read Hobbes without any inkling that he is, in a way, part of
their own story.
November 13, 2009
Trita Parsi's Response to Eli Lake's Story
Here's the response from the National Iranian-American Council to Eli Lake's article which suggests that the group lobbies for Iran:
Washington DC - NIAC is proud of its work to advance US national security through a smarter and more effective policy on Iran. NIAC rejects the insinuations made by Washington Times that its activities are in violation of tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws.
NIAC has provided tens of thousands of documents and all its financial records in order to prosecute a defamation case against Hassan Dai. Those documents prove the allegations made against NIAC are completely false. The judge denied Dai's motion to dismiss the case on 18 out of 19 counts. Realizing this, the defendants have decided to maliciously leak those documents to a reporter at the Washington Times, Eli Lake, in an attempt to litigate the case in the media rather than in a court of law.
NIAC is a 501 (c)3 educational organization representing Americans of Iranian descent. It engages in educational, advocacy and limited lobbying activities in accordance with US laws and regulations. NIAC does not lobby on behalf of the Islamic Republic. NIAC advocates on behalf of the Iranian-American community, who overwhelmingly oppose the policies of the government of Iran.
Mr. Lake's article does not present any evidence for any of its claims and stops short of making any direct accusations. Instead, it makes insinuations and engages in conspiratorial speculation, presumably with the aim of sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the public about NIAC and fabricating a controversy around the organization.
This follows by now a familiar pattern in which neo-conservative activists have sought to smear and defame NIAC by making accusations, innuendos and speculation, without providing any evidence to back their claims.
In fact, evidence is to the contrary. Why would Ambassador John Limbert, a former hostage imprisoned for 444 days by the government in Iran, join the advisory board of an organization that supposedly represents the interests of the very same government that imprisoned him? This claim is illogical at best and ludicrous at worst.
Mr. Lake has selectively focused on emails and documents that fit with his pre-determined verdict against NIAC. Though the basis of Lake's article is misinformation about NIAC provided by Hassan Dai, Lake did not ask a single question about our lawsuit, why it was filed, our understanding of Dai's political motivations and Dai's connections to the Iranian terrorist organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq. NIAC encouraged Lake to investigate the evidence of Dai's role in the Mujahedin-e Khalq. However, Lake declined to investigate his own sources.
It is clear that some neo-conservative elements wish to divide the Iranian Diaspora at a time when unity is needed more than ever for the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved. While some prominent figures in the Iranian Diaspora have misunderstood NIAC's activities, we are reaching out to them and we refuse to walk into this trap of pitting members of the community against each other.
NIAC has given the Iranian-American community a powerful voice in Washington DC that has effectively pushed for greater focus on human rights in Iran, opposed war between the US and Iran, opposed broad-based sanctions that hurt the Iranian people while strengthening its hard-line government, and supported diplomacy between the two countries to resolve their differences in a peaceful manner.
Trita Parsi, Lobbyist for Iran?
A couple of weeks ago, I retracted my assertion that Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, did "leg-work" for the Iranian regime. I was trying to suggest, in a not-so artful way, that Parsi is trying to build his organization into an Iranian version of AIPAC, but "leg-work" seemed, in retrospect, like too harsh a description for his activities.
But now I may have to retract my retraction. Eli Lake has come up with some very interesting evidence about Parsi's activities in Washington, including an internal memo from the group's policy director, Patrick Disney, in which he states that NIAC is, in fact, functioning as a lobby:
(I)n a July 2008 memo obtained by The Times, Mr. Disney quoted the Lobbying Disclosure Act - a law that says even the preparation of materials aimed at influencing legislation or policy must be disclosed to the public - and said he and a colleague should register as lobbyists.
"Under this expansive view of 'lobbying,' I find it hard to believe Emily, and I devote less than 20 percent of our time to lobbying activity. I believe we fall under this definition of 'lobbyist,' " he wrote, referring to NIAC's legislative director at the time, Emily Blout.
The tax code allows nonprofits to devote less than 20 percent of their activities to lobbying if they declare the activity in a special section on their taxes. NIAC's latest tax form shows that the group has declared that it spends none of its time lobbying.
When asked about his policy director's memo, Mr. Parsi said that Mr. Disney is not a lawyer and that when he wrote the memo, he was new to the organization.
I'm going through Lake's story now, and will try to post something more detailed later, but there are a couple of other discoveries that suggest strongly that Parsi is operating as a lobbyist, including this:
Law enforcement experts who reviewed some of the documents... say e-mails
between Mr. Parsi and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations at the
time, Javad Zarif - and an internal review of the Lobbying Disclosure
Act - offer evidence that the group has operated as an undeclared lobby
and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents
Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws....
E-mail correspondence between Mr. Parsi and Mr. Zarif show Mr. Parsi
suggesting that the Iranian diplomat meet with members of Congress.
"Happy to hear that you will meet with [Rep. Wayne] Gilchrest
and potentially [Rep. James] Leach. There are many more that are
interested in a meeting, including many respectable Democrats," Mr.
Parsi wrote in an Oct. 25, 2006, e-mail.
Arranging meetings between foreign officials and members of Congress in order to influence legislation -- the point of meeting with members of Congress, of course -- is an essential aspect of lobbying. Parsi is on record as opposing sanctions on Iran, a position the Iranian regime, and its representatives at the U.N., obviously endorse.
Like I said, I want to spend some time looking at Lake's charges, and I'm also curious to see the reaction to this story around town. One other item in the story struck me as particularly interesting: Parsi, it turns out, isn't an American, but a resident alien. I had assumed he was an Iranian-American, because his group says it represents the interests of Iranian-Americans -- but it turns out he holds Iranian and Swedish passports. I was under the impression that Parsi's group was trying to build itself into an Iranian equivalent of AIPAC, but the analogy is inexact, because AIPAC was founded, and is staffed and funded, by American citizens. In any case, I'm assuming that NIAC will issue a statement about the Lake article, and I'll post it. I'm especially curious to see what Parsi has to say about this last quote from the Lake article:
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an acclaimed Iranian filmmaker and unofficial
spokesman for Iran's opposition Green Movement, told The Times, "I
think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his
lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic."
On Dan Baum's Assumptions About Lieberman
A Goldblog reader writes:
Your prior reader thought it was uncontroversial that Baum "assumed Lieberman listens to Jews." What? First of all, when did Lieberman become the Senator of the Jews? I'm very excited about the constitutional provision that apparently grants us representation in the senate, but I must have missed its enactment.
Second, where is there any evidence that Lieberman listens to Jews? American Jews largely opposed the Iraq war and overwhelmingly supported Obama (and the Democratic party, for that matter). Why would Lieberman start listening to the Jews now?
Goldstone Won't be at Peres's Seder Next Year
This has got to hurt: Shimon Peres, the avatar of peace and reconciliation, calls Richard Goldstone a "small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence," who was "on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel."
When Jews go wild, Klein v. Kirchick edition. Apparently there's a video of their argument, so we'll wait to watch it before Goldblog declares a winner.
The Iranian government fielded an impressive squad of angry, hungry, Jew-hating fanatics. What of the opposition? Their counterprotest, centered slightly north and east of the main event, has attracted ample coverage from many sources, who offered reports that to my eyes, on the fringes of the counterprotest, sound plausible and accurate. I did not see Muhammad Khatami shoved to the ground, or any of the other more dramatic scenes of thuggery. Around Haft-e Tir, the government did break out the batons and beat protesters at the fringes, but mostly they seemed to have learned the lesson that by isolating the protesters to a few small areas they could avoid the spectacle of outright violence.
The Dangerous Life of an Advice Columnist
This month, a reader asked me to divulge the secrets of writing an advice column:
It has been a longtime goal of mine to become an
advice columnist. I live in a fairly small town, and there is a free
paper that everyone reads that is distributed at grocery stores, the
library, and most local businesses. I recently obtained a life-coach
certificate and I am thinking of proposing to the editor that he add an
advice column. I would welcome your suggestions for five or 10 things
that make an advice columnist successful.
K. R., Queensbury, N.Y.
Dear K. R.,
Writing an advice column is not for everyone. Consult your doctor
before deciding whether a career as an advice columnist is the right
step for you. Side effects of writing an advice column include dry
mouth, marked drowsiness, sleeplessness, distension of the coccyx,
hatred of fondue, stigmata, premature brake wear, Munchausen Syndrome,
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, Munchausen Syndrome by Two-Thirds
Majority Vote, cataracts, thrush, cloture, and a desire to wear funny
hats to funerals. Do not attempt to operate a computer while writing an
advice column. Do not attempt to visit Latvia while writing an advice
column. Avoid diphthongs, the Guggenheim Museum, and the words
"sprocket," "croque-monsieur," and "pants" when writing
an advice column. Erections lasting more than four hours, though rare,
require immediate editorial attention. Erections lasting less than four
minutes should not be discussed in public.
"What we see is absolute American commitment to Israeli interests, Israeli conditions, and Israeli security ... while disregarding the dignity or feelings of the Arab and Muslims people and their nations and governments."
I think you're being a bit hard on Baum. He's frustrated by Joseph
Lieberman, and he thought that getting Jews to tell Lieberman that he's
wrong about the public option would be a good idea, because he assumed
Lieberman listens to Jews. I think the danger here is that Baum could
be understood to be a Jewish Al Sharpton (except that he's not arguing
for ethnic solidarity on behalf of a Jewish cause) but he's right to
say that ethnic politics are a fact of life. But on the other hand, or
the other other hand, I guess, I think he it's possibly dangerous to
introduce religion into this debate. When the Catholic bishops do this
on behalf of abortion -- tell Senators they're not good Catholics
unless they vote against abortion rights -- leftists like Dan Baum go
up in arms.
So on balance, I'd say Baum is just being naive. The problem is that what he's doing makes it look like he's setting
himself to be the Catholic bishop of the Jews, which is bad news not
only because he's mixing religion and policy-making, but because, based
on a pretty extensive on-line search, I can't find any proof that Dan
Baum has ever identified himself previously as a Jew, or taken the
"Jewish" line on any sort of issue. So you are right in saying that his
appeal is a naked appeal for blood solidarity, when he's never
expressed an interest before in solidarity with his fellow Jews. Still,
though, you were hard on him since he was trying to change Lieberman's
mind, and based on what you've written, you want Lieberman to change
his mind as well.
Removing the Profit Motive from Health Care
A Goldblog reader thinks I'm naive for believing that the profit motive should be removed from the health care system:
spent years publicizing the work of brilliant scientists and physicians
at two Ivy League medical centers. They are incentivized both by an
altruistic desire to eradicate disease and by the prospect of seeing
some financial reward for their labors, even when it is postponed for
years while they toil in their laboratories, working for subsistence
wages, until, with luck, they have a breakthrough or discovery. When a
new drug, or treatment, or scientific technique does come to market,
it's also a great boon for the university where the work is likely to
have taken place, when they start to see an income stream from
licensing their patent. Take a look at any university with a large
scientific research enterprise, and then look at their budget. It's
likely they are reaping significant revenue from intellectual
property. So it's a pillar of our educational establishment. These
discoveries don't come out of a vacuum; scientists are just like anyone
else, with families to support and expenses to be paid. The difference
is that they are willing to put their enjoyment of financial
compensation on hold, while they invest extraordinary amounts of time
on research that may or may not bear fruit.
The
same is true in many respects of physicians, who accumulate significant
debt attending medical school and postgraduate programs. Don't we want
to offer incentives to entice the most capable of our students into the
medical profession? There was a time when medicine was a lowly trade,
practiced by journeymen. I'm sure we don't want to relegate it to that
diminished status again.
Exciting News From the TSA
TSA undercover agents wear TSA uniforms while performing their duties. Or something. James Fallows has details.
November 11, 2009
Hot Jew-on-Jew Action, Health Care Division
Tablet weighs in on my criticism of Dan Baum. You'll notice -- those of you who pay attention to these things -- that I come out for a single-payer system. But I'm not arguing that there's a "Jewish" position in the health-care debate. The general Jewish proposition is that the poor should be clothed, the hungry fed and the sick healed -- but I believe that there are many possible paths one could follow to achieve those goals. It diminishes Judaism to suggest that a specific political party, or a specific political ideology, is the truly Jewish ideal. One of Dan Baum's sins is to suggest that Joe Lieberman's filibuster threat is somehow anti-Jewish. If Baum could prove to me that Lieberman has no interest in helping the sick get well, then I would agree that the senator is standing in opposition to a basic tenet of Judaism. But he can't prove that. I don't agree with Lieberman at all -- I would like to see the profit motive completely removed from health care in this country -- but I don't think Lieberman is betraying his religion by taking the position he takes.
Baum sent an email to every single Jew on his contacts list asking them to write letters to Senator Joe Lieberman asking him to support health care
reform. This is funny and stupid in many ways. Like: Lieberman
represents American Jews, as a whole? (No, he represents Connecticut
insurance companies. And right-wing Jews.)
The Ineffable Dan Baum's Latest Project
Dan Baum, late of The New Yorker, has sent around an e-mail to every Jew on his list (yes, you read that correctly), asking his fellow tribesmen to write to their wayward brother, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, in order to let him know he's a raving schmuck for threatening to filibuster health care reform legislation. I reprint the e-mail below -- trust me, you have to read this:
From: Dan Baum Subject: Jews
I'm the last guy in the world to try to organize people by religion, but we
Jews may be the only people to whom Senator Joseph Lieberman might
listen. He is threatening to filibuster the health-care bill to remove
the public option. He has been an obvious problem for years, but this
time he can do genuine damage, and it's possible a deluge of calls and
emails from Jews nationwide will give him pause. Please take a minute
and either call his office -- (fair warning, the mailbox was full) or (860) 549-8463, or send him an email... This is the text of the message I used, but you could compose your own:
"As a fellow Jew, I am appalled by your threat to filibuster the health care bill now working its way through the Senate. I appeal to your conscience. Do not block access to affordable health care for millions of Americans. Please support the bill."
This will take only a minute to do. Once you've sent a message to Sen. Lieberman, please forward this email to all the Jews you know. We could make something happen.
Baum may have revealed himself to be an "As-a-Jew," a particular Semitical sub-type. As-a-Jews are people who invoke their heritage only when they feel a need to dump on another Jew, or a Jewish organization, or the Jewish state. The classic formulation is, "As a Jew, I want to tell you how embarrassed I am by (fill-in-the-blank)." It's a low practice, particularly from a person who begins his message by overtly distancing himself from the idea of Jewish peoplehood, and religion in general. At least one person who received the e-mail has responded to Baum (and everyone else on his list) already, dismantling him for this crude appeal:
Hey Dan Baum!
Honored to be on The Jew List and your missive is being forwarded onward!
We are all in favor of your decision to organize
people by religion as a way to influence politics and public opinion.
It's a beautiful and under-exploited stereotype, and if there is
anything we can do to help, please let us know.
We believe the answer to your healthcare concern
may be to get Senator Lieberman to adopt Krewe du Jieux's lower impact
"Gefiltebuster" approach:
Its roots can be
traced back to the short delay at the Passover Seder where everyone
must eat a little something of mysterious cultural origin, before
getting to the brisket.
The Gefiltebuster -- Less filling than the
filibuster, rich in Omega-3, and Kosher to boot -- Chalk up a few
points for Healthcare as we delay along the way!
TELL LIEBERMAN GEFILTEBUSTERS NOT FILIBUSTERS - A HEALTHY WAY TO DELAY!!!
Please note that in the spirit of being the last
guys in the world to organize people by religion, we have made note of
all your hebraic contacts and will have them assimilated into our
Kosher SPAM list at the soonest convenience. They have been BCCed on
this reply to begin the process, and may ask to be removed at any time.
Terrorism is "violence designed to register some protest and/or to
change the outcome of some political issue," says Professor Hoffman.
"Certainly this type of leaderless terrorism is not an organic
phenomenon. Terrorist organizations are actively encouraging people -
through the Internet and other means - to engage in violence of their
own."
November 10, 2009
What the U.S. Military Needs is More Muslims
A Goldblog reader writes:
I read your post on Ft. Hood today, and I have a question: Are you for
having more Muslims in the army, or fewer Muslims? You want the Army to
recruit Muslims because of their language skills (assuming you're
talking about Arab Muslims) but you think that Muslims might pose a
security threat to the U.S. Which one, Goldblog? You can't have it both
ways.
Yes I can! I can have it both ways. There's no contradiction here, I think. I want all sorts of Muslims (people of Arab descent, Iranian descent, Pashtun descent) in our military for all the obvious reasons, including, by the way, because the military can serve as an effective melting pot and break down barriers among different ethnic groups (as it has done so effectively for blacks and whites). But this doesn't mean that soldiers -- of all backgrounds (Timothy McVeigh comes to mind) -- shouldn't, or can't, be screened for dangerous behaviors or beliefs. Of course I want more Muslim soldiers in the American military. What I don't want is anti-American soldiers in the American military.
Robert Kaplan on Europe (Cont'd)
Robert Kaplan wrote to tell me he wants to add
context to the end of his piece on the Berlin Wall that I mentioned earlier. Here's the context:
War can be the worst thing imaginable. And while a society should certainly
never want to go to war, it should nevertheless feel the need to be prepared to
stand for something besides itself; to make a difference, otherwise historical
memory becomes lost, even as pleasure and convenience take over as values in and
of themselves. I am particularly worried about Europe in this regard. Europe
remembers well its centuries of war which it does not want to repeat. That I
understand. But I honestly feel that its low defence budgets are dangerous
in some important ways. One example: as I have reported at length
about Bangladesh and other places in The Atlantic, absolute rises in population
growth in environmentally and seismically fragile areas mean many human beings
are about to be killed or made homeless by Mother Nature in coming decades.
Europe needs an expeditionary capability for military rescue missions in this
regard, and for out-of-area missions in general. It shouldn't place all the
burden on the U.S. and rising Asian military powers to do this. Moreover, Europe
should help out more with sanctions against Iran. It must find a way
to balance against a newly powerful Russia. It isn't sufficiently
doing these things. It is a legitimate worry that Europe's fixation with its own
violent past can go too far, so that it abdicates future international
responsibilities. America needs Europe. In this regard, the gradual emergence of
a Brussels-based European super-state may offer help.
I'm a Yankees Fan Myself
Citi Field is hosting a fundraiser for Hebron's Jewish community. I can think of better causes.
Well, This is Certainly No Way to Win Over the Iranians
If only Nidal Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood killer, had been gay, the Army would have spent quite a bit of time hunting him down. Especially after 9/11, it's exceedingly important for the military to keep gays and lesbians, especially patriotic gays and lesbians with advanced Arabic-language skills, from polluting our military with their gayness. I hope the Nidal Hasan tragedy spurs the military to spend even more time hunting down gay people, and less time looking for jihadists, who are also opposed to homosexuallity.
What is the Lesson of the Ft. Hood Massacre?
Ta-Nehisi, in a post entitled "Mooslim Lovin Media Elites," (which I assume wasn't meant to imply that anyone who questions the motivations, beliefs, behaviors or actions of individual Muslims, or groups of Muslims, is a know-nothing), asks an interesting question in reaction to an earlier post of mine: "If we grant that Hasan was motivated by religion, what does that actually tell us? What is there beyond the fact that people will, at times, interpret religion as a justification to commit heinous acts?" He goes on to write, "That's really my issue. What is the big 'thing' that we should be seeing, in this case? What are those elite blinders preventing us from seeing?"
Let me use an example from my own religious group (I'm Jewish, in case any of you were wondering) to illustrate a possible answer to this question. Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst for the Navy, was convicted of spying on behalf of Israel in 1986. Pollard's actions cast a shadow over many Jews working in the American national security apparatus. Loyal Americans were questioned, and sometimes denied security clearances, simply because they were Jewish, or had visited Israel. The FBI pursued some dubious cases, including the recently-aborted prosecution of two former AIPAC employees, in large part because of fears that another Pollard was lurking somewhere inside the American government.
Was it fair that loyal American Jews had their patriotism questioned by the FBI? No. Was it right of the FBI, in the wake of the Pollard case, to be concerned that Israel, having turned one American Jew into a spy, had turned others? Unfortunately, yes. I'm not excusing the witch-hunts that took place after the Pollard scandal, but I am saying that it would have been a dereliction of duty on the part of the FBI to ignore, because of political correctness, an actual threat. Ultimately, it was the fault of Jonathan Pollard, and the Israeli officials who used him as a spy, that innocent American Jews were suspected of spying for Israel.
So, Maj. Hasan. One of the lessons of this shooting, alas, might be that the military needs to become more aware of the possibility that at least a few of America's Muslim soldiers might succumb to the same impulses that apparently set Hasan on a violent path, and screen, and monitor, accordingly. (This isn't the first time a Muslim soldier has committed violence against his fellow soldiers in the name of Islam). This is a difficult and fraught thing to do, not only because of the risk of discrimination, the sort of discrimination experienced by Jews in the intelligence community after the Pollard affair, but because the military has a real and abiding need to recruit more Muslims, and not fewer, to its ranks, for all the obvious reasons -- language skills and cultural knowledge, for starters.
But I think the evidence is growing that the military ignored some pretty obvious warning signs in Hasan's case, signs that Hasan himself seemed to be providing: The Washington Post reports today on Hasan's extraordinary presentation about jihad to his fellow physicians at Walter Reed. It seems as if he was trying to communicate something to a military that wasn't listening. Here's Ta-Nehisi's "big thing" -- perhaps we should take slightly more seriously the degree to which jihadist thought has penetrated parts of the American Muslim community. Maj. Hasan provided an outline to this sort of thinking:
Under the "Conclusions" page, Hasan wrote that "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam," and that "Muslim Soldiers should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly -- will vary!"
The final page, labeled "Recommendation," contained only one suggestion: "Department of Defense should allow Muslims [sic] Soldiers the option of being released as 'Conscientious objectors' to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.
Europe,
having been liberated from nuclear terror at the conclusion of the Cold
War, proved unable to muster the gumption to deal with Yugoslavia on
its own, or, as the case of Afghanistan shows, to demonstrate much
enthusiasm for any great collective effort. Which leads to the
question: What does the European Union truly stand for besides a
cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to
struggle for, there can be no civil society--only decadence.
Thus, with their patriotism dissipated, European governments can no
longer ask for sacrifices from their populations when it comes to
questions of peace and war. Ironically, we may have gained victory in
the Cold War, but lost Europe in the process.
Did Obama Make Bibi Sweat?
Aluf Benn has a point: He writes that the delay in scheduling a meeting between Obama and Netanyahu in Washington this week was a reflection of the near-constant tension between the two leaders:
The White House wanted Netanyahu to sweat before
being granted an audience with the president, and wanted everyone to
see him perspire. The delays in finding a time to meet, and pushing it to a late hour
- after the news programs on Israeli television - make Netanyahu look
as if Obama threw him a bone. In such circumstances, it is no longer
important what will be said at the meeting, and the extent to which
there will be an attempt to present it as an achievement. The prime
minister of Israel was humiliated before all. ... Netanyahu may be an experienced diplomat and
politician, and Obama may be a novice, but Obama is the president of a
superpower, and Netanyahu represents a small country that depends
greatly on the United States.
November 9, 2009
Is Israel Fair to Religious Minorities?
I'm a critic of the Goldstone report in good measure because of its source -- the hopelessly anti-Israel United Nations, and its farcical Human Rights Council. But not all Israel investigations are created equal. When the United States State Department issues a new report cataloging the Israeli government's double-standard on the protection of holy places, I think we have to pay a bit more attention. But I haven't seen much of a debate, or introspection, about the State Department's findings so far:
The 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law applies to holy sites of all
religious groups within the country and in all of Jerusalem, but the
Government implements regulations only for Jewish sites. Non-Jewish
holy sites do not enjoy legal protection under it because the
Government does not recognize them as official holy sites. At the end
of 2008, there were 137 designated holy sites, all of which were
Jewish. Furthermore, the Government has drafted regulations to
identify, protect, and fund only Jewish holy sites. While well-known
sites have de facto protection as a result of their international
importance, many Muslim and Christian sites are neglected,
inaccessible, or threatened by property developers and municipalities.
The Christian pilgrimage sites around the Sea of Galilee face periodic
threats of encroachment from district planners who want to use parts of
their properties for recreation. In the past, only diplomatic
interventions have forestalled such efforts. Such sites do, however,
enjoy certain protections under the general Penal Law (criminal code),
which makes it a criminal offense to damage any holy site. Following a
2007 order by the High Court to explain its unequal implementation of
the 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law, the Government responded in
March 2008 that specific regulations were not necessary for the
protection of any holy sites. The Government did not explain why it
therefore promulgated regulations for Jewish sites but not for
non-Jewish sites.
This Was Inevitable, Wasn't It?
Iran is going to charge those three doofus American hitchhikers with espionage. Then we'll negotiate their release and Bill Clinton will bring them home and we'll have to call the Iranian government reasonable and compassionate.
Nature Erupts at National Zoo, Humans Aghast
A deer wandered into the lion enclosure at Washington's National Zoo yesterday, and the lions tried to do what lions do: Eat it. This was apparently too much for many in the crowd, as the video below suggests. This occurred at a zoo that sells dead-animal products -- hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken "fingers" -- for humans to eat while observing other animals pace in their cages. .
John Wilkes Booth opened fire on President Abraham Lincoln in
Ford's Theatre in April 1865, the media was puzzled. "True, the actor
was outspoken in his Confederate sympathies and viewed himself as a
Southerner," said someone who knew him, "but that was no reason he
might want Lincoln to be dead." The day before he went on his shooting
spree, Booth hoisted a big Confederate flag outside his hotel room.
After he leaped onto the stage he shouted, "Thus ever to tyrants!" the
motto of the rebel state of Virginia.
November 8, 2009
When Muslims Commit Violence
A consensus seems to have formed here at The Atlantic that the Ft. Hood massacre means not very much at all. Megan McArdle writes that "there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this." James Fallows says: "The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre 'mean'? A decade later, do we 'know' anything about Columbine?" And the Atlantic Wire has already investigated the motivation for the shooting, and released its preliminary findings. Of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Wire states: "A 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, he appears to have not been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage (he is American by nationality), or any related political causes."
It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. This is the second time this year American soldiers on American soil have been gunned down by a Muslim who was reportedly unhappy with America's wars in the Middle East (the first took place in Arkansas, to modest levels of notice). And, of course, this would not be the first instance of an American Muslim soldier killing fellow soldiers over his disagreements with American foreign policy; in 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two officers and wounded fourteen others when he rolled a grenade into a tent in a homicidal protest against American policy.
I am not arguing, of course, that American Muslims, as a whole, are violently unhappy with America (I've argued the opposite, in fact). But I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims. Here's a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.
"I get so angry when I feel people pushing a weight-loss agenda," said Linda Bacon, a nutrition at City College of San Francisco and author of "Health at
Every Size," a book published last year whose title has become the
rallying cry of the fat pride community. "What we're doing in public
health care policy is harmful. We give a direct and clear message that
there's something wrong with being fat."
November 5, 2009
The Origins of Israel's Tech Miracle
Dan Senor and Saul Singer, the authors of the new, best-selling Start-Up Nation, have done the impossible: They've written a book that doesn't examine Israel through the prism of its conflict with the Arabs. Instead, they've produced a fascinating and illuminating look at the reasons Israel has become one of the world's prime incubators of technological innovation. This is a story about Israel, of course, but it's a story with universal implications. "Start-Up Nation" is, among other things, an indispensable business book. I wish I had thought to write it. I spoke with Dan Senor by phone last week, and here is an edited version of our discussion.
Jeffrey Goldberg: This book is a reminder that Israel, despite its many problems -- many of them inflicted from the outside, some self-inflicted -- is a remarkable success story, and I'm wondering what sparked your curiosity about Israel's technological achievements.
Dan Senor: Originally the idea was not to do a book -- when I was in my second year of Harvard Business School in 2001, I took a group of thirty students to Israel, three of them were Jewish, twenty-seven were not, and had no connection to Israel. The idea was to look at the economic opportunities in Israel and also study the history and the politics. It was at a pretty depressing time -- there was a good entrepreneurial economy story there, but it was during the Second Intifada. And I took all these students - to their credit, none of them pulled out even though literally the day we were leaving things were blowing up -- and my classmates were all saying to me, "I get it. There's huge economic opportunity here for people who are willing to invest here and do business here." But even more than that, I was struck by the question of how they pulled it off. It's a very young country, very difficult environment, there are no natural resources, no access to regional capital or regional markets. If you were to paint a picture of the circumstances under which you're not going to have a successful economic developing country, it would be Israel.
JG: One thing about the book that's interesting to me is that it seems that you're trying very hard not to say, 'Well, of course if you put a bunch of Jews in a room, that weird Jewish brain will create something."
DS: We were very self-conscious about that.
JG: Because it's wrong? Because it's stereotypical? Because you don't believe it?
DS: We believe that there are lessons that developing and developed economies can learn from Israel, and that there are prescriptions for the U.S. that can be taken from Israel, and if it is simply about the fact that Jews are smart, well-educated and good at business, it completely undermines the notion that there is anything transferable. We really believe that. We're not naïve; there are certain dynamics that are unique to Israel that cannot be, and should never be, tried elsewhere.
JG: Judaism: Don't try this at home.
DS: Exactly, but we think that's only part of it. There are many elements that absolutely are prescriptive and the moment it becomes about 'Jews are smart,' no one's going to pay attention to the other part. And the other parts are extremely important. For example, we're writing the book, it's September of last year, Lehman blows up, and there's a big debate among economists about productivity gains and how all our economic growth over the last five or ten years was not at all about productivity gains -- it was all about speculative credit, near-zero interest rates -- and we were watching a reversion back to a discussion on the need for basic innovation as the juice for economic growth. And, by the way, the only way you get true innovation into the economy is if it's dominated by small enterprises. And we were struck by this debate, because that's exactly what we were writing about.
JG: One of your arguments is that it's not necessarily Jewish culture that created this, but Israel Defense Force culture, that many of the great entrepreneurs and innovators come out of the Air Force, out of the technical branches of the IDF. And that this is replicable. Is that fair to say?
DS: One, we believe in an anti-hierarchical tolerance for self-criticism -- not only tolerance, almost encouragement.
JG: By the way, it's a well-known Jewish trait.
DS: Shimon Peres told us that Jews have a tendency throughout our history to be dissatisfied. That's a big theme, so this is obviously a big part of IDF culture. I'm of two minds on how applicable this is to the American military. On the one hand, I feel that the Israeli military is just a more entrepreneurial military than any military I know of or that we've studied. I mean, it's just so much more built around improvisation. The fact that when you're being promoted in the Israeli military, your subordinates have input, or can have input, in those decisions. So it's a very entrepreneurial, start-up military. There are very few bosses. The only way you can cultivate that culture and ethos is if you have very few bosses, because the moment you have a lot of bosses, you have a lot of people who need to justify their existence, and they justify their existence by giving commands. I saw this on military bases I've worked on and when I've been in government -- the U.S. military is top-heavy, and you have a lot of people standing around giving orders to sort of justify their existence. We do believe, though, that the American military is changing, it is becoming more entrepreneurial -- not nearly as much as the Israelis, and quite frankly it should never be as entrepreneurial as the Israelis because the Americans have to fight different kinds of wars than the Israelis. Israelis fight all their wars in their own neighborhood, it's a different dynamic. You really need Fed-Ex logistics more than you need Fraud Sciences, which is one of the start-ups we profiled.
JG: We know that Israel excels at innovation, but why is there no Nokia in Israel, a huge manufacturer of hi-tech products?
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, which is the leading American group advocating for an independent Palestine alongside Israel, has a new book out, "What's Wrong With the One-State Agenda?" which does a comprehensive job of demolishing the arguments made by those who think that Israel should be eliminated and replaced by a single state of Jews and Palestinians. He has performed an important service with this book by noting one overwhelming truth about this debate: Virtually no one in Israel wants a single-state between the river and the sea. It's useful to remember this salient fact when listening to the ostensibly reality-based arguments of the one-staters.
I spoke to Ibish about his arguments last week, shortly after he spoke at the J Street conference. Here is an edited version of our conversation:
Jeffrey Goldberg: What were your impressions of the conference?
Hussein Ibish: It was impressive as a first step. My impression is that there's still quite a bit of message-cohesion and message-formulation to be done. It seemed to me to be an insufficiently coherent group of people. The range of people was so large.
JG: You mean on the Zionist spectrum?
HI: I mean people ranging from the sort of centrist-center left, all the way to post-Zionists, anti-Zionists, who were there, too. It's not ultimately a group that's going to form, I think, a functional coalition. Right now, they're finding their feet. This is normal, it's inevitable -- but at a certain point, I think they have to clarify what they are, who their constituency is, what they stand for, who they are, who they're not. They've been more successful in creating a space for themselves as a new voice that is compelling, but at other moments it's looked like where they were simply positioning themselves as the alternative to AIPAC. And my sense of things is that, initially, that they would look too much to their rivals. But sooner rather than later, they're going to have to just move on and start to define themselves in a much more coherent and pro-active way, not just in contrast to the traditional Jewish organizations but also to distinguish themselves from people in the Jewish community whose criticism of Israel makes them anathema to the mainstream of the community. They can't go there and I think they've tried not to go there.
JG: You can't be Zionist and non-Zionist at the same time, in other words.
HI: Exactly. I think it's essential for them. For us, it's not important.
JG: Well, isn't it important to have a pro-Israel, pro-two-state organization in Washington that's credibly Jewish?
HI: It is. But I believe that all of the mainstream organizations are moving in that direction. I think begrudgingly, without enthusiasm, I think they're all getting there, because I think ultimately the only organization that I can think of that is absolutely opposed to a two-state agreement are on the far right, the Zionist Organization of America, which is in favor of the occupation without reservations and, on the left, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is a one-state group all the way and without reservation. It seems to me everybody else occupies some space in the middle without being one-staters and without being flag-waving pro-settlers.
Now, the question is, from our point of view, what's really important is that the Jewish community have a range of dynamic organizations that are effective in advocating for peace based on two states, number one. And number two, that we can work with everybody who is in favor of a two-state solution without any other preconditions. I mean, we don't want to get involved in intra-Jewish rivalries. We want to work with everyone who wants peace based on two states. It's as simple as that. We don't have a huge stake in where J Street ultimately positions itself, but I will say this: The more mainstream it can become, the more powerful and important it will be. I think they should be as mainstream as possible, they should avoid the impression they sometimes give that they're perhaps not being sensitive to fears about Israel's security. There's a real appetite for a more robust, more aggressively pro-peace organization in the Jewish community. But from our perspective, the only people we don't want to talk to are the one-staters and the pro-occupation groups.
JG: But the one-staters are a very marginal group. I think one of the interesting things you do in your book is show very coolly, calmly, the essential ridiculousness of one-state advocacy based on the simple fact that in order to have a successful one-state plan, you need Israeli Jews to want it, and today, not even one percent of Israeli Jews want it.
HI: You could put all of them in a small auditorium.
JG: I don't think you need an auditorium. Talk about these guys, the Tony Judts --
HI: I don't want to be too hard on Judt. Judt put out this argument and then he immediately admitted that it was utopian, that it wasn't serious and he was just doing a thought experiment. And since then, he basically has more or less withdrawn from the conversation Judt has not been a person who suggests that this is a realistic plan and a serious proposal for the future.
There are two fundamental flaws with pro-Palestinian strategic thinking that focuses on the idea of abandoning two states and going for a single state. The first is the question of feasibility, and it's hard to argue with that. Obviously anyone who is familiar with this sees the difficulty, and I would be the first to say that success is not assured by any means. Even a two-state agreement looks, at the moment, like something of a long shot. The difference between the two-state solution and everything else is that yes, it's a long shot, but it would work. And if we could conceivably get it, if we did get it, it would solve the conflict.
The fundamental argument that the one-staters seem to be making, which is that we can't possibly get Israel to end the occupation and relinquish their control of the 22 percent of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) but we will inevitably succeed in getting them to relinquish one hundred percent of the territory under their control. This is a problem of logic. The second thing is that once you've realized this, obviously what you've done is set yourself the task of convincing Jewish Israelis to voluntarily do this. The idea of coercing the Israelis into this through military force is absurd, and it could only really be done through voluntary persuasion. What the one-staters argue, actually, is that they don't have to do that. What they're going to do, they say, is bring the Israelis to their knees.
Andrew's mad at me because I didn't post this on my blog. Obviously, as I told Mother Jones, I wasn't meaning to imply that Trita Parsi is a paid agent of the Iranian regime, or somesuch. I was implying that he has made himself the AIPAC of Iran in Washington. My bad. On the larger question of whether Trita Parsi functions as a lobbyist for the Iranian regime, based on what I know, I'd have to say yes: He has argued consistently against any sanctions against Iran, and an end to sanctions is obviously what the Iranian regime wants. So he is working on behalf of a stated interest of the Iranian government. Yes, he also criticizes Iran's human rights abuses, but it's been suggested recently that it is possible to lobby for a country while criticizing it at the same time. The reason I'm for sanctions is that they represent one of the only possible ways to stop an Israeli (or American, for that matter) attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. An end to sanctions means either a potentially-catastrophic attack or a nuclear-armed Iran, neither which is acceptable to me, and, I presume, to Andrew.
One more thing -- a thank you to Mother Jones's Nick Baumann for this clarifcation: "I don't think Goldberg's a neocon, and I hope this post doesn't imply that he is." I would like to add, nevertheless, that some of my best friends are neocons.
And one more final thing: To those Goldblog readers who have asked me to respond to Andrew's intemperate attack on Israel today, you'll have to pardon me but I have the flu and therefore no energy for any of this right now. Suffice it to say that I know Andrew loves Israel, and he's a Zionist, so I don't actually know how to explain this current level of hostility, but one day I'm going to have the two of us invited to speak together at my synagogue (don't worry, Andrew, it's within bike-distance!) so we can hash this out.
Matt Yglesias is Very Upset
(UPDATE BELOW)
A friend of mine e-mailed me this weekend me to say that I upset Matt Yglesias by nominating him for one of Andrew Sullivan's Yglesias Awards. I had praised Yglesias for recognizing that J Street's conference attracted a certain number of anti-Zionists (or "un-Zionists" in J.J. Goldberg's phrase), and I think Yglesias didn't appreciate such praise by an ultra-Zionist wolf such as myself (and God knows what this post, from Marty Peretz, did to him).
In any case, an answer, of sorts, from Yglesias wasn't long in coming, in the form of this post, attacking me for arguing that Trita Parsi does "leg-work" for the Iranian regime in Washington. I think it's fair to say that Parsi's organization, the National Iranian American Council, functions as a kind of AIPAC for Iran, but this was too much for Yglesias, who calls me shifty and contemptible, etc. etc. All par for the course, including his criticism of me for supporting a war he also initially supported. But then he does something dishonest in his piece, lumping me in with a group of people who support a military strike against Iran:
"Some people, also known as people who know what they're talking about, think an unprovoked US or Israeli preventive military strike on Iran would be a huge gift to the Iranian government and a crushing blow to the opposition. Others, who I hope are liars rather than fools, claim to believe that this is wrong. Parsi is, I know, in the former camp. So it's worth revisiting Jeffrey Goldberg's record as a prognosticator on this sort of question."
Yglesias surely knows that I'm opposed to a military strike on Iran by either the U.S. or Israel for a whole range of reasons. I've been publicly and vocally opposed to a strike for some time. My opposition to military action against Iran can be learned by reading this and this and this, just for starters. I've spoken to Jewish groups inclined to support such an attack and told them why it's a bad idea. I've argued with Israeli cabinet officials about a strike. I suppose that next I could take an ad out on Yglesias's blog trumpeting my opposition to a strike. I'm going to e-mail Yglesias to ask him to acknowledge in his post that I am, in fact, in the Parsi camp(!) when it comes to attacking Iran. It's fine to attack me for things I believe, but this particular bit of criticism by Yglesias is ridiculous.
