UNRWA chief on charm offensive

Note that the UNRWA is directly under the general assembly, which is run as a direct democracy of nations without any formal protections for minorities. The General Assembly discriminates heavily against Israel. Many feel the existence of the UNRWA, an organization exclusively for Palestinian refugees which defines Palestinian refugees differently from all other refugees and which does not aim to resettle them, is intended to prolong the conflict. (cf.) He is clearly being diplomatic and vague, but even the gesture is itself interesting. Where he is clear, it is remarkable.

In one appearance, he says,

Talking about sanctions and boycotts is not going to bring about anything positive

There's also an interview posted at Adi Schwartz (with much commentary from Schwartz, an Israeli journalist) which is somewhat critical of the UNRWA, itself, of Hamas, and of Gazan society.

“We shouldn’t exist after so many years”, says Ging, “and I perfectly understand the Israeli negative view towards my organization, because it is the manifestation of the political failure of the international community to resolve the conflict. Our 60th anniversary was not a moment of celebration but a commemoration of failure because we should not have had to exist after 60 years”.

If this is the manifestation of an underlying problem, then surely that problem is the widespread failure to recognize that Jews have the same rights to self determination as other peoples.

Of imperialism and second campists

I've been thinking this since Noam Chomsky's reply to Mearsheimer and Walt (Why now? I don't know) but I want to commit it, especially the emphasized part below, to paper.

The first thing to note about it is:

But recognizing that M-W took a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion.

I have to wonder why such an unconvincing argument (to Chomsky) would deserve praise and merit (from Chomsky). I've noted before that his explanation for the appeal of M&W looks a lot like Chomsky is accusing M&W of scapegoating Jews for American imperialism:

The reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on its high pinnacle of nobility, "Wilsonian idealism," etc., merely in the grip of an all-powerful force that it cannot escape.

Except Chomsky doesn't seem to recognize the familiar pattern of scapegoating Jews.

M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals, but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis loses much of its content.

What Chomsky seems to appreciate is not the argument, but the target.

Israel, for Chomsky, is a client state of the US, not the other way around. He cites several cases where Israel has furthered the interests of the US or bowed down to the interests of the US. (Here, Chomsky shares the definition of American interests with Mearsheimer and Walt as specifically being national security and business interests. I disagree with that definition.) But if Israel is a client state, it should follow that Israel has interests that we, the Left, ought to liberate Israel from American imperialism. I imagine Chomsky may agree with that so far. I've also seen others write in the same vein about how the Miltary Industrial Complex in the US profits off Israel's conflict. But it's plain that if we are to liberate Israel from American imperialism, then we, as Americans, ought to do a better job of listening to Israelis. Otherwise, we're only presenting a different face of American imperialism; you can't liberate anyone by forcing something on them. Israelis want security, and so American anti-imperialists ought to be concerned with Israeli security. Here, it's also plain that Chomsky disagrees that such a principle ought to be applied to Israel. He isn't interested in exploring how Israelis view their interests, except to criticize and undermine Israelis. It's exactly the sort of stance Moishe Postone singles out. Chomsky isn't interested in anti-imperialism, per se, but a perverted form of anti-imperialism. Chomsky is a second campist -- and here I choose the phrase second campist over similar terms such as Manichean entirely on purpose.

Feel Good Video

What the debate over Israel means

David links to this article in the Forward. His comments are well worth reading. I'd like to add my comments on one particular line, and put that one line more clearly in context.

“Malmo reminds me of the anti-Semitism I felt as a child in Poland before the war,” she [Judith Popinski] told the Forward

Frightening, and I don't doubt it's entirely true. In part, I don't doubt it because I know something about how people described Poland before the war when they actually described it before the war. (Not quite the same as after.) But consider this:

During an interview in his office, Imam Saeed Azams said it was wrong to blame Swedish Jews for Israel’s actions. The wheelchair-bound Azams stressed the importance of teaching young Muslims to stop equating the Jews of Malmo with Israel. But this seemed to include an assumption that Jews, in turn, should not permit themselves to be seen as pro-Israel.

“Because Jewish society in Sweden does not condemn the clearly illegal actions of Israel,” he said, “then ordinary people think the Jews here are allied to Israel, but this is not true.”

I am pro-Israel because I care about having a place to go if things get as bad as Poland before the war. Won't happen here in the Good Ol' US of A? No one would think it would have happened in Sweden. By coincidence, I was born in Lund, according to Google Maps only about 20 minutes away from Malmo.

And I am pro-Israel because I care about having the right to speak out in defense of my life, a right which has been traduced and effectively if not formally restricted in every other society but Israel. That doesn't mean I support every action of the Israeli government or that I am anti-Palestinian, but I certainly support Israel's existence and Israel's right (see David's point about supporting a two-state solution) to provide for it's own defense against very real threats even when I disagree with the decision (as I often do).

Consider if I disagree with this imam on what actions of Israel's are "clearly illegal"? I've seen almost everything Israel does described as illegal and often disagreed. I've seen changes to road signs described as "ethnic cleansing." But should that mean it's a simple and understandable mistake for people to try to kill me, because I was insufficiently rabid in my hatred of Israel? That's certainly a recipe for silencing me and making it easy for various people to falsely claim, "but this is not true" that "the Jews here are allied to Israel." I'm guessing most of the Jews of Sweden, and particularly those fleeing Sweden for Israel, are like most other Jews in the world and see themselves very clearly as "allied" (whatever that means) to Israel. At least every bit as much as anti-Israel activists who attempt to murder Swedish Jews are "allied" to Palestine.

But this conflation, wherein people who support Israel in any visible fashion are responsible for everything Israel does, is not just the framing of one Swedish imam. I won't say who, except that this person will surely have a much bigger effect on the progression of antisemitism in America than that Swedish imam, but I will quote something from a recent Racialicious conversation:

Maybe you would like to elaborate on how arguing that the term “Israeli Apartheid” bars Israeli people from participating? The only way I can see it barring people from participating is if they themselves identify entirely with the Israeli government, something that you yourself go to a great extent to point out is a dangerous assumption about Israeli people.

Of course, the very point of the word Apartheid is to destroy the middle ground on which peace can be built. It is a word about which one is not allowed to have moderate feelings. The word entirely in that quote is entirely meaningless. One is not allowed to have the tiniest positive feelings about Apartheid anything. That's not just the fact of how people understand the word, but it is explicitly the point and argument of the BDS movement that pushes the use of the word and openly declares the aim of making "pariahs" of those who support Israel. Including those who support Israel by living or visiting there. Or performing music or accepting literary awards there. Or even trying to bring Jewish and Palestinian children together to learn conflict resolution skills at summer camp. Think I'm exaggerating on that last one? Sadly, no.

So, of course, one is not allowed to defend Israel from even the tiniest of slanders. One is simply not allowed to disagree. To do so would be to present oneself as allied with ethnic cleansing, as a fair target for hatred and discrimination. Perhaps as a target for murder. (And we're accused of bullying tactics and silencing debate!)

It's not just my life which is potentially at stake in this conversation. It's my right to live, my right to have my life protected by something other than lesser antisemites, my right to speak out in defense of my life. Somehow, dying does not frighten me nearly so much as having these rights taken away. No wonder, when so many people think they can tell me what I'm allowed to think, that the debate over Israel is so emotional and difficult and scary. And when "anti-racists" try to spin that as privilege because my skin is white, fuck that.

Two more, with nuance. Plus one more

Stephen Kinzer on Leonard Lopate. The most interesting thing I heard was that the inclusion of Islamists in Turkish democracy was the end of Islamism as a threat to Turkish democracy. Less interested in the claim that peace talks are counterproductive with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

I'm a little surprised that I like this Tony Judt piece at the NYTimes. He's wrong in some ways that he ought to find embarrassing. Consider, Israel does not have a Constitution, but he claims it does. (Before people think, "OMG, Israel is evil," England doesn't have a Constitution, either.) And though it's a less simply factual matter, there's another way that he's wrong which is more serious. He's wrong, as he always is, as this is a major point for him, about the Israel lobby. "Why else do an overwhelming majority of congressmen roll over for every pro-Israel motion?" In fact, the so-called Israel lobby loses more often than it wins when the issue is significant. "No more than a handful [of congressmen] show consistent interest in the subject." And the lack of interest in the issue is most certainly not the product of Jewish lobbying! He's right to say, "It is one thing to denounce the excessive leverage of a lobby, quite another to accuse Jews of 'running the country.' " But being significantly wrong about how much power Jews have in America is worthy of denunciation.

And, well, Judt is wrong all over the place. But he says a few good things, too. And overall, the intent of the piece is largely right, when he insists that both sides have a point. I'll leave it at that since I keep seeing more to dislike about the piece.

Plus, bonus content! This interview, on Tell Me More:

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of “That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation,” says gay people should stop fighting to uphold what she considers to be the failed institution of marriage.

The issues raised are fasinating --and I'm always for "resisting assimilation"-- but there's a great deal there that I hate about a great deal of "radicalism." I have no question that marriage equality is a step toward equality, even if we allow that not everyone wants to get married and that universal health care is still an important goal. I have two uncles (one is my uncle by marriage to the other) who have gone back and forth on marriage, between viewing it as a "straight thing" they would want no part of and viewing it as an important matter of equality. So, I know people can have mixed views about what the goals of queer rights movements should be. (And would agree with Sycamore that straight America underestimates the anti-marrigage sentiment among queers.) But in the end, my uncles have gotten married in as many places as they could. It seems to me there was a discussion in queer communities about goals and a decision that marriage equality was worth fighting for. Sycamore, herself, goes back and forth. At one point, the decision to focus on marriage equality was made because it was winnable. But at another point it was imposed by gay elites. When radicalism actually derides the choices made by those it claims to represent (scapegoating them as "elites," no less), it has ceased to be viable. I am all for continuing the fights against conservative cultural values and for universal health care (or universal insurance), but Sycamore is wrong to pit these fights against the fight for marriage equality.

Churning Butter

There's a story I came across recently. I'd heard it before, and it made very little sense. But this time I thought of the Beinart piece. And then something I'd heard long ago, "the only rational position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is an irrational optimism." Following recent news, it seems more important. The story begins with two frogs in a bowl of milk. The milk is deep enough and the bowl is high and steep enough that things are clearly hopeless for the two frogs. Already you know how improbable it is, and why I've hated this story. Of the two frogs, one is very smart. Seeing the situation to be hopeless, it allows itself to drown. The other frog is so stupid, it strives furiously until, eventually, its treading churns the milk to butter.

Israelis boarded a Free Gaza ship. A few Israeli soldiers have been injured, and at least 10 anti-Israel activists have been killed. Perhaps as many as 60 have been injured. There are many, many things to say. Too many. A friend posted an article to facebook in which Glenn Greenwald writes:

As Americans suffer extreme cuts in education for their own children and a further deterioration in basic economic security (including Social Security), will they continue to acquiesce to the transfer of billions of dollars every year to the Israelis, who -- unlike Americans -- enjoy full, universal health care coverage?

And that's part of the problem. No, neither Jews nor Israelis are to blame for the lack of an adequate American healthcare system. Despite whatever else Greenwald might say in the article that's absolutely right, it's outrageous and offensive to suggest this, and fuck him.

Hussein Ibish is better. He's wrong to so completely dismiss "Tohar HaNeshek, the 'purity of arms' that the Israeli military boasts of." But he is deeply impressive when he points out:

Flotilla organizers are no doubt shocked, horrified and appalled by the way this has turned out. But if they were engaged in classic civil disobedience, their action has actually produced some version of the intended result. If the point is to provoke a reaction, and indeed an overreaction, to make a point, they have succeeded beyond their wildest imagination.

In fact, the activists were not engaged in "classic civil disobedience." See the discussion here and follow David's link to see the videos here. When the Israelis boarded the ship, they were attacked, and they responded to lethal force with lethal force. As military personal, their capacity to cause harm greatly exceeded that of the activists, but military and police forces always rely on an advantage in force (especially when outnumbered) to prevent escalations. Still, the confrontation stems from the blockade of Gaza. I could, in turn blame that on the rockets from Hamas, but however nuanced I want to be, I refuse to shift blame for these deaths from Israel. However, antisemitic and outrageously one-sided Free Gaza has been, it's close enough to civil disobedience that I can only blame Israel for these deaths.

There is, however, a not-so-nuanced point I do insist on: Nothing can "delegitimize" the idea that Jews have the right to self rule. I am not any less of a Zionist because of this tragedy. Only, I must try harder to churn butter.

Is a cultural boycott "non-violent"?

From the acceptance speech of Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood (via Adam Holland), awarded the Dan David prize in Israel:

We two fiction writers are very small potatoes indeed in the context of the momentous political events now unfolding. But writers everywhere are soft targets. It’s easy to attack them. They don’t have armies, they can’t retaliate. We have both received a number of letters urging and indeed ordering us not to attend, on the grounds that anything connected with Israel is tabu. (Oddly enough, neither the President of Italy, Giorgo Napolitano – winner of the “Past” category for reason and moderation in political affairs – nor the three computer scientists – Leonrad Kleinrock, Gordon Moore, and Michael Rabin – who were awarded in the “Future” category — were targeted by these correspondents.) We have both sent letters to many but not all of the urgers and orderers. (Not all, because in some cases the petitions etc. have appeared online without having been sent to us first.) The letters we have received have ranged from courteous and sad to factual and practical to accusatory, outrageous, and untrue in their claims and statements; some have been frankly libelous, and even threatening. Some have been willing to listen to us, others have not: they want our supposedly valuable “names,” but not our actual voices.

In other words, the all-or-nothings want to bully us into being their wholly owned puppets. The result of such a decision on our part would be – among other things – to turn us into sticks with which to beat other artists into submission, and that we refuse to do. We are familiar with what other artists of many countries have been put through in similar circumstances.

The metaphor of beating others into submission is apt. Even discounting the threats they received as the fringe of a movement (though I don't think it is the fringe), the boycott is fundamentally coercive. It is not about bringing people together. It is not in the tradition of nonviolent movements such as Gandhi's or Martin Luther King, Jr's. At least, not as I understand those movements. Looking through MLK quotes, I find:

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

The "white intifada" has yet to take this step, loving and sacrificing for peace, rejecting hate. I hope it evolves. Perhaps it will evolve as Israelis respond in kind. Perhaps as it becomes less bizarre to Palestinians to reject violence. But for now non-violence is a tactical choice, not a moral decision.

I recently saw the film Budrus. One thing (among many) that stands out is how shocked Ayed Morrar, an organizer of non-violent protests, was that there are Israelis who would join them in protesting the separation barrier. The impression was that he had imagined Israelis as evil. Eventually, peace activists who hope to be truly effective must come to love even those who hate.

I don't say that as someone who embraces non-violence the way Gandhi did; I think it is often the only acceptable option, but not always. In fact, I have real problems with Gandhi's stance on WWII. But I do hope, in part because I believe only non-violence will work, in part because I think violence against Israeli citizens is wrong, that it becomes the dominant strategy among Palestinians. I hope the white intifada continues to grow and evolve.

The cultural boycott against Israel is not about making peace through love and sacrifice. The Montgomery bus boycotts were about proving Blacks to be an integral part of society; the boycott of Israel is about proving Jews to be dispensible in the world. It is about proving the weakness of Jews, incapable of standing up against the world. It is about making Jews weaker by depriving Israel of support. So, we should ask how history will one day view a boycott against a weak minority.

Converging Narratives

So, last night I went to an event at the JCC. It began with a few short film clips and then broke into discussion groups.

Join other young social justice and Israel activists for an exciting evening of short films and an open, facilitated dialogue, which will grapple with the Arab experience in Israel.

A lot comes to mind, including just how open the Jewish community can be to such things. Afterall, this and the previous event were both at the JCC in Manhattan. Also, it's always worth noting how solidly even the leftwing Jews who come to these things stand behind Israel. They're critical but not anti-Zionists by any means. One person, a journalist stationed in Israel for a few years, offered an experience of seeing IDF "purity of arms" in action. At the same time, I'm also participating in a Jewish social justice discussion group, where people are similarly critical but not anti-Zionist. I forget where, but in comments at a blog post discussing this article, someone claimed that when Hannah Arendt thought Israel was truly threatened, in the '73 war, she donated money to the JDL. (For those unfamiliar, the JDL is a reactionary Jewish group, listed by the SPLC as a hate group.) I think most Jews, even many who are awfully critical will similarly turn to hawkish defense if they actually perceive Israel as threatened. Much of the difference between the Jewish "left" and "right" (I'm coming to hate those terms as applied to Israel) is simply the perception of how serious the attack on Israel is.

Anyway, the event was largely about Palestinian narratives. I was a bit surprised none of the clips mentioned the Nakba or dispossession (though the speaker who introduced the event did mention it). I don't know if that's an oversight by the organizers or not, but I do feel it helped me a lot to be less defensive. Instead, two of the three clips focused on the problems of identity. In the third, a Bedouin woman complained specifically that Bedouin children are assimilating, even as she herself was quite thoroughly assimilated.

I wanted to say to her that I understand that complaint, because that's my history, but it's also why I'm a Zionist. Jews everywhere for three thousand years since the Babylonian conquest have had to deal with that very problem. And it's been terrible for us. I want Israel to be a multicultural state where she doesn't have to deal with that, but I also want it to be a Jewish state so Jews don't have to either. Or, at least, so Jews have a choice, in either Israel or the Diaspora, of what kind of society to assimilate to.

boycott as violence

Gershom Gorenberg writes, in a larger piece about Palestinian non-violence (which is, so far, nascent and not really non-violence yet):

Many Israelis believe both that continued rule over the Palestinians is untenable - and that there’s no chance of making peace with the Palestinians. The challenge of effective Palestinian political action is to make Israelis pay more attention to their misgivings about the occupation - while alleviating their fears that peace is just the prelude to the next attack.

I'm going to keep thinking about some of the stuff in the post for a while. I have an attraction to, or at least a willingness to tolerate, some 'revolutionary' violence. Or maybe it's better to say I have an attachment to ridiculing some of the more idiotic (and half-hearted) versions of pacifism. But in the end, there's emotion there that I have to dig up and examine. Violence is surely sometimes necessary, but Gorenberg skewers the attachment many 'radicals' have to violence. It ceases to be a tool and becomes an aesthetic - as surely on the Left as on the Right.

But I wanted to highlight the above quote and put boycotts in that context. Boycotters often claim boycotts are nonviolent, but they are, by their very nature, coercive. They are about power and demonstrating power. I wish more boycotters would accept that as the obvious truth it is.

And boycotts will fail on the two tests Gorenberg offers to measure the effectiveness of violence. It will make Israelis more fearful and they will background their concerns about the occupation. And then the boycott will fail. What then?

Early 20th century in Tel Aviv

An article from JPost up at Point of No Return argues that that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict goes back further than "the occupation."

In 1913, to counter already rife judeophobia and incendiary agitation in the Arab press, Yosef-Eliahu, along with other Arabic-speaking Tel Avivians, founded Hamagen (the shield), an organization dedicated to persuading Arabs that they and Jews share economic and cultural interests and can only improve each other's lot.

I'm afraid a lot of the earliest conflicts have been forgotten, buried under the claim that even early antisemitism among Palestinians was a response to Zionism and particularly the 1919 Balfour declaration. Though it's not quite as infuriating as the claim that the conflict goes back thousands of years, I'm amazed at how many people don't know how far back things go.

Yaacov Lozowick on Gaza's moral failings

Two months after the IDF operation in Gaza, an internal Israeli conversation taking place in Hebrew is being splashed over media outlets the world over, from the New York Times to the Zevener Zeitung, the local newspaper of a townlet west of Hamburg no-one has ever heard of: yet it carried an item about the Israeli discussion. Unremarkably, the reportage, whether measured and calm, breathless and excited, or antagonistic and gleeful at uncovering Israel’s crimes, is uninformed and silly. That the reporters can’t follow the original discussion because of lingual and cultural barriers is obvious; sadly, they seem not to have read the English translation very carefully, either.

Read the whole thing.

Israeli Elections

No, Labor is not dead. No more than Likud was dead last time. Some people are saying the Israeli left voted Kadima to prevent a Likud victory. That's good and bad. Good because it worked. Bad because it didn't work well enough. Likud is one seat short of having the same number of seats as Kadima in the Knesset. Yisrael Beitenu is the next largest contingent. (Fuller results.)

I don't really like that Yisrael Beitenu is being called fascist. First, it means "Our Israel," but it should be understood that it's a largely Russian-Jewish party. For recent immigrants largely hated for using up welfare services, and there was an exaggerated perception that few were really Jewish, to announce "Israel is ours, too" was a progressive politic. Further, they're really far left on a few issues, like LGBT rights. Hypermasculinity was such a big part of fascism, I can't square pro-gay fascism. And they're strongly secular, which is going to really frustrate Shas and the religious right. (Look for a push for civil marriage.) On the other hand, they also push politics that are deeply troubling, like a 'loyalty oath' for all citizens. No way the Supreme Court would uphold such a thing, but I'd be deeply hurt if it manages to pass the Knesset. Just because I find it awkward to call Yisrael Beitenu fascist doesn't mean I don't think they're dangerous far-rightists.

On the other hand, it should be noted that Likud is not the Likud of the past. Netanyahu is still Netanyahu, not quite as right-wing than you might imagine. As Gershom Gorenberg put it (I say him at the 92nd St Y last week), he'd often agree to maybe a quarter of what Clinton would ask for, then scrap it facing pressure from his own party and the Knesset. But beneath Netanyahu, who wanted to run to the center, several far-rightists joined Likud and took over. According to Wikipedia, Moshe Feiglin, who previously founded Zo Arteinu ("This is Our land" - contrast with "Israel is Our Country"), once served 6 months of community service for sedition following civil disobedience in opposition to Oslo.

Between them, though, these three parties have 70 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. Something I haven't seen (in what seems a rush to condemn Israel) is that no coalition will likely last long. I think Israeli governing coalitions have averaged around 3 years since the end of Oslo. This time, there might be new elections in as little as 2 years.

It's hardly surprising that Israel has moved to the right - every nation under attack moves to the right. Now we have to think about strategies for reviving the Left. Hint: If attacks push them to the right, being nice might work the other way.

Taking Sides II

Rebecca posts on some signs from an NYC protest against Cast Lead. Many of these signs are explicitly pro-violence. In other words, it would be a mistake to call this a peace rally. It is, rather, a pro-Hamas rally. I've seen others post similar pictures, including the absolutely not hilarious "Death to All Juice." You can see it says "Zionist" in very small letters in parentheses, as if that makes it ok. Or maybe you can't because it's too small.

Yet a great many people who are genuinely pro-peace may be torn over whether to join such rallies. It certainly seems that there are two sides, and I can imagine that one might feel they have to chose. The pro-Israel signs I've seen posted in various places have generally not been much smarter. The websites I found googling that picture are decidedly Islamophobic.

There certainly are situations where it is not enough to stand on the sidelines with a self-satisfied, principled stance. But there's a problem that there isn't anymore space for a genuinely pro-peace position. And there are plenty of people, I think it's fair to say that in the last 10 years they've mostly not not exclusively been on the anti-Israel side, actively trying destroy whatever space remains. Though some of the pictures I've seen have been posted by the anti-Israel crowd, I haven't seen any anywhere that say things like "Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Peace" or "Salaam, Shalom, Peace." Ten years ago, these were staples of such protests.

I think the most important consideration for peace activists has to be to recover that space. I don't think that can be done by joining these anti-Israel protests. Maybe standing ostentatiously in the middle of the street between the different protestors would be a good strategy.

Just war and criticizing Hamas

Gershom Gorenberg writes about tragedy. Along with some necessary criticism of Israel, I appreciate the inclusion of this paragraph:

Outside of the hammer, actually, Hamas did have some delicate tools in its tool chest. It could, for instance, have proposed indirect negotiations aimed at a two-state solution.That would have caught Israel’s leaders totally off guard, and undermined the political rationale for the siege. I guess that no one in the Gaza leadership considered this for 10 seconds.

Also,

Israel claimed that Hamas wasn’t keeping the agreement. That was true.

It's nice to see somebody who isn't a right-wing Zionist acknowledging that. Hamas didn't stop mortar fire. They didn't (as would be the responsibility of any government claiming legitimacy) stop others from sending rockets. Yet he still frames this within a larger narrative of rising burn injuries during the siege, which I find touching.

Terry Glavin raises questions about proportionality:

In the UK, the editorialists at the Independent wonder whether "counterproductive" rather than "disproportionate" is the better term to deploy in considering, say, a possible ground assault on Gaza: "There are, in any case, problems with the notion of proportionality in situations such as these. No state can be expected to tolerate rockets being launched at its civilians."

Something about proportionality, is that, while it's absolutely central to just war theory, it's ridiculously vague. Ten billion to one is a proportion. So is one tablespoon [butter] to one tablespoon [flour].

Pacifism might be a reasonable alternative. Personally, while I believe in peacefulness and even a radical peacefulness, I'm not a pacifist. But, also, when I look around at the people talking about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I see far too few serious pacifists. So I'll only deal with just war theory here.

What is really meant by proportionality is "in reasonable proportion" What is meant by reasonable is often put off for later discussion. Surely, the word proportional has always implied something different from symmetrical or equal. Though those would qualify as types of proportionality, there's a reason people don't use those terms. There is no rule in just war theory that all violence must intend to result in a draw. So what defines reasonableness? Reasonable to accomplish a desirable end, I would argue. Reasonable to prevent future attacks. In the short term, medium term, or long term? What if efficacy is measured differently on different timescales? The question always leads to more unanswerable questions.

Eamonn McDonagh quotes Fabián Glagovsky:

There is a lot of confusion being put about by those who hate Israel with regard to the question of proportionality. These people make reference to just war theory, of which they have not the slightest understanding. According to some formulations of this theory, military action does indeed have to be proportionate, proportionate to military or political objectives.

Bias in reporting Jewish/Israeli view of Obama

Lisa Goldman has a good post that comes to me via Deborah Lipstadt:

Meanwhile, 65 percent of Israelis who visited a site called If the World Could Vote (for the president of the United States) chose Obama; and on a similar site called The World For, 82 percent of Israelis clicked on Obama.

Amongst Jewish Americans 78 percent, including New York Times columnist Frank Rich, voted for Obama.

And yet, the international media come to the conclusion that, as the IHT put it, “if Israel were on a US map, it would be bright red.”

Look, here’s the Associated Press reporting that Israelis were totally into McCain, by a margin of three-to-one. The LA Times’s correspondent in Israel, Ashraf Khalil, reports the same story on his blog for the newspaper’s website: apparently 76 percent of absentee American voters polled in Israel said they would vote for McCain, and most Israelis were barely controlling their panic at the prospect of an Obama presidency.

So, let me get this straight: 78 percent of Jewish Americans voted for Obama; somewhere between 65 and 82 percent of Israelis who participated in two online polls indicated their preference for Obama; and the Israeli media was practically holding a party for the Democratic candidate on election day. And yet, a sizeable proportion of the international media is reporting that Israelis prefer McCain to Obama by a margin of three-to-one. Doesn’t anyone think this discrepancy a bit odd?

No wonder they want to boycott Israeli academics

This is worth reading. (Unfortunately, I forget where it was recommended to me.)

In short, he says, "the whole argument is absurd." So absurd, in fact, that Yakobson wonders if "the right to national self-determination is some kind of a club with a 'no Jews allowed' sign hanging at the entrance. The principles of national self-determination are widely accepted by the Left worldwide as a universal principle. We support this right when it comes to the Palestinians. Why do many people on the Left refuse to apply this principle to the Jewish people?"

And:

AT THE end of the day, Yakobson and Rubinstein are doves, and their motive for writing the book reflects that sensibility. Efforts to undermine Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state are not just intellectually dishonest, Yakobson argues, but they are actually preventing peace.

"When you regard Israel as an illegitimate foreign element, any peace with it is a humiliation," he says. "The Palestinians look at a map of the Middle East and cannot believe this tiny foreign body is irreversible. Even if part of the leadership accepts the need to make peace with a foreign invader, there will always be significant forces refusing to accept it. [Faced with such a challenge,] it is extremely difficult to use force against your fellow Palestinians in defense of an entity that is a foreign intruder."

Which is why moderate anti-Zionists, who claim their moderation in 'allowing' Israel to continue exist (though it was a mistake in the first place) are being silly. I, for one, would not gladly accept that anyone should 'allow' me to continue to exist.

A broad spectrum of Jewish views

From time to time, I'm dismissed as one among many Jews. Of course, I am merely one among many, but the implication is that my view is hardly representative. The person implying this almost always means that someone like Norman Finkelstein should be included in debate, even though most Jews find him deplorable. There are a lot of problems with this, including that this "wide spectrum" of Jewish views is expected to speak out against the supposed abuses of the Jewish establishment - suggesting that there must be a silent majority of Jews who disagree with the vocal majority Jews. If the vocal majority were actually an insignificant minority, why would there be a need for anyone to speak out? If the silent majority aren't actually a tiny minority, why the need to include them as representative of anything? I thought I'd present a more honest spectrum of Jewish thought. I'm maybe one standard deviation to the left of center. I think I'm probably a fair bit more radical on anti-antisemitism than most Jews, and because of a specific focus on that I don't always speak out against Israeli abuses as often as some others (it's simply a matter of focus), but when it comes to Israel I'm pretty solidly among the Jewish left. Yaacov Lozowick is maybe one standard deviation to the right:

There are a small number of well-known Jewish settlements on the West Bank - Yitzhar, Tapuach and the Jewish Quarter of Hebron spring to mind as the most obvious, but there are a few more, only slightly less malicious places - which are dominated by violent evil men, thugs of the worst degree. These thugs terrorize their Palestinian neighbors, and do so mostly unrestrained by the Israeli security forces who are in charge of those areas. The thugs are a blemish on our face and defilers of our honor, but the long-standing inability or unwillingness of our security forces to stop them is even worse, as they have the power to do so, but don't use it.

So, the vast majority of Jews lie - this should be unsurprising to any serious anti-racist activist - within a fairly reasonable spectrum of reasonableness. Instead of trying to pit me against other Jews as the representative of collective Jewish thought, which is how the demand for additional Jewish voices functions, someone who doesn't know if my views are representative of other Jews should probably settle for dealing with me as an individual.

Sari Nusseibeh in Haaretz

In an interview with Haaretz, well worth reading. He talks about the feeling that time is running out on a two-state solution? The irony is that Israel has often hoped that the settlement of the West Bank would pressure the Palestinians to settle the conflict more quickly. At the same time, Israel has claimed the settlements (except a few of the major ones) are reversible. Meanwhile the Palestinians demand that the settlements be reversed, but use them to pressure the Israelis to end the Occupation before "it's too late." It seems that both sides are playing both sides. (Via Ron Skolnik at Meretz USA.)

playing games with Israel's left and right

Anti-Israel activists often love to talk about the plight of Mizrahim in Israel. Ashkenzi dominate nearly all Jewish institutions including Israel. This is supposedly proof that Israel is fundamentally racist (in a way supposedly different from, say, Iran). Yaacov Lozowick points to this article from YNet News. Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz are vying for head of Kadima.

The first real black candidate (meaning, in this case, Mizrachi, i.e. non Ashkenazi), vs. almost the first woman candidate (Golda, he reminds us, wasn't really much of a woman).

So, I wonder, are all these anti-Israel activists excited about Mofaz? In Amnon Levy's words:

The man who sent oil prices up with idiotic statements about Iran and who irresponsibly escalated our relationship with it. The man who promoted targeted assassinations but insisted on declaring that the IDF is the world’s most moral army. The man who is no stranger to any worn-out cliché and who makes Bibi Netanyahu look like an island of sanity and diplomatic moderation.

Colonial versus Settler States

In Coming out Jewish, Jon Stratton repeatedly refers to Israel as a "settler state." I think it would be good if all those who insist that Israel is a "colonial state" were to adopt that term. To say it is a colonial state is to argue that the Jewish refugees from the Holocaust formed a colonial power. It demolishes any recognition of Jewish suffering and plays into antisemitic views of Jewish power. On the other hand, to say it is a settler state merely, to my mind, points out that most Jews settled in Israel from elsewhere. I think that's accurate without all the baggage.

[Update: David Schraub disagrees in the comments. He's probably right.]