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.

Two bits

Pheobe on Helen Thomas:

For supposedly educated, informed non-Jews today to throw their arms up and ask what the heck these white-as-white Jews were thinking, setting up shop in the Middle East of all places, is, on a historical level, disingenuous.

She refers to the chant of "Go back to Palestine!" As for "supposedly educated," I would also point out that about (but over) half the Jews of Israel are Mizrahim, which means they never had ancestors in Europe. A senior white house correspondent, I would hope, would be aware of both of these things before making any comments on the issue.

Here's Michael Chabon writing in the NYTimes to say that Jews aren't really smarter than anyone else:

Regardless of whether we chose in the end to condemn or to defend the botched raid on the Mavi Marmara, for Jews the first reaction was shock, confusion, as we tried to get our heads around what appeared to be an unprecedented display of blockheadedness.

Albert Einstein was right when he said the only reason Jews weren't as notably blockheaded in just the same way as every other nation on Earth was that the lack of Jewish power made it impossible to notice. Of course, that's a terrible reason to attack Jewish empowerment. But here's Sander Gilman, proving himself to be quite the smarty, back in 2007:

At least they [Jews] have “smartiness,” a quality analogous to and proven by Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”: “truth that comes from the gut, not books.” It isn’t really that Jews are smarter than everyone else; it is just that everyone believes they are.

Here's a relevant bit:

Something very similar takes place within Evangelical Christianity, which envies the Jews—because they were God’s first “chosen people” and are necessary for the plan of the End of Days—but detests Jewish religious practice because the Jews continue to deny Christ. Like Murray, the Evangelicals can never “be” Jews; they remain always a poor simulacrum of Jewish belief or, in Murray’s case, Jewish “smartiness.” Philo-Semitism creates the Jews as a universal and therefore poisoned category. All Jews are…. The same happened by extension to the Israelis after the Six-Day War: they were all powerful and resistant and ethical; since then, and as international sympathy for the Palestinians has grown, when any given Israeli acts against type all are damned as too powerful, too rigid, too corrupt. The stereotype of Super Jew has transformed itself in Jewish barbarity.

The problem with stereotypes is often that failing to conform to them brings outrage. If Israel behaves far better than every other nation in such a situation (an argument for another time, but we have no way of knowing how any other nation would act in such a situation, because no other nation could be), the occasional failing will still be cause for condemnation. That doesn't automatically make such condemnation wrong, but it should make it clear why Israel doesn't always react to condemnation by saying "Oops. Our bad."

Hagee in the Forward

I'm a bit behind on this one, but I recently got an email from Zeek asking if I'd like them to continue their presently suspended coverage of Hagee. A few weeks ago, the Forward published an op-ed by John Hagee in which Hagee defended "Christian Zionism" from charges that it's antisemitic. I have a lot of problems with Christian Evangelical support for Zionism. (For starters, I don't like the term "Christian Zionism.") That includes the hawkishness. Jews who have engaged in dialogue with Evangelicals have said the support for Israel and for Jews was sincere, but many of the charges against Hagee claim that he (and the whole movement, I guess) is flat out lying on a number of issues. This goes beyond questioning whether the movement is as sensitive as it should be toward Jews or whether it is helpful. I don't believe that it is either of these to a sufficient degree, but if that's the nature of the problem, then I've had enough with too many despicable attacks on some Jews because they have found him to be sincere.

Some of the charges against Hagee are far more serious than what I'll deal with here at this time. But if Hagee's followers can be shown that these charges are true, then they will disown him. The goal of discussion should follow from that, but instead, criticism of Hagee is used to prove a whole range of antisemitic stereotypes to discredit "bad Jews" and promote "good Jews."

There is one point where it seems particularly clear to me that Evangelicals are wrongly maligned. Hagee writes:

Like all people of faith, we Christians firmly believe that our religion is true. But we also believe in religious freedom and have enormous respect for the Jewish faith. The first rule adopted by Christians United for Israel was that there would be no proselytizing at our events. CUFI exists only to honor and support the Jewish people, never to convert them.

I don't think it's controversial to say Hagee is, here, both defending himself from real attacks and addressing real concerns among Jews. Neither do I think it's controversial to say that there is work to be done among Christians to more fully realize this goal of refusing to proselytize. I think especially of the disparity between Orrin Hatch's Hannukah song (and that he wears a mezzuzah-inspired necklace) and the continuing Mormon practice (Hatch is Mormon) of baptizing Jews by proxy without consent. Christians who claim to support Jews in the way Hagee and Hatch do could, for instance, lobby the Church of LDS to stop that practice. But I do believe the desire to be sensitive to Jewish concerns is sincere.

My view on this is partly shaped by having had a roommate in college who was a member of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He appeared in every way typical of the conservative Evangelical movement. [UPDATE: At least, the younger part of the movement. In comments, Rebecca mentions Falwell and Robertson. I don't think this post would be true if it were about them.] I had a lot of disagreements with him, including that he thought I was going to Hell. But the reason wasn't that I wouldn't convert to Christianity. His view, the dominant view in conservative Evangelical circles, is that Christ came to broaden the message of G-d, but that His covenant with Jews remained as valid today as it had ever been. In other words, I was going to Hell because I wasn't a very good Jew. If I'd kept kosher and observed the Sabbath, believing in Jesus was optional. That doesn't mean he wouldn't have preferred me to be an "Evangelical Jew" but it wouldn't keep me from Heaven if I didn't believe in Jesus. This replaces the incredibly problematic and historically dominant supercessionist view, that Christianity had replaced Judaism and that the Covenant with the Jewish people had been broken. There is still Supercessionism around, but mainstream Evangelicals have used "supercessionist" as a charge with which to discredit. If Hagee can indeed be shown to be a supercessionist, he will be discredited among his own followers.

Really sucky tropes with long histories, 1

"Jews are responsible for antisemitism"

Today: Israel causes antisemitism. NOT cool to say this. Israel's actions often ought to lead to sharp criticism of Israel's actions -- not to antisemitism.

job cohen

See the NYTimes Magazine piece.

The Labor Party in the Netherlands — which several weeks ago emerged from the endless gray muddle of the country’s multiparty system to take the lead in polls as the nation approaches an election on June 9 — was unveiling its candidates. On a makeshift stage, before banners bearing the party’s logo of a fist inside a rose, stood two people. At the top of the list of candidates — the man responsible for the recent shake-up of Dutch politics, who is making some people in Europe begin to wonder whether he represents a way for mainstream parties on the Continent to successfully combat the swelling tide of populist, anti-immigrant voices — was Job Cohen, who until March was the mayor of Amsterdam. Cohen was raised in a secular Jewish household in the hamlet of Heemstede, not far from Amsterdam; his parents spent World War II in hiding from the Nazis; his paternal grandparents died at Bergen-Belsen. At Cohen’s side, No. 2 on the candidate list, was Nebahat Albayrak, who was born in the central Anatolian region of Turkey and moved as a child to Rotterdam, where her father worked as a scaffold builder.

disproportionate

According to a recent op-ed in the LA Times , Los Angeles County saw it's first confirmed case of the measles in roughly 4 years. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Agatha has killed 146 in Central America and created a sinkhole 200 ft. deep. Turkey kills 19 Kurdish rebels (in Iraq).

So why does Israel get so much attention? There are probably lots of reasons, some better than others. I don't know if I'd put any of those stories ahead of the current Israeli/Gaza crisis if I were an impartial editor, but I do know that the attention paid to Israel in the mainstream media (and often even more so in alternative media) is neither idiosyncratic nor reasoned. At times, I think something Mahmoud Darwish said is particularly relevant: The great disadvantage of the Palestinians is that their enemies are the Jews, while the great advantage of the Palestinians is that their enemies are the Jews.

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.