I try to avoid avowing support for or opposition to Israel because I'm afraid of vitriol from any direction (and believe me, there's plenty to go around).
there is a part of the online left which is so viciously anti-Israel that moderates have been intimidated into silence
That's stupid. I'm not intimidated by anybody online or offline. I don't write much about Israel because there just isn't any solution and I'm so fucking sick of the behavior of every player involved that I'm at the "pox on all your houses" stage.
The fact that Left has been arguing against the stupid and ill advised Iraq invasion for years now may have something to do with the left's lack of praise for israel. The current isreali war seems stupid and ill advised, but I really don't know enough about it to come to a definitive position.
2: I didn't mean to. But I wrote something fairly recently saying something along the lines of "I don't write about Israel much, because I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing," and Drum posted something similar.
All I was endorsing was the idea that, to the extent that social pressure was keeping liberal bloggers from posting about Israel, it wasn't social pressure from Palestinian advocates.
A couple months ago, I decided to talk to a group of pro-Palestinian protesters who were hanging out every weekend on a triangle of sidewalk and park right next to Union Square. One of them was holding a sign which said, inter alia, "Israel out of the Gaza Strip." I noted that Israel had left the Gaza Strip. But she replied that they had not given up their air and water rights, I allowed the truth of that but said she should nevertheless acknowledge Israel's unilateral withdrawal, and I'm not sure why I thought this story was relevant to this thread.
This thread seems vaguely Israel-related, so I'm going to take this opportunity to say that I had a totally weird experience of running into a girl who knew me (I didn't remember her; she was the younger sister of someone I was acquainted with in HS, six years ago, and haven't talked to since) in the middle of London, who accosted me, and when I asked what she was doing in London, she said that she'd been living in Lebanon, but that they just packed up their shit and left. Sigh.
By way of anecdote, I once criticised the OxBlog stance on Israel -- which seemed to be at the time to broadly 'Likudnik' -- on a thread on a certain other blog (whose initials are CT) and was immediately accused of anti-Semitism.
That, and similar incidents, generally mean that I shut up about Israel. Not always, but, for example, I'm always careful to be uber-moderate in what I say because anything less will result in a fairly vitriolic response. Not here, I hasten to say. In other places.
Here's the thing. I don't personally know anyone who defends Hamas or Hezbollah. I do know people who defend the hideous shit Israel does. I feel really fucking bad for your average Palestinian who seems to be caught between crazy-ass extremists on one hand, and a state on the other hand that insists on lumping them in with the crazy-ass extremists and treating them accordingly. I feel slightly less bad for your average Israeli, because what with Israel being a functioning political state, your average Israeli has had plenty of chances to vote for a different government.
So I'm not quite at the "pox on both their houses" point yet. But I'm also not under any illusions that anything I have to say about the situation is going to make one goddamn bit of difference.
I'm more or less in Apo's camp, I think. Or I just don't really care that much. That said, LB and #10 are generally right. Or more specifically, Yglesias is right. Juan Cole is way more strident than I'm comfortable with, but, as I understand it, he was knee-capped for alleged anti-Israel bias more than anything else. That's what actual exercise of power looks like, not angry e-mails.
I can think of a small number UK far-left political blogs that tread uncomfortably close to defending elements of what Hamas or Hezbollah do. However, even those blogs come at the issue from a perspective of reluctance -- given the assymetry in power -- to criticise what they see as the actions of an oppressed people acting against an oppressive state rather than a position of actively condoning, say, Hezbollah missiles. And none of them are the sort of loonies who'd go off and harrass people posting on the side of Israel.
However, more importantly, those blogs are massively outnumbered by blogs that either offer qualified moderate criticism of Israel or absolute and unconditional defence of everything Israel does.
Well, in exchange for his kneecaps Cole retains a full professorship at Michigan, so at least he got a consolation prize. All Ogged got was a lousy gift certificate.
15: Two lousy gift certificates. Plus flowers. And an asbestos-filled teddy bear, which he gave away to the first ugly homeless person he had anonymous sex with after his surgery.
"Judt argued in his essay that Israel is quickly on the way to becoming a "belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno state." The ethnic basis of Israeli laws, Judt said, was counter to the modern, democratic ideals to which Israel holds itself. In place of a Jewish state, he argued, should emerge a binational state with equal rights for all Jews and Arabs currently living in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The response to the essay, "Israel: The Alternative," was fast and furious, with several vehement critics seemingly ready to dismantle Judt, the London native and director of the Remarque Institute at New York University.
In the first weeks after his essay was published, Judt and The New York Review received more than 1,000 letters, many peppered with terms like "antisemite" and "self-hating Jew," and some going so far as to threaten the scholar and his family. Judt was removed from the masthead of The New Republic, where he had been listed as a contributing editor, and condemned by the magazine's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, and other pro-Israel commentators.
Adesnik's claim is so crazy only a Jew would have the chutzpah to make it.
Seriously, I imagine what's going on is that he's spent way too much time in Europe and on liberal university campuses (or some combination of those). That's the only environment in which you could straightfacedly come to believe that there's pressure to criticize Israel. In America, it is, as people have pointed out, just the opposite.
This sort of debate always makes me wonder the sort of cognitive dissonance needed to hold that the left is a) all elite Jews and b) all rabidly pro-Muslim at the same time.
I think leftish bloggers don't post about it because it's a hard problem without a clearly identifiable 'left' position. It's certainly not out of fear of the pro-terrorist radical enforcers, who I imagine go from house to house kneecapping weak liberals with extra firm tofu.
Is it just me, or is this the first time multiple high-profile liberal blogs have paid serious attention to anything written at Oxblog since, oh, 2003 or so? Not that I was complaining about the absence, mind you.
All of the lefty/Jewish criticism of Israel I've ever read has this aura of illicit thrill about it. It all seems very self-consciously counter-cultural. That said, there doesn't seem to be much of it. Anything other than blanket support for Israel still seems to be transgressive, even outside the Jewish community.
Part of it is that the US subsidizes Israel in arms and finances analogously to Syria and Iran do for Hezbollah and Hamas. Alliances are real. Alliances in theory are not immoral, as long as the actions of the players are kosher. But it's part of why the default stance is to be on Israel's side, and why no one argues for the destruction of the Israeli state.
I basically agree with 4; I don't even like hearing punditry about Israel that I agree with (insofar as I'm not just confused), why would I want to get into an argument about it? (Depressing answer.) Also 13.
(Cole didn't get fired from his full professorship at Michigan, though some administrator did express regret that he couldn't do anything about his awful site because it wasn't part of his academic presentation. But he did lose a job he presumably wanted, or at least lost some salary leverage at U. Mich. Not much encouragement for anyone who might someday want a job other than the one they already have. Though it's not at all clear that Yale's decision had anything to do with David Horowitz's mau-mau campaign.)
But also, there are probably enough anti-Israel people in academia that posting pro-Israel stuff could get you crosswise with some jerk somewhere who could mess you up later. Best to stick to safe subjects, like cock jokes.
"Drum and Yglesias think this is nonsense, and I have to agree with them."
I've been avoiding a lot of blog reading in recent days for reasons having nothing to do with the real world, and everything to do with my own life, such as, mostly, toothache, and poverty, and dealing with the confusion from my landlord and contractors as to when my windows will be ripped out and replaced, and so on and so forth.
But, yeah, a huge part of why I've avoided blogging about Israel/Lebanon is because I'm reluctant to take any more beating up than I already get on the topic over my opinions.
It's utterly tiresome, wearying, exhausting, and painful. And it's not because I'm too anti-Israel, but because I'm too pro.
So without having yet read Kevin or Matt, I have to say that you're wrong, from my perspective. I'm so endlessly weary of having to endless research facts to defend Israel in the face of the endless claims of genocide and assault and aggression and alleged links to neocons and alleged desires to launch wars on Iran and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged, that, screw it, I'm beaten down, I don't have the strength.
"Seriously, I imagine what's going on is that he's spent way too much time in Europe and on liberal university campuses (or some combination of those). That's the only environment in which you could straightfacedly come to believe that there's pressure to criticize Israel. In America, it is, as people have pointed out, just the opposite."
Gary, whenever you talk about Israel you always go on about other people's ignorance and you always implicitly or explicitly accuse others of thinking differently from you because they haven't done all the hard work of research and claim an implicit authority for yourself that others lack. The possibility is open, you know, that others have done a fair bit of reading and research and sincerely disagree. What count as facts for you may not count as facts for others or they may assess the importance of some facts versus other facts differently.
The whole genocide thing is a total straw man and the claims of aggression are pretty well-founded by many people's standards of what count as a proportional versus an aggressive response to attacks upon them. I say this as a citizen of a nation that has experienced its fair share of terrorist attacks and I don't buy the claim that Israel's experience is somehow sui generis.
Someone can think, as many critics of Israel do, that their behaviour* falls quite a way below the standard of what is acceptable for a civilised nation -- yes, even one facing a very real terrorist threat -- without thinking that Israelis are genocidal maniacs or the pawns of some wierd neocon conspiracy.
* Current behaviour in Lebanon. Not all of Israel's behaviour -- military or otherwise -- is unreasonable or unfounded.
Thanks for pointing to the Judt and the Levy pieces, Fontana. Gary surely is correct that a pro-Israel stance generates a backlash from certain audiences. Yet I do think it is correct to say that, in the US, a pro-Israel view is closer to the mainstream, and that anti-Israeli statements are under more scrutiny. The Walt/Meirsheimer paper was, I thought, a pretty shoddy effort. The response it generated from the likes of Abe Foxman, however, was appalling. The New Republic's dropping of Judt is likewise shameful. I really know of no parallel cases in which a pro-Israel journalist or academic has been pilloried by mainstream institutions.
29: Gary -- is what's wearing that people are abusing you for being pro-Israel, or that they're disagreeing with you and arguing with them is burdensome? You certainly know more than I do about Israel, and I'd expect if we argued about anything related the effort of explaining what you consider the elementary facts would be tiring and annoying. That still wouldn't mean that I was being abusive.
I'm simply not sure what claim you're making -- do you find that pro-Israel post attract vitriolic hostility? Or just irritating disagreement?
Other note: "But in real life, I know a lot more fervent supporters of Israel than I do the sort of campus-leftists who might be expected to support the destruction of Israel (actually, I've never met anyone in the latter category. I'm sure some exist, but they aren't in my social circle.)"
For gosh sake's, you live in Manhattan. Sheesh! As if this has much to do with most of America.
"Thanks for pointing to the Judt and the Levy pieces, Fontana."
I have to confess that I'm going to skim here, and evacuate. I'll be back in touch later, but, no, as I said, I have no energy at present for the general debate.
Judt is, of course, as I've pointed out many times, a guy who advocates the destruction of Israel. I have no idea what context he was brought up in here, but that's always worth being the starting place when discussing Judt.
Beyond that, within the realm of discussion of Israel existing, and what it should and shouldn't do, and what are proper actions, and strategies, and tactics, there's always, of course, endless room for debate.
I'm bored with discussing my past with Peace Now, Meretz, New Jewish Agenda, etc.
I shouldn't have joined in otherwise. Pretty much the point, though. I have no patience left.
Gary, I agree that Judt's opposition to a two-state solution wouldn't fill me with much confidence were I Israeli. And don't take my thanks to Fontana as endorsement, of course.
Judt is, of course, as I've pointed out many times, a guy who advocates the destruction of Israel
From what I know of Judt, he advocates a binational state encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories with equal rights for both Jewish and Arab inhabitants. This would mean the end of Israel as a strictly Jewish state, but to say that he advocates "the destruction of Israel" seems to imply a rather more extreme position - something closer to Ahmadinejad's "wiped off the map" stance. Now, maybe you've read something by Judt where he calls for expelling all Israelis from the Mideast or something, but I've never heard a view like that attributed to him.
No, I'm pretty sure Judt's position is exactly as you say, SJ, and that Gary interprets that as calling for the destruction of Israel (in which he is not alone).
Yeah, I have a commenter on my blog who thinks that advocating the return of Palestinians to Israel = destruction of Israel. In fact, he seems to literally think that it would result in all Jewish Israelis being killed outright.
Hi. Israel: Jewish state. State in which the Jews can come to live and say "never again" and not depend on others to survive. Jews get to have their own state. Like many other people. Jewish state.
Have I mentioned that I'm an evil Zionist?
Y'know, like I'm evily for a Palestinian state?
(Presumably there are civil rights for everyone in each, although we won't get into, for now, stuff like the Arab members of Knesset, the lack of Jewish members of the PLO, etc. Persuing that sort of thing for now is futile; the basics of two states is what's important for now.) (See, this is why I have absolutely no patience for these discussions. Apologies, again.)
"Yeah, I have a commenter on my blog who thinks that advocating the return of Palestinians to Israel = destruction of Israel. In fact, he seems to literally think that it would result in all Jewish Israelis being killed outright."
How crazy. It's almost as if he was a follower of the Hamas manifesto, or something. Wacky.
"29: Gary -- is what's wearing that people are abusing you for being pro-Israel, or that they're disagreeing with you and arguing with them is burdensome?"
I've searched your post, and the term "abuse" never came up. Please don't move the goalposts.
I'm weary of fighting about Israel.
As for the current war, I've reserved judgment. I said a bunch at ObWi the other week. I'm inclined to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, but that's all. I don't know for sure what's going on, and I don't know for sure how far they're doing right or wrong. And I refuse to be pushed into judgement.
And I feel deeply painful about that. Deeply. Anguishedly.
It would be far easier for me to come out swinging.
Easier, and dumber.
Meanwhile, I have thoughts, and prejudices, and I'm trying to collect knowledge, and evaluate.
I could give preliminary opinions, but it seems to me that that would be less helpful than not.
It's all a tragedy. More than that: I'd only wish people might think carefully. Not because they shouldn't beat the hell out of the Jews when they deserve it (jeebus, I've said a jillion times that Sharon should have been imprisoned as a war criminal, and Begin and Shamir besides), nor because, oh, well screw it, whatever.
But, yeah, a huge part of why I've avoided blogging about Israel/Lebanon is because I'm reluctant to take any more beating up than I already get on the topic over my opinions.
I think that's whence LB formulated her question about abuse.
38: No, I'm pretty sure Judt's position is exactly as you say, SJ, and that Gary interprets that as calling for the destruction of Israel (in which he is not alone).
Usually it comes down to viewing the practical consequences of a binational state as being an inevitable repetition of the Holocaust... and an indulgence of the urge to ascribe malice to people who recommend what seems from a Zionist standpoint to be an obvious recipe for the massacre of the Jews.
It's no wonder that the debate over Israel is so emotional, since the basic disjuncture lies in whether one sees it predominantly as the future hope and security of the Jews, or as (somewhat like Liberia) one of the more unusual and tragic chapters in the often-dishonorable history of Western colonialism. Since colonialism and anti-Semitism both have deservedly poor reputations, a conflict pitting Jewish colonialists against often anti-Semitic regional opponents will almost inevitably bring out the ugly in people... especially because it's often tempting to believe the worst about your interlocutors. After all, the world has no shortage of anti-Semitic loons (on both sides of the debate) and raving us-against-the-wogs racists.
So, I understand why people who first learn about the Palestinian view of the conflict can go overboard in being critical of Israel. And I understand why guys like Gary are so eager to whip out the Eliminationism Stick against guys like Tony Judt. I don't agree with it, but I can understand where it comes from. I've been on both sides of that line.
"I think that's whence LB formulated her question about abuse."
And where teofilo started off at 1 with: "I try to avoid avowing support for or opposition to Israel because I'm afraid of vitriol from any direction (and believe me, there's plenty to go around)."
I mean, yeah, a lot of us, particularly in leftist environments, are sick of being beaten up. Not that I speak for anyone but myself.
But the liberal/left blogger community, of which I like to think I'm mostly a part, isn't precisely filled with defenses of Israel at present.
Should it be?
See, I'm not apt to say.
Funny, that. Not apt to get a lot of defense here, either.
Kinda the point, though.
Meanwhile: flying rats might be more like bats, actually.
Anthropomorpho-- stuff: better if we can or can't spell it?
What you really want for a yard full of feral cats, though, is some cat traps. Your cat trap is pretty much like your bear trap, only smaller. And full of cats.
"Usually it comes down to viewing the practical consequences of a binational state as being an inevitable repetition of the Holocaust... and an indulgence of the urge to ascribe malice to people who recommend what seems from a Zionist standpoint to be an obvious recipe for the massacre of the Jews."
Oh, I don't ascribe malice to those for a binational state, as a rule. Not at all.
Just blissful ignorance, as a rule.
I mean, jeez, sure, in a wonderful world, it's a nice thought.
I've never bonded with mammals much. Smaller mammals, like mice and rabbits, sure. But for me it's mostly been lizards and frogs and goldfish. And tarantulas. A tarantula is like a tiny dog with four extra legs - or it would be, if I didn't hate dogs.
74: All I can remember of that show is cheap FX of a guy turning into a bird, which nonetheless left a primal impression on my squishy, barely-formed brain. Years later I would encounter the Grant Morrison comic Animal Man, assume somehow it was the adaptation, and pick it up, only to be hopelessly confused (it was the one where the aliens defeat the Arab stereotype villain by "erasing" him).
All I remember of "Manimal" were the commercials. And how it was a spectacular flop. Brandon Tartikoff (head of NBC at the time) hosted SNL that year and the whole show was full of "Manimal" jokes.
Jeez. I wish I had this kind of memory for important stuff.
Then there were the great, if somewhat crudely written, Andre Norton novels, about the original Beastmaster, and the other telepaths and such, of the fifties/early sixties, and the horrible, evil, dreadful, horrible, I'll say "horrible" a few more dozen times, way they were made into those unbearably dreadful films of the eighties, that everyone who had cable saw again and again.
And thus a writer of worth, if not a great one, but one with great skills for kids, was ruined for decades to come.
Which is a very long way of saying that I dread even mentioned the word "beastmaster," because it became a legitimate target of Eighties-plus ridicule due to the dreadful movie, while neglecting the fact that Andre Norton was beloved by jillions of readers for past decades.
But, as usual, I digress. (Who, me? Who'd expect that?)
Beastmaster! Wow. Yeah, that movie was seriously on cable all. the. time. I feel like it was in the "USA Up All Night" rotation pretty much constantly. For some reason I associate that movie with Gilbert Gottfrield.
I like the Harry Potter books, but here's what I don't understand. Voldemort is sold as this great huge dire threat not just to the wizards, but to the whole world - but the most powerful spell he can cast is a spell that can kill people one at a time. Now, as far as I can tell, the lowly muggles of the British army alone should be able to take this doofus out with a well-placed airstrike, since there's no amount of hocus pocus that's gonna make the Dark Lord immune to an exploding missile. Hell, a few sneaky commandos armed with machine guns ought to be able to put away this sorry sucker. So what's the big deal?
Oh, jeez: Animal Man. Morrison. Great stuff. And it all inadvertently led into the Crisis....
Animal Man is fantastic. Of course at the time all the Crisis stuff was completely incomprehensible to me; I spent a lot of time assuming that all this "Earth-16" stuff must be referring to something that happened earlier in the series. And later on I just got totally lost. "Wait a minute! Why is Superman a post-apocalyptic super-Nazi grown by the government now?"
"Beastmaster! Wow. Yeah, that movie was seriously on cable all. the. time. "
I figured that that was why poor Andre Norton died not long after. (Okay, it was a fair while after.)
I don't connect the timeline, because it doesn't work at all. It was actually some time after. It's just the facts. Marc Singer. Great stories for kids. Marc Singer. Dead writer.
It doesn't make sense, but one was good and the other wasn't, so there.
Jeez, when I wrote here before about Jim Baen dying, no one said a thing (that I noticed), so I dunno why I should make more sense now.
There was a pro-Israel demonstration in Brookline the other day. There were a few anti-Israel pro Palestinian types, but they were vastly outnumbered. I have the general sense that being pro-Israel is the default iew for most Americans in the US, to the extent they think about the question at all.
My experience in the UK has been that they tend to be much more sympathetic to the Palestinian position, though they are not generally pro-Arab. I was, therefore, a little surprised by nattarGcM ttaM's characterization of the situation there.
I knwo someone who works in public health who says that there are two orthodoxies at his school that must not be chsllenged: (1.) the absolute right if a woman to have an abortion without any restrictions and (2.) the pro-Israel position.
"But that descrives Marvelman exactly, of course."
Um, yeah, the fact that maybe about eighty copies made it into America, and that the lawsuit destroyed all others that it could reach, probably should indicate to me that I shouldn't make references to that stuff, even if it did become legendary in comics fandom.
I think there were some later, rather revised, reprints, though. I didn't quite follow. I only read stuff about it later.
Anyway, not that anyone here cares, and I apologize for being incredibly boring. Not that that's hardly new.
So: anyone going to see The Passion of the Clerks, that is, Clerks II?
re 102: Everyone in their right mind and possession of the facts should be "pro-Palestinian" and "pro-Israel," which is to say, for everyone to have a great life in each of two separate states for each people, I'd think. (Viable borders, economics, contiguousness, defense, etc., yadda yadda.)
Seems obvious, but apparently not entirely.
Meanwhile: I loved Chasing Amy, and I twisted the arm of my lesbian girlfriend-at-the-time to overcome what she'd heard, to consider it, and she liked it then, too. Others?
Man, it happens every time. It's not late in the Rockies (not even midnight) and you oppressors in the East knock off and stop commenting, almost as if it were past 1:30 a.m. your time. Come see the repression inherent in the system!
We laze about reading and what not, and you guys go to sleep on us!
104: See, this is where it starts getting complicated. I see you saying that's it's obvious that two states living in harmony is the right answer, and upthread you say that two peoples living in harmony in one state is the very height of cluelessness, and it starts getting a little hard to figure out when you're reporting the informed opinions of everyone who's paying attention and when you're reporting the strong but possibly debatable opinions of Gary Farber. It can make Israel discussions a bit problematic for those of us who respect your learning but don't necessarily accept all of your premises.
106: it starts getting a little hard to figure out when you're reporting the informed opinions of everyone who's paying attention and when you're reporting the strong but possibly debatable opinions of Gary Farber.
Particularly since, in fact, many of those who fancy themselves as informed and paying attention vigorously rubbish the notion of two states living in harmony for the same reason that they rubbish the notion of a bi-national state. Which in fact is why Israel is so reluctant to allow a viable and independent Palestinian state... thus leading folks like Tony Judt to conclude (with some cause) that no serious attempt to implement the two-state solution will ever be made. And that to seek a just one-state solution is therefore more realistic.
I don't agree with Judt -- in part because I think a "binational state" could easily be made just as much a nightmare for the Palestinians as the current sitch -- but Gary rather oversteps in calling it "blissful ignorance" IMO.
106 - imagine that as of a few years from now North and South America would become one country under a govt with access to the US military might and the US debt and your choice of commitment to economic equality. Oh, and imagine we've been fighting a dirty war against South America for generations, with 100k casualties on our side and a few times more on theirs, and the only way people in New York have been able get their kids to school without the subway being blown up is to build a huge wall along the Rio Grande, and we've been bombing Mexico City a bit less discriminately than some would like and running the Reagan Central American policy for forty years. You think that's likely to work out?
There's a good two-state solution for the I/P problem - Clinton brought something like it to the table a few years ago. The one-state solution is good way to create a new Diaspora following a lot of bloodshed.
Just about a week ago, when Hezbollah had just kidnapped those soldiers and the rockets were beginning to be fired (and we bleeding hearts were all agog over the destruction of Gaza, which appears to have been totally forgotten, poor fuckers), a British "Decent Left" site of my acquaintance posted the question "well O Ye Critics Of Israel, What Should Be Done?"
Quick as a flash and with the rapier wit for which I am known and hated, I replied "this is an unconscionable act of agression and the only possible response for the State of Israel is to bomb power stations and civilian infrastructure elsewhere in the country".
The reply came back "could we have some serious answers, please?"
24 hours later, the self same chaps were explaining to each other why it was obviously necessary to blow up those power stations (one of them even managed to explain that the Liban Lait dairy was a legitimate target because Hezbollah probably drink milk). Myself and a rather nice bunch of Israeli ex-services types who hang around there basically gave up.
"Particularly since, in fact, many of those who fancy themselves as informed and paying attention vigorously rubbish the notion of two states living in harmony for the same reason that they rubbish the notion of a bi-national state."
I read the words, but I don't get the meaning.
Two states: why not? One state: doesn't reflect the national feelings of either Palestinians or Jews, so I don't get it.
"Which in fact is why Israel is so reluctant to allow a viable and independent Palestinian state... thus leading folks like Tony Judt to conclude (with some cause) that no serious attempt to implement the two-state solution will ever be made. And that to seek a just one-state solution is therefore more realistic."
As realistic as would happen after everyone kills each other. Huh?
The notion that either Jews or Palestinians wouldn't settle for a state of their own: "realistic"? WTF?
This connects to history how? Where? On what planet? WTF?
I think that the traditional argument is that Israel won't (or can't) allow a fully viable Palestinian state to sit adjacent to it, and Palestinian leaders won't (or can't) accept a Bantustan-like substitute for a fully viable state.
110 - that would be on Planet The-Iraqis-Will-Welcome-Us-With-Flowers in star system Ushering-In-Democracy-Across-The-Arab-Middle-East in the Pony constellation.
Is there not some room for wondering about whether the whole "reflecting national feelings" thing might be better better classified as part of the problem than part of the solution? I mean, as long as we're into not killing people and ponies and shit, why not imagine a world where people's ancestry wasn't quite so important?
113: "I mean, as long as we're into not killing people and ponies and shit, why not imagine a world where people's ancestry wasn't quite so important?"
Umm, shall we solve the problem of the poor in China by inviting the worst-off 300 million to move to America and become citizens?
114: Cute. But there's still a fair bit of room between "where you were born is pretty important" and "where your great^10 grandparents were born is pretty important," and that's all that I'm suggesting. Or what eb said in 115.
The meaning, Gary, is that --as you must know-- many supporters of Israel vigorously claim that a Palestinian state would be a mere prelude to a sustained attempt to sweep the Jews into the sea. And these are people with some influence. And that influence is part of what drives the dynamic of Israel's clear discomfort with ending the occupation.
You're not one of those people. Good on you. But if you're pretending they don't exist and aren't influential, you should maybe not be talking about how naive Judt is to believe what he believes, you know?
115 - Got any relevant examples? Think there are no relevant counterexamples?
116 - So are the Palestinians like Germany or France? And since when did Germans make up half the French army?
117 - All I'm saying is that one should take human nature into account when proposing to reorganize people's lives - and consider the last 90 or 900 years of history when reorganizning the ME.
115 and 116 are supposed to counterexample each other. The idea that "history simply says X" and people who don't agree with X are ignorant of history is not one I'm sympathetic to.
I don't think either solution - multiethnicity or two states - is obviously more workable than the other. But I wish one of them could be implemented sooner rather than later as peacefully as possible. Also: pony.
123: I think it has to be a two-state solution. I buy the argument about the need for a Jewish homeland; I certainly wouldn't abandon the idea based on Western promises that we won't fuck'em this time.
122 - fair enough - but doesn't history say some things like "simple naive starry-eyed solutions to complex problems don't work"?
123 - I think we came rather close to getting the obviously workable solution - first at the end of the Clinton era, then recently when Olmert was going to take the important stop of giving Abbas 90% of the West Bank.
Can someone who looks at all favorably on the one-state solution give me a broad outline about how Israel's economic goods and military reins would be divided up? How the country's constitution and laws and foreign policy would be set? How Hamas would be integrated into the polity? What would convince Israeli Jews not to leave en masse?
Abstractly speaking, I'm more sympathetic to the idea of homelands not based on ethnicity. Practically speaking, a two-state solution is fine with me and probably (but still, I would say, not obviously) more workable given the conditions on the ground.
It's not always clear from history what was or was not a simple naive starry-eyed solutions to a complex problem. A functioning multiethnic democracy certainly is not a simple thing. Neither is a functioning system or international relations among countries that hate each other's guts.
I'm not sure what you're surprised by. My impression, also, is that the UK populace is more sympathetic to the Palestinian position.
But, even in the context of a more broadly pro-Palestinian political context, I rarely read/hear support for the actions of Hamas or Hezbollah -- with the exception of a few (very) lefty blogs that tread a bit closer to that line than most.
118: I think it's both, and what I'm partly reacting to is Gary's 40 idealizing Israel-as-Jewish-state. I'm skeptical of ethnic claims of entitlement to territory. In general, I tend to think that the justice of territorial claims starts to get very problematic by the time you get past living memory, and maybe somewhat problematic sooner than that.
But Zionist immigration to what is now Israel did happen and Israel does exist. That's history. It's not going to change, and Palestinians aren't any more entitled to boot out Israelis than Israelis are entitled to boot out Palestinians. Any argument that concludes that either Palestinians or Israelis have the right to exclude the other based on their historical connection to the land doesn't work.
So I see the issue as how Israelis and Palestinians can best hope to live together in some semblance of peace and justice, whether "together" involves a border between them or not. In thinking about that, I can readily see how the preservation of Israel's Jewish identity could be of great practical significance, but I have a hard time seeing it as intrinsically good. If the best solution for attaining some semblance of peace and justice is two ethnically-based states, so be it, but if not, not.
125: I don't look all that favorably on the one-state solution, because the obvious answer to most of your questions involves Israel moving from being something of an apartheid state de facto to its becoming one both de facto and de jure. Which is something most of the one-staters don't seem to have thought through.
OTOH, when you see people referring to the state of affairs in the Clinton era as "the close-to-workable solution" (such were the halcyon days in which the "peace process" and the right-wing settler movement moved forward hand-in-hand), much less "unilateral disengagement" plans which involve partial abandonment of territories but leave the military occupation more-or-less intact... well, the two-state solution isn't looking in the greatest of shape, either.
129 says what I was trying to say, but much better.
Incidentally, how does citizenship work in ethnic states for children of parents of different ethnicities? This is a serious question. I don't know how it works in Israel, or anywhere for that matter. It's a slightly different issue than citizenship for immigrants.
131 - "its becoming one both de facto and de jure"
Utter nonsense. And the rest of your comment, if referring to mine above, shows remarkably poor reading comprehension. Oh, and the "'unilateral'" there indicates you weren't following the news. You've hit the trifecta.
As I agree completely with Gary on this issue and he's better qualified to argue about it, I'll shut up now.
133: Yeah, if you don't have anything to offer but bluster about my alleged and curiously non-specific "poor reading comprehension," shutting up is probably a good idea.
I do understand why Gary gets sick of arguing about Israel, I have to say. Thanks for the reminder.
133: Oh, but something you might find helpful, BTW: just prior to the outbreak of the present crisis, realignment was a very hot topic. It's exactly the same thing as unilateral disengagement (the terms are used interchangeably in the press), and the only possible thing you could have been talking about Olmert offering to Abbas.
I don't know much about Israel, but the idea that if someone disagrees they must not have studied enough is pretty laughable, and it's not at all hard to see why that wouldn't be conducive to debate.
When will people learn? Multiethnic democratic states just don't work and never have.
Switzerland.
Canada.
Yes, Canada. Canadians grumble a lot about Quebec, and Quebecois grumble about the Anglophones but one of the nice things about being successful is that you get to grumble at length about very small things.
Finland. Even though a lot of Swedish Finns don't speak Swedish, they're still a recognized minority (about 10 percent).
Even Belgium. The Vlaams Blok is making lots of trouble, but immigration is the reason for their success. As Flemish nationalists they'd still be a fringe party.
None of this helps a bit with Israel-Palestine, though. I'm just shooting down the generalization.
One reason that the Israel question is so tough is that most national states were established by brutal methods during past eras when such methods were normal. The American XIXc is an example, but French treatment of the Alsatians, Bretons, and Basques has been pretty rough at times (though the French were good about making assimilation possible, as I understand) and the British treatment of the Scots and Irish was hardball too.
But partly because of the Holocaust, and also because of decolonisation, the old-fashioned methods are no longer acceptable.
"I certainly wouldn't abandon the idea based on Western promises that we won't fuck'em this time."
This is the whole thing.
"That's history. It's not going to change, and Palestinians aren't any more entitled to boot out Israelis than Israelis are entitled to boot out Palestinians. Any argument that concludes that either Palestinians or Israelis have the right to exclude the other based on their historical connection to the land doesn't work."
129: "118: I think it's both, and what I'm partly reacting to is Gary's 40 idealizing Israel-as-Jewish-state. I'm skeptical of ethnic claims of entitlement to territory."
Jeepers, there was no entitlement there. It was bought hard, with many lives.
"If the best solution for attaining some semblance of peace and justice is two ethnically-based states, so be it, but if not, not."
It's not on offer as a choice. Not from the Jews.
"As I agree completely with Gary on this issue and he's better qualified to argue about it,"
And yet so lazy. So very very lazy. And cowardly, at times. Which is where we started.
Incidentally, I need to check out an assertion I recently read that Israeli Jews were 60% from the Mideast; it's entirely plausible, but, as I said, I've not yet verified it, so I'm not, at this time, sure it's true. But, generally speaking, that whole "you came from Europe" thing ignores all the Syrian Jews, Iranian Jews, etc., endless etc. thing. Sephardim: not exactly insignificant in Israeli politics or polity. (Hey, why did those folks move, anyway? Surely staying in their "one state" was a great option, eh?)
Israel's hard because it's a weird aberration in a lot of ways, including that, as Emerson sort of says, it's a colony-turned-country that started at exactly the time of decolonization. The whole thing is just bizarre, and so people want to wish all the issues away. For some reason, that doesn't seem to work.
In any case, my suspicion is that a workable deal will be put in place sometime in the next fifty years, or Israel will cease to exist in a hundred years. I'm betting on the deal.
When somebody decides to put me in charge of reorganizing the Middle East I might worry about that. Discussing the situation on blogs, not so much. You're skating awfully close to accusing me of antisemitism for expressing views on the policies of the State of Israel, and that's bullshit. Possibly the reason that you don't see liberal bloggers getting mau-maued for not being sufficiently pro-Israel is that you're more in the mau-mauer camp than the mau-mauee camp.
Mmmm. Okay, well, I feel a little bad about telling rilkefan he was better off shutting up in my comment 134. Sorry about that, dude, I was a little tired and cranky. Maybe you have some legit issues with the post in question that you haven't spelled out; I promise not to be a hurter if you tell me what they are.
143: Incidentally, I need to check out an assertion I recently read that Israeli Jews were 60% from the Mideast;
Almanacs usually list Ashkenazim as about 75% of Israeli Jews, and Sephardim as about 25%. I suspect that assertion is wrong. (Ethnic tension between Ashkenazim and Sephardim is one of the dynamics of Israeli life that don't get talked about much, but Anthony La Guardia has a really interesting treatment of it in his book War Without End, which I recommend.)
148 - no blood, no foul, but thanks for your retraction - I said I was shutting up because I felt a case of stridency coming on.
On misreading, I was referring not to the sucky situation in 2000 but to the varieous peace plans discussed at the time giving most of the West Bank to the PNA (plans scuttled in my view by Arafat and his intifada). On "unilateral", I was referring to Olmert's switch to a readiness to negotiate the return of 90% of the West Bank with Abbas. I probably took some umbrage at "partial" - e.g., 99.999% would be "partial", and it seems to me that demands that Israel give up 100% of the territories right now without any way to ensure they don't become another rocket launching pad are not made with the interests of both sides firmly in mind. On the one-state consequence, perhaps I should just say I think it would obviously lead to internecine warfare escalating to the expulsion of Israeli Jews (and quite a few Israeli Arabs for that matter).
146 - it seems to me you can't answer Gary, so you say he's mau-mauing you. He's saying course X leads to peace, all others lead to the destruction of Israel - and you reply que sera, sera. When he says no thanks, you say he's nearly calling you anti-semitic, which is rather the reverse of the risk discussed above - defend Israel well, and you'll get accused of calling those who disagree antisemites.
"We conquered it, so we get to keep it? That really doesn't sound like a moral argument to me."
And yet, no different than that of 99% of other countries.
When time comes that all Americans bail back to Europe (with as much accuracy for that notion) , we can then talk about why the Jews should then do so.
Spaniards out of Mexico. British out of Australia. Russians out of Belarus. French out of Quebec. Etc. Old argument. Jews: not volunteering to be first.
I didn't read 146 as saying "que sera, sera," but rather disagreeing with the statement that "course X leads to peace, all others lead to the destruction of Israel."
That has to be a permissible subject for debate, right?
"When somebody decides to put me in charge of reorganizing the Middle East I might worry about that. Discussing the situation on blogs, not so much. You're skating awfully close to accusing me of antisemitism...."
And yet, no different than that of 99% of other countries.
Except that nothing works like that. We don't say that slavery was used to improve the lot of America 100+ years ago, and so it's OK if it happens in Africa now. Or I don't.
Semi-sovereignty and the existence of Native Americans as domestic dependent nations within the United States has not entailed the destruction of America.
151 - "That has to be a permissible subject for debate, right?"
Sure, but debate means acknowledging when the other guy has carried his point, and not calling him an anti-semite-labeller because he says your preferred solution would have bad consequences for the Jews.
I see that "que sera" is in fact not quite accurate - more "I don't like the way those guys have organized their lives like I have, but if that's the best we can do, ok, if not, not" - which I take as avoiding engaging the argument.
Spaniards out of Mexico. British out of Australia. Russians out of Belarus. French out of Quebec. Etc. Old argument. Jews: not volunteering to be first.
But he hasn't carried his point. He hasn't done anything other than make assertions. (It's possible that this is lazy reading on my point, and I'll welcome a correction.)
I'll let DaveL explain his own comment, but I still don't agree with the reading of 146.
I think people are still citing right-of-conquest laws in border disputes to this day - somewhere in wikipedia, to narrow it down. Of course no one sensible is claiming Israel conquered the West Bank and so deserves to keep it. No one sensible argues about the 67 borders vs the orignial 48 borders, though.
I don't see the charge of anti-semitism, but I think #157 misses the mark (and #143). I take DaveL to be saying that at this stage, on a blog, with people who have no actual power, Jewish preferences aren't folded in. If we could work out what we thought would be a just outcome, or best outcome, then we would address various objections. Moreover, the distance between "offer" and "compelled" is, as we're trying to show in the ME right now, not so great.
164 -- What are you talking about w/d? You live in NYC and (if I don't miss my guess) within a reasonable walk of Washington Square, where pigeons are pandemic, and purring is the noise they make all the time. Walk by sometime and listen to them.
Re the various responses to 146: what I'm trying to get at is that when people talk about Israel's right to exist, they tend to conflate two distinct claims: (1) that the people of Israel have a right to live in peace without their neighbors constantly trying to kill them or drive them out; and (2) that the Jews are entitled to a homeland and that the identity of that homeland as the Jewish state is of paramount importance. I'm fully on board with (1), less so with (2). I recognize that (2) is important to a lot of people that I like and respect, and I don't think it's wrong in the way that, say, South African apartheid was wrong, but ultimately I think that ethnic nationalism isn't a great way for people to organize themselves. That doesn't mean I think we should run around the world trying to stop people from organizing themselves that way, but it does affect how I respond to moral claims based on ethnicity or the history of an ethnic group.
Perhaps I'm over the line in seeing Gary as insinuating anti-Semitism, and if so I apologize, but I don't have a better term for the repeated suggestions that some of us just don't care about bad things happening to Jews.
If I were going to guess, the headline originally contained a quote from a statement by some party that included the word 'killed'. The headline got edited, and the quote got edited down to one word, and no one noticed that leaving the quotes around it no longer made sense.
and then says: No, that's like pigeons, 'cept smaller.
Since, as 166 correctly said, pigeons coo (have you not seen the classic Animaniacs remake of West Side Story featuring "Coo" (e.g., "Be coo, coo boy") ?) and cooing does not sound particularly like purring (more than it sounds like barking, sure, but that can't be our standard), I wrote to 164 to try to make a joke out of 52.
149: I was referring not to the sucky situation in 2000 but to the varieous peace plans discussed at the time giving most of the West Bank to the PNA
Different sides of the debate often find themselves inhabiting incommensurate universes. The (informal) Camp David proposal that Arafat was panned for rejecting offered, in your view, "most of the West Bank" to the PNA, but in my view it offered four disconnected cantons (the word "Bantustans" springs to mind, with reason) surrounded and controlled by Israel. If the latter is true -- and I think it's pretty much a matter of public record -- then it was a patently insulting intepretation of the "two-state solution," and was rejected with good reason.
IMO Olmert's decision to go through the motions of "negotiating" with Abu Mazen -- a leader he had previously (and probably correctly) derided as a "powerless" lame duck -- were more last-minute political theatre than a substantive move away from the concept of realignment unilateral disengagement. I haven't yet found anything that indicates otherwise... but that doesn't mean I couldn't be wrong, of course. It just seems the likeliest explanation given the info I have.
On the one-state consequence, perhaps I should just say I think it would obviously lead to internecine warfare escalating to the expulsion of Israeli Jews
Israeli Jews would be a heavily-militarized majority in any short-term one-state situation and would hold a distinct advantage*. That situation is therefore much more likely to work to the disadvantage of the Arabs than of the Israelis. In the medium- to long-term, enough different things could happen that I don't know if I can talk about "obvious" conclusions with anything like your confidence.
(* This is why so many Israeli predictions of disaster rely on "demographic threat" theories -- projecting Arab birth rates into the future on the assumption that the signal trends of a poor underclass will remain constant.)
150: And yet, no different than that of 99% of other countries.
Other countries also suffer ongoing moral and political struggles with the acts of conquest and settlement that founded them in their current form, arguably the more so the fresher those events are -- and of course many other countries today exist as a result of having successfully fought off colonial and imperial presences. Why should these vagaries of political reality not also apply to Israel and Palestine?
It doesn't, though. Maybe they're just not informed enough, but if the two-state solution is going to work, it's got a long way to go and a lot of deep-seated beliefs to overcome.
Strasmangelo: I actually sympathize a lot with Israel. I just don't think that what they're doing now will actually help them, at least not for more than a few months, and not enough to make it worth the costs to their own interests, let alone those of the Lebanese.
I normally avoid writing about I/P partly because, having lived there, it's something I care a lot about in a way that impedes writing, and partly also because so many people seem to feel compelled to take sides, and I just think: I can understand (in some sense that does not imply approving of) what a lot of people do; I think that leaders on both sides have gotten things horrifyingly wrong; and most of all I hate the tendency to get into assigning blame (which as far as I'm concerned attaches to all sides, though not equally in any given case) instead of trying to figure out what on earth to do.
And even though I'm an ethicist, and have in fact written an entire book on moral responsibility, I hate what people do with blame in this case. So much of it is an attempt to avoid the need to think hard about what to do, I think. Honestly, I can't bear to watch any of those dialogues between Israeli and Palestinian spokespeople anymore, since they always seem to degenerate into 'well, your side did this!' 'how can you say that, when your side did that?, and given the number of people on both sides who are just suffering, I want to scream.
Just so we're not misunderstanding each other, Hilzoy, I wasn't disparaging your post, nor was I attributing a partisan view to it. It was the reply to your post that set me off, representing as it did a viewpoint I simply cannot comprehend ("This was a mistake, and is costing more and more innocent lives every day. Now let's keep it up.") I can imagine how the various sides trapped in this sick debacle are feeling, and I can understand how living in extreme circumstances could drive ordinary people to murder fellow human beings. But my understanding runs out at the guy who's cheering on this pointless waste of human life from thousands of miles away.
I'd never noticed this before, but boy are you correct. Just from this morning's headlines:
'Militants die' in Afghan clash
Uganda urged to probe 'torture'
Ethiopian troops 'are in Somalia'
Glaxo has bird flu 'breakthrough'
Saddam 'forced' back to his trial
With the exception of "torture," none of the quoted bits corresponds to a quote in the article. I still don't understand the practice. Seems like a nervous tic.
Well, I think they scare quote claims that aren't adequately sourced or are reflective of the viewpoint of one party to a disagreement.
That's certainly the case with the "Saddam 'forced ... " article. Saddam claims he was forced. Presumably the prosecution contend he was not.
Ditto with the Glaxo story. Glaxo claim to have made a breakthrough. The BBC is reporting this claim without endorsing it as an actual breakthrough, etc.
Presumably their style book provides for this rather than adding lots of 'claimed' or 'allegedly's to headlines.
This is a theme on the 'Decent Left', who cherry pick every example they can find of the BBC using, for example, terrorist in scare quotes to bolster their assertion that the Auntie is run by moral relativists who don't really oppose terrorism. As you demonstrate here, in fact it's a stylistic tic which is topic independent.
I wish they wouldn't (both the Decent Left and the people who write the BBC style book).
Slol, a lot of traditional conservatives I know (they'd be regarded as rabid liberals in America, but still) would be very happy to scare quote 'conservative' in the context of the present White House.
Where Andersen is very right, however, is that believe it or not, I try to avoid the Middle East whenever possible. Often times, this is impossible, but the result is rarely a good one. The level of invective and refusal to listen are equivalent on both sides, with the caveat being that the pro-Israeli side is approximately 99 times as strong in the United States as the pro-Palestinian side. Whenever I try to say anything remotely nuanced about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I am called vicious and hateful things by right-wing Jews even in respectable places like the Boston Globe editorial pages, where liars like Cathy Young apparently abound, to say nothing of the Weekly Standard, or organizations that are set up explicitly for this purpose like Camera, FlAME and The New Republic. On the other hand I receive quite similar attacks from the other side in letters to The Nation and places like Counterpunch. There was also quite a bit of disturbing leftish anti-Semitism in the comments section of a short post I did recently for the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” Web site.
190-192: Yes, I'm fairly sympathetic tyo wet Tories; I kind of liek Michael Ancram. I do have my Lib-Dem sympathies, but I don't care for their new tough on crime, law-and-order stance; the Sun is never going to support the Lib-Dems. nattarGcM and I would probably disagree on a lot of issues were I in the UK. Here, we'd be mounting the barricades together.
For example, I positively cheered when a bunch of hereditary peers stood up to the Government (is that teh right? Anyway, it was Blair's bill) on identity cards and restrictions on the right to trial by jury. And I think that some of their willingness to do that comes from the fact that they don't face elections. And I've internalized a lot of respect for the concept of noblesse oblige which a true leftist would find distasteful.
192: On Tories deciding that they're Democrats. There are a bunch of weird linsk between British and American politicians where operatives will cross the Atlantic to help out with campaigns. I get the sense that this happens less with people from actual Commonwealth countries, like Canada. There do seem to be Australians who settle in the UK and get involved in politics. There was that horrid woman who was a journalist and then worked for William Hague. I think her name was Amanda Platell.
Also it is really wrong that Piers Morgan was let into this country to be the Simon Cowell character on the new American Idol knock off. I don't see how a career as a disgraced (did I mention taht he was fired?) tabloid editor qualifies one to judge a music contest. Along with his new casual American tieless look he's sporting a really bad hair-do. Save us!
I forgot the main point of my post. Isn't there a Conservative MP who self-identified as Democratic-leaning? He's actually worked for Democratic campaigns despite the strong links between teh Republicans and the Conservatives. And it wasn't a recent development. I think he'd worked for McGovern or someone like that.
194: Out of curiosity I had a look at Alterman's "Comment is Free" article (not one of his better outings; it comes awfully close to being one of those unutterably dreary "let's mount the barricades for Jyllands-Posten" affairs). For the life of me I can't find all the "disturbing leftish anti-Semitism" that supposedly clutters the comment thread. There's plenty of disturbing rightish Islamophobia in there, and some vocal dissenters pointing out that J-P were basically engaged in racebaiting. And there's one guy early on who uses the phrase "dare I say 'zionist.'" Far as I can see, that's about it.
Yes sure, so why has the cultural editor of the danish newspaper which originally published the cartoons, let's call him the 'zionist', refused to publish cartoons which depicted jesus in simialr distasteful manner? Is this yet another zionist propaganda to divert the attention of the public opinions of their crimes against the palestinian people?
Which would make me think, "Hmm. Probably an anti-semite," and this:
used to think well of Eric Alterman's articles, and it may well be that I confused him with another jew.... Sadly, Eric is displaying a common jewofascist agenda in extolling the publication of these cartoons as they serve no other useful purpose.
which is definitely and obviously anti-Semitic. Neither reads obviously leftist, rather than nuts, to me, but I suppose it's a fair assumption that opposition to the publication of the cartoons, where not Muslim, was mostly leftist.
Ah, okay, didn't see those. I'd agree they don't read as obviously leftist (the first in particular doesn't strike me that way), but the second is more plausibly a case of leftish anti-Semitism. So that would make for two, maybe three identifiable instances in the thread.
I briefly broke my rule over a lovely dinner where I sat with a new friend who is the European bureau chief for Al-Jezeera. We had an extremely warm, friendly and informative discussion—although I found some of his views about global Jewish power quite worrisome—until an American leftist—one I actually like—objected to some of my answers to my friends questions in typical dismissive know-it-all Chomsky/Cockburn fashion, instructing me that the Arabs have always wanted peace with Israel, but Israel wouldn’t give it to them, and Mossad is actually doing all the damage that’s being done in the Middle East. I ended that conversation and unfortunately, I cannot help but like that fellow less than I used to.... Anyway, my point is, it’s not generally useful and almost always destructive. Sometimes silence really is golden.
Yeah, but what I'm wondering is how reliable Alterman's elaboration is, given what appears to qualify for him as "quite a bit of disturbing leftish anti-Semitism."
I think he misrepresented the CiF thread he talked about, albeit not necessarily intentionally, and I'm not sure how reliable his reportage of that convo would be either. What, for instance, are the supposedly somewhat sinister "views about global Jewish power" he alludes to? Am I prepared to believe those views actually were "worrisome" on Alterman's say-so? I'm thinking maybe no. Nor, for similar reasons, am I much persuaded by his dismissiveness about the "dismissive Chomsky/Cockburn know-it-all."
I try to avoid avowing support for or opposition to Israel because I'm afraid of vitriol from any direction (and believe me, there's plenty to go around).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:28 PM
I'm a little surprised that you all agree with the premise that leftist bloggers don't write about Israel. This seems quite plainly untrue to me.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:29 PM
I'm a little surprised that you all agree with the premise that leftist bloggers don't write about Israel. This seems quite plainly untrue to me.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:29 PM
there is a part of the online left which is so viciously anti-Israel that moderates have been intimidated into silence
That's stupid. I'm not intimidated by anybody online or offline. I don't write much about Israel because there just isn't any solution and I'm so fucking sick of the behavior of every player involved that I'm at the "pox on all your houses" stage.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:33 PM
The fact that Left has been arguing against the stupid and ill advised Iraq invasion for years now may have something to do with the left's lack of praise for israel. The current isreali war seems stupid and ill advised, but I really don't know enough about it to come to a definitive position.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:36 PM
2: I didn't mean to. But I wrote something fairly recently saying something along the lines of "I don't write about Israel much, because I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing," and Drum posted something similar.
All I was endorsing was the idea that, to the extent that social pressure was keeping liberal bloggers from posting about Israel, it wasn't social pressure from Palestinian advocates.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:37 PM
A couple months ago, I decided to talk to a group of pro-Palestinian protesters who were hanging out every weekend on a triangle of sidewalk and park right next to Union Square. One of them was holding a sign which said, inter alia, "Israel out of the Gaza Strip." I noted that Israel had left the Gaza Strip. But she replied that they had not given up their air and water rights, I allowed the truth of that but said she should nevertheless acknowledge Israel's unilateral withdrawal, and I'm not sure why I thought this story was relevant to this thread.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:45 PM
This thread seems vaguely Israel-related, so I'm going to take this opportunity to say that I had a totally weird experience of running into a girl who knew me (I didn't remember her; she was the younger sister of someone I was acquainted with in HS, six years ago, and haven't talked to since) in the middle of London, who accosted me, and when I asked what she was doing in London, she said that she'd been living in Lebanon, but that they just packed up their shit and left. Sigh.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:49 PM
How's travelling going?
Posted by washerdeyer | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 3:56 PM
By way of anecdote, I once criticised the OxBlog stance on Israel -- which seemed to be at the time to broadly 'Likudnik' -- on a thread on a certain other blog (whose initials are CT) and was immediately accused of anti-Semitism.
That, and similar incidents, generally mean that I shut up about Israel. Not always, but, for example, I'm always careful to be uber-moderate in what I say because anything less will result in a fairly vitriolic response. Not here, I hasten to say. In other places.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:01 PM
Here's the thing. I don't personally know anyone who defends Hamas or Hezbollah. I do know people who defend the hideous shit Israel does. I feel really fucking bad for your average Palestinian who seems to be caught between crazy-ass extremists on one hand, and a state on the other hand that insists on lumping them in with the crazy-ass extremists and treating them accordingly. I feel slightly less bad for your average Israeli, because what with Israel being a functioning political state, your average Israeli has had plenty of chances to vote for a different government.
So I'm not quite at the "pox on both their houses" point yet. But I'm also not under any illusions that anything I have to say about the situation is going to make one goddamn bit of difference.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:06 PM
6: Well, okay, but Drum and Ygesias seem to actually believe Adesnik's right, but he's not. Lefties can't shut up about Israel.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:14 PM
I'm more or less in Apo's camp, I think. Or I just don't really care that much. That said, LB and #10 are generally right. Or more specifically, Yglesias is right. Juan Cole is way more strident than I'm comfortable with, but, as I understand it, he was knee-capped for alleged anti-Israel bias more than anything else. That's what actual exercise of power looks like, not angry e-mails.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:14 PM
re: 11
I can think of a small number UK far-left political blogs that tread uncomfortably close to defending elements of what Hamas or Hezbollah do. However, even those blogs come at the issue from a perspective of reluctance -- given the assymetry in power -- to criticise what they see as the actions of an oppressed people acting against an oppressive state rather than a position of actively condoning, say, Hezbollah missiles. And none of them are the sort of loonies who'd go off and harrass people posting on the side of Israel.
However, more importantly, those blogs are massively outnumbered by blogs that either offer qualified moderate criticism of Israel or absolute and unconditional defence of everything Israel does.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:18 PM
Well, in exchange for his kneecaps Cole retains a full professorship at Michigan, so at least he got a consolation prize. All Ogged got was a lousy gift certificate.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:27 PM
Have we talked about Tony Judt's piece from Haaretz? Also this is interesting. (Hope that's the right link; I'm having trouble with the connection.)
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:32 PM
15: Two lousy gift certificates. Plus flowers. And an asbestos-filled teddy bear, which he gave away to the first ugly homeless person he had anonymous sex with after his surgery.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:42 PM
I can't wait to punch him in the other kidney.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:51 PM
He still has 2/3 of the first one. You have options, Labs.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:53 PM
16: I googled Judt and came up with this:
Forward
Judt's views are, I assume, pretty non-standard. And the response referenced above strikes me as evidence for Yglesias's thesis.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 4:55 PM
Adesnik's claim is so crazy only a Jew would have the chutzpah to make it.
Seriously, I imagine what's going on is that he's spent way too much time in Europe and on liberal university campuses (or some combination of those). That's the only environment in which you could straightfacedly come to believe that there's pressure to criticize Israel. In America, it is, as people have pointed out, just the opposite.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 5:42 PM
This sort of debate always makes me wonder the sort of cognitive dissonance needed to hold that the left is a) all elite Jews and b) all rabidly pro-Muslim at the same time.
I think leftish bloggers don't post about it because it's a hard problem without a clearly identifiable 'left' position. It's certainly not out of fear of the pro-terrorist radical enforcers, who I imagine go from house to house kneecapping weak liberals with extra firm tofu.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 5:48 PM
Is it just me, or is this the first time multiple high-profile liberal blogs have paid serious attention to anything written at Oxblog since, oh, 2003 or so? Not that I was complaining about the absence, mind you.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 6:05 PM
All of the lefty/Jewish criticism of Israel I've ever read has this aura of illicit thrill about it. It all seems very self-consciously counter-cultural. That said, there doesn't seem to be much of it. Anything other than blanket support for Israel still seems to be transgressive, even outside the Jewish community.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 6:32 PM
Part of it is that the US subsidizes Israel in arms and finances analogously to Syria and Iran do for Hezbollah and Hamas. Alliances are real. Alliances in theory are not immoral, as long as the actions of the players are kosher. But it's part of why the default stance is to be on Israel's side, and why no one argues for the destruction of the Israeli state.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 6:43 PM
I basically agree with 4; I don't even like hearing punditry about Israel that I agree with (insofar as I'm not just confused), why would I want to get into an argument about it? (Depressing answer.) Also 13.
(Cole didn't get fired from his full professorship at Michigan, though some administrator did express regret that he couldn't do anything about his awful site because it wasn't part of his academic presentation. But he did lose a job he presumably wanted, or at least lost some salary leverage at U. Mich. Not much encouragement for anyone who might someday want a job other than the one they already have. Though it's not at all clear that Yale's decision had anything to do with David Horowitz's mau-mau campaign.)
But also, there are probably enough anti-Israel people in academia that posting pro-Israel stuff could get you crosswise with some jerk somewhere who could mess you up later. Best to stick to safe subjects, like cock jokes.
I also endorse 23.
Posted by Ttam R. | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 6:44 PM
I don't think the link is free, but the Chronicle of Higher Ed has a bunch of blogger-authored responses to the Cole case including a reply from Cole himself. I haven't read any of them, so I just link neutrally.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:02 PM
27: Yeah, DeLong had posted some excerpts, which is what made me think of Cole in this context.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:06 PM
"Drum and Yglesias think this is nonsense, and I have to agree with them."
I've been avoiding a lot of blog reading in recent days for reasons having nothing to do with the real world, and everything to do with my own life, such as, mostly, toothache, and poverty, and dealing with the confusion from my landlord and contractors as to when my windows will be ripped out and replaced, and so on and so forth.
But, yeah, a huge part of why I've avoided blogging about Israel/Lebanon is because I'm reluctant to take any more beating up than I already get on the topic over my opinions.
It's utterly tiresome, wearying, exhausting, and painful. And it's not because I'm too anti-Israel, but because I'm too pro.
So without having yet read Kevin or Matt, I have to say that you're wrong, from my perspective. I'm so endlessly weary of having to endless research facts to defend Israel in the face of the endless claims of genocide and assault and aggression and alleged links to neocons and alleged desires to launch wars on Iran and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged and alleged, that, screw it, I'm beaten down, I don't have the strength.
This isn't nonsense. This is current life.
And it sucks.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:18 PM
"Seriously, I imagine what's going on is that he's spent way too much time in Europe and on liberal university campuses (or some combination of those). That's the only environment in which you could straightfacedly come to believe that there's pressure to criticize Israel. In America, it is, as people have pointed out, just the opposite."
Alternatively, someone might say this is crazy.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:20 PM
re: 29
Gary, whenever you talk about Israel you always go on about other people's ignorance and you always implicitly or explicitly accuse others of thinking differently from you because they haven't done all the hard work of research and claim an implicit authority for yourself that others lack. The possibility is open, you know, that others have done a fair bit of reading and research and sincerely disagree. What count as facts for you may not count as facts for others or they may assess the importance of some facts versus other facts differently.
The whole genocide thing is a total straw man and the claims of aggression are pretty well-founded by many people's standards of what count as a proportional versus an aggressive response to attacks upon them. I say this as a citizen of a nation that has experienced its fair share of terrorist attacks and I don't buy the claim that Israel's experience is somehow sui generis.
Someone can think, as many critics of Israel do, that their behaviour* falls quite a way below the standard of what is acceptable for a civilised nation -- yes, even one facing a very real terrorist threat -- without thinking that Israelis are genocidal maniacs or the pawns of some wierd neocon conspiracy.
* Current behaviour in Lebanon. Not all of Israel's behaviour -- military or otherwise -- is unreasonable or unfounded.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:31 PM
Thanks for pointing to the Judt and the Levy pieces, Fontana. Gary surely is correct that a pro-Israel stance generates a backlash from certain audiences. Yet I do think it is correct to say that, in the US, a pro-Israel view is closer to the mainstream, and that anti-Israeli statements are under more scrutiny. The Walt/Meirsheimer paper was, I thought, a pretty shoddy effort. The response it generated from the likes of Abe Foxman, however, was appalling. The New Republic's dropping of Judt is likewise shameful. I really know of no parallel cases in which a pro-Israel journalist or academic has been pilloried by mainstream institutions.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:39 PM
29: Gary -- is what's wearing that people are abusing you for being pro-Israel, or that they're disagreeing with you and arguing with them is burdensome? You certainly know more than I do about Israel, and I'd expect if we argued about anything related the effort of explaining what you consider the elementary facts would be tiring and annoying. That still wouldn't mean that I was being abusive.
I'm simply not sure what claim you're making -- do you find that pro-Israel post attract vitriolic hostility? Or just irritating disagreement?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 7:49 PM
Other note: "But in real life, I know a lot more fervent supporters of Israel than I do the sort of campus-leftists who might be expected to support the destruction of Israel (actually, I've never met anyone in the latter category. I'm sure some exist, but they aren't in my social circle.)"
For gosh sake's, you live in Manhattan. Sheesh! As if this has much to do with most of America.
"Thanks for pointing to the Judt and the Levy pieces, Fontana."
I have to confess that I'm going to skim here, and evacuate. I'll be back in touch later, but, no, as I said, I have no energy at present for the general debate.
Judt is, of course, as I've pointed out many times, a guy who advocates the destruction of Israel. I have no idea what context he was brought up in here, but that's always worth being the starting place when discussing Judt.
Beyond that, within the realm of discussion of Israel existing, and what it should and shouldn't do, and what are proper actions, and strategies, and tactics, there's always, of course, endless room for debate.
I'm bored with discussing my past with Peace Now, Meretz, New Jewish Agenda, etc.
I shouldn't have joined in otherwise. Pretty much the point, though. I have no patience left.
Sorry.
Later, best.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:21 PM
Gary, I agree that Judt's opposition to a two-state solution wouldn't fill me with much confidence were I Israeli. And don't take my thanks to Fontana as endorsement, of course.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:29 PM
Author: Gary Farber. Title: "I have nothing to say." Essay length: 15, 000 words.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:36 PM
Judt is, of course, as I've pointed out many times, a guy who advocates the destruction of Israel
From what I know of Judt, he advocates a binational state encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories with equal rights for both Jewish and Arab inhabitants. This would mean the end of Israel as a strictly Jewish state, but to say that he advocates "the destruction of Israel" seems to imply a rather more extreme position - something closer to Ahmadinejad's "wiped off the map" stance. Now, maybe you've read something by Judt where he calls for expelling all Israelis from the Mideast or something, but I've never heard a view like that attributed to him.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:37 PM
No, I'm pretty sure Judt's position is exactly as you say, SJ, and that Gary interprets that as calling for the destruction of Israel (in which he is not alone).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:41 PM
Yeah, I have a commenter on my blog who thinks that advocating the return of Palestinians to Israel = destruction of Israel. In fact, he seems to literally think that it would result in all Jewish Israelis being killed outright.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:54 PM
Hi. Israel: Jewish state. State in which the Jews can come to live and say "never again" and not depend on others to survive. Jews get to have their own state. Like many other people. Jewish state.
Have I mentioned that I'm an evil Zionist?
Y'know, like I'm evily for a Palestinian state?
(Presumably there are civil rights for everyone in each, although we won't get into, for now, stuff like the Arab members of Knesset, the lack of Jewish members of the PLO, etc. Persuing that sort of thing for now is futile; the basics of two states is what's important for now.) (See, this is why I have absolutely no patience for these discussions. Apologies, again.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:55 PM
"Yeah, I have a commenter on my blog who thinks that advocating the return of Palestinians to Israel = destruction of Israel. In fact, he seems to literally think that it would result in all Jewish Israelis being killed outright."
How crazy. It's almost as if he was a follower of the Hamas manifesto, or something. Wacky.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 8:57 PM
Yeah, see, this is why conversations like this are a bad idea.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:01 PM
I don't see anybody accusing you of being evil for having those opinions, Gary, so I'm not sure why you're describing yourself as such.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:09 PM
"29: Gary -- is what's wearing that people are abusing you for being pro-Israel, or that they're disagreeing with you and arguing with them is burdensome?"
I've searched your post, and the term "abuse" never came up. Please don't move the goalposts.
I'm weary of fighting about Israel.
As for the current war, I've reserved judgment. I said a bunch at ObWi the other week. I'm inclined to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, but that's all. I don't know for sure what's going on, and I don't know for sure how far they're doing right or wrong. And I refuse to be pushed into judgement.
And I feel deeply painful about that. Deeply. Anguishedly.
It would be far easier for me to come out swinging.
Easier, and dumber.
Meanwhile, I have thoughts, and prejudices, and I'm trying to collect knowledge, and evaluate.
I could give preliminary opinions, but it seems to me that that would be less helpful than not.
It's all a tragedy. More than that: I'd only wish people might think carefully. Not because they shouldn't beat the hell out of the Jews when they deserve it (jeebus, I've said a jillion times that Sharon should have been imprisoned as a war criminal, and Begin and Shamir besides), nor because, oh, well screw it, whatever.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:10 PM
"Yeah, see, this is why conversations like this are a bad idea."
My thought for years.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:11 PM
But, yeah, a huge part of why I've avoided blogging about Israel/Lebanon is because I'm reluctant to take any more beating up than I already get on the topic over my opinions.
I think that's whence LB formulated her question about abuse.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:15 PM
"Yeah, see, this is why conversations like this are a bad idea."
My thought for years.
Well, if we can just avoid talking about any contentious subject that might come up, then all our problems will be solved.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:15 PM
Kittens: pro or con?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:17 PM
Don't get me started, baa. I fucking hate kittens.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:17 PM
Fascist.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:18 PM
They're like giant purring rats.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:20 PM
"They're like giant purring rats."
No, that's like pigeons, 'cept smaller.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:24 PM
38: No, I'm pretty sure Judt's position is exactly as you say, SJ, and that Gary interprets that as calling for the destruction of Israel (in which he is not alone).
Usually it comes down to viewing the practical consequences of a binational state as being an inevitable repetition of the Holocaust... and an indulgence of the urge to ascribe malice to people who recommend what seems from a Zionist standpoint to be an obvious recipe for the massacre of the Jews.
It's no wonder that the debate over Israel is so emotional, since the basic disjuncture lies in whether one sees it predominantly as the future hope and security of the Jews, or as (somewhat like Liberia) one of the more unusual and tragic chapters in the often-dishonorable history of Western colonialism. Since colonialism and anti-Semitism both have deservedly poor reputations, a conflict pitting Jewish colonialists against often anti-Semitic regional opponents will almost inevitably bring out the ugly in people... especially because it's often tempting to believe the worst about your interlocutors. After all, the world has no shortage of anti-Semitic loons (on both sides of the debate) and raving us-against-the-wogs racists.
So, I understand why people who first learn about the Palestinian view of the conflict can go overboard in being critical of Israel. And I understand why guys like Gary are so eager to whip out the Eliminationism Stick against guys like Tony Judt. I don't agree with it, but I can understand where it comes from. I've been on both sides of that line.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:24 PM
No, that's like pigeons, 'cept smaller.
No, I like pigeons. They've got that neat head-bobbing thing.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:26 PM
And they crap all over the yard.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:26 PM
The pigeons and the feral cats should hang out.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:27 PM
Feral cats are more fun to shoot, though.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:29 PM
In the interests of comity, I suggest you guys return to Israel. Or someone who will not be named is gonna get fucked up.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:31 PM
Cattlemen and ranchers should be friends.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:31 PM
—So, how's the poopin'?
—Not bad, not bad. Nothing like '99, though. God.
—Fuckin' '99, that was some shit.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:31 PM
58: That is, return to talking about Israel.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:31 PM
"I think that's whence LB formulated her question about abuse."
And where teofilo started off at 1 with: "I try to avoid avowing support for or opposition to Israel because I'm afraid of vitriol from any direction (and believe me, there's plenty to go around)."
I mean, yeah, a lot of us, particularly in leftist environments, are sick of being beaten up. Not that I speak for anyone but myself.
But the liberal/left blogger community, of which I like to think I'm mostly a part, isn't precisely filled with defenses of Israel at present.
Should it be?
See, I'm not apt to say.
Funny, that. Not apt to get a lot of defense here, either.
Kinda the point, though.
Meanwhile: flying rats might be more like bats, actually.
Anthropomorpho-- stuff: better if we can or can't spell it?
Animals: more deserving if cute, or not, and why?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:32 PM
Voldemort is gonna get fucked up?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:32 PM
What you really want for a yard full of feral cats, though, is some cat traps. Your cat trap is pretty much like your bear trap, only smaller. And full of cats.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:33 PM
59: With themselves?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:33 PM
Oh, and kittens hell, BTW. The human soul is properly measured by appreciation of the beautiful dance of mating slugs.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:34 PM
Bad Strasmangelo Jones!
I like pigeons too. Also rats. You people are evil.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:34 PM
"Usually it comes down to viewing the practical consequences of a binational state as being an inevitable repetition of the Holocaust... and an indulgence of the urge to ascribe malice to people who recommend what seems from a Zionist standpoint to be an obvious recipe for the massacre of the Jews."
Oh, I don't ascribe malice to those for a binational state, as a rule. Not at all.
Just blissful ignorance, as a rule.
I mean, jeez, sure, in a wonderful world, it's a nice thought.
And ponies for everyone!
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:34 PM
63: Who?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:34 PM
68: Just blissful ignorance, as a rule.
Yeah, or that. Not much of an improvement, innit.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:36 PM
Animals: more deserving if cute, or not, and why?
I've never bonded with mammals much. Smaller mammals, like mice and rabbits, sure. But for me it's mostly been lizards and frogs and goldfish. And tarantulas. A tarantula is like a tiny dog with four extra legs - or it would be, if I didn't hate dogs.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:37 PM
Voldemort is he-who-cannot-be-named in the Harry Potter books, you sockpuppet.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:37 PM
"With themselves?"
I'm fairly sure we all do it with ourselves.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:38 PM
Manimal!
It was utter shit, and I never saw a minute, but you people compel me to say it now.
Because it just fits.
And I'm avoiding other fits.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:42 PM
"Bad Strasmangelo Jones!"
He doesn't answer my e-mail. So: true.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:44 PM
Gary, I barely answer anybody's email. I'm a bad emailer. Also, of late, a terrible blogger and all-around bad human being.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:46 PM
74: Good Lord. Where there really only eight episodes of Manimal?
I could have sworn it ran for years.
And it was shit, of course.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:49 PM
That is, return to talking about Israel.
Glad you clarified. I couldn't figure out what in the world you were trying to say.
isn't precisely filled with defenses of Israel at present.
What's going on currently is pretty difficult to defend.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:53 PM
'Postropher, don't poke the Farber.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:56 PM
74: All I can remember of that show is cheap FX of a guy turning into a bird, which nonetheless left a primal impression on my squishy, barely-formed brain. Years later I would encounter the Grant Morrison comic Animal Man, assume somehow it was the adaptation, and pick it up, only to be hopelessly confused (it was the one where the aliens defeat the Arab stereotype villain by "erasing" him).
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 9:57 PM
72: Oh, I've heard of those. Are they worth reading?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:00 PM
No, I'm glad Apo said that. It needed to be said.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:02 PM
All I remember of "Manimal" were the commercials. And how it was a spectacular flop. Brandon Tartikoff (head of NBC at the time) hosted SNL that year and the whole show was full of "Manimal" jokes.
Jeez. I wish I had this kind of memory for important stuff.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:02 PM
Why are they ripping off the Dwarves, though? I thought those books were about wizards, not dwarves.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:03 PM
80: Ahhh, that was a golden age in television.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:04 PM
"Gary, I barely answer anybody's email. I'm a bad emailer."
I so believe that. That is, I completely do. I have so been there, and done that.
Also, we've been there, and done that.
I'm going to take that as conclusive proof that I know who you are, and shut up. I will never mention, er, y'know.
I just wanted to make sure of that sort of thing, because I'm an oaf. Oaf, oaf, oah, oaf.
Oaf.
Wow, meanwhile, thunderstorms here in Boulder.
And, man, they're happening about every past night in weeks, and projected for the rest of the week.
It's one of the things I lurve about Boulder.
Oh, jeez: Animal Man. Morrison. Great stuff.
And it all inadvertently led into the Crisis....
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:05 PM
The Harry Potter books are rife with magicism and muggle abuse. If you can't cast a spell you might as well be livestock. It's really off-putting.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:07 PM
Gary, let's have none of this HINT HINT HINTing that you've slept with strasmangelo jones. We get it, you're a stud.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:09 PM
SB, it's only off-putting if you can't cast spells, MUGGLE.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:10 PM
Then there were the great, if somewhat crudely written, Andre Norton novels, about the original Beastmaster, and the other telepaths and such, of the fifties/early sixties, and the horrible, evil, dreadful, horrible, I'll say "horrible" a few more dozen times, way they were made into those unbearably dreadful films of the eighties, that everyone who had cable saw again and again.
And thus a writer of worth, if not a great one, but one with great skills for kids, was ruined for decades to come.
Which is a very long way of saying that I dread even mentioned the word "beastmaster," because it became a legitimate target of Eighties-plus ridicule due to the dreadful movie, while neglecting the fact that Andre Norton was beloved by jillions of readers for past decades.
But, as usual, I digress. (Who, me? Who'd expect that?)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:14 PM
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from fascism.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:17 PM
Beastmaster! Wow. Yeah, that movie was seriously on cable all. the. time. I feel like it was in the "USA Up All Night" rotation pretty much constantly. For some reason I associate that movie with Gilbert Gottfrield.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:19 PM
88: A gentleman never asks and a lady never tells, Standpipe.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:19 PM
Neither of those apply at this place.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:25 PM
I like the Harry Potter books, but here's what I don't understand. Voldemort is sold as this great huge dire threat not just to the wizards, but to the whole world - but the most powerful spell he can cast is a spell that can kill people one at a time. Now, as far as I can tell, the lowly muggles of the British army alone should be able to take this doofus out with a well-placed airstrike, since there's no amount of hocus pocus that's gonna make the Dark Lord immune to an exploding missile. Hell, a few sneaky commandos armed with machine guns ought to be able to put away this sorry sucker. So what's the big deal?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:25 PM
Well, "Harry Potter and the Tactical Air Strike" would be less a seven-book series and more of a pamphlet.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:29 PM
Oh, jeez: Animal Man. Morrison. Great stuff. And it all inadvertently led into the Crisis....
Animal Man is fantastic. Of course at the time all the Crisis stuff was completely incomprehensible to me; I spent a lot of time assuming that all this "Earth-16" stuff must be referring to something that happened earlier in the series. And later on I just got totally lost. "Wait a minute! Why is Superman a post-apocalyptic super-Nazi grown by the government now?"
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:32 PM
The same thing as #96, said in 1000 times as many words.
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:34 PM
Dude, don't link to He-who-must-not-be-named.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:36 PM
"Beastmaster! Wow. Yeah, that movie was seriously on cable all. the. time. "
I figured that that was why poor Andre Norton died not long after. (Okay, it was a fair while after.)
I don't connect the timeline, because it doesn't work at all. It was actually some time after. It's just the facts. Marc Singer. Great stories for kids. Marc Singer. Dead writer.
It doesn't make sense, but one was good and the other wasn't, so there.
Jeez, when I wrote here before about Jim Baen dying, no one said a thing (that I noticed), so I dunno why I should make more sense now.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:37 PM
"Wait a minute! Why is Superman a post-apocalyptic super-Nazi grown by the government now?"
No, no, no, I didn't say "Miracleman/Marvelman."
(I actually read the originals via a roomate in the mid-eighties, but never mind.)
But that descrives Marvelman exactly, of course.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:40 PM
There was a pro-Israel demonstration in Brookline the other day. There were a few anti-Israel pro Palestinian types, but they were vastly outnumbered. I have the general sense that being pro-Israel is the default iew for most Americans in the US, to the extent they think about the question at all.
My experience in the UK has been that they tend to be much more sympathetic to the Palestinian position, though they are not generally pro-Arab. I was, therefore, a little surprised by nattarGcM ttaM's characterization of the situation there.
I knwo someone who works in public health who says that there are two orthodoxies at his school that must not be chsllenged: (1.) the absolute right if a woman to have an abortion without any restrictions and (2.) the pro-Israel position.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:47 PM
"But that descrives Marvelman exactly, of course."
Um, yeah, the fact that maybe about eighty copies made it into America, and that the lawsuit destroyed all others that it could reach, probably should indicate to me that I shouldn't make references to that stuff, even if it did become legendary in comics fandom.
I think there were some later, rather revised, reprints, though. I didn't quite follow. I only read stuff about it later.
Anyway, not that anyone here cares, and I apologize for being incredibly boring. Not that that's hardly new.
So: anyone going to see The Passion of the Clerks, that is, Clerks II?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:50 PM
re 102: Everyone in their right mind and possession of the facts should be "pro-Palestinian" and "pro-Israel," which is to say, for everyone to have a great life in each of two separate states for each people, I'd think. (Viable borders, economics, contiguousness, defense, etc., yadda yadda.)
Seems obvious, but apparently not entirely.
Meanwhile: I loved Chasing Amy, and I twisted the arm of my lesbian girlfriend-at-the-time to overcome what she'd heard, to consider it, and she liked it then, too. Others?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 10:56 PM
Man, it happens every time. It's not late in the Rockies (not even midnight) and you oppressors in the East knock off and stop commenting, almost as if it were past 1:30 a.m. your time. Come see the repression inherent in the system!
We laze about reading and what not, and you guys go to sleep on us!
It's not even half past 11 out here!
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 11:28 PM
104: See, this is where it starts getting complicated. I see you saying that's it's obvious that two states living in harmony is the right answer, and upthread you say that two peoples living in harmony in one state is the very height of cluelessness, and it starts getting a little hard to figure out when you're reporting the informed opinions of everyone who's paying attention and when you're reporting the strong but possibly debatable opinions of Gary Farber. It can make Israel discussions a bit problematic for those of us who respect your learning but don't necessarily accept all of your premises.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-24-06 11:36 PM
106: it starts getting a little hard to figure out when you're reporting the informed opinions of everyone who's paying attention and when you're reporting the strong but possibly debatable opinions of Gary Farber.
Particularly since, in fact, many of those who fancy themselves as informed and paying attention vigorously rubbish the notion of two states living in harmony for the same reason that they rubbish the notion of a bi-national state. Which in fact is why Israel is so reluctant to allow a viable and independent Palestinian state... thus leading folks like Tony Judt to conclude (with some cause) that no serious attempt to implement the two-state solution will ever be made. And that to seek a just one-state solution is therefore more realistic.
I don't agree with Judt -- in part because I think a "binational state" could easily be made just as much a nightmare for the Palestinians as the current sitch -- but Gary rather oversteps in calling it "blissful ignorance" IMO.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:05 AM
106 - imagine that as of a few years from now North and South America would become one country under a govt with access to the US military might and the US debt and your choice of commitment to economic equality. Oh, and imagine we've been fighting a dirty war against South America for generations, with 100k casualties on our side and a few times more on theirs, and the only way people in New York have been able get their kids to school without the subway being blown up is to build a huge wall along the Rio Grande, and we've been bombing Mexico City a bit less discriminately than some would like and running the Reagan Central American policy for forty years. You think that's likely to work out?
There's a good two-state solution for the I/P problem - Clinton brought something like it to the table a few years ago. The one-state solution is good way to create a new Diaspora following a lot of bloodshed.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:10 AM
Just about a week ago, when Hezbollah had just kidnapped those soldiers and the rockets were beginning to be fired (and we bleeding hearts were all agog over the destruction of Gaza, which appears to have been totally forgotten, poor fuckers), a British "Decent Left" site of my acquaintance posted the question "well O Ye Critics Of Israel, What Should Be Done?"
Quick as a flash and with the rapier wit for which I am known and hated, I replied "this is an unconscionable act of agression and the only possible response for the State of Israel is to bomb power stations and civilian infrastructure elsewhere in the country".
The reply came back "could we have some serious answers, please?"
24 hours later, the self same chaps were explaining to each other why it was obviously necessary to blow up those power stations (one of them even managed to explain that the Liban Lait dairy was a legitimate target because Hezbollah probably drink milk). Myself and a rather nice bunch of Israeli ex-services types who hang around there basically gave up.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:27 AM
"Particularly since, in fact, many of those who fancy themselves as informed and paying attention vigorously rubbish the notion of two states living in harmony for the same reason that they rubbish the notion of a bi-national state."
I read the words, but I don't get the meaning.
Two states: why not? One state: doesn't reflect the national feelings of either Palestinians or Jews, so I don't get it.
"Which in fact is why Israel is so reluctant to allow a viable and independent Palestinian state... thus leading folks like Tony Judt to conclude (with some cause) that no serious attempt to implement the two-state solution will ever be made. And that to seek a just one-state solution is therefore more realistic."
As realistic as would happen after everyone kills each other. Huh?
The notion that either Jews or Palestinians wouldn't settle for a state of their own: "realistic"? WTF?
This connects to history how? Where? On what planet? WTF?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:28 AM
Gary,
I think that the traditional argument is that Israel won't (or can't) allow a fully viable Palestinian state to sit adjacent to it, and Palestinian leaders won't (or can't) accept a Bantustan-like substitute for a fully viable state.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:33 AM
110 - that would be on Planet The-Iraqis-Will-Welcome-Us-With-Flowers in star system Ushering-In-Democracy-Across-The-Arab-Middle-East in the Pony constellation.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:34 AM
Is there not some room for wondering about whether the whole "reflecting national feelings" thing might be better better classified as part of the problem than part of the solution? I mean, as long as we're into not killing people and ponies and shit, why not imagine a world where people's ancestry wasn't quite so important?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:35 AM
113: "I mean, as long as we're into not killing people and ponies and shit, why not imagine a world where people's ancestry wasn't quite so important?"
Umm, shall we solve the problem of the poor in China by inviting the worst-off 300 million to move to America and become citizens?
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:42 AM
When will people learn? Multiethnic democratic states just don't work and never have.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:43 AM
The French-German border not a zone of bitter contention? That'll never happen.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:45 AM
114: Cute. But there's still a fair bit of room between "where you were born is pretty important" and "where your great^10 grandparents were born is pretty important," and that's all that I'm suggesting. Or what eb said in 115.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:45 AM
117: The situation at issue is really more the former than the latter, though.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:48 AM
Oh my.
Okay, really quick to 110:
I read the words, but I don't get the meaning.
The meaning, Gary, is that --as you must know-- many supporters of Israel vigorously claim that a Palestinian state would be a mere prelude to a sustained attempt to sweep the Jews into the sea. And these are people with some influence. And that influence is part of what drives the dynamic of Israel's clear discomfort with ending the occupation.
You're not one of those people. Good on you. But if you're pretending they don't exist and aren't influential, you should maybe not be talking about how naive Judt is to believe what he believes, you know?
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:49 AM
Or in other words, what SCTM says in 111. I don't know what rilkefan is on about, sorry.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:51 AM
115 - Got any relevant examples? Think there are no relevant counterexamples?
116 - So are the Palestinians like Germany or France? And since when did Germans make up half the French army?
117 - All I'm saying is that one should take human nature into account when proposing to reorganize people's lives - and consider the last 90 or 900 years of history when reorganizning the ME.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:56 AM
115 and 116 are supposed to counterexample each other. The idea that "history simply says X" and people who don't agree with X are ignorant of history is not one I'm sympathetic to.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:01 AM
I don't think either solution - multiethnicity or two states - is obviously more workable than the other. But I wish one of them could be implemented sooner rather than later as peacefully as possible. Also: pony.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:03 AM
123: I think it has to be a two-state solution. I buy the argument about the need for a Jewish homeland; I certainly wouldn't abandon the idea based on Western promises that we won't fuck'em this time.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:12 AM
122 - fair enough - but doesn't history say some things like "simple naive starry-eyed solutions to complex problems don't work"?
123 - I think we came rather close to getting the obviously workable solution - first at the end of the Clinton era, then recently when Olmert was going to take the important stop of giving Abbas 90% of the West Bank.
Can someone who looks at all favorably on the one-state solution give me a broad outline about how Israel's economic goods and military reins would be divided up? How the country's constitution and laws and foreign policy would be set? How Hamas would be integrated into the polity? What would convince Israeli Jews not to leave en masse?
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:15 AM
Abstractly speaking, I'm more sympathetic to the idea of homelands not based on ethnicity. Practically speaking, a two-state solution is fine with me and probably (but still, I would say, not obviously) more workable given the conditions on the ground.
It's not always clear from history what was or was not a simple naive starry-eyed solutions to a complex problem. A functioning multiethnic democracy certainly is not a simple thing. Neither is a functioning system or international relations among countries that hate each other's guts.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:23 AM
re: 102
I'm not sure what you're surprised by. My impression, also, is that the UK populace is more sympathetic to the Palestinian position.
But, even in the context of a more broadly pro-Palestinian political context, I rarely read/hear support for the actions of Hamas or Hezbollah -- with the exception of a few (very) lefty blogs that tread a bit closer to that line than most.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:23 AM
Too many typos in 126.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:24 AM
118: I think it's both, and what I'm partly reacting to is Gary's 40 idealizing Israel-as-Jewish-state. I'm skeptical of ethnic claims of entitlement to territory. In general, I tend to think that the justice of territorial claims starts to get very problematic by the time you get past living memory, and maybe somewhat problematic sooner than that.
But Zionist immigration to what is now Israel did happen and Israel does exist. That's history. It's not going to change, and Palestinians aren't any more entitled to boot out Israelis than Israelis are entitled to boot out Palestinians. Any argument that concludes that either Palestinians or Israelis have the right to exclude the other based on their historical connection to the land doesn't work.
So I see the issue as how Israelis and Palestinians can best hope to live together in some semblance of peace and justice, whether "together" involves a border between them or not. In thinking about that, I can readily see how the preservation of Israel's Jewish identity could be of great practical significance, but I have a hard time seeing it as intrinsically good. If the best solution for attaining some semblance of peace and justice is two ethnically-based states, so be it, but if not, not.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:26 AM
129 gets it right, imho.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:30 AM
125: I don't look all that favorably on the one-state solution, because the obvious answer to most of your questions involves Israel moving from being something of an apartheid state de facto to its becoming one both de facto and de jure. Which is something most of the one-staters don't seem to have thought through.
OTOH, when you see people referring to the state of affairs in the Clinton era as "the close-to-workable solution" (such were the halcyon days in which the "peace process" and the right-wing settler movement moved forward hand-in-hand), much less "unilateral disengagement" plans which involve partial abandonment of territories but leave the military occupation more-or-less intact... well, the two-state solution isn't looking in the greatest of shape, either.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:34 AM
129 says what I was trying to say, but much better.
Incidentally, how does citizenship work in ethnic states for children of parents of different ethnicities? This is a serious question. I don't know how it works in Israel, or anywhere for that matter. It's a slightly different issue than citizenship for immigrants.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:38 AM
131 - "its becoming one both de facto and de jure"
Utter nonsense. And the rest of your comment, if referring to mine above, shows remarkably poor reading comprehension. Oh, and the "'unilateral'" there indicates you weren't following the news. You've hit the trifecta.
As I agree completely with Gary on this issue and he's better qualified to argue about it, I'll shut up now.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:47 AM
133: Yeah, if you don't have anything to offer but bluster about my alleged and curiously non-specific "poor reading comprehension," shutting up is probably a good idea.
I do understand why Gary gets sick of arguing about Israel, I have to say. Thanks for the reminder.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:54 AM
133: Oh, but something you might find helpful, BTW: just prior to the outbreak of the present crisis, realignment was a very hot topic. It's exactly the same thing as unilateral disengagement (the terms are used interchangeably in the press), and the only possible thing you could have been talking about Olmert offering to Abbas.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:03 AM
I endorse 129 and the first half of 131.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 6:04 AM
I don't know much about Israel, but the idea that if someone disagrees they must not have studied enough is pretty laughable, and it's not at all hard to see why that wouldn't be conducive to debate.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 6:29 AM
When will people learn? Multiethnic democratic states just don't work and never have.
Switzerland.
Canada.
Yes, Canada. Canadians grumble a lot about Quebec, and Quebecois grumble about the Anglophones but one of the nice things about being successful is that you get to grumble at length about very small things.
Finland. Even though a lot of Swedish Finns don't speak Swedish, they're still a recognized minority (about 10 percent).
Even Belgium. The Vlaams Blok is making lots of trouble, but immigration is the reason for their success. As Flemish nationalists they'd still be a fringe party.
None of this helps a bit with Israel-Palestine, though. I'm just shooting down the generalization.
Posted by . | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 6:40 AM
I'm just shooting down the generalization.
The generalization was sarcasm, as was the following comment by the same person.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 6:44 AM
That was me.
One reason that the Israel question is so tough is that most national states were established by brutal methods during past eras when such methods were normal. The American XIXc is an example, but French treatment of the Alsatians, Bretons, and Basques has been pretty rough at times (though the French were good about making assimilation possible, as I understand) and the British treatment of the Scots and Irish was hardball too.
But partly because of the Holocaust, and also because of decolonisation, the old-fashioned methods are no longer acceptable.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 6:49 AM
Whoops.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 6:50 AM
"I certainly wouldn't abandon the idea based on Western promises that we won't fuck'em this time."
This is the whole thing.
"That's history. It's not going to change, and Palestinians aren't any more entitled to boot out Israelis than Israelis are entitled to boot out Palestinians. Any argument that concludes that either Palestinians or Israelis have the right to exclude the other based on their historical connection to the land doesn't work."
This is the rest of it.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 9:09 AM
129: "118: I think it's both, and what I'm partly reacting to is Gary's 40 idealizing Israel-as-Jewish-state. I'm skeptical of ethnic claims of entitlement to territory."
Jeepers, there was no entitlement there. It was bought hard, with many lives.
"If the best solution for attaining some semblance of peace and justice is two ethnically-based states, so be it, but if not, not."
It's not on offer as a choice. Not from the Jews.
"As I agree completely with Gary on this issue and he's better qualified to argue about it,"
And yet so lazy. So very very lazy. And cowardly, at times. Which is where we started.
Incidentally, I need to check out an assertion I recently read that Israeli Jews were 60% from the Mideast; it's entirely plausible, but, as I said, I've not yet verified it, so I'm not, at this time, sure it's true. But, generally speaking, that whole "you came from Europe" thing ignores all the Syrian Jews, Iranian Jews, etc., endless etc. thing. Sephardim: not exactly insignificant in Israeli politics or polity. (Hey, why did those folks move, anyway? Surely staying in their "one state" was a great option, eh?)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 9:21 AM
Israel's hard because it's a weird aberration in a lot of ways, including that, as Emerson sort of says, it's a colony-turned-country that started at exactly the time of decolonization. The whole thing is just bizarre, and so people want to wish all the issues away. For some reason, that doesn't seem to work.
In any case, my suspicion is that a workable deal will be put in place sometime in the next fifty years, or Israel will cease to exist in a hundred years. I'm betting on the deal.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 9:39 AM
Jeepers, there was no entitlement there. It was bought hard, with many lives.
We conquered it, so we get to keep it? That really doesn't sound like a moral argument to me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 9:41 AM
It's not on offer as a choice. Not from the Jews.
When somebody decides to put me in charge of reorganizing the Middle East I might worry about that. Discussing the situation on blogs, not so much. You're skating awfully close to accusing me of antisemitism for expressing views on the policies of the State of Israel, and that's bullshit. Possibly the reason that you don't see liberal bloggers getting mau-maued for not being sufficiently pro-Israel is that you're more in the mau-mauer camp than the mau-mauee camp.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 11:10 AM
144: My suspicion is that they'll still be fighting when they bury my grandchildren.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 11:18 AM
Mmmm. Okay, well, I feel a little bad about telling rilkefan he was better off shutting up in my comment 134. Sorry about that, dude, I was a little tired and cranky. Maybe you have some legit issues with the post in question that you haven't spelled out; I promise not to be a hurter if you tell me what they are.
143: Incidentally, I need to check out an assertion I recently read that Israeli Jews were 60% from the Mideast;
Almanacs usually list Ashkenazim as about 75% of Israeli Jews, and Sephardim as about 25%. I suspect that assertion is wrong. (Ethnic tension between Ashkenazim and Sephardim is one of the dynamics of Israeli life that don't get talked about much, but Anthony La Guardia has a really interesting treatment of it in his book War Without End, which I recommend.)
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 12:31 PM
148 - no blood, no foul, but thanks for your retraction - I said I was shutting up because I felt a case of stridency coming on.
On misreading, I was referring not to the sucky situation in 2000 but to the varieous peace plans discussed at the time giving most of the West Bank to the PNA (plans scuttled in my view by Arafat and his intifada). On "unilateral", I was referring to Olmert's switch to a readiness to negotiate the return of 90% of the West Bank with Abbas. I probably took some umbrage at "partial" - e.g., 99.999% would be "partial", and it seems to me that demands that Israel give up 100% of the territories right now without any way to ensure they don't become another rocket launching pad are not made with the interests of both sides firmly in mind. On the one-state consequence, perhaps I should just say I think it would obviously lead to internecine warfare escalating to the expulsion of Israeli Jews (and quite a few Israeli Arabs for that matter).
146 - it seems to me you can't answer Gary, so you say he's mau-mauing you. He's saying course X leads to peace, all others lead to the destruction of Israel - and you reply que sera, sera. When he says no thanks, you say he's nearly calling you anti-semitic, which is rather the reverse of the risk discussed above - defend Israel well, and you'll get accused of calling those who disagree antisemites.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 1:00 PM
"We conquered it, so we get to keep it? That really doesn't sound like a moral argument to me."
And yet, no different than that of 99% of other countries.
When time comes that all Americans bail back to Europe (with as much accuracy for that notion) , we can then talk about why the Jews should then do so.
Spaniards out of Mexico. British out of Australia. Russians out of Belarus. French out of Quebec. Etc. Old argument. Jews: not volunteering to be first.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:02 PM
I didn't read 146 as saying "que sera, sera," but rather disagreeing with the statement that "course X leads to peace, all others lead to the destruction of Israel."
That has to be a permissible subject for debate, right?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:02 PM
"When somebody decides to put me in charge of reorganizing the Middle East I might worry about that. Discussing the situation on blogs, not so much. You're skating awfully close to accusing me of antisemitism...."
Um, hey what? Where?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:04 PM
And yet, no different than that of 99% of other countries.
Except that nothing works like that. We don't say that slavery was used to improve the lot of America 100+ years ago, and so it's OK if it happens in Africa now. Or I don't.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:04 PM
America is not an ethnic European state.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:08 PM
Semi-sovereignty and the existence of Native Americans as domestic dependent nations within the United States has not entailed the destruction of America.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:10 PM
"You're skating awfully close to accusing me of antisemitism for expressing views on the policies of the State of Israel...."
Huh? In what comment? Number, please?
That's an unpleasant charge, and I'd like to see the evidence, sir.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:12 PM
151 - "That has to be a permissible subject for debate, right?"
Sure, but debate means acknowledging when the other guy has carried his point, and not calling him an anti-semite-labeller because he says your preferred solution would have bad consequences for the Jews.
I see that "que sera" is in fact not quite accurate - more "I don't like the way those guys have organized their lives like I have, but if that's the best we can do, ok, if not, not" - which I take as avoiding engaging the argument.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:18 PM
Q: Do I want to point out that this
is a terrible argument?
A: no.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:20 PM
But he hasn't carried his point. He hasn't done anything other than make assertions. (It's possible that this is lazy reading on my point, and I'll welcome a correction.)
I'll let DaveL explain his own comment, but I still don't agree with the reading of 146.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:22 PM
153 - "Except that nothing works like that."
I think people are still citing right-of-conquest laws in border disputes to this day - somewhere in wikipedia, to narrow it down. Of course no one sensible is claiming Israel conquered the West Bank and so deserves to keep it. No one sensible argues about the 67 borders vs the orignial 48 borders, though.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:23 PM
That's an unpleasant charge, and I'd like to see the evidence, sir.
Gary, skimming the thread at Obsidian Wings, it doesn't look like you should be getting too upset at other people making unpleasant charges.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:24 PM
I don't see the charge of anti-semitism, but I think #157 misses the mark (and #143). I take DaveL to be saying that at this stage, on a blog, with people who have no actual power, Jewish preferences aren't folded in. If we could work out what we thought would be a just outcome, or best outcome, then we would address various objections. Moreover, the distance between "offer" and "compelled" is, as we're trying to show in the ME right now, not so great.
But I really don't see the anti-semitism thing.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:24 PM
I repeat 42.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:26 PM
Can someone please tell me more about where to find these purring pigeons? What kind of drug use is required?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:41 PM
I apologize to Gary - if he's still here - for linking to the Nazi thing from the ObWi thread. It was childish and I'm sorry.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:42 PM
Pigeons don't purr, they coo. But that just makes them cooler.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:43 PM
164 -- What are you talking about w/d? You live in NYC and (if I don't miss my guess) within a reasonable walk of Washington Square, where pigeons are pandemic, and purring is the noise they make all the time. Walk by sometime and listen to them.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 2:47 PM
Re the various responses to 146: what I'm trying to get at is that when people talk about Israel's right to exist, they tend to conflate two distinct claims: (1) that the people of Israel have a right to live in peace without their neighbors constantly trying to kill them or drive them out; and (2) that the Jews are entitled to a homeland and that the identity of that homeland as the Jewish state is of paramount importance. I'm fully on board with (1), less so with (2). I recognize that (2) is important to a lot of people that I like and respect, and I don't think it's wrong in the way that, say, South African apartheid was wrong, but ultimately I think that ethnic nationalism isn't a great way for people to organize themselves. That doesn't mean I think we should run around the world trying to stop people from organizing themselves that way, but it does affect how I respond to moral claims based on ethnicity or the history of an ethnic group.
Perhaps I'm over the line in seeing Gary as insinuating anti-Semitism, and if so I apologize, but I don't have a better term for the repeated suggestions that some of us just don't care about bad things happening to Jews.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 3:04 PM
Stepping out of the ongoing conflict in the comments, can anybody figure out why there are scare quotes around "killed" in this BBC headline?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 3:15 PM
If I were going to guess, the headline originally contained a quote from a statement by some party that included the word 'killed'. The headline got edited, and the quote got edited down to one word, and no one noticed that leaving the quotes around it no longer made sense.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 3:27 PM
The BBC errs on the side of scare quotes. I'm surprised that it didn't read "'Five' 'killed' in 'Gaza' 'shelling'."
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 3:35 PM
52 quotes: "They're like giant purring rats."
and then says: No, that's like pigeons, 'cept smaller.
Since, as 166 correctly said, pigeons coo (have you not seen the classic Animaniacs remake of West Side Story featuring "Coo" (e.g., "Be coo, coo boy") ?) and cooing does not sound particularly like purring (more than it sounds like barking, sure, but that can't be our standard), I wrote to 164 to try to make a joke out of 52.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 4:03 PM
149: I was referring not to the sucky situation in 2000 but to the varieous peace plans discussed at the time giving most of the West Bank to the PNA
Different sides of the debate often find themselves inhabiting incommensurate universes. The (informal) Camp David proposal that Arafat was panned for rejecting offered, in your view, "most of the West Bank" to the PNA, but in my view it offered four disconnected cantons (the word "Bantustans" springs to mind, with reason) surrounded and controlled by Israel. If the latter is true -- and I think it's pretty much a matter of public record -- then it was a patently insulting intepretation of the "two-state solution," and was rejected with good reason.
IMO Olmert's decision to go through the motions of "negotiating" with Abu Mazen -- a leader he had previously (and probably correctly) derided as a "powerless" lame duck -- were more last-minute political theatre than a substantive move away from the concept of realignment unilateral disengagement. I haven't yet found anything that indicates otherwise... but that doesn't mean I couldn't be wrong, of course. It just seems the likeliest explanation given the info I have.
On the one-state consequence, perhaps I should just say I think it would obviously lead to internecine warfare escalating to the expulsion of Israeli Jews
Israeli Jews would be a heavily-militarized majority in any short-term one-state situation and would hold a distinct advantage*. That situation is therefore much more likely to work to the disadvantage of the Arabs than of the Israelis. In the medium- to long-term, enough different things could happen that I don't know if I can talk about "obvious" conclusions with anything like your confidence.
(* This is why so many Israeli predictions of disaster rely on "demographic threat" theories -- projecting Arab birth rates into the future on the assumption that the signal trends of a poor underclass will remain constant.)
150: And yet, no different than that of 99% of other countries.
Other countries also suffer ongoing moral and political struggles with the acts of conquest and settlement that founded them in their current form, arguably the more so the fresher those events are -- and of course many other countries today exist as a result of having successfully fought off colonial and imperial presences. Why should these vagaries of political reality not also apply to Israel and Palestine?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 4:51 PM
173 is me.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 4:52 PM
Point: "These terrible atrocities must come to an end."
Counterpoint: "No they shouldn't!"
Some people sympathize more with Israel, some people sympathize more with Lebanon, and some people just like the idea of blowing shit up.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 7:22 PM
Some of the Israelis I know are against a two-state solution, and the 'pushing us into the sea' rhetoric registers more with them.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 7:29 PM
Some of the Israelis I know are against a two-state solution, and the 'pushing us into the sea' rhetoric registers more with them.
That shit just absolutely kills me. At some point, 200 nuclear bombs to zero has to register.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 7:31 PM
The thing about the "pushing into the sea" stuff is that it works against any sort of final settlement at all, which is why it's so pernicious.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 7:34 PM
It doesn't, though. Maybe they're just not informed enough, but if the two-state solution is going to work, it's got a long way to go and a lot of deep-seated beliefs to overcome.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 7:34 PM
Strasmangelo: I actually sympathize a lot with Israel. I just don't think that what they're doing now will actually help them, at least not for more than a few months, and not enough to make it worth the costs to their own interests, let alone those of the Lebanese.
I normally avoid writing about I/P partly because, having lived there, it's something I care a lot about in a way that impedes writing, and partly also because so many people seem to feel compelled to take sides, and I just think: I can understand (in some sense that does not imply approving of) what a lot of people do; I think that leaders on both sides have gotten things horrifyingly wrong; and most of all I hate the tendency to get into assigning blame (which as far as I'm concerned attaches to all sides, though not equally in any given case) instead of trying to figure out what on earth to do.
And even though I'm an ethicist, and have in fact written an entire book on moral responsibility, I hate what people do with blame in this case. So much of it is an attempt to avoid the need to think hard about what to do, I think. Honestly, I can't bear to watch any of those dialogues between Israeli and Palestinian spokespeople anymore, since they always seem to degenerate into 'well, your side did this!' 'how can you say that, when your side did that?, and given the number of people on both sides who are just suffering, I want to scream.
Posted by hilzoy | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 7:51 PM
Just so we're not misunderstanding each other, Hilzoy, I wasn't disparaging your post, nor was I attributing a partisan view to it. It was the reply to your post that set me off, representing as it did a viewpoint I simply cannot comprehend ("This was a mistake, and is costing more and more innocent lives every day. Now let's keep it up.") I can imagine how the various sides trapped in this sick debacle are feeling, and I can understand how living in extreme circumstances could drive ordinary people to murder fellow human beings. But my understanding runs out at the guy who's cheering on this pointless waste of human life from thousands of miles away.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 8:48 PM
strasmangelo: I didn't take it as criticism. I think I might have read one too many comments (on ObWi) that did take sides, is all.
von is a decent and reasonable guy, though obviously I disagree with him on this issue.
Posted by hilzoy | Link to this comment | 07-25-06 9:58 PM
179 and 181: Egg-fucking-zacktly.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 3:06 AM
The BBC errs on the side of scare quotes.
I'd never noticed this before, but boy are you correct. Just from this morning's headlines:
'Militants die' in Afghan clash
Uganda urged to probe 'torture'
Ethiopian troops 'are in Somalia'
Glaxo has bird flu 'breakthrough'
Saddam 'forced' back to his trial
With the exception of "torture," none of the quoted bits corresponds to a quote in the article. I still don't understand the practice. Seems like a nervous tic.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 6:47 AM
Well, I think they scare quote claims that aren't adequately sourced or are reflective of the viewpoint of one party to a disagreement.
That's certainly the case with the "Saddam 'forced ... " article. Saddam claims he was forced. Presumably the prosecution contend he was not.
Ditto with the Glaxo story. Glaxo claim to have made a breakthrough. The BBC is reporting this claim without endorsing it as an actual breakthrough, etc.
Presumably their style book provides for this rather than adding lots of 'claimed' or 'allegedly's to headlines.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:03 AM
This is a theme on the 'Decent Left', who cherry pick every example they can find of the BBC using, for example, terrorist in scare quotes to bolster their assertion that the Auntie is run by moral relativists who don't really oppose terrorism. As you demonstrate here, in fact it's a stylistic tic which is topic independent.
I wish they wouldn't (both the Decent Left and the people who write the BBC style book).
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:04 AM
The BBC do actually have a specific policy on terrorism. It's discussed at length in Phil Rees's book "Dining with terrorists".
However, as you say, it's an instance of a more general policy of scare quoting any 'fact' that remains disputed.
[The Decent Left of course have their own underhanded motives for wanting to foreground this.]
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:12 AM
I wish the 'Decent Left' weren't.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:12 AM
re: 188
Of course the irony is that they are neither decent nor left.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:13 AM
Yeah, can we agree on a style of scare-quoting them? Also, `conservatives', `Republicans', and while we're at it, `Democrats'?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:17 AM
Slol, a lot of traditional conservatives I know (they'd be regarded as rabid liberals in America, but still) would be very happy to scare quote 'conservative' in the context of the present White House.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 7:23 AM
I have some Tory Americaphile friends who lived a few weeks in the US and said, holy hell, I think I'm a Democrat.
OTOH, New `Labour' would be eminently appropriate, too.
See also Peter Hitchens.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 8:31 AM
Does anyone out there not avow support for Israel because they're afraid of leftist vitriol?
I don't know about "afraid", but see.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 11:30 AM
You mean this bit:
Fair enough.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 11:37 AM
190-192: Yes, I'm fairly sympathetic tyo wet Tories; I kind of liek Michael Ancram. I do have my Lib-Dem sympathies, but I don't care for their new tough on crime, law-and-order stance; the Sun is never going to support the Lib-Dems. nattarGcM and I would probably disagree on a lot of issues were I in the UK. Here, we'd be mounting the barricades together.
For example, I positively cheered when a bunch of hereditary peers stood up to the Government (is that teh right? Anyway, it was Blair's bill) on identity cards and restrictions on the right to trial by jury. And I think that some of their willingness to do that comes from the fact that they don't face elections. And I've internalized a lot of respect for the concept of noblesse oblige which a true leftist would find distasteful.
192: On Tories deciding that they're Democrats. There are a bunch of weird linsk between British and American politicians where operatives will cross the Atlantic to help out with campaigns. I get the sense that this happens less with people from actual Commonwealth countries, like Canada. There do seem to be Australians who settle in the UK and get involved in politics. There was that horrid woman who was a journalist and then worked for William Hague. I think her name was Amanda Platell.
Also it is really wrong that Piers Morgan was let into this country to be the Simon Cowell character on the new American Idol knock off. I don't see how a career as a disgraced (did I mention taht he was fired?) tabloid editor qualifies one to judge a music contest. Along with his new casual American tieless look he's sporting a really bad hair-do. Save us!
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 12:14 PM
I forgot the main point of my post. Isn't there a Conservative MP who self-identified as Democratic-leaning? He's actually worked for Democratic campaigns despite the strong links between teh Republicans and the Conservatives. And it wasn't a recent development. I think he'd worked for McGovern or someone like that.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 12:17 PM
194: Out of curiosity I had a look at Alterman's "Comment is Free" article (not one of his better outings; it comes awfully close to being one of those unutterably dreary "let's mount the barricades for Jyllands-Posten" affairs). For the life of me I can't find all the "disturbing leftish anti-Semitism" that supposedly clutters the comment thread. There's plenty of disturbing rightish Islamophobia in there, and some vocal dissenters pointing out that J-P were basically engaged in racebaiting. And there's one guy early on who uses the phrase "dare I say 'zionist.'" Far as I can see, that's about it.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 12:55 PM
Well, there's this:
Which would make me think, "Hmm. Probably an anti-semite," and this:
which is definitely and obviously anti-Semitic. Neither reads obviously leftist, rather than nuts, to me, but I suppose it's a fair assumption that opposition to the publication of the cartoons, where not Muslim, was mostly leftist.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 1:06 PM
Ah, okay, didn't see those. I'd agree they don't read as obviously leftist (the first in particular doesn't strike me that way), but the second is more plausibly a case of leftish anti-Semitism. So that would make for two, maybe three identifiable instances in the thread.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 1:26 PM
I was also thinking of this elaboration:
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 8:58 PM
Yeah, but what I'm wondering is how reliable Alterman's elaboration is, given what appears to qualify for him as "quite a bit of disturbing leftish anti-Semitism."
I think he misrepresented the CiF thread he talked about, albeit not necessarily intentionally, and I'm not sure how reliable his reportage of that convo would be either. What, for instance, are the supposedly somewhat sinister "views about global Jewish power" he alludes to? Am I prepared to believe those views actually were "worrisome" on Alterman's say-so? I'm thinking maybe no. Nor, for similar reasons, am I much persuaded by his dismissiveness about the "dismissive Chomsky/Cockburn know-it-all."
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 07-26-06 10:19 PM
"If the best solution for attaining some semblance of peace and justice is two ethnically-based states, so be it, but if not, not."
It's not on offer as a choice. Not from the Jews.
So what's Judt, chopped liver?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 07-27-06 12:45 PM