Mondoweiss

Israel Warns UN and Palestinians to Cleanse Their 'Lexicons' of a Word. Guess Which One

Haaretz reports that the UN Sec'y-General used the word "Nakba" yesterday, angering Israel.

The [UN's official] report said the UN chief telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity with the Palestinians on the day they mark the "nakba," the Arabic word meaning "catastrophe" that is used in reference to the founding of the state of Israel.
 
Danny Carmon, Israel's deputy ambassador to the UN, told Israel Radio that the term "'nakba' is a tool of Arab propaganda used to undermine the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel, and it must not be part of the lexicon of the UN."

Apparently it's the first time the UN has used the word, Nakba. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made the same point re Nakba in a speech yesterday, per Ynet:

"with the establishment of a Palestinian state, we wish to see the end of the conflict. The Palestinians will be able to celebrate their independence if on that same day they also strike the word 'Nakba' from their lexicon."

Now close your eyes and for just one second imagine how I'd feel if you told me not to use the word "pogrom" to describe what happened to my ancestors in Russia.

 

 

Peretz and Goldberg Get Obama to Renew the Balfour Declaration

I'm still mulling Marty Peretz's longish phone conversation with Obama about Israel, also Jeffrey Goldberg's longish interview with the candidate. One of the weird things about both conversations is the sense that Goldberg and Peretz are extracting a promise from Obama to the Jewish community. Indeed, Goldberg establishes himself as a Jew who is a guardian of Jewish "worry". In a sense, neither is that interested in what Obama really thinks--both men behave less like journalists than petitioners, trying to get Obama on the record expressing his support of the Jewish state as an answer to the Jewish problem. "I’m curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?" Goldberg asks. Then: "Do you think that justice is still on Israel’s side?"

The whole thing feels like a reprisal of the Balfour Declaration, 91 years on, with Peretz and Goldberg reenacting the roles of Chaim Weizmann and Lord Rothschild, and Obama playing the role of the British ruler. Here's why the analogy fits, and why it is actually helpful in understanding Israel/Palestine:

Jeffrey Goldberg Says American Politicians Can Say 'Whatever They Want About Israel'

Marty Peretz and Jeffrey Goldberg are powerful journalists; Obama lately talked to both of them about Israel. Peretz had a "longish" conversation, Goldberg did an interview. Why did Obama go to them? He obviously believes that they have the keys to the Jewish leadership, or a large segment thereof. Maybe they do. Joe Lieberman is inaccessible to Obama, so are Malcolm Hoenlein and Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner and Anne Lewis. Go where you can get it, as my guru likes to say.

I find the Goldberg conversation with Obama weird. There's a general atmosphere of Goldberg, a former Israeli soldier, vetting Obama in his capacity as a representative of Jews who are outsiders in American society and who "feel Jewish worry." No other people's interests or worries are invoked in this interview. Not the American interest, not a word about the life and suffering of the Palestinians (though yes a question about settlements). This is surely a sincere reflection of Goldberg's parochial concerns, but it makes you wonder why he gets to write for the New Yorker and the Atlantic about Middle East matters. Two years ago at Yivo, J.J. Goldberg, the Forward editor, said that Jeffrey Goldberg had distorted an aspect of  Palestinian politics in a piece to serve a rightwing agenda. (Bill Kristol stood up for Jeffrey Goldberg, and no wonder; these guys as much as anyone produced "the mindset" that gave us Iraq, which Obama is sworn to change.) I wish the Goldberg boys would have this out; it's the Iraq soul-searching the Jewish community needs.

Goldberg says here that Jimmy Carter said Israel was turning into an "apartheid" state. No, Carter only made this claim with respect to the West Bank. Goldberg says at the top that Obama is fighting to win over Jewish voters in Florida. Is that really why Obama is making obeisance to Jews? It's much broader than that. It's about money and media and cultural power; "Jewish voters in Florida" is now the media's euphemism for this larger sociological reality, and it's a form of disinformation.

Then there's Goldberg's requirement that politicians respond to Jews in their "kishkes," or guts:

if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

This sounds like a tribal shibboleth. Goldberg is basically saying, So long as you say you love Israel,  you can say whatever you want about Israel. Can he point to one politician or official who says whatever he wants about Israel? I don't know what world he's living in. Jimmy Carter says whatever he wants and he's vilified by among others Goldberg. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel ventured recently that the Israel lobby "intimidates a lot of people" on Capitol Hill. Will that comment disqualify Hagel from being Obama's VP?

A Nakba Memorial, of Sorts

The Etzel Museum, commemorating the Irgun, is itself housed in a former Palestinian home in Jaffa.

And check this out: several demonstrations by No Time to Celebrate Jews, including 10 openly-identified "anti-Zionist" Jews outside a "birthright" event in New York. The great Hannah Mermelstein was there...

Bush Suggests Obama's an Appeaser at Knesset--the Israel Lobby Finally Enters Our Political Discourse

Today's a great day. George Bush's crazily craven speech at the Knesset, a naked obeisance to the Israel lobby, has caused Chris Matthews to charge that Bush and Hillary, with her "obliterate Iran" talk, are competing for a "domestic political" constituency. Why is Israel the "Hyde Park" of American politics? Why is this issue "the podium of American politics?" he asked.

Good questions. He cannot ask them seriouslywithout having John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt, who advanced this subject more bravely than anyone else, on his show. If not now, a year from now.

Oh and let's not forget Obama. He had a "longish" conversation with Marty Peretz on the telephone re Israel. And also provided slavish answers re Israel to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. It's a party, come on down!

Wait-- not you, you're not invited.

P.S. Just now on NBC Nightly News, John Yang said the Bush speech was aimed at a "key" American "voting bloc."

Jaffa Is Still Contested Space (Even in Jewish Hearts and Minds)

Against Commentary Magazine, a reader has offered me this Jaffa blogger. Her name's Yudit, an artist. I want to believe she's Jewish. Oh my god, there are some beautiful Jews in the world! She says Jaffa, once  "bride of the sea" to the Arab population, is now a slummy suburb of Tel Aviv. She resists continuing efforts to push Arabs out, and describes a demonstration the other night at the Etzel Museum, a museum of the Irgun, right in historic Jaffa: 

At the etzel museum a small audience listens to a sound & light heroism performance,
We are kept at "a safe" distance, but using old pots and sticks as well as small flutes we raise a lot of noise. Banners tell the story of the naqbe in Jaffa, of the acts of terror carried out by Etzel against civilians. Sixty years ago, the naqbe.

Reuven Abergil tells the story of how that happened, while the Brits and the Hagana conveniently looked in the other direction. They controlled the road blocks on the way to Jaffa and the Etzel people dressed to look like local Arabs, passed through with their weapons and explosives. Bombs hidden inside a watermelon cart and a truck exploded in Jaffa's market. Children and women were murdered. The aim was to create terror and make the population want to flee away.

Neocons Don't Have Time for Golf. Or Didn't. Maybe Now They Do?

Scott McConnell comments on Bush's promise of giving-up golf while the war's on:

There’s also a more complicated sociological point to be made here: that the WASP establishment which ran the country’s foreign policy rather decently in the years after World War II has been nudged from the central halls of power, and one is now more likely to find its scions working on their handicaps or plotting elaborate middle age man getaways to this historic courses of Scotland than clawing their way up the ranks of the foreign affairs intelligentsia.

I agree, and wonder why there isn't any journalism on the subject of the new establishment. The answer, my friend, is: the fear of another Holocaust if we talk about Jewish power. So journalists betray their mission of informing the public on the grounds that the public is not to be trusted, and then tell themselves that the public is too stupid to notice this anyway. But people aren't too stupid. They know that significant changes have taken place in the sociocultural makeup of the establishment, especially the foreign-affairs branch; but they get little information about it, and the result is that commenters on my blog can claim that Jews run America, when obviously it's not that simple...

'Commentary' Ignores Palestinians' Eyewitness Testimony in Denying that Zionists Drove Arabs From Jaffa in '48

Last week I blogged about Commentary's piece denying the Nakba, which was underwritten by the chairman of the New-York Historical Society-- a landmark of Nakba denial, published in what was once a glory of Jewish intellectual tradition: Commentary, the magazine I grew up with, stacks of it, my parents didn't throw it away. The article demonstrates how fealty to Israel is eroding Jewish intelligence, as it has forced some of the smartest people on the planet to devote themselves to alchemy, coming up with elaborate proofs that black is white.

One paragraph that particularly disturbed me said that "huge numbers of Palestinian Arabs were being actively driven [Commentary's emphasis] from their homes by their own leaders and/or by Arab military forces.. In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the [Arab] municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea..." In making this assertion, author Efraim Karsh denied the New Standard View, that the Zionists forced the Palestinians from Jaffa. He offered no evidence.

Having just attended a speech on the Nakba by Lila Abu-Lughod, an eminent anthropologist at Columbia University, in which she stated that her father had been "driven" out of Jaffa by Zionists, I posted about the Commentary piece, and a couple days later Commentary published an annotated version online, including the following footnote to support Karsh's claim re Jaffa:

One Cheer for Olbermann's Latest Bush/Iraq Tirade

Tonight I watched one of Keith Olbermann's trademark rants against George Bush. It went on for 15 minutes of vituperative outrage, generally surrounding Bush's politico interview, and his decision to give up golf while the Iraq War was going on...

The first thing you have to say is that it's completely impressive that Olbermann gets to hold forth with such fury, it's a proof that we still have a democracy, even on commercial TV. Good for him. He's surely ignored a lot of responsible people telling him to Cool it. The second thing is that Olbermann's analysis is a little cheap. He blames Bush for the Iraq War. Good, so do I. He says that Bush is a nincompoomp. Agreed. There are suggestions that Bush is doing it for business interests. There is anger that Bush overruled the "realists." If you're going to talk about realists, you have to talk about neocons, and you have to talk about ideas. This war was built on bad ideas. Yes George Bush showed the worst judgment in American history, but he is a nincompoop, he doesn't have time to read books. Guys who read books came up with this war and he was swayed by their arguments post-9/11. Of course it's his fault, but it's also the fault of the guys who read and wrote books.  Blame the intellectual agents of this horror, or you are going to have more like it.

Olbermann also gives a pass to the Congress, saying it was misled by mendacious Bush-fed intelligence. But Congress voted for this war; the Congress showed a disastrous lack of judgment when handed obviously-shaky intelligence. Barack Obama was a state senator then, in Chicago, and he knew it was a bad war, Lincoln Chafee knew it when he did the minimum and went to see the CIA guys. The weird thing about Olbermann's rant is that it's so focused on George Bush, and so trembling with operatic outrage, that it creates an odd sympathy for its nincompoop target. I'm glad MSNBC is airing this stuff. I just wish Olbermann was smarter.

Citing Israel and Obama, Chicago's Daley Quashes Anti-Iran-War Resolution

In '68, Mayor Daley's police force brutally broke up the antiwar demonstration in Chicago so as to preserve the dignity of the Democratic convention...

Forty years on, and Daley's son, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, has quashed a City Council resolution opposing war with Iran saying that it hurts  native son Obama. "Passing a resolution like that puts a... burden upon his candidacy and injects something that should not be injected” into the presidential campaign, Daley said. What's being injected? Daley brings up Israel. "Let's be realistic. The U.S. did [create Israel]," he says. I.e., we're joined at the hip. The resolution came after a hearing featuring realist John Mearsheimer and Scott Ritter. The Sun-Times account of course fails to point out the importance of Jewish votes in FL, let alone Jewish money to Obama...

Prophet Without Honor: 'Sydney Morning Herald' Prints American's Appeal for 1-State Solution

The Sydney Morning Herald has an op-ed by Chicago's Ali Abunimah saying that the one-state solution is gaining adherents worldwide. The two-state solution "has all but disappeared as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are caged into walled reservations by growing Israeli settlements and settler-only roads - a situation that resembles the bantustans of apartheid South Africa," Abunimah says, and points out that the number of Palestinians under Israeli rule is about to exceed the number of Jews, at 5 million.

The Herald is one of Australia's two leading papers, sort of the NYT of Aussie. A pity that Abunimah can express these views down under but not here. When does the author get invited on to op-eds here? Our journalism is broken, even as Abunimah is right, the one-state option gains adherents.

If Israel Is a Democracy, Why Does a Liberal Jewish Leader Forswear a Coalition With Arabs?

It's too bad that Huffington Post runs bellicose articles like this one by Amitai Etzioni, in which he rationalizes the Israeli occupation and dismisses the idea of separation between church and state as high-falutin' western values. I thought Huffpo was more enlightened than this.

I just heard Ehud Olmert speaking about democracy on television, introducing George Bush. I was in the barber shop, and had brought Righteous Victims, Benny Morris's book, with me to read while I was waiting. I came on the following episode, in Chapter 14:

Following elections in 1999, Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, wanted to create a new coalition to replace Netanyahu. Barak had 50 votes from Labor and four other centrist and left-wing factions, short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. "Another 10 votes, held by three Arab parties, could be expected to go along with Barak on the peace process, but the new prime minister was loath to induct them into his coalition and make it dependent on Arab consent," Morris writes. So Barak ended up making a coalition with the religious right, Shas. I.e., a center-left guy built his coalition with religious right Jews so as to escape the Arab grasp.

This is interesting for a few reasons. Barak failed at Camp David the following year to make a peace with Arafat. I generally blame Israeli intransigence (insistence on an undivided Jerusalem, on a security force on the Jordan river, and unjust appropriation of West Bank colonies) but Arafat surely also deserves some blame. Whatever-- If Barak had had Arabs in his coalition, would he have behaved differently? Would Arafat and the Arab world Arafat had to represent, visavis the holy sites in Jerusalem, have behaved differently?

Also, if Israel is a true democracy, why is there an objection to giving power to Arabs in a coalition dependent on them? After all, that is the character of a representative democracy: one man, one vote, and some day, some way, your vote may be the determinative one. Arabs were denied that opportunity by the Israeli left, in favor of Jewish parties. The same Jewish parties that are now forcing Olmert to build more illegal colonies. Imagine for a moment an American group being left out in the cold politically on a racial basis--it's unimaginable, especially in post-Obamaland. This just shows: Israeli-Arabs are second-class citizens.

Finally, I would note that Benny Morris is garlanded by the pro-Israel mainstream American press as a balanced sage. He is the darling of the New Republic, the New Yorker has lately written that he flatters no one's prejudices, least of all his own. Can you imagine an American historian, or an Arab one, passing along this disturbing information in such a matter-of-fact manner, without comment?

Chicago City Council, Leading the Nation Re Iran

Sorry, I meant to post this before the event! The Chicago City Council had an all-star panel today testifying on the dangers of going to war with Iran. John Mearsheimer, Scott Ritter, Stephen Kinzer formerly of the NYT, someone from the Institute for Policy Studies. Good for Chicago. Will they post a video?

I assume this is like other road shows. It'll work out the glitches in the Midwest then come to the Council on Foreign Relations in a few weeks. I can't wait.

Bush's Jewish Guest List to Israel Bash Feels a Little Throw-Backy

Here's Bush's guest list at the 60th birthday party in Israel. I'm still learning my way around the politics of the Israel question, but here are my scores in the free-skating competition:

Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor, a Netanyahu guy, Iran/Iraq guy, very scary, now quizzed in the Olmert investigation. Kenneth Bialkin--his firm, Skadden, Arps hosted Ambassador Gillerman when the ambassador said Jimmy Carter had blood on his hands, an establishment CFR and ADL guy, I believe, and don't you ever dare impose a solution, while the settlements continue. Matthew Brooks of Freedom's Watch, neocon. Tony Gelbart of Nefesh b'nefesh and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Jewish nationalist, make sure the kids don't marry non-Jews. Rabbi Marvin Hier. Scary. Believes Jews to be "endangered," as Elie Wiesel does, who's here too. Michael Oren, military intellectual (by which I mean, military justice is to justice as military music is to music). Mort Zuckerman, Conference of Presidents, along with Malcolm Hoenlein. Abe Foxman, say no more. Leslie Wexner of the Limited, giving fellowships to build Israel's leaders and Jewish leaders here, too. Ethnocentric. Dan Senor, a neocon, allied with the Republican Jewish Coalition crowd, but also a little unfriendly to the Iraq bitter-enders. Leonard Sands and Matthew Brooks, more RJC people. Sands has moolah. Bill Safire, former Times columnist.

There are a lot of names, and maybe I'm reading this wrong, tell me who I'm missing, but it seems like the Iraq bitter-ender Zionists aren't here. No Richard Perle or Dore Gold. What we have are mostly donor base and ethnocentric Jews like Gelbart, along with the U.S. and Israel are joined at the hip Jews, the Michael Oren types. Neocons by another name. I wish there'd been a few progressives. Why not a surprise or two, a Dem, an Ambassador Kurtzer. A Nakba Jew, just to shake things up. Guess I gotta wait for President Obama. Have fun, guys.

Obama's Obeisance to the Lobby Concerns Me Not

A friend is disturbed by Marty Peretz's renewed endorsement of Obama--"What Obama Said to Me About Israel", and by Obama's obeisance to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who my friend points out served in the Israeli army in the 80s at a prison where Palestinians were tortured. How can you have such faith in Obama to change U.S. policy? Well I have faith.

First off, it's interesting that this shidduch, to use the Yiddish phrase for marriage or a deal, is happening right now. Obama has clearly won, and now he is getting a laying on of hands by a prince of the Israel lobby, actually two princes, who pronounce that he's kosher. My crowd has always said that the lobby is important, this just shows it. Expecting Obama to cut the lobby out is naive. It is not for nothing that he sold out Ali Abunimah in Chicago some years back; I wish he didn't but he did, and it was a necessary step to his advancing to the national stage.

I don't mean to suggest that Obama is insincere either. The great demand of Walt and Mearsheimer, and of others who support Palestinian right of self-determination, is that We be included at the table of foreign policy. We're not asking that Marty Peretz be thrown out, or Goldberg, or Dennis Ross even, no; we're saying that other Americans be included, from Ali Abunimah to Zbig Brzezinski to Rob Malley to MJ Rosenberg to Leon Hadar. Of course we seek a great weakening of the Israel lobby, but what I have always said is that a robust debate of what the American interest is visavis Israel is all that we need. When that takes place, Americans will exercise real fairness in our dealings, and the situation will change. And I do think this is happening: that an Obama administration will include Chuck Hagel and many realists who believe that Israel is damaging our position in the world, and that its allies are promoting a dangerous idea about Islamofascism... Obama is a real smart guy. I am sure he has read Walt and Mearsheimer's paper on line.

It doesn't even bother me so much that Peretz is claiming Obama. Peretz is a Washington type, he loves power, he likes to be at the table. He has good political values in some areas, he held Al Gore's hat for him for a long time. The greatness I see in Obama is a cold ability to weigh the arguments of petitioners without being beholden. He doesn't anger, he doesn't fall in love. His language is considered. He has the unique ability to triangulate the Palestinian position and Marty Peretz's and maybe bring about an understanding, the ability not to frighten Holocaust-era Jews. I have that faith.

The most important lesson of Aaron David Miller's book is that the greatest achievement by any president in the Middle East came through the efforts of a guy who really liked Arabs 30 years ago. Jimmy Carter: Camp David. Carter was a rich, rural man who adored Anwar Sadat and even Hafez al-Asad. And he threw himself at the problem, in defiance of the domestic considerations his aides kept warning him about, and was willing to toss his presidency aside to achieve something here. After all, Sadat gave his life for what Carter was merely sacrificing position or reputation to achieve.

The other Democratic paradigm is Bill Clinton, who didn't want to spend any political capital on the problem--no, he'd been impeached and wanted to rise again with his wife's presidency. Clinton's Camp David team was almost all Jewish, its chief negotiator acting as "Israel's lawyer" (per Miller); and it achieved nothing, and the second intifadah began. Ambassador Kurtzer has now written that the next president should have a diverse team, including Arabists.

I recite this history only to say that Obama is more in the Carter camp than the Clinton one. I've read his wife's thesis at Princeton and Obama's first book. These people entered public service because they wanted to change things. No I can't imagine that he will torch prospects of a second term over the issue, but I think he truly understands, as Carter did, that this is the great hidden secret of American politics, and the great challenge to a true statesman is to lead America out of this swamp. Jews are powerful; he needs Jews to get there.

Oren Shows, It's Not that Zionism Is Racist, It's that It's Selfish

This morning Michael Oren was on NPR's "Morning Edition," speaking of Israel's achievement, and Renee Montagne asked him what he hoped for in the next 60 years. Oren said, he wants an Israel at peace with its neighbors and at peace with itself. By peace with itself, he said he meant that it contained considerable diversity and that he hopes that it can reconcile that diversity with its own identity as a Jewish and democratic and Middle Eastern state. (That's pretty close; I'm paraphrasing because I don't want to have to listen to him a second time.) Montagne asked whether that meant a Jewish state. Oren said, Well I would "prefer" a Jewish state, as would most Jewish Israelis.

Two things leap out at me from the interview. First, Oren, who works at the Shalem Center in Israel, said he preferred a Jewish state, i.e., he was not absolute on this score. This seems to me a significant reflection of where things are going today. Even this Zionist, who moved from the U.S. to Israel, who has fought for Israel, as has his son, who has helped confuse the borders between Israel and the U.S. with all his work, and who has distorted U.S. history with a superficial book claiming that the U.S. has been religious and pro-Israel from the start, thereby claiming that these two countries are joined at the hip--even Oren is reduced to saying, I prefer. This is the Obama Effect. The world is moving past tribal distinctions, the western world is.

The other thing that leaped out was, Not a word about Palestinian self-determination in all his hoping. Not a word about a Palestinian state, not a word about the dignity of the Arabs under occupation, not a word about the futures of the people living in Gaza. No, Israel has not had peace for "a nano-second" since its founding, Oren said; and so presumably anything that befalls these people is their own fault. His indifference to Palestinian statehood was so stark in these comments it suggested that he still hopes for a Greater Israel. 

The other day a pro-Israel paper (Canada's National Post) likened Israel/Palestine to India/Pakistan in historical terms--partition and bloodletting--and then stated that, Ha!, there was far more bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in India/Pakistan than during the Nakba.  Maybe this is true; I should study that question. But as I have said before here, for 60 years Pakistanis have had a state, and for 60 years since the U.N. called for statehood, the Palestinians have had none. They've been disqualified for countless reasons, even as Israel gobbles land. What do I hope for? I hope that a stateless people who have no meaningful political representation be represented democratically, in a state that respects minority rights. Without that, there will be no peace.

'Loathing Is Acceptable,' My Wife Said

I heard my wife on the phone saying, "Loathing is acceptable."

When she hung up, I got the story out of her. Turns out she was talking to a friend who's been married for 2 years. The friend was complaining about her husband, all this stuff she couldn't stand about him. "I hate him. Am I allowed to hate him?" That's when my wife said "Loathing is acceptable." You go through a lot of different moods with a spouse and you shouldn't try and push them down. If it gets past loathing to You want to kill him, or do a Lorena Bobbitt, that's when you should leave. So spake the wife. I'm going to keep my eyes open.

Was Dennis Ross Sincere When He Scanted Power of Israel Lobby?

This week George Bush is to speak at the "President's Conference" in Israel, which is titled "Facing Tomorrow" and being led by a thinktank called the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. One of JPPPI's chief concerns is the "erosion" of Jewish demography worldwide due to intermarriage and other factors. I.e., fewer Jews. This must be looked at "urgent"ly, JPPPI says, because of "the implications of  demography for Israel's standing in a prolonged situation of military and political conflict." My emphasis. This means, when there are not many Jews in America, the Israel lobby loses strength, and who will Israel turn to?  And what is meant by times of "political conflict"? All the time.

Dennis Ross is the chair of JPPPI. A year or so back I heard him argue, at Cooper Union in New York, [and here, on NPR] that Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis was bunk, and that maybe the Israel lobby affected Congress, but surely not White House policy. I never found Ross's argument to be believable. His thinktank's "urgent" concern suggests he doesn't believe it either. 

More Mainstream Voices Declare, Israel Can't Survive as Jewish State

I'm easily amazed. Maclean's Magazine has published a huge piece headlined "Why Israel Can't Survive" as a Jewish state if it wants to be democratic. (Chris Varley , who pointed the piece out to me, notes, that Maclean's is Time-magazine like, and "home to cranks like Barbara Amiel and Mark Steyn, and edited by Ken Whyte [very mainstream, formerly of the National Post], so publishes the usual agit-prop.") Christopher Hitchens in Slate is saying the same thing: Israel can't survive as a Jewish state. And I notice that Maclean's has a respectful interview with John Mearsheimer here too.

I'm sure the Israel lobby is watching this as closely as I am. The conventional wisdom is solidifying. What was once radical when Tony Judt proposed it five years ago is now a real option. Some day soon the Times and Washington Post will fall into line, and from there the networks, and then, finally, the politicians will question apartheid policies in the West Bank. Mearsheimer will then be embraced, because he is for a 2-state solution.

Why is this happening? You can blame Iraq, you can blame the bankruptcy of the peace process. But I say it's the zeitgeist. The times are changing; the left and its answers are coming in. And the Obama effect is going to change the air we breathe. I remember when a questioner at NYU challenged Judt, How can you oppose a Jewish state when we see the primacy of tribe at every hand.... Well, that feels like a long time ago; and we will soon have a postracial president.

Progress, Progress. MSM Flatly Refers to 'Cycle of Violence'

Dude, rub your eyes, it really is happening: the progressive voice re Israel/Palestine is breaking into the MSM. The always great Christian Science Monitor (as a commenter pointed out) gives Steve Walt the last word in a piece debating how much money we give to Israel:

Professor Walt maintains he's pro-Israel. The US refusal to put pressure on Israel to settle with the Palestinians on a two-state solution, he argues, is not helpful.

"Giving any country unconditional backing encourages irresponsible behavior," he says. It could lead to an apartheid state, or as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, Israel facing "a South African-style struggle."       

And yesterday's Hartford Courant offered a long profile of a Jewish activist whose dreams of a shared Jerusalem have stirred opposition from other American Jews. The piece openly pits activist Yehezkel Landau against Hartford's Jewish establishment. Says one:

"Ultimately, I want the same thing Yehezkel wants — a Jewish state in Israel, an Arab state in Palestine and a shared capital in Jerusalem," Fuchs says. "But where we may not see eye to eye is judging just how sincere these peace offers are from Arab leaders. You have a government now in Gaza whose avowed goal is to destroy Israel militarily. There has to be a more concrete acknowledgment on their part of the right of Israel to exist."

Landau is an evolved guy, as gentle as Richard Witty, and his response is clearly the Courant's point of view:

"Because I have befriended so many Palestinians over the years. I can distinguish between the extremists and the pragmatists in the Arab community," Landau says. "I know that Palestinians suffer terrible consequences from the extremists because I see them as humans just like me. But too many Israelis live in isolation from their Arab neighbors and they can only see them as enemies." [provocative emphasis all mine]

...A regrettable result of the dispiriting cycle of violence in Israel has been a hardening of attitudes among many of America's strongest supporters of Israel, he says.

"The problem is that Jews, like any people under mortal threat, retreat into a kind of tribal bunker and become doctrinaire, one-sided," Landau says. "Our imagination is crippled by war."

Landau is talking in his gentle way about the Israel lobby. Walt and Mearsheimer, who support the 2-state solution, were described as inflammatory 2 years ago. Well, they blew the dam. The water's flowing.

Walt & Mearsheimer Must Be Brought Into the Mainstream (Just Ask Haaretz)

I've often argued that our journalism has done our country a real injury by marginalizing Walt and Mearsheimer. I say this anew because of two pieces I just read in (as usual) Haaretz. 1, Haaretz essentially echoed much of what Walt and Mearsheimer wrote about the stranglehold on policy in this interview with Haim Saban, the Israeli-American financier of the Brookings Institution and of the Democratic Party.

You said once that you are a one-note person, and that note is Israel. Why?
 
"You can't explain love."...
 
Do you still feel, as you once did, that America's attitude toward Israel is liable to deteriorate?

"At the moment there is no sign of a crisis. But we must not be complacent. The two pillars of the state are the Israel Defense Forces and the U.S.; Dimona [the site of Israel's nuclear reactor] and Washington. We must do all we can to maintain the alliance with America. A major crisis at the wrong time could be a disaster, a disaster." [emphasis mine]

Amid Tears, Brandeis Student Senate Declines to Congratulate Israel at 60

The world keeps changing. The Globe has a shocking story on Brandeis's student senate tabling/killing a resolution to congratulate Israel on making 60.

The resolution sparked more than two hours of debate on the senate floor on March 9, leaving some students in tears, according to a senator who was there. Critics questioned whether it was appropriate to have student leadership delve into Middle Eastern politics on a campus that hosts students from 100 countries, some of which oppose Israel's policies.

Such a resolution "shuts people like me up," said Lisa Hanania, 20, a Christian Palestinian-Israeli student from Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish city outside Tel Aviv. "For me it's 60 years of Nakbah - Catastrophe - of the Palestinian people."

"The senate is not the place for a discussion about the State of Israel," said Senator at Large Jessica Blumberg, 21, a junior from New York's Westchester County. "There are people going to Brandeis who are Palestinian refugees."

Following the discussion, student senators voted, 13 to 6, with one abstention, to "postpone indefinitely" a vote on the resolution, effectively killing it.

A few comments: Brandeis is half-Jewish, it keeps blowing my mind. These kids are the most sophisticated about these issues in the country. I visited it last year and was stunned by the support I saw for Jimmy Carter. Zochrot visited it last month and was welcomed. Jessica Blumberg and Noam Shuster, an Israeli-American who has co-founded Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine, are clearly the way the arrow is pointing for young Jews. Wonder how many of Commentary Magazine's readers are under 40?

Thanks to Joachim Martillo for the tip.

Nakba and Neocons Can Dance

How many years will it be till neoconservative Commentary Magazine apologizes for its Nakba denial? 5, 10, 50? Well, I'm setting the egg-timer. Because the National Post of Canada, a neocon hive--owned by rightwing Jews, long guarantor of a platform to David Frum, who invented two dangerous slogans, "Victory or Holocaust" and "Axis of Evil"--yesterday stated there was "ethnic cleansing" in '47-48 Palestine. First it printed a piece by contributor Jeet Heer on the Nakba that was unapologetic:

Obama Vs. Goldberg (Or, Why the Jewish Experience of the U.S. Civil Rights Struggle Is Israel's Only Hope)

Yesterday Richard Silverstein offered a criticism of Times reporter Ethan Bronner's comments on the Nakba:

[Ethan] Bronner has done a good job of channeling a certain Israeli nationalist perspective on the necessity of retaining Jewish dominance within the State of Israel. But what he hasn’t done is allow for the transformation of such attitudes over time. Look at the racial attitudes of white America toward African-Americans before 1954...

Can anyone now imagine an Arab running for president or prime minister of Israel? Perhaps not. But it will happen as surely as Barack Obama is now running for president. Time heals wounds as long as people really attempt to grapple with the issues that divide them. In my heart of hearts, I believe that they, and Israel, will find a way to realize the deepest aspirations of Arab and Jew within Israel.

...[F]or Israel to realize the full meaning of its democratic nature and its Declaration of Independence, developments must gradually move toward Israel becoming a state of all its citizens. Otherwise, Israel will be an ethnocracy with truncated rights for its Arab minority. [All emphases mine]

Prophetic. Now flash back nearly 20 years, the most important moment in the making of Barack Obama, the Harvard Law Review's presidential election of 1990. From the Boston Globe:

In the fall of 1989, when Obama returned to campus for his second year, students were protesting the lack of minority law school faculty. They staged sit-ins in the law library, camped outside the office of Dean Robert C. Clark, and carried signs that read "Diversity Now" and "Homogeneity Feeds Hatred."

[In February 1990, the election lasted] until just after midnight, when only Obama and a 24-year-old Harvard graduate named David Goldberg remained  contenders .

At about 12:30 a.m., the editors called Obama into the room, told him he had won, and broke into applause. [Kenneth] Mack, another black editor, pulled Obama in for a hug.

"It was a hard hug, and it lasted a while," Obama told the Harvard Law Record, the school newspaper, at the time. "At that point, I realized this was not just an individual thing. . . but something much bigger."

A few additions to this important parable of American life: Obama's presidency put him on front pages around the country and led to his book deal. The Globe's fine reporting was done by Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman, who I assume are like myself, upper-middle-class Jews drawn to journalism.  David Goldberg is, I believe, a progressive lawyer specializing in public law in New York, working for poor women denied health care.

The Declaration of independence that Silverstein cites promised that Israel would " ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex..."

The lesson of this story is a simple one. After World War II, Jews in America and Israel set out to guarantee civil rights to all, even in the wake of horrors like the Holocaust and slavery/segregation. In America, we also were a minority, and Jewish activists in the David Goldberg tradition succeeded beyond the world's wildest dreams. In Israel we have utterly failed. Homogeneity breeds hatred. Diversity now.

Israel Could Transform Its Future, and Image, by Recognizing 'Nakba' Right Now

Something's happened in the last year: the debate over the 1967 borders is giving way to a debate over the '48 borders. Ilan Pappe said this was happening in his book on '48, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, now it's all around us; Israel's 60th birthday is causing even the New Yorker to print the word Nakba. If Israel actually wanted to preserve the two-state solution, it would issue a statement tomorrow acknowledging the great suffering in the Nakba, and the need to address the refugees' rights.

Yesterday the softspoken Columbia U. anthropologist, Lila Agu-Lughod, co-author of the book Nakba (who met her co author, Ahmad Sa'di, at her father's funeral in Jaffa 7 years ago), posted these eloquent comments on the Columbia University Press blog to honor the 60th anniversary of the Nakba:

The Palestine/ Israel conflict has occupied center stage in international affairs at least since the Balfour Declaration in 1917... Its macabre manifestations confront us on TV screens and newspapers’ pages daily. The efforts invested to solve it peacefully have so far failed. And despite apparently huge diplomatic efforts (genuine, self-serving, or cynical) doomed approaches continue, paradoxically, to prevail. These approaches most commonly—and with various degrees of sophistication—construct a political landscape that is dominated by elites who are described as either for or against peace. Leaders are classified in loaded and dichotomous terms: as moderate or radical; westernized or traditional; secular or fundamentalist. Very little, if anything at all, is said about those who construct these categories and their interests in doing so, let alone their role in perpetuating the conflict. Nothing is said about the morality of those who categorize....

[A] durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians must begin by tackling the moral foundation of the conflict. In 1948 the vast majority of the indigenous population, the more than 750,000 Arab Palestinians who resided on 77.8% of the land of their country—which later became Israel—were expelled. The will of the international community to allow their return, expressed in the UN resolution 194, has been ignored.

How can Palestinians challenge the current realities that are constructed by powerful nations and the dominant narrative that denies their existence, dreams, and aspirations? Why has the morality of their claims to nationhood and to a return to their homes not been understood or supported?

And McCain Is Dukakis

George Will agrees that Obama is like Reagan:

McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness -- the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

Will says "cotton candy" because this great communicator is coming from the left! While I'm on the subject, here's a line from page 3 of Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father:

I was... prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.

This is still true of Obama, and also very Reaganesque. RWR was aloof, impossible to fathom. So's Obama, a weird, wonderful cat.  Check out his wild, wild signature.

Leviev Is Foiled at Last! And 'Forward' Refers to 'Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'

Adalah-New York's campaign against Leviev, the Russian-Israeli diamond dealer who has funded colonies in the West Bank, has new bite. Dubai has reconsidered and rejected plans by Leviev to open two stores there, evidently because of his role in illegal colonization.

“They sort of folded under the media pressure,” David Bloom, an Adalah-NY activist, said of the Dubai government. He credited his own organization — which circulated an e-mail titled “Is Dubai Helping Ethnic Cleansing In Palestine?” — as well as Arab media outlets, with embarrassing Dubai into disavowing a connection with Leviev.

Kudos to Adalah, and to the Forward's Marissa Brostoff, for using the words "ethnic cleansing in Palestine." Hope it breaks a spell on American Jewry!

More Evidence of Obama's Post-Racial Appeal

A month or so back I said that Obama was going to pull racists into his coalition. Today's dailykos has proof, a poster describing how his/her mother in Kentucky said she wasn't "ready for a colored man to be president," and changed her mind in the last couple of weeks, because of the war, because of Hillary: 

"Well, you know, he’s half white," she pointed out, as though that was some special revelation.  "Maybe that’s a good thing, to have someone who can see things from the point of view of black people and white people."

Identity meant more when a mountain range--or a quota, or a color ban-- separated you  from the next tribe. The world's too small for all that. And identity is evolving before our eyes. Black, white, southern, Jewish, Catholic. Just watch the kids, it's fluid...

Was I Glib About Ahmadinejad?

Yesterday I said that Ahmadinejad hasn't called for the end of Judaism, he has called for the end of the state of Israel--in something of the way that George Bush called for the end of the secular Arab dictatorship in Iraq. Jerry Slater takes exception:

Bush called for the end of the Saddam Hussein regime, (not voted into office by the people of Iraq), certainly not for the end of Iraq as a state. Moreover, given the history of the Jews, when someone calls for the end of Israel as a state, there is no choice but to see that as the end of the Jewish people who are part of that state.

I accept that I was a little glib about that; though I would point out that the U.S. has now decimated an Arab society in the name of regime change. Another reader, Anne Silver, pointed me to Virginia Tilley's article saying that Ahmadinejad wasn't threatening Jews, he is against the "Zionist regime" of Israel. Do I have a bottom line? Jews are legitimately fearful of existential rhetoric. Everyone needs to get past this stuff.

'LA Times' Bravely Addresses 1-State Solution

It seems that Israel's 60th birthday is not triggering wild celebration around the world. Even the American discourse is changing. The cheers are muted.

In Le Monde Diplomatique, they are openly savaging the "ethnic cleansing of Palestine" and repudiating the settlements, and quoting Avraham Burg.

Here in the Philadelphia Inquirer, an editorial celebrating Israel's birthday is a little dejected. The U.S. is the only one supporting Israel, and it may be that way for generations, the editorial says. Well, think about that; why is that? (Do we want to be in Iraq for 100 years?) The editorial writer seems to understand that's not a good answer, but can't take that on. Meantime, the peace process seems busted. To which the editorial adds,

In that context, the future for Israel is murky.

Meantime, the LA Times does its readers a tremendous service by openly addressing the idea of a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine.

Palestinians who favor the idea say they would have no problem living with Jews as equals. If Jews were to give up their superior status and allow Palestinians the right to vote and move about the country, they say, Islamic extremists would lose their appeal.

Emphasis mine. Radical notion--that took 60 years?

The article quotes the Israeli Meron Benvenisti, who is for one state.

"Israelis and Palestinians are sinking together into the mud of 'one state,' " he writes. "We need a model that fits this reality. . . . The question is no longer whether it will be bi-national, but which model to choose."

I haven't seen such a fair treatment of Israel's crisis in the American mainstream press before. It was written by men named Richard Boudreaux and Ashraf Khalil (yes with help from Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem). I assume they are non-Jewish. That is a necessary part of this crisis: America needs non-Jewish Americans to speak their minds on these issues!

P.S. The Times went further, here with a blogpost where Khalil lists lots of sources on the one-state question, including Electronic Intifadah and Ali Abunimah, as well as Uri Avnery's opposition to it. God bless America.