Mondoweiss

It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fabulous)

Just got up, just heard Steve Inskeep of Morning Edition on NPR angrily asking the Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor (whom Horowitz dispatched on this site last night) what the goals were, when it was going to be over, aren't you empowering Hamas, etc. I missed the beginning of the interview, it doesn't matter. Inskeep was short with the ambassador, almost trembling with contained feeling. Inskeep is the son of an English teacher and grew up in Indiana. He's a real American, as my good friend Sarah Palin used to say. And he's at NPR, which administers the IV drip every morning on what Elite Blue Staters Are Allowed to Think. And he's angry. This would never have happened before. Inskeep would have checked himself and thought about the mantra, Israel's right to exist, Arabs have never missed an opportunity, what would Daniel Schorr with his Zionist mama say, blah blah blah...

It's over baby. The whole thing is over. I'm telling you. America is waking up at last and realizing that the warm cuddly furball it adopted in 1948 is a monster. A few weeks ago one of my anti-Zionist friends murmured in an email to me, "I hate that f---ing country." I was shocked; it's not something I feel. But I think that sentiment is now seeping out through my country, and affecting people like Inskeep. The American street is rising up. And everyone who has taken the wrong side of this easy important choice called the Gaza Slaughter, from Mayor Bloomberg to Jeffrey Goldberg, is suddenly going to find themselves on an ice floe to nowhere. Just ask the neoconservatives. (Jeffrey, get right with the lord, we need you.) It really is the end of the Israel lobby, or a new phase. What Jack Ross said here yesterday is right. J Street and MJ Rosenberg are in the driver's seat; Obama is going to have room to be tough on Israel. 385 Palestinians have lost their lives for a reason. A horrifying thing to say (but it is what Norman Finkelstein said a month ago).

As Ross said, it might even be the end of the two-state solution, this moment when Americans see ethnic cleansing/genocide/apartheid, give it whatever name you please, and look at their wives or husbands and say, I hate that frakkin country, why have we believed a word they told us. I know, I'm dramatic, my wife always tells me that. But I'm right. And guess what's the next shoe to drop? The Nakba. You heard it here first.

(Photo is from Shifa Hospital, 2 days ago, likely by Suhaib Salem of Reuters.) 

Big-Media Clothing Budgets Are Fair Game

I find Andrea Mitchell of NBC oddly charming. She is unpretentious, straightforward and racked by insecurity, which I always find appealing, so long as you're not grabbing my arm.  She works hard, she's smart, and she doesn't pretend to be a thinker. The other day after someone had tee'd off on Sarah Palin's clothes budget, she grinned and said: "Fortunately we're in television, we're not running for office." Charming. But incorrect, I would argue. Why aren't big media clothing allowances fair game, especially if the media are speechifying about how much ordinary people spend? After all, Sarah Palin only raided Neiman Marcus because she was on television.

Palin Balked at Meeting Donors. Who?

What You're Seeing Is a Progressive Movement

There are going to be 1 million people in Grant Park in Chicago tomorrow night. (If Obama loses, imagine what they'll do to the city, then imagine what people will do to New York.) On MSNBC, Chuck Todd was saying there's a never-before-seen intensity in Obama's supporters: that they don't want anyone to go after their guy. I saw the cultlike army myself once, up close, and liked what I saw. Sarah Palin said just now in Missouri that the real America fights the wars, and the far left wants to take over the government. So she's feeling it too, and her crowd seemed thin. This is a progressive movement. We're Obama's base, and yes he's going to swing states and reaching out, but the base matters. Clinton's ideological base was the DLC, Bush's AEI. From to Frum. When will the papers get at the inner-political-intellectual-juice of this campaign. David Axelrod, said to be Obama's closest political adviser, is a Lower East Side Jew and a true movement guy. We're coming back in as a major force in American political life. It's been what, 35 years, or even 75.

CNN Shocker: Khalidi Accused Israel of 'Occupying Palestinian Territories'

Now Sarah Palin is going after Rashid Khalidi as a "radical" professor. Gee, I know Khalidi and he's not very radical. He's sober, even a little middle of the road.

If you have any doubts about the disastrous effects of the Israel lobby, consider that CNN says that Khalidi "has accused the country [Israel] of 'occupying' Palestinian territories." This shows how little Americans know about this situation, how afraid the media are of the issue, and what a negative priority Palestinian human rights are here.

I'll Take My Stand (for the Palin Wardrobe)

From an aesthetic standpoint, I must say that Sarah Palin's expenditures worked. She looks glamorous, soigne, natural. I had been noticing this before the story broke. I thought, For a hick, that girl sure knows how to put it together. Now we know. Everyone's saying that Joe Sixpack wouldn't spend that money on clothes, but then Joe Sixpack wouldn't welsh on a deal to take public funding then raise $150 million in September, corrupting the process. What's Obama spending his money on? How much of that is going into appearance? (And why does he drive round like a caudillo in a caravan of black SUVs?)

Also, for what it's worth, I know from the media business that some women magazine editors get clothing allowances. Lavish clothing allowances. Help me girls, what's that mean? How much do corporations spend in a similar endeavor? Andrea Mitchell was looking down her nose at Palin today on MSNBC. Andrea, hon, let's bitch and switch...

And no, I don't like it. But there is some hypocrisy and self-righteousness working in the Obama media. (Matt Drudge--link me please)

Palin:Obama=Netanyahu:Rabin (Sure Hope Not)

David Bromwich has a moving piece on Huffpo about the actual dangerousness of Palin's loose talk about Obama, linking him to terrorists. David Gergen has been saying this too. Bromwich says it's a form of delegitimation which we also saw with Kennedy:

Netanyahu Shares His Vision of Bantustans With Brit Reporters

The Financial Times is a great newspaper. They have a piece on Bibi Netanyahu's plans for a Palestinian "entity." Netanyahu himself jumping up to the white board. Well it's subdivided "into a collection of disconnected economic zones with dedicated business projects," and there are security zones. Bantustans. It makes me want to vomit. Americans must ask, Do we want this? Is this fair? Will this end the cycle of violence? (No, no, no, to echo Khartoum). 

Memo to Ethan Bronner, of the NYT: You've been doing great work, dude, you're smart, you know the story. Now take this Netanyahu stuff and extend it. Tell us who in McCain's camp shares this view. Talk about Dore Gold, Netanyahu's ace boon-coon, getting $96,000 a year as a "scholar" in Jerusalem from the AMERICAN (?) Enterprise Institute, chaired by horsey-set Bruce Kovner, who with his wife gave $4600 to McCain. Then talk about all the advisers to McCain and where they are on the two-state solution. Get Randy Scheunemann on the horn and pin his ass down. Palin said she's for 2 states. But what does that mean? Isn't that the Netanyahu plan? Lay it out. Because this stuff is underlyng many of the battles in the American presidential race, and no one talks about it. Except you; and you will be showered in glory. Well--linked here for damn sure.

At a Palin Rally, Racism

How ugly will America get? I'm a cockeyed optimist. But this is worrisome. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

'I've Lost My Analytical Center of Gravity'

Alison Weir's differences with me remind me of a meeting I had the other day with a Jewish Arabist. I'm disguising some facts about him to protect his identity, still I wanted to convey some of his thinking. He worked on Israel/Palestine for a while then left for another field of Arab life because it was too exhausting. He had "lost my analytical center of gravity." One day he would be with Palestinians who are arguing against Jews and he'd want to stand up for the Jews--yes, I got the feeling, maybe a little as a Jew. Another day he would be with Jews talking about Palestinians and have to stand up for the Palestinians. He lost his analytical center of gravity. Beautiful words. I said to him, I sometimes feel I've lost mine too. Of Israelis, he said: They are like a dog that has been beaten; they don't respond well to the slightest provocation, it gets ugly very fast. Then he said: he has talked to Jews on the left in Israel, who said, we can't get anywhere here because of the American Jewish community supporting the rightwing in Israel. My friend disputed them; said, you live in a democratic country, stand up. But still, they blamed American Jews. They believe in the Israel Lobby more than Walt and Mearsheimer.

My conclusion is that the discourse is completely broken in the U.S. There is no dialogue between the conversations about this issue, no consensus, no unity. Alan Dershowitz is in the cloakroom and Norman Finkelstein is in the street, and never the twain doth meet. Lies are put forward by the American government regularly: Joe Biden's suggestion last night that it was the Palestinians who somehow have to make the concessions. When actually, when you delve into this, you understand that the reality is different, that Israel has been expansionist for more than 60 years and yet has been portrayed as the victim throughout. You develop enormous sympathy for the Arabs, as Jimmy Carter has, and Alison Weir, David Bloom, myself.

I say again that it is necessary to heal the Jewish narrative of victimization, because it controls the American conversation about these issues. We've all lost our analytical center of gravity.