Month: March 2012

"So maybe the conservative alternative to Romney is Romney," – Rush Limbaugh, warming to the idea of Mitt as the nominee.

I'm going to respond to Goldblog's unhinged, thin-skinned rants against me in due course, but it's worth noting how he conducts debate. He resorts either to authoritah – my critics are too uninformed and dumb to engage – or to marginalization of his opponents. So in just a few days, he has cited "the dean of American Jewish journalism, Gary Rosenblatt," Sol Stern, Yehudah Mirsky, and even Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street, to argue against a Beinart proposal that might – just might – change the doomed dynamic that Greater Israel is now trapped in.

Then – surprise! – someone Goldblog frequently cites admiringly, Hussein Ibish, publicly agrees with Peter. Money quote:

Teleportation via jump rope:

More dizzying camerawork by the videographer here.

Hanin Ghaddar thinks supporting Assad is destroying the Lebanese terrorist group's base of support:

Hezbollah is less popular today, locally and regionally, than it was a year ago. It is corrupt and supports a dictator, and its leader is not as charismatic as he used to be. It is losing its allies and becoming the subject of jokes by its enemies. No one in their right mind wants to be close to Hezbollah now; it is like the bully at school who no one likes but fears. But eventually, the bully loses his aura and we move on.

A few readers step into the fray:

Back in 2010, in the form of a question addressed to Peter Beinart, of all people, Jeff Goldberg gave an unwitting justification for his persistent intellectual subterfuge on the subject of Israel:

It's interesting to me that you, an Orthodox Jew, don't answer the question about Zionism in any sort of theological way whatsoever. Anti-Semitism to me is not a good enough answer to the question of "Why Israel." I'm not Orthodox, but I do feel a spiritual connection to our homeland. Without this connection, can Israel's location in what was Palestine be justified? Shouldn't it have been built in Bavaria?

In other words, for Goldberg, the only legitimate justification for Israel is a "theological" one.

How much stock can we then put in his supposedly political discussions of the state's actions? More to the point, how much stock can we place in his reporting, since he must always begin from the premise that, whatever tactical errors Israeli politicians might make, the country itself will always turn out to have been "right" in the eyes of eternity? 

How is a non-believer (even a non-believing Jew like myself) ever supposed to engage in this discussion, let alone a Palestinian? Sounds like "don't get the complexity" is code for "impious," if you ask me. And I think the last thing the Middle East conflict needs is more piety.

Another writes:

I have spent a fair amount of time in my career wading into the law and ethics of boycotts. I find absurd the notion, suggested by Goldblog and advanced by Ami Eden, that Beinart's call for a boycott of goods produced from illegal settlements is equivalent – or even roughly equivalent – to the call by Beinart's critics to boycott Beinart himself. Beinart is proposing a community sanction for pure conduct – and illegal conduct at that. Beinart's critics, in stark contrast, are proposing a community sanction for pure speech and expression of ideas. The notion that those who call themselves liberals can't see such a basic distinction is profoundly troubling.  Can you imagine what Goldberg or Eden would say if, in response to a call to boycott South African goods in the days of apartheid, right-wingers said that the boycott advocates should fear that they themselves may be boycotted? I am pretty sure they'd call it a form of bullying – retaliation for free speech.

Beinart's idea may not in substance be a good one – I have to mull it more – but it's an idea. And the suggestion that those who disagree with Beinart would be justified in boycott him for expressing the idea is not just morally foggy; it's dangerous because there's a hint of a threat to Beinart in those suggestions: "You will be a pariah of you keep bucking the 'community.'"

A reader writes:

As an employee of what you have taken to calling the “Greater Israel Lobby” who does not support the idea of Greater Israel, I would like to respond to the question that you leveled at Jeffrey Goldberg: “What would work to stop and reverse the settlements and forcibly remove the religious fanatics now upping the ante in a global religious war into which the US would inevitably be dragged?” One thing that would work is to stop looking at “settlements” so myopically and start drawing distinctions between the different kinds of Israelis living in different kinds of neighbourhoods that fall on the “wrong” side of the 1948 armistice lines.

The term “settlements” encompasses everything from what are essentially neighbourhoods of Jerusalem that have expanded over a then-unrecognised border to the hilltop outposts that probably come to mind when you write about them. Most of the people who live in “settlements” are not the religious fanatics you speak of, they are generally poor immigrants from the former Soviet Union or from Ethiopia who came to Israel and went where the housing was cheapest, as well as people who work in Jerusalem but wanted to live in a quiet suburban setting.

The religious-Zionists who refuse to give away the Path of the Prophets and the Cave of the Patriarchs are definitely the loudest of the West Bank’s Jewish residents, but they are neither the largest group nor the most powerful. What is happening with all of this external pressure, however, is that their voices are resonating within a community that feels attacked and does not understand why. Having actually been to the places you write about, I can tell you that many of them are not even aware of the issues surrounding the Green Line – they have been raised to consider where they live to be part of Israel.

Another issue that is rarely raised by you or anyone else who attacks them for where they choose to live is that they have some very serious and legitimate concerns about security. I have been on the bullet-proof school buses that take their children to school every day, which were introduced because they used to be habitually shot at as they drove to school; they will all tell you horror stories about babies being shot by snipers and restaurants full of people being bombed. They have seen what has happened in the last twelve years when Israel has twice withdrawn from territory and both times the territory was overrun by Islamist extremists who have used it to attack Israel.

I am, of course, aware that there is another side to the story and that many of these settlers also have blood on their hands, but many of them do not and the fact that they are being constantly condemned by people – such as yourself – who refuse to investigate who they really are is causing them to band together, leading to a retrenched siege mentality and a growing influence of the fanatical voices that none of us want to hear.

What would work to stop and reverse the settlements? I would suggest:

1) Draw distinctions between different settlements and start treating them like a group of people with a fanatical minority rather than a group of fanatics.

2) Begun a dialogue with them, showing them that we understand their perspective and educating them on other perspectives that boycotts would only cut them off from.

3) Israel implementing tax penalties for living in settlements and using the attendant revenue to compensate people who leave the settlements for Israel proper. This is a change that will not come from American pressure, but will need to result from internal lobbying within Israel.

4) Address the security legitimate concerns that the Israelis have. Put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to stop naming sports teams after terrorists, stop endorsing clerics who refer to Jews as “Satan on Earth” and stop appointing people to public office because they were imprisoned by Israel for murder (see the Governor of Bethlehem if you don’t believe me).

It would also help to form a better understanding of AIPAC, which is not the right-wing group that everyone is making it out to be and actually does not have a particular stance one way or the other regarding the West Bank. AIPAC has a very narrow policy agenda, which is entirely focused on increasing cooperation between America and Israel. There are militant organisations affiliated to – but distinct from – AIPAC that could perhaps justify the moniker “Greater Israel Lobby”, but the pro-Israel community is a very diverse and fractured group in America and the only message that can bring most (if not all) of them together is one as simple as AIPAC’s “the US should have a strong relationship with Israel”.

If you speak to the pro-Israel mainstream, you will find that the vast majority are not too fond of the settlements and are in favour of a two-state solution, as indeed are most Israelis. The debate is not what the solution is but when and how it will come. The increasing hostility from certain sectors of the US is not encouraging Israelis to act sooner, but rather creating a feeling of being attacked and winning more sympathy for all the wrong people.

 

Last month, Stephen Marche said no:

To be a hero is to do the heroic, to reach above the call of duty. The men and women returning this year are just less selfish and privileged than everybody else. They have done their job. In a previous era we would call them something else — normal Americans.

Ari Kohen counters:

What he’s saying is that it was never heroic simply to serve, even when everyone was doing it. It was just doing one’s duty. But what he neglects to mention is that it used to be compulsory; we didn’t have the option not to do our duty.

Now, of course, one chooses to enlist, one makes the active assertion that military service is one’s duty. And that’s what opens up the opportunity for heroism. Because enlisting is optional, one must actively choose to make sacrifices, to put oneself in harm’s way. Without the choice to stay home, it’s much more difficult to make the case that there is a measure of heroism simply in someone’s service in the armed forces. But since it’s not necessary, and since the rewards often seem not to outweigh the risks, it makes sense to me to praise those who enlist.

Tim Culpan reports on the "real Foxconn":

The problem with Mike Daisey’s lies is that they’ve painted a picture of the Evil Empire, a place devoid of any happiness or humanity. A dark, Dickensian scene of horror and tears. They also make anyone who tries to tell a fuller, more balanced account look like an Apple or Foxconn apologist because your mind is already full of the “knowledge” of how bad it is there.

To the public, a story about a 19-year-old shrugging her shoulders and claiming work is not so bad just can’t stand up against a 12-year-old working the iPad factory lines. The naïve and youthful smile of a kid having found his first girlfriend at a Foxconn work party pales in comparison to a crippled old man holding an iPad for the first time. Compared to the lies, the truth just doesn’t make good theater.

Yglesias chips in his two cents.

Jelani Cobb ponders the tragic killing:

[T]he shooting death of Trayvon Martin (black, male, seventeen, unarmed save for a packet of candy and a bottle of iced tea) did not so much raise questions as it confirmed suspicions: that we remain stratified or at best striated by race, that “innocent” is a relative term, that black male lives can end under capricious circumstances, and that justice is in the eye of the beholder—ideas that are as cynical as they are applicable. At this juncture, events in Sanford, Florida, suggest the benefit of the doubt in the shooting of a black teen-ager extends even to unauthorized, untrained, weapon-toting private citizens who pursue unarmed pedestrians.

Julian Sanchez is incredulous over the shooter's actions:

[S]upposing we actually believed Zimmerman’s unbelievable story, could it have been remotely reasonable for him to think lethal force was necessary to defend himself from imminent death or grave bodily harm? He had no hope of holding the boy off for a few minutes until someone else arrived? No "I’ve got a gun" or "I’ll shoot" against an unarmed opponent?

Maybe there’s some story he could tell at trial that would at least get you to reasonable doubt, but I don’t see why a jury would be forbidden from concluding that Zimmerman’s response was so wildly disproportionate to the threat that no reasonable person could regard it as necessary, even if they believe Martin threw the first punch. Not to be flip about it, but fistfights happen all the time—and I’ve got to assume that killing the guy who started it would not be a reasonable or justifiable resolution to the large majority of them.

Robert VerBruggen, who defends Florida's much-criticized self-defense laws, nevertheless sides against Zimmerman:

[His] actions went well beyond defending himself and others from physical threats, and into the territory of vigilantism — and they should be illegal. Zimmerman sought out this confrontation, and as a result a young man is dead — a young man who was unarmed, who was not carrying drugs, and who very well may have done nothing more than defend himself against a stranger who followed him on the street.

Why would it not? The way in which the next generation has been exposed to Christianity this past decade has been toxic to the faith. Christianism isn't just corrosive of our political order; it is deeply destructive to Christianity itself. Go to any college campus and ask the uncommitted their views of Christianity. What I hear is intolerance, anger, anti-gay prejudice, sexual obsession, and hatred of Islam. How many people Rick Santorum has scared off Christianity for life is beyond reckoning. And the bile directed at gay people has been deeply damaging in getting across to people what Jesus' message really was: which is, in many cases, almost the opposite of that of his current most prominent representatives in the media. 

Peter Berger reviews an article [gated] by David Campbell and Robert Putnam. Here's the Campbell-Putnam case:

The growth of the “nones”, and especially of their young constituent, is a reaction against the Religious Right. According to their data, between 2006 and 2011 Democrats and progressives were more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than Republicans and conservatives. These data are supported by those of the Pew Forum: “Nones” are 23% of those who say they are Republicans or leaning toward the Republican party, but 55% of Democrats and those leaning toward that party. There is an even higher discrepancy among younger “nones”. They associate Republicanism with intolerance and homophobia. And they don’t like this. We know from many other sources that the young are much more liberal on issues of gender and sexuality. On empirical grounds, one may conclude that, whatever else has happened in America in recent decades, the sexual revolution has achieved victory on most fronts. If one wants to use this hackneyed phrase, those who take a stand against this development find themselves on “the wrong side of history”. 

His critique of the article:

Let me, with all due respect for Campbell and Putnam, suggest a hypothesis of my own:  Most “nones” have not opted out of religion as such, but have opted out of affiliation with organized religion. Among Christians (the great majority of all survey respondents) there are different reasons for this disaffection. The two authors are very probably correct that, broadly speaking, those who are turned off by Evangelicals and conservative Catholics do so because they don’t like the repressive sexual morality of those churches (the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church has not helped).

But the “nones” have also exited from mainline Protestantism, which has been much more accommodating to the liberationist ethic. Here, I think, there has been frustration with what my friend and colleague Thomas Luckmann long ago called “secularization from within”—the stripping away of the transcendent dimensions of the Gospel, and its reduction to conventional good deeds, popular psychotherapy and (mostly left-of-center) political agendas. Put differently: My hypothesis implies that some “nones” are put off by churches that preach a repressive morality, some others by churches whose message is mainly secular.

So Christianity in America, as Ross Douthat's excellent forthcoming book explains, is undermined by both the political temptation and degeneracy on the evangelical right and the failure of mainline Protestantism to advance a Christianity that is both at ease with modernity but also determined to transcend its false gods of money, celebrity, and power, and to require more from its adherents.

We need a via media that lies not in between these models, but transcends both.