Month: April 2012

The latest government data predicts that the ultra-orthodox haredim and Israeli-Arabs will form a majority by the middle of this century in democratic Israel. Whatever secular democratic middle is left will be very isolated:

According to the CBS forecast, the ultra-Orthodox population will number 1.1 million people by 2019, compared with 750,000 in 2009. By 2059, there will be anywhere between 2.73 million and 5.84 million haredim – a 264%-686% increase.

The Arab proportion of democratic Israel's population will also increase. Yousef Munayyer believes that "to hope for a 'democratic' Israel is foolish," even if there were a two-state solution:

Think about what “democratic” Israel would be like. In order to insure a Jewish majority, the state will have to continue to not only discriminate against the Palestinian citizens in Israel but also continue to treat them as a “demographic threat.”

Numerous Israeli laws discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Because of a 2003 law, Palestinians like me can’t reside in Israel with their Palestinian spouse from outside of “Israel proper.” This means that if I want to live in Israel, my wife from the West Bank cannot live with me. Yet Jews are exempt from this hardship. These laws exist to prevent what Netanyahu refersto as a "demographic spillover"; the movement of Palestinians into Israel, which would threaten the state’s desired Jewish majority.

Why is that less offensive when used to describe the radical tax and spending cuts offered by Romney-Ryan than the use of the word "socialist" to describe the president? David Boaz has a point.

Michelle Goldberg profiles them:

[D]espite the best efforts of the Republican establishment, many on the religious right are far from ready to accept Romney’s inevitability, or to coalesce behind him. They remain distrustful of his record on abortion, and unsure they can believe his campaign promises. And the harder party elites push Romney on them, the more alienated they become. "The biggest story that everyone in the media has missed this cycle is how frustrated and fed up the Republican Party base is with the Republican Party," says Deace. "It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen."

Jonathan Tobin sees the resistance finally giving up in Pennsylvania. YouGov points out that GOP voters are relatively unenthusiastic about Romney:

[O]nly 11% of GOP voters in this week’s  Economist/YouGov Poll would be excited if Romney became the party’s nominee.

Michael Barone takes a close look at it:

[Excluding Missouri] I find that 10,715,721 votes have been cast so far and that 10,428,036 votes were cast in those states’ primaries in 2008. That represents a turnout increase of 2%. The story line has been that dropping turnout is bad news for Republicans, because it suggests even less enthusiasm and interest than in 2008, which was a dismal year for the party. The 2% rise is better news for Republicans, but not very much better. It’s a very small increase, less than the population increase in four years, and from a relatively low base, since Democrats had far greater primary turnout in 2008 than Republicans did.

In case anyone had any doubts about Netanyahu's utter disdain for a two-state solution, his government is actively ramping up the Jewish population in non-democratic Israel:

[T]he Ministry of Housing, on its Web site, invited bids for plots for the construction of more than 800 apartments in Har Homa, a Jewish development across the 1967 lines in southeast Jerusalem, and in Givat Zeev, a settlement north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. “The principle that has guided me is to strengthen Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, using the biblical names for the West Bank. … He said he also intended, together with the defense minister, to seek the necessary permits to retroactively legalize three other West Bank settler outposts that went up without authorization.

And yet Netanyahu also says that "we do everything according to the law." How does retroactively legalizing illegal settlements uphold the law? What it does is encourage more radical Jewish settlers to move into non-democratic Israel, in the knowledge that they may eventually be legalized. This is a facts-on-the-ground annexation. There are now an estimated 600,000 Israelis living on occupied territory, ten percent of Greater Israel's population.

Increasingly, it seems to me the window is over for a two-state solution in Greater Israel. Ethnic social engineering can work if you have enough brute power.

More on Jonah’s new book here, here and here. Video archive here.

A reader writes:

In raising John 7:53-8:11, the story of Jesus stopping the stoning of the adulteress, you highlight a biblical passage that brings to light the contradictions of Evangelical, or more broadly Christianist, ideology. As obsessed as they are with sexual purity and reading the Bible as primarily a rulebook, they are also obsessed with the issue of biblical inerrancy and literal readings of text.

But in John 7:53-8:11, we have Jesus – God incarnate among men – rejecting both the biblical laws of sexual purity and the right of legitimate earthly authority to condemn, judge, and kill. To accept the inerrancy, authority, and literal truth of the Bible, one must accept that in this passage, Jesus expressly stood against rigid sexual legalism and capital punishment. So it's telling that it has become widely accepted in the Evangelical/Christianist right that this one particular passage of the Bible is not actually inerrant, and maybe isn't literally true at all.

Bible translations aimed mainly at Evangelicals generally include a note before the passage, such as the New International Version's "[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]" Christianist supporters of Old Testament sexual purity, or the death penalty, routinely argue that John 7:53-8:11 is not an authentic part of the Bible at all, probably never happened, and cannot be regarded as revelation. The "Jesus didn't really stop an execution" argument is widespread among Christianists, both Protestants and Catholics.

For most Christianists, this is literally the only passage of the Bible that is not held to be the perfect revelation of God's word. Scholars have found that many portions of the New Testament changed significantly in the first decades after their writing; "earliest manuscripts" and "other ancient witnesses" do not agree on large swaths of the Gospels. Yet for this one passage, and not any other, Evangelicals embrace postmodern critical theory to write Jesus' mercy out of the Bible.

Another writes:

The story of the woman accused of adultery has always struck me. First, it is rather certain that the text is a later addition to the Gospel of John. In the manuscript tradition, it is found at several points in the narrative or missing altogether. Second, however, is that I've become convinced by other scholars (especially Leticia Guardiola-Sáenz) that calling this unnamed woman an adulteress condemns her without evidence. We have the word of a crowd of men concerned more with trapping Jesus than justice. Thus, her partner in this purported crime never appears in the narrative. What proof do we have that the accusation leveled against her is true?

To me, it seems far more likely that the narrative is not primarily about Jesus forgiving a sinner, but Jesus practicing justice for a woman unjustly accused. She was nearly crushed by the machinations of religion imbued with power and overly concerned with the sexual mores of the time. Jesus notices this exploitation of power and saves this woman not from her sinfulness but from a system that would condemn her without pondering her humanity, without consider that she too was created in the image of God.

In fact, this may speak more directly to our times than a Jesus who forgives even the sinner. This is about Jesus confronting the crushing injustice of a religious and political system that has chosen power over grace, that chooses to protect itself instead of protecting the most vulnerable in their midst.

Santorum is losing in his home state:

Mitt Romney's taken the lead in PPP's newest poll of Rick Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania. Romney has 42% to 37% for Santorum with Ron Paul at 9% and Newt Gingrich at 6%. The numbers represent a dramatic turnaround from when PPP polled the state a month ago. Romney's gained 17 points, going from 25% to 42%. Meanwhile Santorum's dropped 6 points from 43% to 37%, for an overall swing of 23 points in the last four weeks.

Weigel points out that "Pennsylvania is the only one of five April 24 states where Santorum has the advantage":

If you were already ignoring the GOP primary, I'm sorry for interrupting.

(Photo: With supporters on stage behind in his hometown of Mars in northwestern Pennsylvania, Republican Presidential Candidate Senator Rick Santorum speaks to a half-full ballroom at an election night party in Mars, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, April 3, 2012. By Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

"I am mystified why the GOP has adopted such a hard line when it comes to tax policy, particularly within the framework of a budget deal which would include a major re-structuring of federal entitlement programs. … [G]iven what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally deal with entitlements, personally, as a member of the near-1%, I would at least grudgingly accept a moderate tax increase knowing that we’ve set the nation on a sustainable path. Further, I would gladly – enthusiastically! – support the possibility of a moderate tax increase as part of the 2012 GOP budget platform, as long as it’s clear that this would only be on the table as part of a comprehensive deal which included entitlement reform, along the lines proposed by Ryan," – Morgen Richmond, Hot Air. 

A-fucking-men.