The Dish

A fascinating squabble over CNN senior correspondent Andrea Koppel is beginning to make the email rounds. It concerns allegations that the Israeli Defense Force has conducted a slaughter of civilians in the Jenin refugee camp. The reliably anti-Israel and pro-terrorism newspaper, the Independent, is running hard with the story today. The New York Times version is harrowing but doesn’t find evidence of anything but collateral civilian deaths. Still, It seems Andrea Koppel knew for sure there was an Israeli massacre as early as last Sunday. Here’s an email from an Israel-sympathizer who had an encounter with Koppel last week:

I am attending the Israel Venture Association annual conference in Tel Aviv and was introduced to Andrea Koppel from CNN as we were waiting for Prime Minister Sharon and Secretary of State Powell to finish their discussion Sunday evening at our hotel.
While we were chatting, an American-born Israeli joined us to tell Andrea about his perception of media distortion in that the press that stresses moral equivalence between Israeli civilian deaths caused by Palestinian terror and Palestinian civilian deaths caused by Israeli military actions. He argued that Israel has tried to engage in a peace process since Camp David and has been double-crossed over and over by the Palestinian Authority. Further, he argued the civilian deaths caused by Palestinians are intentional, whereas the deaths caused by Israel are mostly the tragic, unintentional results caused by Israel trying to defend itself.
Andrea replied, “So when Israeli soldiers slaughter civilians in Jenin, that is not equivalent?”
Israeli: “What are your sources? Were you in Jenin? How exactly do you
know there was a slaughter?”
Andrea: “I just spoke with my colleagues who were there, and they told me of the slaughter.”
Israeli: “Did they actually see the shooting, the bodies?”
Andrea: “Palestinians told us about the slaughter.”
Israeli: “And you believe them without evidence. Could they possibly be
lying and distorting facts?”
Andrea: “Oh, so now they are all just lying??”
The Israeli became emotional in describing that his children are afraid, his friends have been murdered, and if this goes on, “We could lose our lives or we could lose our country.”
Andrea, “Yes, you will lose your country.”
At this point, I interrupted the two of them and asked Andrea Koppel,
“Did I just hear you correctly– that you believe the current crisis will lead to the destruction of the State of Israel?”
Andrea: “Yes, I believe we are now seeing the beginning of the end of Israel.”

Koppel and Walter Isaacson have denied the gist of this account, and insist that Koppel didn’t use the word ‘slaughter.’ The man present continues to insist that was precisely the word she used, and that she clearly predicted the demise of Israel. I wasn’t there. I have no way to prove which party is lying. But when you see Andrea Koppel on television, ‘reporting’ on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems to me you should be aware of this alleged exchange.

HOW CONSERVATIVES UNDERMINE MARRIAGE: Terrific piece by Jon Rauch in the current Atlantic, fast becoming indispensable reading under the guidance of David Bradley and Mike Kelly. He points out how the stalemate on equal marriage rights for straights and gays has had an unintended effect: more and more localities, cities, states and companies are setting up pseudo-marital arrangements for gays, which can be and are extended to heterosexuals. So domestic partnerships, civil unions, and other “ABM” (Anything But Marriage) relationships are being codified by society. By blocking gay marriage, social conservatives are busy helping create a plethora of pseudo-marital institutions that really are undermining marriage. Hence the big jump in ‘unmarried partners’ in the Census. If the Bush administration really wanted tio support marriage, they would back gay marriage as the critical institution to prevent its decline into irrelevancy. But they don’t; they can’t; they won’t. They’d rather see marriage undermined across the culture than get over their hostility to treating gay relationships as equally beneficial as straight ones. This is perverse in the extreme. “Can you imagine social conservatives telling any other group to cohabit rather than marry?” Rauch poignantly asks. “Can you imagine them saying, ‘The young men of America’s inner cities won’t take marriage as seriously as they should, so let’s encourage them to shack up with their girlfriends’?… Someday conservatives will look back and wonder why they undermined marriage in an effort to keep homosexuals out.” Yes, Jon. Someday they surely will.

MY ONCE AND PRESENT BOSS: Marty Peretz endured a lot of name-calling in the 1980s and 1990s for his skepticism about the ability and will of Palestinian leaders to deliver on their occasional public endorsements of ‘peace.’ For Marty’s troubles, he’s been all but banned from NPR, described routinely as a Zionist fanatic, and barely gets coverage in the mainstream media without some reference to his allegedly ‘reflexive’ support for Israel (to borrow Eric Alterman’s latest euphemism for the old dual loyalty smear). What a shock that a committed Jew might actually care about Zion! I’ve had my differences with Marty over the years (who hasn’t?) but I never doubted the sincerity of his faith in Israel or wavered in admiring – yes, admiring – him for it. And you know what? Leaving all matters of loyalty, politics, or whatever out of it, he’s also been right. He got it – early and perceptively. When I had the task of editing his magazine for five and a half years, people often asked me how I put up with all the pro-Israel material. Put up with it? I eagerly endorsed it. Occasionally, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to add more dissent, but for the most part I found TNR’s coverage to be exemplary of what a committed political magazine should publish. Which brings me to recommend Marty’s latest diarist – one of countless that he has written in defense of his beloved Zion. He makes two sharp points: that the European intelligentsia that so often frets about the death penalty in America has apparently no qualms about the PA’s public lynchings of suspected collaborators in the last few weeks. In fact, I haven’t even seen a photograph in the press of these victims of Arafat’s police state. Marty’s also smart in pointing out how those early stories about Israeli draft-resisters have not been followed by similarly prominent stories about how more Israelis are volunteering for service now than the draft requires. That’s a sea-change, an important sign of the atmosphere in Israel, and yet barely covered. Why not?

CORRECTION: A couple of readers say my attribution of the remark, “I may have lost my faith. I haven’t lost my mind,” with respect to joining the Church of England after leaving the Roman church is incorrect. It was James Joyce, not Evelyn Waugh. If any of you have the exact quote (from “Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man,” perhaps) I’d be grateful for it.

YOU SWELTERING? Trust me – after doing a six hour tech rehearsal in leather pants in this heat, you’re not the only one. So here’s an old article from Newsweek in 1975 that might cheer you up, if you’re convinced it’s global warming. If you’re not, or if you’re not sure, what be
tter reason for joining the book club this month and reading the most provocative discussion of the subject in years – Bjorn Lomborg’s book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”? There’s still plenty of time to read the book before the May 4 discussion starts – with me, Bjorn and other andrewsullivan.com readers. So buy the book today and get a grip on the weather.

MEDIA BIAS WATCH: Check out Patrick Tyler’s “News Analysis” in the New York Times today. A classic piece of anti-Bush spin, with the major quotes attributed to a former Clinton official and the Egyptian ambassador all arguing that the last week’s impasse in the Middle East is yet another blow to the administration. Tyler also manages to bring Venezuala into it. Not a single nod to anyone who believes the current crisis is no threat to the war on terror. That, after all, would not be New York Times ‘analysis.’ It would be objective journalism.

THE TERRORIST BISHOP: Along with protecting sexual abusers of children, the current hierarchy of the Catholic church is also adept at sheltering terrorists and their supporters. The terror-loving bishop Oriana Falaci referred to recently, is Bishop Hilarion Capucci, 77, the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. Capucci, once imprisoned for arms smuggling for the PLO, is a big fan of the regimes in Iraq and Iran, and has visited both countries, telling Tehran IRIB television that “the Muslim people of Iran are revolutionary standard-bearers of humanitarian and moral values.” He’s also high on Saddam’s Iraq. Less than two years ago, he visited that country and praised it for financially aiding Palestinian terror in Gaza and the West Bank. You see the “culture of life” means barring Catholic couples from using contraception, but not preventing Catholic bishops from supporting sending teenage girls on suicidal murder missions.

SO I ASKED FOR IT: Here’s an email responding to my challenge yesterday to come up with a serious defense of our marijuana laws:

Many of the very same people who celebrate the remarkable reduction in New York crime through the Guiliani/Bratton “zero tolerance” policy on all crimes somehow reject this same sort of reasoning when it comes to drug policy, particularly in regard to the decriminalisation of marijuana. The Netherlands is usually cited as the model for decriminalisation but the Dutch experiment is in reality a disaster. It has turned Holland into the drug baron of the West with all of the attendant rise in crime implied by the retention of this policy; its young people are now the biggest users in Europe of cocaine and ecstasy; use of heroin and cannabis has risen and there has been an explosion of drug-related crime.
Here’s a successful alternative that transcends the liberalisation policy of the Netherlands and the bogus and corrupt war on drugs pursued in the United States. It’s the Swedish solution. In Sweden, where a mere 9% have tried drugs compared with Britain’s 34%, drug use is kept low through tough enforcement and prevention policies. In the 1960s Sweden decriminalized amphetamines and produced an epidemic. It has since reverted to its tough approach. It does not just enforce fines for possession and prison for large-scale possession and supply. It has criminalized drug use itself. The police test the blood and urine of suspected users, and if they come up positive they are fined. If teachers suspect that pupils have taken drugs, they call in the police and social workers. Against this background, treatment and drug education policies work because all the signals are pointing in the same direction.
But law enforcement relies on popular consent and that is precisely what the present campaign is intended to undermine. Promoted by organizations backed by unlimited funds to pump out propaganda, it is capturing the gullible, the opportunistic, the malign and those for whom it would be a grave social embarrassment for their drug-puffing, pill-popping children to gain a criminal record. By contrast, when have you ever seen a serious study of Sweden’s success in this area?

Sorry, I’m still unconvinced. The problem with the Dutch example is that it’s a small country in a large continent. It’s almost inevitable if one place – with open access to the rest of Europe – legalizes dope, while the rest don’t, it could still become a haven for drug-criminals across Europe. A continent-wide liberalization of marijuana laws in the U.S. would not attract the same problems. As for Sweden, how can a free society tolerate mandatory drug-testing of ‘suspected users’? As for the amphetamines example, it doesn’t follow that legalizing pot would be as harmful. Even anti-marijuana advocates concede that addiction is far less likely with pot than with speed or, God help us, crystal meth. It also seems to me that legalization of the relatively harmless cannabis – far from undermining all drug laws – could actually help restore some confidence in a legal system that currently makes no distinctions of any profound kind between drugs that really do harm and those that don’t. Lets have the best of both worlds: legalization of soft drugs and a zero tolerance policy for the rest? Anyway, that’s my take. Any further refutations?

When two smart liberals in D.C. both decide that the only hope for their party is drafting a Republican for the presidency, the real state of the Democrats could hardly be more brutally exposed. For what it’s worth, I think Jon Chait and Josh Green are engaging in wishful thinking. On abortion and affirmative action alone, McCain has much less of a chance of becoming a Democratic nominee than Colin Powell (in reverse) ever had of becoming a Republican nominee. (And at least Powell was already in the party.) Moreover, if McCain were to perform Clintonian pirouettes on these issues, he would erase his cenral attraction to voters: his ‘straight-talking’ conviction politics. Maybe events, i.e. the evisceration of the Democrats’ funding base after campaign finance reform, will prove me wrong, and they’ll be desperate to have anyone who can raise the sizzle factor among their candidates. But I doubt it, and I like McCain far too much to want him to erase his long-standing loyalty to his party to be eclipsed by being wooed by a bunch of desperate Washington lefties. But think about what this little gambit really says about the Dems right now. They have acknowledged that a president they still routinely describe as a moron, a tool of corporate interests, and an inarticulate boob is all but unbeatable by anyone in their ranks. This is a party, remember, that had to win back the Senate by a Republican defection, and now it wants to win back the White House the same way. The truth is, the only people actually excited about the current Democratic Party’s domestic and foreign policy ideas are Republicans yearning for the excitement of conversion. If I were McCain, I’d remember Evelyn Waugh’s line, when asked, as a fading Catholic, whether he would join the Church of England. “I may have lost my faith,” he replied. “But I haven’t lost my mind.” Stay sane, John. Stay sane.

Her screed on European anti-Semitism rather hits the nail on the head. Here’s an incident I had not heard of:

I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, an angel who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party.”

Who is this bishop?

DOWD GOES BLOGGING: The Beatrice of the New York Times op-ed page writes a column that essentially follows up on her last one, responding to input from readers, via 600 emails. Hmmm. Great idea, Maureen. Next up: MODO.com. Blog away, baby, blog away.

MEN ARE FROM MARS, PART XXXVIIB: Don’t miss Michael Lewis’ account of being present for the birth of his second daughter – this time, sober. My favorite passage? How about this one:

At some point in his private ordeal one of the hospital staff will turn to him and ask, sweetly, “And how is Dad doing?” He must understand that no one actually cares how Dad is doing. His fatigue, his worries, his tedium, his disappointment at the contents of hospital vending machinethese are better unmentioned. Above all, he must know that if his mask of perfect selflessness slips for even a moment he will be nabbed.
“Would a little food taste good to you right now?”
“I don’t think so.” (Muffled, through oxygen mask.)
“Because they have these Ring Dings in the vending machine. The kind with the vanilla icing.”
The fixed accusing stare. “You’re incredible.” Pause. A weary tone. “If you want something to eat, just go get something to eat.”

No one writes about being an ass better than Michael.

THE GREAT CIRCUMCISION DEBATE: Check out the Letters Page for some strenuous and informed pros and cons. But here’s an extract from a study published in the British Journal of Urology that really lays it on the line, and provides details I hadn’t seen elsewhere. It was sent to me by a reader. If you’re squeamish, I advise moving on. If you still think circumcision is a good or even a neutral thing, read on. Especially if you’re a heterosexual woman and like orgasms:

With their circumcised partners, women were more likely not to have a vaginal orgasm (4.62, 3.65.80). Conversely, women were more likely to have a vaginal orgasm with an unaltered partner. Their circumcised partners were more likely to have premature ejaculation (1.82, 1.42.27). Women were also more likely to state that they had vaginal discomfort with a circumcised partner either often (19.89, 5.966.22) or occasionally (7.00, 3.812.79) as opposed to rarely or never. More women reported that they never achieved vaginal orgasm with their circumcised partners (2.25, 1.14.50) than with their unaltered partners. Also, they were more likely to report never having had a multiple orgasm with their circumcised partners (2.22, 1.33.63). They were also more likely to report that vaginal secretions lessened as coitus progressed with their circumcised partners (16.75, 6.840.77).

So it isn’t just the men who lose sexual pleasure by being mutilated. Their partners do as well. Why? Because circumcision throws a wrench into nature’s way of combining pleasure with sexual intercourse:

When the anatomically complete penis thrusts in the vagina, it does not slide, but rather glides on its ownbeddin of movable skin, in much the same way that a turtls neck glides in and out on the folded layers of skin surrounding it. The underlying corpus cavernosa and corpus spongiosum slide within the penile skin, while the skin juxtaposed against the vaginal wall moves very little. This sheath-within-a sheath alignment allows penile movement, and vaginal and penile stimulation, with minimal friction or loss of secretions. When the penile shaft is withdrawn slightly from the vagina, the foreskin bunches up behind the corona in a manner that allows the tip of the foreskin, which contains the highest density of fine-touch neuroreceptors in the penis [1], to contact the corona of the glans, which has the highest concentration of fine-touch neuroreceptors on the glans [18]. This intense stimulation discourages the penile shaft from further withdrawal, explaining the short-thrusting style that women noted in their unaltered partners. This juxtaposition of sensitive neuroreceptors is also seen in the clitoris and clitoral hood of the Rhesus monkey [19] and in the human clitoris [18].

So mutilated men have to go to far greater lengths to achieve orgasm – and they can damage their partner in the process:

As stated, circumcision removes 35% of the penile skin. With this skin missing, there is less tissue for the swollen corpus cavernosa and corpus spongiosum to slide against. Instead, the skin of the circumcised penis rubs against the vaginal wall, increasing friction, abrasion and the need for artificial lubrication. Because of the tight penile skin, the corona of the glans, which is configured as a one-way valve, pulls the vaginal secretions out of the vagina when the shaft is withdrawn. Unlike the anatomically complete penis, there is no sensory input to limit withdrawal. Because the vast majority of the fine-touch receptors are missing from the circumcised penis, their role as ejaculatory triggers is also absent. The loss of these receptors creates an imbalance between the deep pressure sensed in the glans, corpus cavernosa and corpus spongiosum and the missing fine-touch [20]. To compensate for this imbalance, to achieve orgasm, the circumcised man must stimulate the glans, corpus cavernosa and corpus spongiosum by thrusting deeply in and out of the vagina. As a result, coitus with a circumcised partner reduces the amount of vaginal secretions in the vagina, and decreases continual stimulation of the mons pubis and clitoris.

Well, I just hope you’ve had your breakfast already.

ROPE A DOPE: How many times can a sane person write an article pointing out that our marijuana laws are simply, irrefutably, incontrovertibly, nuts? Deroy Murdock does it again – and very cogently, I must say. There are plenty of topics on which I hold strong views but completely respect the views of those who disagree with me. I simply, honestly, cannot respect anyone who believes alcohol should be legal but marijuana shouldn’t. Here’s a challenge: will one reader provide a short (less than 300 words) defense of that position? I will gladly publish it in the Dish, if it has a modicum of sense. And, please, no circular arguments about gateway drugs and the like. It’s only a gateway to shady, illegal characters if it’s illegal in the first place. Besides, if presidents and CEOs and House speakers and mayors of major cities enjoyed pot in the past, how on earth is this gateway to anything but success and responsibility? Someone – anyone – persuade me, please.

BENEDICKS AND, ER… : “This is where Europe really trumps America. [Circumcision] is an outdated ritualistic norm, and flies in the face of logic. If cleanliness is an issue, I suggest using a bit of soap and attempting to suppress the urge to second guess the intention of God. Personally, I find my husband’s
uncircumcised penis quite large and glorious.” The circumcision debate and reflections on Shakespeare’s Benedick – all on the Letters Page.

Thanks for all the emails on circumcision. I’ve long suspected that this is an issue people care about but that our squeamish culture shies away from. Two points stand out, so to speak. The first is that circumcision for men clearly and indisputably lessens sensitivity and therefore sexual pleasure. Some would argue that this slows sex down, helps control premature ejaculation, and so on. But again, this is so subjective a choice, surely it should be left up to the man whose weenie is going to go under the knife. Secondly, the notion that it’s more painful for a grown-up, and is therefore best performed on infants, is complete projection. How do we know? If anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction, viz this email:

I’m not sure why it is so commonly believed that circumcision is easier on infants than adults. Perhaps this idea persists from the time, not so long ago, when it was believed that infants did not feel pain. There are two reasons why circumcision is almost certainly harder on infants.
1. The foreskin is naturally fused to the glans at birth, in something like the way that kitten are born with their eyes fused shut. Natural separation takes several years. Thus, the foreskin and the glans have to be torn apart, injuring them both, in order for the foreskin to be cut off.
2. We now are beginning to understand the vulnerability of the infant nervous system. The spinal cord response to pain is larger and lasts longer in infants. When infant nerve cells die, other nerve cells fill the gap and make inappropriate connections, thus permanently distorting the nervous system. This can lead to hypersensitivity. We know, for instance, that circumcised boys have a greater pain response to their 4 to 6 month vaccinations. Thus, while the long-term effects of infant pain are still something of a mystery, it seems quite imprudent to cause infants any unnecessary pain or injury.

I have no memory of my own mutilation experience. My mother told me recently that I screamed for hours in pain and shock. Because I don’t recall it now doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic then. Can you imagine our medical system doing this unnecessary procedure in any other context? I’m sorry but this is an indefensible practice.

D’oh! Here I am at Slate’s Washington offices, finding out about a Freudian typo in my post last night. When I said “homocide bomber,” I was not actually outing a bunch of Palestinians. I meant to write “homicide bomber.” By the way, Jack Shafer is unrecognizable. I remember him when he was a long-haired, constantly stoned hipster. Alas, the hair is short and the shirt tucked in. Maybe he will get the job, after all.

That’s my read on the Pope’s unprecedented decision to summon all 13 American cardinals to Rome to address the current crisis. When a problem is this big, the leaders must take some responsibility. Law is the obvious candidate for removal. No, he won’t be fired. He may even hang on for months. But at some point soon, someone else will be given de facto authority over his diocese and some sinecure will be arranged to allow him to serve God in another capacity. He still obviously doesn’t get what’s gone wrong, which means he is what has gone wrong. My other fearless prediction: Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, won’t survive much longer than Law. Theologizing in public is not part of his job description. Rome, I think, may finally be getting it. A national formal policy on sexual abuse will have to be imposed; a fuller investigation will be needed; more priests will be removed. Why is the crisis this deep? Because it wounds both wings of the American Church. It wounds the conservatives, because their church is clearly run by many people who do not believe for a minute in the sexual teachings of the church, and who have batted an eyelid at sexual abuse. It wounds the liberals, because it exposes the hypocrisy and dysfunction at the heart of the hierarchy, and shows how hard it will be to get grown-ups with even vaguely healthy sexualities in leadership in the future. And neither wing can stay in the church if either resolves the problem. If liberals succeed in bringing women, married priests and open gays with partners into the priesthood, it’s hard to see how traditionalists could stay. But if the conservatives purge every gay priest, ramp up teachings against sex without procreation even further, and do so with the credibility of the current leadership, then the exodus from the pews will be massive. Given the likelihood of schism under either scenario, there will be an attempt to keep the status quo – with some amendments on sexual abuse policy. Which means, barring spectacular spiritual leadership, more of the same. In other words, the current system favors a slow death over a wrenching cure – of either prescription. Not pretty at all.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “Larry Summers strikes me as the Ariel Sharon of American higher education. He struck me very much as a bull in a china shop, and as a bully, in a very delicate and dangerous situation.” – Cornel West, as quoted in the New York Times. Does that make West Arafat?

KRISTOF’S PUZZLEMENT: Nick Kristof, who wants us to sue Saddam Hussein, keeps scratching his head at Arab double-standards with regard to Israel. As he puts it,

Some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the latest round of violence erupted in the fall of 2000. In contrast, two million Sudanese have died in the ongoing civil war here, with barely anyone noticing. Likewise, Syria blithely killed about 20,000 people in crushing an abortive uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. And Saddam Hussein, who has killed more Arabs than Ariel Sharon and all his Israeli predecessors put together, is somehow a hero for much of the Arab world.

In a word, Nick, duh. Welcome, however belatedly, to reality. Kristof them rightly outlines the sense of Arab shame that fuels their rage at defeat or humiliation at the hands of the “other.” But what he doesn’t mention is something gob-smackingly obvious: anti-Semitism. If you’re a raving anti-semitic paranoiac, defeat at the hands of the Americans is one thing; but defeat at the hands of the Jews is beyond endurance. This is the pathology without which nothing that is now happening in the Arab world can be understood. I don’t know how to cure a culture of such a sickness, but I do know that in the past, only decisive and comprehensive military defeat did the trick.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “The Geoghan documents were his Hiroshima, the Shanley files his Nagasaki. But Bernard Cardinal Law did not follow the script and surrender.” – National Review Online’s Rod Dreher, with his usual gift for understatement.

OFF THE FENCE ON THE FENCE: Richard Cohen jumps on the Barak fence-building bandwagon. (How’s that for mixed metaphors? I’m beginning to sound like Tom Friedman). Uh oh. Perhaps it’s time for me to think about this one even further.

CHOMSKY AND BRITISH FASCISTS: Odd little catch by blogger Travelling Shoes. Who should turn up on a list of people beloved of the British Fascist Party but, er, Noam Chomsky? He’s got the right attitude toward the Jews, you see. Here’s their encomium to him on a website dedicated to the British fascist of the 1930s, Oswald Mosley.

SHARANSKY’S HALF A POINT: In an interview with Fox News, former Soviet dissident and now Israeli politician, Natan Sharansky, bracingly defends Israel’s military tactics on the West Bank. Here’s his argument:

The army spent two weeks in Jenin rooting out the terrorists, and then there was a pause in the operation. What was that pause used for? We found that it was used to booby trap buildings, and to prepare a terrorist network that resulted in the loss of 13 soldiers. We made a decision not to use bombs in the Jenin operation, not to use warplanes, but to go house to house, to avoid civilian casualties. As a result of that decision, which was made by the army and also by the cabinet, we created the situation where a terror network could be installed, and it ended up costing many more Israeli lives and also the lives of more Palestinian civilians. Now I ask you to compare that decision and the principles on which it was based to two recent wars – the war of the United States in Afghanistan, and the European war in Yugoslavia. Which culture stuck to its principles of human rights being the most important value? And yet from whom do we hear the loudest criticism? From those same Americans and Europeans.

Sharansky, it seems to me, is over-stating his case. The Americans and Europeans went to great lengths to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties in bombing both Serbia and Afghanistan. And in the first case, the intervention was in defense of the rights of a minority facing genocide; in the second, it was a matter of pure self-defense – two unimpeachable war rationales. Still, the door-to-door searching of the IDF, in difficult terrain, with snipers always around, does not seem to me to be an exercise in unthinking brutality. That makes sense. What doesn’t make moral sense to me is the bull-dozing of houses, the humiliation of Palestinian civilians, and the brandishing of victory. Read this piece in today’s Daily Telegraph, hardly a paper viscerally hostile to Israeli, and you’ll see what I mean. I agree with Paul Wolfowitz who said yesterday, “Innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying in great numbers as well. It is critical that we re
cognize and acknowledge that fact.” (The boos that greeted those remarks were disgraceful.) I understand the emotions behind Israel’s need to defeat terror and show resolve. But some of the excess is misguided and wrong – in terms of Israel’s image, morality, and simple political sense.

“Many of my male and female friends have also noted the unappealing appearance of an uncircumcised penis. Not the most crucial matter, perhaps, but worthy of consideration.” This and other expressions of dissent on the Letters Page.

FORCE AND FRAUD: A Machiavellian defense of the Bush administration’s toing and froing in Israel and the Middle East.

MUCH ADO ABOUT MUCH ADO: No, I won’t be in tights, regardless of the New Yorker headline. But if you want to find out more about the production, when it opens, where it is, how to buy tickets, etc, then click here.

Is for the continuance of suicide bombing. This piece reporting on the latest announcements from the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, makes it perfectly clear that Arafat sees no reason to surrender the one weapon – however grotesque – that still gives him leverage. None of this is particularly bad news, however, for the war on terror. Having Arafat more clearly seen by the world as an enthusiast for terrorism – especially the current brutal, suicidal form – can only help our case in the end. Having Israel continue its incursion into the West Bank can likewise only help intelligence efforts with regard to the terrorist network, sponsored by Iraq, Iran and Syria. The current round of largely meaningless diplomacy achieves what the Bush administration needs it to achieve: nothing. I just hope none of this has in any way delayed or hampered the military planning for Iraq. First things first. If and when Arafat sees his paymasters are under dire threat, he may change his tune. Until then, the art of pursuing the impossible while hoping for stalemate is the order of the day. Colin Powell looks like he’s following instructions quite nicely, thank you. Oh and can we please retire immediately the term ‘homocide bomber?’ It’s largely superfluous and omits the key, if horrifying, element of the new terrorism: the use of young, impressionable men and women as human bombs. If we don’t like ‘suicide bombers,’ how about ‘suicide killers?’

THE OLD NEW GORE: How obtuse is Al Gore? It takes amazing cojones after one of the most execrable campaigns in modern times to get back in the ring with the aplomb he demonstrated in Florida. But his timing is exquisite as usual. When 80 percent of Democrats believe he shoujld refrain from direct attacks on a war-time president, Gore gives a shrill, McAuliffe-like partisan address. No doubt, the need to appeal to his party base skews Gore to the left. But I think it’s worth considering that this is where Gore now is. His long years preparing for coronation were peppered with moderate stances – on economics, race, foreign policy, even the environment, where, despite his New Age book, his record as veep was barely distinguishable from a moderate Republican’s. But since the 2000 convention, Gore has come out as an unreconstructed leftist. He backs strong affirmative action, he describes American economic issues in purely left-populist terms, he is a captive of liberal interest groups, backing the agenda of the NAACP, NARAL and the no-enemies-to-the-left gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign. This is the real Gore, on the assumption that such a creature exists independent of bare-knuckled ambition. Fair enough. Let him run from the Left. But what this merely proves is that those of us who supported Gore for years as a moderate Democrat were essentially manipulated and lied to. Hence our hostility today. If this “new Gore” is the real Gore, what does that say about the Gore of the 1980s and 1990s? At least Richard Nixon had a modicum of political talent. And at least Bill Clinton rarely governed from the old left.

BACK TO BARAK: His plan still makes the most sense. Fight terror, never negotiate with terror, and build a wall. If Bush is smart, he’ll put whatever weight the U.S. still has in this matter behind the Barak agenda. And let the Arab dictators deal with the aftermath.

UNRAVELING BENEDICK: It’s been a grueling weekend of tech rehearsals, i.e. standing around waiting for production people to cue the sounds and lights. Two twelve hour days of almost continuous grind. Nevertheless, all the gaps give you a chance to hammer the lines into your head and also think some more about your character. I’m glad to say I haven’t seen any productions of “Much Ado About Nothing.” I rented the movie in good faith but never got past the first scene. Kenneth Branagh, alas, drives me up the wall. I’d also never read the play thorougly before I signed up for the Washington Shakespeare Company production, so I started trying to figure out Benedick from scratch. He is known, of course, as a classic romantic character, whose tempestuous and often very acerbic relationship with Beatrice is a deliciously arch and adult mirror to Romeo and Juliet. In most readings, Benedick’s heterosexuality is therefore a given. But the script is far more ambiguous. He is a ‘confirmed bachelor,’ unmarried into middle age, he harbors an attitude toward women that is alternately sexually forward “as being a professed tyrant to their sex,” and dismissive, vowing never to contaminate his life with marriage. Beatrice, who knows him well, makes obvious and crude references to his homosexual leanings in the very first scene of the play. He is “a man to a man,” someone who variably has a new young male companion on his shoulder. Throughout the play, his excessive and rhetorical hostility to the whole idea of marriage is exactly the kind of smoke-screen a homosexual passing as a heterosexual deploys to disguise his true feelings. Indeed, the whole armor of emotional protection that guards Benedick throughout the play is uncannily reminiscent of the contortions gay people have performed for centuries to survive with a modicum of dignity in a heterosexually-dominated world.

BUT IS HE GAY? Yet at the same time, thinking of Benedick as a contemporary gay man is as flawed as seeing him as a classically uncomplicated straight guy. His emotional conflicts, while more comprehensible if seen through the prism of his homosexual orientation, are also intelligible without it. Maybe he’s just scared of intimacy, as most men – gay or straight – are. He clearly loves Beatrice, who is, after all, a woman (and a terrifically funny and sexy one too). Yet he is more comfortable expressing this love in verbal combat than physical proximity. He’s terrified of commitment – but in a way that surpasses the entire issue of orientation. He’s also created by a man who lived in an era where the very rigid concepts of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ didn’t explicitly exist. What I’m finding, of course, is that, by acting him, I have to make up my mind about his fundamental orientation, and yet find a way to express the sexual ambiguity and emotional complexity that Shakespeare clearly wanted his audience to reflect upon. In the end, what Shakespeare’s comedy has helped me understand is how humanity ultimately transcends gay or straight. The questions of love and sex, marriage and freedom, commitment and relationship, go beyond sexual orientation. I’ve long believed this in the abstract. But acting this part has helped me internalize it again in a whole new way – and, when all is said and done, to find it, as Shakespeare obviously did, one of God’s deepest and funniest jokes.

“Lutheran Minister Arrested On Charges Of Boring Young Children
PERU, IL- St. Luke’s Lutheran Church was rocked by scandal Tuesday, when Rev. Bob Tillich, the church’s pastor of 12 years, was arrested on suspicion of boring as many as 23 children within the congregation. “Reverend Bob always seemed like the sweetest man,” parishioner Vera Crandall said following the arrest. “When my son said he made him watch three 1975 filmstrips about the suffering of Job, I was shocked.” In the wake of the arrest, seven former Sunday-school students, dating as far back as 1989, have stepped forward with charges that Tillich subjected them to inappropriately tedious parables.” – from – where else? – the Onion.

THE CURE FOR GAY PRIESTS: One wacky right-wing Catholic suggests the real problem is that straight Catholics haven’t been told firmly enough they need to stop using contraception:

The fact that this crisis for Catholicism revolves around sexual misconduct is not coincidental either. For too long Catholic pastors have given lip service to the more controversial Church teachings on sexual behavior while quietly tolerating the violation of those norms. Most prelates have chosen to ignore the abundant evidence that many Catholic married couples use contraceptives and that many Catholic priests are active homosexuals. The gross inconsistency between public teaching and private practice has given rise to a culture of hypocrisy and secret vice.

That’s a warning to the straight people struggling to make sense of the Church’s teachings on sexual morality: you’re next, guys. Even if we have to empty the pews completely to make our point.

I’ve not commented these last few days on the crisis on the West Bank and Israel for a pretty obvious reason. I’m not completely clear what I think. I’d like to argue that Sharon is totally right, that the incursion is essential to restrain terrorism, that the military strategy can work, that Arafat can and should be ignored, that the Bush administration has been foolish to tack against the Israeli anti-terror mission. In my gut, I believe all those things. At the same time, it also seems to me that the logic of these events leads inexorably to a regional war with unimaginable consequences – the use of weapons of mass destruction in several countries, including Israel. Under those circumstances, it is not crazy for Washington to intervene to attempt to restrain the violence. This won’t buy peace; but it could buy time. And some time could persuade the Israelis to do what they absolutely have to do to survive.

SO BUILD A FENCE: And what they have to do is construct a real barrier between Israel and the West Bank. The Forward recently ran an astute editorial that noted how all the suicide bombers have come from the West Bank, rather than Gaza. The reason? Gaza is cut off by a real, defensible barrier. Would-be terrorists can check into Gaza, but they can’t check out. If the same could be done with the West Bank, it’s possible terrorism could be reduced to much lower levels in Israel proper. Yes, there would still be the danger from some Israeli Arabs. But they are far less of a threat, and those who do use such violence should simply be imprisoned or deported. Such a fence would, however, mean ending the isolated settlements in the West Bank, consolidating those near the border, and establishing some kind of buffer. Perhaps the extent of the Palestinian terror network in the West Bank, and the horror of the suicide bombs in Israel will finally bring about a consensus in that country for abandoning the settlements. The benefit of such a unilateral withdrawal is also that Israel does not have to negotiate anything with a lying murderer like Arafat. Indeed, Israel should remain indifferent to what emerges in that neighborhood, as long as it is not used as a base for yet another Arab attack on Israel itself. Deterrence, vigilance, and the fence should make it feasible for Israel to survive in such a straitened form. And survival, right now, would be an achievement.

SCREWING THE SAUDIS: The flip-side of this, of course, should also be American unilateralism – in disentangling ourselves from the morally and politically crippling engagement with the majority of the Arab dictators. By far the most promising sign of the last couple of months has been the gradual transference of the U.S. military from the Saudi base to Qatar. David Ignatius has a good op-ed on the transition today. He’s way too optimistic about Qatar being a model for the future of the Arab world. But using Qatar as a genuinely reliable base in the region makes a hell of a lot more sense than our current arrangements – and is probably an essential prerequisite for the coming war against Saddam.

THE MUTILATION OF CHILDREN: I may be a broken record on this but the news today that circumcision may have a small effect in restraining transmission of the HPV virus strikes me as likely to be misused. The argument against the circumcision of infants is not that it might not conceivably have some future health-benefits. The argument against infant male genital mutilation is that it is the permanent, irreversible disfigurement of a person’s body without his consent. Unless such a move is necessary to protect a child’s life or essential health, it seems to me that it is a grotesque violation of a person’s right to control his own body. It matters not a jot why it is done. It simply should not be done – until the boy or man is able to give his informed consent. And to perform such an operation to protect the health of others is an even more unthinkable violation. It’s treating an individual entirely as a means rather than as an end. I’m at a loss why a culture such as ours that goes to great lengths to protect the dignity and safety of children (and rightly so) should look so blithely on this barbaric relic. Yes, I know there are religious justifications for it. But even so, religions should not be given ethical carte blanche over the bodies of children. Would we condone a religious ceremony that, say, permanently mutilated a child’s ear? Or tongue? Or scarred their body irreversibly? Of course not. So why do we barely object when people mutilate a child’s sexual organ?

SANCTIMONIOUS AND ARROGANT: “Just finished reading Father McCloskey’s “2030, Looking Backward” and his comments on “Meet The Press” from March 31. As a fellow Catholic, you shouldn’t be surprised. This is the kind of sanctimonious, arrogant triumphalism in which our church has specialized since at least the Middle Ages.” This is one reader’s view. Here’s another’s: “”Francoite!” what a wonderful term of approbation you have hurled. I suppose it is the analogue to calling some lefty a “Stalinist.” I am not a member of Opus Dei but did attend some of their prayer meetings here in the district when I was younger. What you have is earnest young men who wish to live a truly spiritual life in the truth of the Faith.” This and both sides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the Letters Page.

ALTERMAN’S BLACKLIST: You may recall that Eric Alterman of the Nation recently listed a number of columnists he regards as reflexive lackeys of Israel and the Jews. In a revealing error, it turns out he named one woman, Cathy Young, who had never even written about the Middle East. Well, she was a Jew and conservative, so that was good enough for Alterman. (Yes, he was also the one complaining about bloggers’ making errors without editors.) Anyway, patiopundit has provided a very helpful hyperlinked version of the list, enabling you to read instantly the latest propaganda served up by the Elders of Zion, while young I.F. Alterman toils away as a beacon of independent thought at, er, the Nation. Enjoy.

ST-ST-ST-ST-ST-STOP!: A stutterer has been discriminated against as a driving instructor. Now there’s an ethical quandary. Would the ADA stop that here? It reminds me of the joke about the Jewish guy who applied for a job as a radio announcer. When he returned from the interview, he was asked if he got the job. “No,” he replied. “Why not?” asked his friend. “Anti-s-s-s-s-s-semitism.”