The Predicament Of Ukrainian Jews

Eli Lake addresses it:

Ukraine has never been a very good country for the Jews. The 19th and early 20th centuries were marred by pogroms against Jewish communities. Under Soviet occupation, many Jews that stayed in Ukraine faced the state sponsored anti-Semitism of the Communist system. More recently, a few neo-Nazi groups have openly participated in the popular uprising that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych baring at times swastikas.

Nonetheless, leaders of Ukraine’s small Jewish community (experts estimate there are between 80,000 and 350,000 Jews in Ukraine) say they are more worried about anti-Semitic attacks from Russian operatives and Yanukovych loyalists than the nationalists who gathered in Kiev and other cities to oust him.

Marc Tracy’s take:

Both sides are using Ukraine’s Jewish community as a symbolic pawn, in which the credibility of the other side can be diminished by accusations of anti-Semitism. And that is remarkable. In a sense, it’s even laudatory. Babi Yar—in which, outside Kiev, over just two days Nazi Einsatzgruppen shot more than 33,000 Jews—was barely 70 years ago. 900,000 Ukrainian Jews, more than half the country’s pre-war Jewish population, were murdered in the Holocaust. This was in no small part because occupying Germans were able to secure the cooperation of homegrown anti-Semites, who had been carrying out pogroms in parts of their country that at the time were a designated region for Jews to settle in for decades preceding World War Two.

He bets that “it would be better for Ukraine’s Jews for Ukraine to retain its sovereignty and territorial integrity”:

If Ukraine is divided along ethnic lines, then ethnic minorities—most of all the Muslim-majority Tatars but also, potentially, Jews—could find themselves the odd peoples out.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Veidlinger points to the history showing that “before Crimea was an ethnic Russian stronghold, it was a potential Jewish homeland.”

What Does AIPAC Really Want?

At the lobbying group’s annual policy conference, Judis takes their temperature on the peace process:

AIPAC doesn’t poll its attendees, so there was no way to measure directly support for Kerry’s efforts. But I heard some grumbling in the workshops that the West Bank, if allowed to become a state, would turn into Gaza. When Kerry, who spoke at the conference, and two Israeli business leaders attempted to justify the negotiations, they got at best tepid applause. The discussion of the peace process by Netanyahu and by AIPAC leaders was also extremely one-sided. They did not utter a word about settlers, outposts and the occupation, or about Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party, which is opposed to a Palestinian state.

Instead, Netanyahu and the AIPAC leaders dwelled entirely on the concessions that the Palestinians would have to make. “The Palestinians must prepare their population to make the necessary compromises with Israel,” Robert A. Cohen, AIPAC’s new president, declared. Netanyahu hinted at some of those compromises. Israeli troops would have to be able to patrol the Jordan Valley for decades. And Jerusalem would remain “the eternal undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people.” If Netanyahu and AIPAC stick to those demands, they would probably doom the negotiations.

MJ Rosenberg examines Netanyahu’s decision to spend a quarter of his speech excoriating the BDS movement:

Netanyahu is using BDS as just one more excuse to avoid making tough decisions about the occupation. And he is giving a hostile movement infinitely more credibility than it deserves. The prime minister of Israel should not be giving speeches about a fringe movement that, so far, has accomplished almost nothing — including on U.S. campuses. It’s as if Lyndon Johnson gave a speech denouncing the Trotskyists for its opposition to the Vietnam war.

All Netanyahu did was use BDS as another excuse to avoid the issue of the ugly, immoral, illegal occupation itself. So typical. Anything to avoid talking about peace.

Paul Pillar notes Bibi’s enduring obsession with vilifying Iran:

Outside of the anti-Americanism that is heard so widely and often, it is hard to think of any other leader or government so dedicated to heaping calumnies unceasingly on another nation, at least one not currently waging war on the heaper’s country. Maybe some American Cold Warriors fixated on the Evil Empire came close. Attacks on Iran occupied most of the first half of Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday to AIPAC. Haaretz accompanied a transcript of the speech with one of those graphics depicting the frequency with which particular words have been used. For the entire speech Iran was mentioned far more than any word other than Israel.

Another, Deeper Conservatism

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Reviewing Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, Elizabeth Corey comes to a striking conclusion – “Paine has won” – and longs for a more counter-cultural conservatism:

[M]uch of modern conservatism provides a vision of a good life that differs little from that advocated by the most energetic progressives. The ends might be different, but the means are the same.

A substantive alternative would require a much more radical reorientation of the modern soul. Even as everything in contemporary culture pushes us to look forward, to “aim high” and relentlessly pursue change, we might remember that there are truly countercultural ways of living that ask for patience, gratitude, and satisfaction instead of impatience, discontent, and constant desire for what does not yet appear. Such an attitude does not entail our becoming inactive, boring, or staid, but it requires a willingness to preserve rather than tear down and build anew. Reform would be, as Burke suggested, more cautious than radical, with careful attention to the familiar and the tried. We might begin by learning to appreciate and even to love, as Michael Oakeshott has put it, the “gentle, endearing imperfection of all living things,” including ourselves.

And so a truly counter-cultural conservatism would regard play as the highest of human activities and homo ludens a great cultural achievement – and play is indeed a deep, underlying virtue in Oakeshott’s thought. But so too is a reinvigorated modernist Christianity, the religion of unachievement, the faith that has no time with the American “cult of wellbeing“. This is a conservatism in love with nature, with friendship, with humor – and all those things that can never be reduced to the level of the “useful”. And of course it includes the voice of art, of imagination, of poetry, as Mark Signorelli explains:

The key, I think, lies in relishing the extraordinary power of [Burke’s] language, a political and moral rhetoric that effectively models the kind of conservatism Corey calls for, with its “radical reorientation of the modern soul.” Other writers describe the sort of principles that would constitute a viable conservative vision—the grateful piety towards God and land and family—but only Burke realizes that vision in his words, conveying to us some sense of what it must be like to live according to such principles. His superb eloquence, which is often noted as something incidental to his thought, is really at its heart. It is the means by which he manifests the full experience of constructing a political order out of the particular affections of time and place.

Burke is, in effect, the poet of conservatism. And, like any good poet, he is capable of arousing the elemental affections from which civilized life grows.

Richard Reeves appreciates that Levin doesn’t ignore the parts of Burke’s thinking that today’s conservatives might not want to emulate:

Not that Burke is sanitised here for modern consumption. While many contemporary conservatives cite his famous line about the need “to love the little platoon we belong to” as an argument for local, civic associations, Levin reminds us that the platoons in question were in fact “very clearly a reference to social class”. Burke thinks that, in a flourishing society, people know their place in the hierarchy – and learn to love it.

By offering us Burke warts and all, Levin in fact makes a stronger claim for his continued importance. In his hands, Burke forces us to think again about the wisdom that can inhere in the institutions and customs of a nation, sometimes even after rational scrutiny has done its work.

Previous Dish on Levin’s book here and here.

The Acid Test For Francis, Ctd

And he fails:

Speaking about the horrific abuse of children by priests, Francis said “the cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very deep wounds”.  Benedict XVI “was very courageous and opened a road, and the Church has done a lot on this route, perhaps more than all others”, he stated. He noted that the statistics reveal the tremendous violence against children, but also that the vast majority of abuse takes place in the milieu of the family and those close to them.  The Church is the only public institution to have moved “with transparency and responsibility”, he said; no one else has done as much as it, “but the Church is the only one to be attacked”.

This is more of the institutional defensiveness that has proven so devastating to the church’s moral authority and a bad omen for more thoroughgoing accountability and reform. Here’s hoping that he will leave this attitude behind and lead further down the road of “transparency and responsibility” he believes Benedict opened.

Previous Dish on the subject here.

Decriminalized In DC

The City Council voted yesterday to decriminalize petty marijuana possession:

The measure removes criminal penalties for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for individuals 18 years of age and older and replaces them with a civil fine of $25, similar to a parking ticket. It also removes penalties for possession of paraphernalia in conjunction with small amounts of marijuana, and it specifies that individuals cannot be searched or detained based solely on an officer’s suspicion of marijuana possession. Public use of marijuana would remain a criminal offense punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a fine of up to $500. Currently, possession of any amount of marijuana is a criminal offense punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

Serwer explains why this is a big social justice victory for the majority-black city:

Nationally, according to a 2012 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, black people are almost four times as likely as white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite the fact that whites and blacks use marijuana at similar rates.

That may sound shocking, but in D.C. the disparity is even greater.

In the District according to the ACLU, blacks are eight times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. Black people, who made up slightly more than half of the population of the city when the study was produced, also made up more than nine out of 10 arrests–91%–for marijuana possession. According to the ACLU in 2010, the more than 5,000 arrests for marijuana possession made up nearly half (47%) of the District’s arrests for drug offenses.

Allie Jones warns that Congress can scuttle the bill if they want, though it isn’t likely:

The bill now has to sit before congressional panel for 60 days, during which time the House and Senate could agree to reject it. That probably won’t happen — Congress has only rejected a bill before a panel like this three times since 1972. But if federal lawmakers are going to speak up about decriminalization, now would be the time to do it.

Rep. Darrell Issa, whose House committee controls many D.C. affairs, declined to comment to The Washington Post about the bill. But Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting member of Congress, told the Post the doesn’t expect Congress to “interfere.”

Yes, The CIA Spied On Congress

Why? The torture report, of course:

Late last night, McClatchy reported that the CIA inspector general has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that johnbrennanbrendansmialowskigetty.jpgthe CIA illegally monitored Congressional staff investigating the Agency’s secret detention and interrogation programs. The Senate Intelligence Committee spent four years and $40 million investigating the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques in secret overseas prisons, producing a reportedly “searing” 6,300 page finding excoriating the Agency’s actions.

As part of this investigation, intelligence committee staff were required by the CIA to use Agency computers in a secure room in Langley to access millions of sensitive documents. Congressional investigators reportedly agreed to use those computers under the condition that their work not be monitored by the CIA, in accordance with due respect for the separation of powers and the integrity and independence of the investigation. Apparently, the spy mentality proved too strong to resist, as earlier this year the committee determined that their work had in fact been monitored in possible violation of their agreement.

What we have here is a rogue agency, believing it is above the law, above Congress and indeed immune to even presidential oversight. John Brennan, a man who never piped up as the CIA was orchestrating war crimes in a manner unprecedented in US history, is now revealed as running an agency that broke the law and attacked the very basis of a constitutional democracy by targeting the Congress for domestic spying! The CIA is legally barred from any domestic spying, let alone on its constitutional over-seers.

It’s enough to make you think that the CIA committed crimes so damning and lied so aggressively during the torture regime that it is now doing what all criminals do when confronted with the evidence: stonewall, attack the prosecution, try to remove or suppress evidence, police its employees’ testimony, and generally throw up as much dust as possible. That they continue to do this is a real challenge to this president. How much longer is he going to let these goons prevent the truth from being known? Why is he allowing Brennan to continue to run an agency when, under his watch, it has laid itself open to a criminal investigation of its own alleged obstruction of justice?

Ed Morrissey rightly fumes:

This is among the worst possible accusations that could be levied against an intelligence service in a constitutional republic. For the CIA, it would be doubly worse, since the CIA’s charter forbids it to conduct any kind of domestic intelligence; that jurisdiction belongs to the FBI, and it’s significantly limited. The legislature oversees CIA, not the other way around, and if the CIA is snooping on their oversight work, that would undermine their authority.

An agency that can commit war crimes and get away with it seems to believe it can also undermine the very basis of a constitutional democracy and get away with it. This agency needs to be cut down to size and pronto. Its record in recent years has been execrable – the latest evidence being their failure to detect Russia’s intentions in Crimea. They are far too busy protecting their collective asses to do their job. Brennan needs to go forthwith. And the report needs to be published, in its original form, with all the vital details included. These war criminals cannot be appeased any longer. They need to be brought back under constitutional control.

(Photo: John Brennan via Getty Images)

The Focus Of Our Foreign Policy

Beinart expects America’s rivalry with Russia to replace the War on Terror:

When there’s serious tension between America and other major powers, that tension becomes the dominant reality in U.S. foreign policy. And it’s likely that tension will endure. Vladimir Putin has now twice invaded his neighbors in an effort to halt, if not reverse, the West’s encroachment into the former U.S.S.R. Yet the more bullying he becomes, the more desperately many in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and perhaps other ex-Soviet republics will seek economic and military bonds with Europe and the U.S. Large chunks of the former Soviet Union now constitute a gray zone where competition between Russia and the West can breed diplomatic feuds, economic sanctions, and even proxy war.

Michael Brendan Dougherty has a very different view:

[T]he political class in America should remember that Moscow is mostly a symbolic foil in world affairs, not a great geostrategic foe.

America’s political class should stop ducking under its desks and wailing for some kind of symbolic action or rebuke to soothe the nerves. It’s unnecessary. The Kremlin used to compete with the free world for entire continents — now it is reduced to an embarrassing grab at Crimea. An aggressive U.S. response over a sliver of Ukraine would not be meeting Putin’s strength with our strength, but matching his desperate anxiety with our own.

Fred Kaplan suggests we are making too much of Putin:

Just as Putin is not as much in command as many Western hawks suppose, Russia is not as great a power as Putin himself likes to project. It’s at best a regional power, with no global reach. Even his incursion into Crimea is hardly an imperial gesture. Leonid Brezhnev sent five tank divisions into Czechoslovakia. (Now that was aggression!) U.S. military advisers estimate that the Russian army could invade eastern Ukraine if Putin so ordered, but they say it’s much less clear how long they could sustain an occupation, especially with even sporadic insurgent resistance.