It sucks to be Israel [Updated]

When the internet and I were both somewhat younger, I learned what a "blog" was when I stumbled across an Israeli writer's website where he posted daily dispatches from Jerusalem, which, I soon learned, might as well be another planet. 

I engaged with this guy in the comments section and in email to try to get a handle on his version of conservative Israeli politics, and, although our exchange was civil and detailed, I don't think either of us managed to shift the other's attitudes about Israel's place in the world and the best way to address that country's unique problems.

I came to the conversation with a liberal bent, but I have to state clearly that my liberalism did not contain any prejudice about Israel per-se. It's fair to say that I inherited my politics from my liberal parents, and if you subscribe to the conservative worldview, you might say I was further indoctrinated by liberal higher-education institutions. During all this hippy-dippy neo-marxist brainwashing, however, I never received a brief on the correct attitude towards the state of Israel. (It might have been on the curricula. I must have skipped that day.)

What I did bring was a core faith--probably criminally under-examined, but currently still retained--in the core principles of the United States, some of which go back to its founding, including:

* Freedom of religion

* Equal rights for all people, regardless of ethnicity

And this was the cornerstone of my disagreement with my Israeli interlocutor. In retrospect I was naive and uninformed, but at the time I was astonished and somewhat shocked at his commitment to an ethnically pure democracy. All of the approaches I could suggest to his problems were grounded in my own ideals of post-ethnic statehood that--even though we're still struggling with it--my own country represents. 

It still seems now, as it did then, that there are only two ways to preserve a Jewish democracy in Israel. Either they must shrink by giving away land to the Palestenians, or they must resort to war crimes and/or institutional racism to keep the land under Jewish control. I'd like to think there's a third way, but I don't see it. 

But, personally, I have nothing invested in the existence of an ethnically pure state, of any type, anywhere in the world. It's just not something of value to me. And while I am fine with other's valuing it, I am not fine with my own country supporting war crimes or institutional racism to prop up such a state. 

And that's where I think you'll find most Americans my age or younger. And that is not good news for the Israeli project. 

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UPDATE: Mere minutes after posting that, I came across the following post by Kevin Drum.

In David Petraeus's famous phrase, How does this end? Unless something dramatic happens, it ends with Israel as a nuclear-armed pariah state. Where else can it go? Hamas and Hezbollah are never going to stop attacking, Israel's responses will continue to get deadlier and more hysterical, the West Bank will never be freed because no Israeli government can any longer cobble together the public support it would require to take on the most extremist elements among the settlers, and like it or not, Israel eventually becomes a permanently armed camp and an apartheid state. Israelis may have hated it when that's what Jimmy Carter called it, but even if it's arguably not quite accurate today there's very little question that it will be before long.

Unless something changes. But what? I guess it's possible that a crisis like this can prompt both sides to get serious in a way they haven't been for a long time, but there have been crises like this before and they haven't prompted anything of the sort.

So help me out here. Is there any glimmer of hope on the horizon at all? Or is despair the only rational response to all this?

You guys are doing it wrong

Racists and other types of idiots are having a quite a time in Arizona. Over at The Corner*, Mark Krikorian approvingly brings us the following news.

As a protest against Arizona’s controversial immigration law, the chambers of commerce from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros have agreed to set May 25 as a “Day Without Mexicans” on the South Texas border.

Business leaders are calling on all Mexican nationals to avoid crossing the international bridges into the United States for any reason, but particularly for shopping, on that day.

Yes, of the people crossing the border, afternoon shoppers bringing money into the U.S. are clearly the worst.

I've been somewhat dismissive of the whole "Arizona's gone crazy" kerfuffle as a temporary and misguided reaction to legitimate problems with international drug violence. But Josh Marshall points to some uglier stuff going on, and says it is basically overt ethnic strife:

There's a difference between what Trent Lott said and what Harry Reid said

Harry ran afoul of some still-charged, awkward language around race. But he had no ill intent, and in no way was suggesting that "negros" should be treated any differently than the crackers in this country.

Trent, by contrast, embodied the very reason this language is still charged and awkward when he implied that we might be better off if we hadn't ended segregation.

(P.S., more posting today after I figure how to turn comments back on).

Update from the melting pot

Taken together the four items form a measure of what scholars call racial resentment. We find an extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform.

via

... in which Jason alienates certain Jewish readers

Among Jews, a subtext of many debates about Israeli/Palestinian politics is the question of who gets to define Jewishness. Is it believers and militarists who believe that "Greater Israel" really is land "promised" to the descendants of Abraham and Isaac? Or humanists who take pride in Jews' diaspora history as "rootless cosmopolitans?" Who is more "in touch" with their Jewishness -- a secular Israeli or a practicing American? A peacenik, a kibbutznik, or a hawk?

Of course, like most debates over legitimacy and authenticity, these questions are reductive, silencing, and actually prevent people from understanding one another. The starting point for a political discussion on settlements, for example, or Palestinian statehood, should not be a definition of "appropriate" Jewishness. Why? Because fixating on that question, as Phil Weiss has written, makes it easier to elide the fact that the group of people primarily suffering right now -- and primarily culturally threatened -- are not Jews, but Palestinians.

That's not to say that we shouldn't make political arguments informed by our own understanding of Jewish values -- and do so proudly and assertively. I've done so myself. But the bottom line is that those who seek to police other people's Jewishness betray an ideological rigidity that is completely unhelpful in the current political moment. | TAPPED |

I'd go further, and say that applying the question of "Jewishness" to politics--while completely understandable--is straight up racist.

Imaginary black on white crime

Later, I'm going to update this post with a link (or possibly an embedded video) of a segment from The Daily Show. In the meantime, here's a blog post that I'd like to believe inspired the bit.

Update: By now you've probably seen this if you wanna, but here it is.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Imaginary Black on White Crime
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Economic Crisis

Jeebus

From the freedom fighters over at The Union News. In native form it's an animated gif, but I couldn't download the file so I took two snapshots. Here's the first:



And the second:




Classy!

Gilding the lily

When last we visited Secular Right, John Derbyshire was arguing that gay marriage needed to remain illegal for the benefit of America's "cognitively-challenged underclass." Heterosexual marriage, Derbyshire explained, served as an "anchoring institution for them to aspire to."

Now here comes blogmate Heather MacDonald to make what I'm sure is an entirely unrelated point:

One overpowering cause of black social failure is the breakdown of marriage in the black community. Nationally, the black illegitimacy rate is 71%; in some inner city areas, it is closer to 90%. When boys grow up without any expectation that they will have to marry the mother of their children, they fail to learn the most basic lesson of personal responsibility. A community without the marriage norm is teetering on the edge of civilizational collapse, if it has not already fallen into the abyss. Fatherless black boys, who themselves experience no pressure to become marriageable mates as they grow up, end up joining gangs, dropping out of school, and embracing a “street” lifestyle in the absence of any male authority in the home.

If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage. Or if someone can guarantee that widespread gay marriage would not further erode the expectation among blacks that marriage is the proper context for raising children, I would also not worry. But no one can make that guarantee. |Heather MacDonald|

Happy Easter

Have a little racism with your resurrection and/or candy.

Department of lame excuses department

Given that we let so many ugly policies go unremarked, I'm not so sure that I believe in punishing people for using ugly words. Be that as it may, the excuse given by Ralph Papitto, former chairman of the Roger Williams University board, for his (somewhat) recent use of the n-word at a board meeting is the most ridiculous thing that I've ever heard.

Barbara Roberts, then a board member, said Papitto became irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, at one point using the slur to refer to black candidates to the board.

She said he then told the board he knew he couldn't say that because of Don Imus, the radio host who was fired after referring to Rutgers University women's basketball team members as "nappy-headed hos."

"There was, like, this complete and utter silence, and I was shocked beyond belief and very angry," Roberts said.

Papitto, who has given the school at least $7 million and whose name is on the only law school in Rhode Island, said he had never used the term before.

"The first time I heard it was on television or rap music or something," he told WPRO. |CNN|