A tale of two NY Times stories

Sar Shalom

The New York Times has two stories today that can be summarized in the following manner: [A] says the [B] is engaged in violating fundamental democratic rights of [C] because of [C]'s exercise of free speech.

One of those articles appears on the home page of the Times' website and you can fill it in with [A] = the alt-right, [B] = Google, [C] = James Damore, the Google engineer who was fired for writing a memo attributing low levels of women in leadership positions to lower capabilities of women. The other story appears in the Opinion section and can be filled in with [A] = Sherif Mansour, the author of the op-ed piece, [B] = Israel, [C] = reporters who write negative things about Israel.

I hardly need to explain to this audience about the malfeasance committed by most of the press corp in Israel and the abuse of freedoms granted that led Israel to draw a line which will lead to consequences if crossed. It is all well and good to point out that case, and eagerly wait to read responses to Mansour along those lines. However, a parallel point is that the malfeasance committed by the media in Israel is to critical coverage of Israel as Damore's memo is to raising legitimate questions about affirmative action policies. In turn, Mansour in covering Israel's response to the most egregious demonization of itself as though it were censorship of criticism of any kind, and the Times in giving a platform to every Tom, Dick, and Harry leveling such charges against Israel, are acting like the alt-right in its defense of the likes of James Damore.

The end of an occupation

Sar Shalom

In just over a week, we'll be celebrating the anniversary of the end of the Soviet occupation of West Berlin. What's that, you don't remember the Soviets having ever occupied West Berlin? Well, don't you remember the Berlin Airlift during which the Soviets prohibited all ground deliveries to West Berlin? What? You don't consider that an occupation and even if it was an occupation, it ended in less than a year and for over 40 years it was possible for supplies to get to West Berlin over land. Fine, does Checkpoint Charlie ring a bell? From the time the Berlin Wall was built until the fall of East Germany, anybody entering of leaving West Berlin had to pass through a phalanx of zigzag barriers and military inspections on the eastern side. What's that? You say that the Soviets still did not have any forces actually present in West Berlin?

Well there you have the real definition of occupation. It consists of forces of the occupying power being garrisoned in the occupied territory and the legitimate government of the territory being unable to function. Yet somehow, this requirement for occupation does not stop much of the world from decrying Israel's occupation of Ramallah and Jenin. Just as Palestinians have to pass through checkpoints when they pass from Area A/B to Area C, Germans had to pass through checkpoints to move between East and West Berlin. Just as the West German government was able to carry the full scope of its operations in West Berlin and no Soviet troops were garrisoned there, the PA is able to carry the full scope of its operations in Area A and there are no IDF troops garrisoned in Area A.

The major argument for the notion that Israel is not occupying the "West Bank" is that there is no legal basis on which to say that the territory belongs to anyone besides Israel. However, there is another why the Palestinian people are not under occupation. Over 90% of the Arab population of the "West Bank" lives in territory governed by the PA. Unless one is willing to say that West Berlin was under Soviet occupation prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, that means that over 90% of the Arabs of the "West Bank" are not living under occupation.

On acknowledging the enemy

Sar Shalom

One of the images from the Rio Olympics that captured international attention was that of a North Korean and a South Korean gymnast posing for a selfie. It is truly the spirit of the Olympics in which athletes disregard the fact the leader of a fellow athlete's leader regularly threatens to incinerate one's home country, or from the other side embracing the embodiment of American imperialism. According to the BBC, some viewers have asked whether the North Korean gymnast will face consequences from her government when she returns home. The answer, according to the BBC, is that North Korea views such events present "one of the few avenues of public affairs diplomacy available to it," and actually encourages such actions.

This raises the question of why people could think such notions to begin with. Could it have something to do with Arab reactions to Team Israel, such as Lebanon refusing to let the Israelis on the bus it was riding or the Egyptian snubbing of the Israeli judoka's offer of a handshake? In the Egyptian case, if there was any censure at home for the Egyptian judoka, it was for participating in the match against the Israeli at all rather than forfeiting as has so often been done by Arab athletes.

This raises the question as to what is different in the dynamic between the Arabs/Muslims and Israel from that between North and South Korea. It would seem that the difference is in such interactions representing a rare "avenue of public affairs diplomacy" for North Korea whereas the Arabs/Muslims enjoy 24/7 a coddle, coddle, coddle approach all over the world. Perhaps if the Arabs were ostracized like North Korea for their judeophobia, they wouldn't be so punctilious about conforming to that stereotype. Would the Global Progressive Left give that a try? Doubt it!

Where analogies are useful

Sar Shalom

A week ago, Abu Yehuda posted about how analogies do not always work. Vic's example was a speech given by Secretary Rice comparing the Palestinians' situation to that of the pre-1960s blacks. While Vic is correct that Rice's analogy does not describe the Palestinians' situation, there is an analogy based on the civil-rights movement that does describe the Middle East.

When the first black students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School in 1957, their fellow student spat at them and physically abused them. Examples included throwing acid in their eyes, drop flaming paper from above and trapping them in the washrooms. This is what was done while the students had escorts from the 101st Airborne. The motivation was simple racism, the whites believed their space should not be "contaminated" by the presence of blacks.

Such is the case with prayer on the Temple Mount. In today's world, the mark of Seriousness, as opposed to seriously evaluating the issue, is to declare that the interests of peace require that Jews refrain from provoking the Muslims by praying on the holiest spot. In other words, the "international laws" that are so often pompously invoked can be set aside when, as is for the case of Jews exercising their rights under Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a heckler's veto is sufficiently fierce. By that standard, Brown v. Board of Education should have been overturned due to white opposition throughout the South.

Tianenmen and the Iran deal

Sar Shalom

In 1989, the Chinese Communist Party responded to a student demonstration in Tianenmen Square by massacring the students occupying Tiananmen Square. In the wake of that massacre, both houses of Congress unanimously passed sanctions against China. President George H. W. Bush vetoed the bill and during the override attempt, 37 Republicans in the Senate changed their positions to sustain the president's veto. Since then, candidate Bill Clinton promised that he would not renew China's Most Favored Nation status the next time the issue came. The next time China's MFN status came up for renewal, Clinton was president, and he did not oppose. Same thing the following time China's MFN status came up. After that, Clinton made China's MFN status permanent, eliminating any future automatic review of that status.

The fate of MFN status for China in the years after Tiananmen provides a model for what would likely happen with the Iran nuclear deal if Obama's veto is sustained. Among President Obama's constant refrains supporting his deal is the claim that if Iran violates the terms of the agreement, we can always "snap back" the sanctions. The problem is that "snapping back" the sanctions after the deal is put into place will create the same disaster scenario that Obama claims would result now if the deal is rejected. The only difference is that rejecting the deal now would leave an outside chance to renegotiate a better deal while "snapping back" the sanctions would open no such opportunity. The result is that any argument used today to support the president's deal could be used to oppose "snapping back" the sanctions under any conceivable violation by Iran. In other words, any violation by Iran would give a choice of "let them get away with it" or war. If those are the choices the future will present to us, "snap back" will be as much of a paper tiger as the renewal process of China's MFN status.

Who is an extremist?

Sar Shalom

One of the common epithets hurled at those exercising Jewish rights to visit the Temple Mount is that of "extremist." For the Arabs to use that language is understandable, however, even the UN has taken to doing so. Without going too deep into the UN's designation of Jews visiting their own holy sites as "extremists," it is worth reflecting on the history of making such designations.

In this country there is a history of calling anyone promoting unpopular rights an "extremist." One notable example is Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, "At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergyman would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist."

What the example of King shows is that branding someone an "extremist" does not necessarily mean anything about the target of the branding. Rather, it can simply mean that the person doing the branding, due to extreme bigotry, viscerally opposes the target's goals. In the meantime, we should start to compare those who, like the UN Special Coordinator, call Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount "extremists" to the bigots who labelled King an "extremist."

Charleston

Sar Shalom

There has been much discussion this weekend about Friday's massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Without getting in to the shooting itself, it is notable that across society, everyone is condemning the shooter's actions. The condemnations are so ubiquitous that some comment how it is easier to take the obvious step of condemning wanton killing members of a particular race than to do anything to help members of that race.

However, let's consider a situation in which condemnations were not forthcoming and that instead calls were ringing across the south celebrating the n***s getting their comeuppance. What would the rest of the country say about the south? Such is the reality of Palestinian society.

The Lance Armstrong of International Geopolitics

Sar Shalom

With sports being discussed among Israel-supporters, a reflection on the Lance Armstrong saga might be worthwhile. As anyone who has even casually followed the sport of cycling knows, Armstrong recovered from a bout of testicular cancer to return to elite bicycle racing, winning 7 consecutive Tours de France. People wanted so much to believe in the story of someone recovering from disease in such a grand fashion that they overlooked the signs that Armstrong was using performance enhancing drugs, engaging in blood doping, and his machinations to obscure his cheating. Furthermore, the authorities overseeing international cycling failed to penetrate the omertà within the elite cycling community, an omertà which that community allowed only Armstrong to break when it helped him eliminate his competition, allowing the cheating to continue with impunity.

It was not until years after Armstrong's retirement from racing that investigators were able to piece together that proof that Armstrong had indeed cheated in all of his Tour de France wins. Since that proof came so many years after the events, when Travis Tygart of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) discussed the case on 60 Minutes, one of the questions was why it was so important to pursue the case so long afterwards. Tygart's response was that if it was dropped, that the message to future cheaters would be that all they need to do to get away with their schemes is to craft a compelling enough and sympathetic enough personal story.

In international geopolitics, there is a political movement that tells a story that pulls on heartstrings around the world as forcefully as did Armstrong's recovery from cancer. It is a story of fighting for a people who lack a state to represent them in the homeland where their ancestors supposedly lived for centuries. The international do-gooders want so much to help this cause that they ignore every indication that this movement's real aim is that a different group should become stateless. Whenever associates of this movements have rallies supporting fascism, it's omertà in newsrooms across the world. Whenever this movement uses its civilians as human shields for its military operations, it's omertà in newsrooms across the world. Whenever compromises are offered to this movement and the movement rejects those compromises, it's omertà in newsrooms across the world.

The movement that gets this treatment is Palestinian nationalism. Just as with Armstrong, if malfeasance on this scale is swept under the rug because the story is so compelling, the lesson to movements across the world will be that a compelling story confers impunity on all actions.

For once, the New York Times accurately describes what is underlying the Mideast conflict (Updated)

Sar Shalom

{Editor's note - Eric Foner is considered the "dean" of historians of nineteenth-century American history, if not American historians, more generally.  His 1988 Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 is a masterpiece of the field.}

While historian Eric Foner's recent New York Times article was not about the Middle East, it does describe an attempted reversal of fortune in that the formerly oppressed were granted equal citizenship while those attempting to thwart that emancipation were disenfranchised.

This is the situation that befell the Mizrahi Jews who throughout the 19th century were subjected to the whims of their Muslim neighbors and who gained full citizenship in Israel as the result of the Zionist enterprise. The example, along with the description of attempts to stymie and then discredit that effort, presented by Eric Foner is that of Reconstruction in the United States following the Civil War.

What we need to do is highlight the parallels between the efforts to bring about African-American equality through Reconstruction with the realized equalization of the Mizrahi Jews among the Arabs, and between the efforts to delegitimize Reconstruction and the efforts to delegitimize Zionism.

Reconstruction refers to the period, generally dated from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation’s laws and Constitution were rewritten to guarantee the basic rights of the former slaves, and biracial governments came to power throughout the defeated Confederacy. For decades, these years were widely seen as the nadir in the saga of American democracy. According to this view, Radical Republicans in Congress, bent on punishing defeated Confederates, established corrupt Southern governments presided over by carpetbaggers (unscrupulous Northerners who ventured south to reap the spoils of office), scalawags (Southern whites who supported the new regimes) and freed African-Americans, unfit to exercise democratic rights. The heroes of the story were the self-styled Redeemers, who restored white supremacy to the South.

Zionism refers to the period from roughly 1871 until today during which the Jews from across the Ottoman Empire and Europe were brought to one corner the the Ottoman Empire, the southwest Levant, where the Ottoman Jews were freed from the shackles of dhimmitude. According to a popular theory today, this represents the last vestige of European colonialism in which European colonists bent on subjugating the native Arab population, imposing white imperial rule over those Arabs and giving a voice the Jewish dhimmis who were unfit for self-rule. The heroes of this story are the irhabis, or as their supporters call them, jihadis, who are struggling to reimpose the Pact of Umar.

This portrait, which received scholarly expression in the early-20th-century works of William A. Dunning and his students at Columbia University, was popularized by the 1915 film “Birth of A Nation” and by Claude Bowers’s 1929 best-selling history, “The Tragic Era.” It provided an intellectual foundation for the system of segregation and black disenfranchisement that followed Reconstruction.

The aforementioned theory of Zionism received scholarly expression through Edward Said's Orientalism and popular support through efforts to demonstrate the human toll of Israel's existence on the lives of the Palestinians.

Lincoln did not live to preside over Reconstruction. That task fell to his successor, Andrew Johnson. Once lionized as a heroic defender of the Constitution against Radical Republicans, Johnson today is viewed by historians as one of the worst presidents to occupy the White House. He was incorrigibly racist, unwilling to listen to criticism

While the original visionaries of the Balfour Declaration, which became the British Mandate for Palestine, lived to see it go into effect, they did not remain in office to do so. The people who came to office, and successive High Commissioners for Palestine, were less committed to the goal of establishing a Jewish national home than were the drafters of the Balfour Declaration, notably the anti-Semite Louis Bols who sought to undermine it. It was those successors who empowered the Mufti who in turn made opposing Jewish self-determination a pan-Arab priority.

[T]he advent of African-Americans in positions of political power aroused bitter hostility from Reconstruction’s opponents. ... As late as 1947, the Southern historian E. Merton Coulter wrote that of the various aspects of Reconstruction, black officeholding was “longest to be remembered, shuddered at, and execrated.”

The sight of Jews, whom all their experiences taught are supposed to be at the mercy of the believers, overseeing their own governance was what was most horrifying and what most needed to be eradicated.

It was not economic dependency, however, but widespread violence, coupled with a Northern retreat from the ideal of equality, that doomed Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and kindred groups began a campaign of murder, assault and arson that can only be described as homegrown American terrorism.

The real model for Palestinian resistance against Israel. Leila Khaled's attacks on Israeli buses are no different from Jesse James' attacks on Reconstruction officials.

Meanwhile, as the Northern Republican Party became more conservative, Reconstruction came to be seen as a misguided attempt to uplift the lower classes of society.

The one area where Zionism differs from Reconstruction. In Reconstruction, the chief beneficiary was the southern "Negroes" (using the terminology of the time) while the chief force sustaining it was northern whites. While the northern whites saw moral benefits to Reconstruction advancing, they did not enjoy any practical benefits of it doing so. In contrast, Zionism benefited both Mizrahi and European Jewry. Thus, while similarly to Reconstruction it was outsiders, the European Jews, who had been able to learn the defense maneuvers that were necessary to secure progress against resistance, something which was not available to the Jews living under Muslim rule, when Klan-like resistance sprung up to the emancipation of Mizrahi Jewry, the European Jews were not about to turn tails and abandon their Middle Eastern co-religionists because it was their dreams that were threatened as well.

A final note: It is time that we present the case that those championing the "Palestinian cause" are not repeating the effort to undo the Apartheid regime of South Africa, rather, they are repeating the effort to overturn Reconstruction, reviving the Pact of Umar the way the end of Reconstruction brought about Jim Crow.

Update:

An article in Tablet today asks about the tensions between attachment of American Jews to Israel and to liberalism. While the article did not go into depth about any of the details producing that tension, it did mention the Arab Spring and domestic-Israeli relations with their Arab population. However, the largest issue in general that is held to place the two at odds is the conflict with the Palestinians. In this regards, the conflict between Zionism and liberalism assumes that supporting the Palestinians is akin to supporting the Civil Rights struggle in this country.

The reality is that supporting the Palestinians is akin to supporting the southern whites under Reconstruction. One could argue that the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli control is excessive,just as one could reasonably make a case that the disenfranchisement of the whites under Reconstruction went too far. However, arguing that the appropriate response to this situation should be to abandon support for Israel would be like arguing that the appropriate response to the excessive disenfranchisement of the whites under Reconstruction was to clear the way for the emergence of Jim Crow.

How to explain Iran's nuclear negotiations posture in terms Obama can understand

Sar Shalom

When Barack Obama started his effort to bring universal health coverage, he initially tried to get some Republican support for his efforts by offering to adjust his plans to their concerns. He tried to tailor his plans to win the support of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and of Maine Senator Olympia Snowe. In every case, whenever he made a requested change, the response was the he or she still could not accept it. Sometimes this was accompanied by some additional change that would be necessary, sometimes not. Eventually, Obama came to the realization that the Republican idea on negotiating health reform was to keep saying that an agreement was just over the horizon so that Obama would waste his time seeking an agreement thus limiting what else he could do. In the case of health reform, running out the clock would have meant continuing the negotiations until Ted Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer, thus eliminating any chance that Obama could achieve a partisan bill in the absence of any Republicans agreeing to universal coverage.

Such is the case with Iran's nuclear negotiating strategy. Whether or not you agree with my assessment of the Republicans' health care negotiation strategy, it is highly likely that those arguing that we should just give the negotiations with Iran more time to succeed would and a certainty among those in the administration. In the case of Iran, "running out the clock" would mean continuing the negotiations until Iran develops enough fuel to reach breakout capacity. At that point, Iran could build several nuclear weapons in response to any punitive action and have them ready before those measures achieve any impact. The one possible exception would be an Operation Iranian Freedom undertaken without debate, but in which the President declared the clerical regime was negotiating in bad faith and the next day troops would land in Khuzestan and in Sistan and Beluchistan with an advance to Tehran as quick as Operation Iraqi Freedom's advance to Baghdad.

It is time to do in the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear developments what Obama did in his negotiations with the Republicans over health reform.

If I may digress

Sar Shalom

Many Americans know of the existence of an Apache nicknamed Geronimo. Fewer Americans know about his role in resisting Mexican and American expropriation of Apache lands and fewer know about his life after he surrendered to the American Army and exited the fight. Once he exited the fight, Geronimo became an American celebrity. He made an appearance at the World's Fair in St. Louis and rode alongside President Roosevelt at his 1905 inaugural. Most notably, his name became associated with bravery in American culture, such as with paratroopers invoking it when they jumped out of airplanes. However, with all the celebrity status the American public accorded Geronimo, he was never allowed to return home, whether in his lifetime of afterwards.

Such is the Left's attitude towards the Jews.

It is important to distinguish the western Left from the Islamists. The Islamist attitude towards the Jews is that of the second generation of English colonists to the Wampanoag. While the western Left's is still unacceptable, we must be aware of how it is different and be able to articulate that we understand the difference but nonetheless call it out as unacceptable.

Mizrahi Reconstruction

Sar Shalom

Back in June, Matti Friedman published an article at Mosaic titled "Mizrahi Nation" contrasting the prevalent Eurocentric narrative of the rise of the State of Israel with a narrative centered on Middle East-Jewry. While I don't have anything to add to his history of Mizrahi Jews, there was one item missing in the parallel between the two narratives. In describing the Eurocentric narrative, Friedman related that many respond to the narrative of oppressed European Jews reestablishing themselves in their ancient homeland by likening European settlement of the Levant to white colonization of Rhodesia. However, there is no external reference for the Mizrahi-centric narrative. I would like to suggest that the appropriate external comparison should be Reconstruction following the American Civil War.

Making such an effort would require two things. One, it would be necessary to have a chance to convince people that the Jewish reclamation of the Land of Israel resembles Reconstruction. Second, convincing people of that notion would have to have an effect on their perceptions of the conflict. The second component is the simpler one. While there is a risk that such an association would alienated some of our right-wing allies who cling to the old Confederacy, the gains among liberals could be substantial. For any liberal who is convinced that supporting the Palestinians against Israel is equivalent to supporting the Klan in its efforts to undermine Reconstruction, it would be game over with us winning that liberal. For the Jew-hatred über alles crowd, there are only two responses to a comparison between Reconstruction: they could assert that while enfranchising the freed Negroes post-Civil War was a positive goal, disenfranchising the whites in service of that goal went too far, or they could circle the wagons to try to prevent the notion that Zionism is like Reconstruction from gaining traction.

This raises the issue of how bring traction to the Reconstruction-Zionism nexus. A start would be to note what is in common between all three of Reconstruction, Apartheid and present-day Israel: they all feature(d) one group that is/was empowered and one that is/was disenfranchised. The task would be to highlight the differences between Reconstruction and Apartheid and pose the question as to whether present-day Israel is more like Reconstruction or like Apartheid. A few examples. Under Reconstruction, the empowered group was previously disenfranchised and the group that became disenfranchised was previously the overlords of those disenfranchised whereas under Apartheid the empowered group only shared the same space with the disenfranchised as the overlords. In Israel, if you take the perspective of the Mizrahi community, the empowered group was previously disenfranchised and the presently disenfranchised were their overlords back then. During Reconstruction, the disenfranchised began a full-press campaign of terror. While the ANC did occasionally commit acts of terror, there was nothing on the scale of the Klan. Needless to say, Israel is faced with a full-press campaign of terror. During Reconstruction, the southern whites never saw anything wrong with any savagery committed in resistance to Reconstruction, only in the North's calling attention to those crimes. In Israel today, the Arabs and their water-carriers never see any crime in any Arab act of savagery against the Jewish population, only in Jews' calling attention to what the Arabs are doing. A further comparison between Reconstruction and Zionism with no analog in Apartheid is the combination of the formerly locally disenfranchised with outsiders. In Reconstruction, this consisted of Northern carpetbaggers helping to enforce the newly established rights for the ex-slaves. In Zionism, this consisted of European Jews, not all of them Ashkenazic, developing a space where Mizrahi had the full rights of free men.

While there are similarities between Zionism and Reconstruction, the lack of any living memory of Reconstruction will make it difficult to make Reconstruction come to people's minds when they think of what is happening in the Levant. Further, it will take more than the sketchy connections I have outlined to withstand the attacks of those who would deny any connection at all cost. A more robust comparison will requiring delving more deeply into the history of Reconstruction. A few examples I could suggest would include The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War and After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace.