Last night my wife and I were talking about a Jewish couple we know: where do they stand on Gaza? I'd run into this couple during the endless festivities of the new year and looked for some sign of outrage or, if not outrage, disturbance. The subject had come up glancingly; they'd said nothing. I told my wife that it upset me that there was not a ripple of concern in their voices. And she said, "You have to give them a break. They're not worldly."
This morning I woke up and thought that this was an essential predictor among all people on the Israel/Palestine issue: Are you worldly or not? If you're worldly you're going to be appalled by Gaza. If you're not worldly you can shrug it off. The great hope we have in Obama springs from the true fact that he's worldly. He loves Hawai'i and Africa, he grew up partly in Indonesia, he's Hussein, he's worldly.
The English writer Jessica Mitford came up [I think this is wrong; the Mitfords came up with it, not Jessica Mitford] with an essential divider of manners a half century or so ago: U and Non-U. U meant upper class. You could be U without being rich. You could be Non-U without being poor.
W is everything in American life today. America is by and large Non-W. We're proudly so. George Bush I was W, Bush II is non-W. Obama is W. Paul Wolfowitz is W but most of the neocons aren't. Elliott Abrams is very non-W. Norman Podhoretz non-W. Michael Walzer was probably the smartest professor I had in college, him and E.O. Wilson, but Walzer is determinedly non-W. E.O. Wilson--W. Walzer's whole intellectual definition of "Culturalism" is non-W. It rationalizes the idea of stickin' with your kind. Nakba: Non-W.
W/Non-W is an important distinction in my personal life. I grew up in very Jewish Non-W surroundings, and even at Harvard I found Non-W places. I married someone who was W--studied anthropology, had been to Africa a few times. Part of my difficulty in journalism was, Most of my editors have been Non-W. They love New York, New York is the world for them. That's Non-W. My closest friends are W. They have a real sense of how other people live their lives, and a respect for it. One reason I have worked so closely with Adam Horowitz on this site is that when I met him in lower Manhattan last May, in an Arab cultural center, I instantly recognized him as W. Completely himself--and that included being Jewish--in a very "alien" setting.
I don't think people roll off the assembly line Worldly and Non-Worldly. But the choices they make in their young adult lives seem to solidify the trait.
Avrum Burg, W. Dinky Romilly, W. Steve Walt, W. Tony Judt, W. The late Hilda Silverman, W. Tony Kushner, W. Ali Abunimah, W. And Obama, W. Time to bring more W to Israel/Palestine.
I think this distinction is entirely subjective to you, Phil, and hence of no relevance or utility to the rest of us.
Entirely subjective?
Here's what W looks like, you decide:
Thereâs a holocaust in progress and yet the world remains mute spectator â powerless in the face of the Nazi-like tactics the Israelis are using against the defenseless people of Gaza. This atrocity should stain the moral conscience of all.
Israelis, on the pretext of retaliation against rockets made from fertilizers have been feverishly dispatching their US-supplied F-16s loaded with deadly bombs against the Palestinians. And the massacres continue with the blessings or indifference of the United States and other Western countries.
As the death toll of civilians rises, so does the shallowness of Israeli claims that this is a defensive maneuver. Since the massive aerial attack was unleashed on Saturday, over 450 Palestinian civilians, including 59 children, have been killed and 1,720 wounded, according to Gaza medics.
Israel has been employing such murderous tactics at the cost of Palestinian lives for far too long. There will be no peace as long as they continue this tactic. It is a given today that the majority of those in the region view Israel as a terrorist state, and the only such pariah in the region.
In spite of efforts by some media pundits to alarm the Arab street about the threat of Iran lately, it has been obvious for quite some time that the real menace to the region is Israelâs continued policy of expansion and oppression and confinement of a people who simply refuse to be exterminated. What the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany, the Israelis have done one better. On the pretext of fighting terrorism, they continue to carry out assaults against a people who have no arms to fight back. And yet the will of Palestinians remains strong. And the world stands by and watches.
Itâs no secret that for the past two years, the people of Gaza have been denied all essential supplies and services to force them into submission. They had been under a suffocating siege. Deprivation of food, water, electricity and badly needed medical supplies are accompanied by frequent attacks on their soil by the Israeli forces under one pretext or another. And the people of Gaza were expected to remain silent. But what Israel has succeeded in doing is expose its terrorist ambitions and harden the resolve of its victims.
For the past 60 years, the Israelis have defied every UN Security Council resolution in their quest to obliterate the voice of resistance. Efforts by various governments to seek a just peace to both parties have failed and will continue to fail as long as Israel engages in such holocausts, undoubtedly encouraged to a great extent by the veto power of the United States at the United Nations. They are also engaging their spin machine within the Western media to justify such atrocities. Comparisons made by the assault on civilians with F-16s and Apache helicopters with fertilizer-fueled rockets border on the ridiculous. Suddenly, fighting for your land and rights is no longer a just cause to some Western columnists, who view any form of Palestinian resistance as a form of terrorism. Talk about hypocrisy!
However, if Israel is under any illusion that their latest round of carnage will lead to peace, then they are grotesquely mistaken. For the people of the region and elsewhere have expressed solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians and will continue to support their struggle for freedom. The people have stood in unity with Lebanon during Israelâs 32-day assault on that country. They will continue to do the same for the people of Gaza. The Rev. Martin Luther King once boldly stated: âOur lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.â The holocaust no longer means the tragic fate of Jews exterminated during World War II. The Palestinian people are the new victims of the crimes against humanity â committed by a people who once were the victims. And nobody can claim this holocaust is veiled in secrecy, taking place in a remote corner of the earth away from the glare of the world media.
I agree with Rowan.
I thought I was the accountant that put all phenomena into categories, and you were oriented to drama.
Interesting post. Maybe…
On the blog design etc, see Kevin Drum's Blogosphere Whines, particularly No. 5.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/12/my_blogosphere_whines.html
5. "Teaser" blogs that put only the first paragraph or two on the main page and force you to click "continue" if you want to read the whole thing. This is both annoying and pointless. It only takes a second or two to scroll past a blog post you don't want to read, after all.
None of the undeniable and horrific facts presented by Mister W (i.e. Phil) have anything do with his maudlin little subjective distinction between 'worldly' and 'unworldly'.
if you agree with me about this one issue, you're W. Great logic. So like it or not, Obama is non W. He really really doesn't care about saving Hamas. He seems to want those assholes dead. How non W!
"There is no long-term thinking in the Middle East, take that as a given and see where we are going in Gaza and the USA congress and White House:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=12961
Trying to lampoon Phil's comment, American wrote:
"if you agree with me about this one issue, you're W…."
Oh that's not fair. He said that he thought Wolfowitz was a "W."
I think Phil (or perhaps more accurately his wife) is on to something here, and just because it can't be entirely captured by one word doesn't render it invalid.
"Historically conscious," "culturally sensitive," "broad," "non-tribal" … none are perfect but all seem somewhat related and none are the kinds of things that spring to mind when considering the "non-W's" Phil has tagged. And he's spot on about Wolfowitz too who has always struck me as not just another fierce, narrow little neo-con. E.g., a guy who doesn't regard words as fundamentally meaningless little toys or tools with which to disguise true beliefs and agendas. Still was on the wrong side of the Iraq thing no doubt, but the kind of guy who has tried to think deeply about things and believes in things like reason and words.
Pretty astute insight by Phil's wife I think. Very astute even.
MMM, did she read Wolfie's novel about the bear who fucked the little goy girl?
Sin Nombre, those terms are all just as hopelessly subjective. The trouble is, Jews have got used to having such a degree of control of the airwaves etc. that they take their own subjectivity for data of 'worldly' value.
I don't knwo abuot this W no W stuff but most americans don't know what the israeli palestinian conflict is. I mean, literally don't know what the most basic version of the story is. Holy crap i think I just saw edgar from "24"
also, the medias coverage has been poor. why do they keep saying "Bush says…" ? who cares what bush says? not only is he a lame duck this is america, we don't take the state view reflexively. and why haven't they mentioned the connection between israel and the iraq war? people should know that the people who lied us into war in iraq also support this war. how is that not important?
anonn, i think you're confusing wolfowitz with irve lewis "moped" libby.
Yes, MM, you are right–it was Scooter Libby, a key player in faking
the right to attack Iraq, now awaiting a pardon from the pimple on Lincoln's toe, the wood chopper, Bush Jr. Sorry, I confused the two; now, what is Wolfowitz's footprint?
Why do you assume Obama is worldly? He despised his mother's exotiphilia. He has rarely traveled abroad other than to visit his relatives. He spent three weeks touring Europe at age 27 and hated every minute of it, saying, "It just wasn't mine."
His chosen career was extraordinarily parochial, choosing to burrow into the politics of the South Side of Chicago, as confined a place as any in America. I lived in Chicago for 18 years, but never met anybody who didn't grow up there who had ever considered going into Chicago politics.
you make a very good case for 'W/non-W' as a shorthand tool for rapid assessment of significant part of a person's character, and thus a better than average indicator of a person's likely future actions/reactions.
i humbly suggest a refinement or corollary to it would be 'curious/incurious'.
(which is arguably a synonym for 'W/non-W' depending on scale)
as i suspect that one can acquire the better aspects of worldliness without decades of experience and travel by means of study/investigation. which of course requires one to be curious enough.