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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
How do guys like Hussein Ibish sleep at night? Shilling for the ridiculous quislings at Americans Tasked with F*ing the Palestinians, assuring us that Asali's gladhanding a monster like Oren should trouble no one, inhabiting his Unicorn World where just a little more bowing and scraping to Congress and the White House will open the ruling class's eyes and counterbalance gazillions in Lobby moolah.
Poor Ibish. His risible website has been "closed for maintenance" for a couple weeks now - at least that's how long I've noticed the (welcome) closure. Could've been longer. Wonder what's going on? PA money drying up?
And to think, he used to collaborate on pieces with Ali Abunimah! How things change...
"i believe it’s a plagiarism of Dennis Ross’s famous poem, “The peace process is a happy pony”"
Happy unicorn, Phil. Unicorn.
"...As to all the countries that persecute minorities, Adler is right, and the Palestinian solidarity left probably doesn't say enough about them. But some of us do, and more to the point: This occupation has been going on for 45 years, there's a reason that it demands attention..."
No, Adler is wrong, and I think your reasoning leads us astray, Phil. Once you bring up the occupation's duration to justify your position, you're accepting the bizarre notion that political commitments follow from some simple political calculus - if it's long enough, or involves more people, it follows that it's a legitimate political concern. If not, your commitment smells fishy.
No one -absolutely no one - is expected to justify his or her political actions with reference to this slapstick notion of permissible activism EXCEPT supporters of Palestinian rights.
Can you imagine anyone insisting that a feminist justify working for equal pay when the far worse crime of FGM still occurs?
You didn't come to focus on Palestine/Israel because you performed some calculation that resulted in assigning P/I the highest spot on the Infamy Index, and nor did any politically interested person on any political issue.
The Bizarro World picture of activism implicit in Adler's et al has nothing to do with real human beings and their convictions. I say don't give an inch - not a centimeter - on this.
Why is it that so many progressives will more or less ignore Obama's unbroken history of obeisance to the lobby on every substantive matter as they take heart from the microscopic parsing of any phrase which may conceivably, by some mixture of hope and wish, be understood as standing up to it?
As for Obama becoming free to challenge Netanyahu once he's in his final term, not a chance. It's not just his own viability as a candidate that's of concern to him, it's also his place in the Democratic party. It wasn't until years after his presidency was over and it was clear that he had become a non-person that Jimmy Carter spoke up.
Obama's not going to cloud his post-presidency opportunities by suddenly developing a conscience.
The feckless Witty elicits endless impassioned replies from folks here despite the lack of novelty, thoughtfulness or profundity in his comments, and it's his fault? Apologists for Zionism who would gladly construe a preference for mayonnaise on one's roast beef sandwiches as evidence of antisemitism pile on Blankfort, and it's his fault?
Right. And did you see that short skirt she was wearing? She was asking for it.....
I get the idea that you don't want to open the site to criticism that some may find more compelling than the boilerplate bullshit you get from the haters, but isn't it too late for that? Do you think that any critic of Mondoweiss will be mollified by the exclusion of Blankfort? ("We used to think that Weiss was a self-hating Jew and his site a nursery for antisemites, but now that he's banned Blankfort, we see the error of our ways").
If you believe Blankfort's an antisemite, I can understand banning him (although I do think there's an interesting conversation to be had about that), but banning him because he may make you look bad to those who would undoubtedly hold you in low regard anyway?
Asperger's, eh? The problem for me is that this option removes the notion of agency or motivation from the equation.
Phil's ignoring social cues because he lacks some cognitive ability most of us have? Maybe.
Or maybe expressing his aggression in this way serves a purpose; he gets to flip the finger at someone who puts him off and still disavow his hostility - "Who, me? You really think I was being nasty? Gosh....I had no idea."
I hasten to add that I don't know Phil from Anna O., so of course I'm being totally speculative.
It's just that, for the most part, I believe human behavior is driven by meaning and motive and, yeah, I'll say it, we remain unaware of some of what drives us.
Of course some of us suffer from Asperger's, but it's a mistake, I think, to try and subsume an increasing range of human behavior, from outright autism to extreme oddness to simple boorishness to plain old luftmensch distraction, under the mantle of a mechanistic model. Besides flirting with fickle diagnostic fashion, this approach erases the possibility of learning something about how those annoying repetitions that we should, fer chrissake!, after all this time!, how many times have I told already!, might be performing a service for us.
But I see our time is up.....
hophmi says:
"Yep. When the UN adopts your narrative, praise it. When it doesn’t, condemn it."
and calls it hypocritical to condemn this UN report while giving the OK to others.
This would suggest that the only way to avoid being hypocritical would be to agree with every UN pronouncement, or none of them. Absurd.
If I think the Supreme Court got it right with Brown v. Board of Ed, but dropped the ball on Citizens United, am I a hypocrite?
MLE - Don't worry about "remedying" anything. Boycotts are about withholding financial support from and shining a light on culprits. They are not about moral purity.
Your money's been spent and there are plenty of ways to show solidarity from now on. I guess breaking the device might keep your dad from promoting it to others (although maybe it'd get a sympathy vote for SodaStream, who knows?), but I don't see an obligation to remedy anything.
On another note, I left a comment at Saveur's website. I encourage others to do the same. Let's see how long they remain up before the Gourmands in Charge get wind of what's happening.
Admittedly, I'm no spark plug when it comes to internet research, but I can't seem to find a list of the congressfolks who are along for AEIF's ride to Israel. Anyone know where to find such a list?
Also, odd that AEIF doesn't appear to have its own website - at least, none comes up in the first couple of pages of a Google search. AIPAC comes up first, but its website contains no link to AEIF - unless I missed it.
Speculating about the contents of Obama's heart (and I have no reason to think that it's anything but an empty vessel, but never mind) has nothing to do with politics. He endorses love? Excellent. Me, too. But he does not act in a loving way - to Palestinians, to Americans, to anyone (OK, maybe to Michelle, who urges us to plant gardens while the Husband-in-Chief appoints agribusiness ogres to Agriculture Dept posts....family tradition, this rhetorical affection for rainbows and granola and hearts bursting with love while casting one's political lot with Tyson and drones and torture).
And microscopically parsing his speeches to discover some hidden nugget of a potential call-to-arms to his progressive base reminds me of nothing so much as the wishful delusions of a battered spouse explaining to incredulous friends that her tormentor has a really good heart and this time, he really, really means to do right.
Psychologism has taken over political reasoning. Obama's mom's freethinking choice of spouse is a reliable predictor of....what, exactly? A boilerplate recitation of brotherhood, unity and self-sacrifice in the face of a natural disaster that could have come from the mouth of Bush? (I propose the regular application of Ismail's Law to any political speech: insert a negative into the speech under scrutiny - if it is unthinkable that anyone would ever utter the resulting opinion, the speech is meaningless. To take the example that Phil provided, imagine someone saying, "I am disturbed by the selfless acts of bravery foolishly performed by some for the sake of their neighbors" Imaginable that you would ever hear a politician say such a thing (Objectivists excluded)? Nope. So, a meaningless puff of hot air, designed to burnish his image with his base at a cost of precisely zero.
I am immensely angry at Obama, and tremendously frustrated by those (some of whom - Phil, for example - I have tremendous respect for) who furnish apologies for his bad behavior. The exact analogue is the PEPs; those who have keen insight and good politics and good hearts but who inexplicably have a blind spot when it come to I/P.
Although I don't know a syllable of Hebrew, I believe I can offer a correct translation of the Israeli delegate's remarks:
"This film presents a perspective which we find politically uncomfortable. Accordingly, we would like both to suppress its presentation and, in an effort to misdirect the public's attention, remind everyone that only powerful antisemitic impulses could animate such critical representations of our policies.
To these ends, we shall propose a series of profoundly silly standards that the film in question fails to meet; all works of art must encompass every possible viewpoint, no artist shall privilege her own interpretation of the events she describes, the correct artistic stance is the absolutely uninflected one, et al.
In this manner, we hope to conceal that our objections basically come down to:
"Wah! No fair!" "
Nothing's broken "...in this beautiful Eretz Israel." It's working the way it was always supposed to work.
Everyone knew that there was no way to establish the state imagined by the Zionists without massive expulsion of the indigenes. From jump street, that was the deal.
And everyone knows that maintaining that state requires increasingly feral measures to dominate those indigenes.
To the majority population of Palestine in 1948, there never was a "beautiful Eretz Israel".
Save us from liberal Zionists.
I feel a little trepidation about saying so, but my reaction to Abuelaish is complicated. Look, there's no doubt that the guy is a saint, foreswearing rancor towards the people who incinerated his family. Maybe it's my moral failing, but I could not begin to imagine reacting in a similar fashion in the face of such a tragedy.
So I would be honored to know him, to spend time with him....but I'm conflicted about his political meaning.
The fact that people like R Witty would be proud to invite him to speak to his congregation is the reddest of flags to me. The fact that he is (was) the darling of left Zionism troubles me. I think of my parents' friends, swelling with self-congratulation over their brave approval of, say, Sidney Poitier, a credit to his race.
The degree to which folks who tolerate/rationalize/support the Zionist project adore Abuelaish is precisely the degree to which he may be ignored as an indicator of the way ahead. Except to the most feral settler types, his place in the conversation comports with the compassionate self-image of liberal (and, in my view, the more dangerous) Zionists.
Most important, support for him is an example of the fetishization of dialogue by some liberals, the transformation of the political into the psychological. "If we can all just talk and realize our common humanity..." etc etc.
No great social change was ever driven by such kumbayah principles. Struggle, struggle and more struggle.......
I now feel churlish and want to repeat that my respect for Abuelaish is boundless. But I see the great whoosh of love for him from folks who support the "peace process" (and will support it for another 40 years, or 80) as an indicator of his political marginality; a comfortable reassurance of their humanity to those who endlessly tolerate the inhumane.
"In fairness to Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street, who disses Vilkomerson, he is playing a double game. It is great that he invited Vilkomerson; but he has to say this kind of sh-t because the Jewish community is so backward. In private, I am sure he would tell you that he needs Vilkomerson: because his own liberal base is vomiting over Israel's behavior, and he needs to address them, he needs to honor what her group Jewish Voice for Peace is doing on his left. Privately I bet Ben-Ami is also in favor of boycotting goods from the illegal colonies of the West Bank that have demolished the two-state solution. Would he say so publicly? Never."
Sorry, Phil, but this kind of comment bears the faint whiff of wishiness. It reminds me of what longtime Democrats, clinging desperately to any analysis that will avoid embracing a true critique, say when confronted with Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Obama's serial malfeasances - "He has to say that to get elected", "He really wants to do the right thing, but he's got to be a realist", etc.
Being a realist, of course, always involves shorting their natural constituencies - women, antiwar types, labor - never the other way around.
Somehow, that storied moment when these guys can finally show their true colors never happens.
In the end, who cares what Ben-Ami "really" believes? We should be talking about politics, not psychology, and I think J Street occupies a useful political space to opponents of justice in the mideast. If its caponized version of challenge to right-Zionist hegemony, with its failure to confront the structural problems with Zionism, counts as the "left" position, it helps push the discourse to the right (just as Clinton/Obama's "liberalism" has done). In this sense, Ben-Ami is the Jewish Hussein Ibish.
Why do we attribute to Ben-Ami, Obama et al the role of hero manque, instead of seeing them for the mediocrities they are? Beats me.
I'm really curious; as a regular reader and infrequent poster here, I'm puzzled by the reactions to R Witty. The guy doesn't have anything astute or novel to say, he doesn't seem to engage his critics in a productive way, he appears to be immune to ordinary notions of compassion or fairness...why feed him?
Sometimes I think that he's just an easy punching bag.
I'm fine dealing with ideologues, but only if a challenging argument or nifty prose or wicked humor is part of the picture.
Why engage with a dull ideologue?
One aspect of this disgraceful affair not mentioned in Maggie's terrific piece: the timing
At this moment, when Obama is being gelded yet again by Bibi, when he is undoubtedly getting massive pressure from Dems fearful of lost Ziofunds to their party unless their prez continues his capitulations, when he, devoid of spine in the best of times, cannot afford the merest whisper of Israel-unfriendly policy, at precisely this moment do these House Dems decide to push him on Pollard.
To my mind, this stands right along Cantor's assurances to Bibi that Congress'll reign in the prez as an example of US Reps acting with greater loyalty to Israel than to their own constituents (not to mention their party).
They know the guy's hamstrung so they figure it's a good time to bring up Pollard. Astonishing.
pjdude -
Thanks. I hadn't heard of Poe's Law, but I now realize that I run afoul of it regularly. Don't know if it's a matter of age (younger people seem to me to be more literal-minded than I remember myself and my friends being, but these days my memory's about as reliable as an Alfa Romeo, so....) or what.
everyone else -
Among the many virtues of this irreplaceable site (excellent reportage, astute eye for aggregating, very personal flavor to many posts, high level of analytical acuity among posters),the overall flavor of honesty and respect and comradeship that exists among the regular commenters here is especially striking.
TGIA, Avi, Annie -
Ummm, folks, I wasn't really suggesting that the video was a forgery. See, the idea that the word "please" coming from an Israeli would indicate forgery plays on the popular (and in my experience, largely accurate) picture of brusqueness and impatience with social niceties as an Israeli trait.
When you have to explain a joke........well, I thought the sarcasm and absurdity implied was obvious, but I guess not. I will do better in the future.
Clearly another shocking Pallywood forgery. You'll note that, at about the 1'03" mark, a soldier says, "Give me the third house, please".
What Israeli ever says "please"?
QED
A number of years ago, a good friend of mine was running for public office in Cambridge, MA. Like myself, he is a NYC transplant to the area, but his wife is a lifelong Cantabridgian. I recall his saying to me that she should be the one to be running, since natives are more likely to understand the issues, etc. I can't recall his exact words, but the drift was most definitely that she had some greater entitlement to the office than a newbie (in Boston, that's anyone here less than a half-century). And he's a great progressive.
I was reminded of this by a sentence in this piece:
" With all due respect to Rabbi Gordis, neither he nor I can ever be as Israeli as Ahmed Tibi, Emile Habibi, or Azmi Bishara. We are immigrants; they are not...."
I get his meaning, but I don't endorse the ramifications of this way of thinking. For purposes of civil society, citizenship is citizenship, whether by birth or naturalization. Period. The notion of greater or lesser legitimacy within the category "citizen" doesn't appeal to me a bit. We can all easily recall how that rubric has been used by people for baleful purposes.
Accents, mannerisms, styles of thinking, shared history, longer residence - whatever is included in the idea that one citizen is "more Israeli" than another - these things ought have no resonance in a democracy (even a soi-disant one like Israel).
I seem to recall hearing that Terry Gross declined to air an interview she did with someone making the Palestinian case. Can anyone corroborate this?
Thanks, Joseph, for your enlightening piece. Any chance you can provide the sources for the quotations?
Actually, Phil, I hope Palestinians and others will be visiting a Nakba Museum in Palestine or in Israel, not in DC.
The presence of the holocaust museum in dc is an affront to native americans and african americans, whose decimation by this country remains unrecognized by any such institution. I understand building a holocaust museum in germany or poland or israel, but in dc?
Similarly, I would hope to see this country recognize its own direct crimes before taking the easy path to demonstrating its ethical perfection by memorializing crimes it had little or nothing to do with while ignoring those for which twe truly bear responsibility.
Marc, that is a first-rate letter-specific, patient, and admirably bereft of the bitterness or fury you must feel . Inspiring.
I agree with your endorsement of linguistic precision. In that spirit, I suggest changing "...as precise use of the language is important." to "...since precise use of the language is important."
This completes today's Pedantry Moment. It is now safe for you to resume your normal activities.
MRW-
"I heard layer upon layer under his speech, but I didn’t hear it until I stopped looking at him and just used my ears. I heard my hands are tied right now but I am fully aware of the problem."
How nice for you that you have such a direct connection to the recesses of Obama's heart. I guess your ears function like George Bush's eyes-you know, the ones that could look into Putin's eyes and see his soul.
I may be just a plodding sort of guy, but I prefer to go by the man's actions, so far almost universally foul. And I have heard the mantra of "well, his heart's in the right place and he really, really wants to do the right thing, but he has to get elected first/ has to pass his domestic program first/has to establish credibility" etc etc ad nauseam. The turnaround never happens. It was the self-delusion of the battered spouse when "progressives" absorbed every insult and ignominy of the Clinton administration without a murmur, and it's the same thing with the current Empty Suit who occupies the White House.
Funny, conservatives never fall for this shit from their guys. Why is that?
I'm most put off by the de-politicization of the conflict implicit in Obama's speech- "race, tribe, religion". While there are of course elements of these things animating the Israel/Palestine conflict, the constant invocation of these hoary tropes-"a tragic and timeless tribal conflict between two peoples whose claim to the land they both desire, blah, blah, blah..." only obscures the essentially political nature of the problem.
Water, land, dispossession....how homely and ordinary when compared to fantasies of prehistoric and unending tribal hatred, surely as indelibly inscribed within the DNA of the opponents as having two lungs or an inclination to care for infants.
How could such irrational and irresistible forces ever yield to a political solution?
I have lots of disagreements with Norman Finkelstein, but he provides an invaluable service by constantly reminding us that there is nothing exotic or mysterious about understanding the Middle East; an examination of history and international law will do.
It is one of the great achievements of the Zionist narrative to have convinced most that the Israel/Palestine conflict is beyond the scope of normal human understanding or intervention.
I sent the following to J Street after reading this post:
Greetings-
I note the following from Mr. Ben-Ami's recent interview with The Washington Independent:
"But if the diplomatic route is completely disregarded and the offer [rejected] — after probably ten or 20 warnings, they’re practically beyond saying no. They’re sticking a finger in the eye of the world. The U.S. has really tried to find a way to offer them a path to full engagement. There have to be consequences. We can’t just allow that kind of disregard of the international community."
Please explain why Iran's "sticking a finger in the eye of the world" warrants sanctions while Israel's far more long-standing eyepoke does not, particularly when the upshot of Iran's transgressions is largely potential, while Israel's have resulted in 40 years of actual dispossession, misery and death.
Also, please explain whom you think you're fooling with your insistence that you provide a progressive alternative to AIPAC when you traffic in such blatant hypocrisy.
Yours,
I know, I know...one is meant to adopt a courteous tone in these circumstances, but I'm weak and succumb to outrage easily. And I don't think there'd be a greater likelihood that Ben-Ami would smack his forehead and say, "Omigod, he's right! What was I thinking?" if I were to have written in the prescribed manner.