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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Basically, most people want an ethnocracy at home and a multicultural society everywhere else. That's human, not contradictory.
I suppose that a lot of Israelis in Germany feel just so. (But a lot of Germans feel the same, and that will become a problem in the future.)
I admit that there are contradictions. Notwithstanding I think that Brooks is basically right. As the late Vine Deloria said, only tribes will survive. (Even if not all tribes.) The rule works for wildernessas well as modern masssociety. And there is a possibility of not-too-sectarian tribalism: Chabad has left the shtetl in order to serve all (potential) Jews. Chabad is a model which seems rather successful to me.
I see that there is no difference in practice, but there is a difference in intention and in communication. People will bear non-collaboration in another way than extortion.
Communication is important, because we need, at last, a solution where not, simply, one party wins over the other, but both find a kind of consensus.
As a way of communication, a "boycott" can transport two completely different messages.
First message: I simply don't want to become an accessory in your activities because they are wrong for me. That's the kind of "boycott" I can support.
Second message: I want to extort you to doing what I think is right. That's a kind of "boycott" I don't support. I don't want to be extorted, so I will NOT try to extort anyone else.
So, what kind of message do you want to send? And what kind of message does the opponent party get?
Note: I'm quite insensible to justification by historical success, like "I'm on the right side of history". (If you look for my reasons, look in Karl Popper's book on "The open society and its enemies".)
Speaking about fairness (like Avishai) - here I miss the fairness needed. The freedom of scientists must be weighed against the freedom of funders/supporters not to fund/support an organization they don't trust. In this kind of conflict, there have yet rules to be found which are impartial - and if public intellectuals get so overexcited, they won't find those rules (not in the McCarthy days and not now).
The latin "Lucifer" would be in Hebraic "heylel", a word which is to be found just once in Isaiah 12,14-15, designing a Babylonian king, and which thereafter was used to design a fallen angel. But is that really what the settlers named their outpost after?
BaghdadTehranBut that's quite an interesting development.
You see, neoconservative rhetoric is basically anti-appeasement. We were told that "the West" mustn't appease Saddam or Ahmadinejad, the same way the West had initially appeased Hitler (in order not to make things worse).
And this new rhetoric implies that the West needs to appease Netanyahu (in order not to make things worse).
And "appeasement" is not really popular, not even with the American Right.
But, to be fair, the Zionist ideal was NOT simply identical with Ashkenazi tradition. It was an Ashkenazi tradition deeply reformed in order to be useful for a modern society and a modern state of Israel. Insofar, Ashkenazi Zionists didn't impose changes on the Mizrahi which they hadn't done for themselves in former decades. Or did they?
Presbyterians are certainly not only interested because Jesus lived there - but also because there is an active and outspoken Palestinian Protestant minority which takes its stand in international Christian meetings. It's solidarity between Protestants, and quite legitime, as long as we accept solidarity between Jews.
Wouldn't it be useful to debate the "dual loyalty" problem in a general way, not singling Jews out, and quite matter-of-factly. Germans, Irish and a lot of other immigrants have had their "dual loyalty" problem (even WASPs, in the 18th century); in fact, the problem is inevitable for immigrants. Wouldn't such an approach help Jews to be more open with it?
I think that Mr. Sand's ranting against "ethnocracy" is basically flawed. Ethnic communities will survive as a mode of human association, for a long time. Marxists should get used to that idea in the same way Sand has got used to religion.
And ethnic communities will normally try to govern themselves. If(!) government is only possible on an own territory, it will be more wise to grant different ethnies different "autonomous territories" in the way the Soviet Union did it (leaving room for non-ethnic public space, too). To rule out "ethnocracies" confronting them with "democracies" is somewhat unfair and definitely unwise.
Reminds to me the business activities of Michail Chodorkovsky. Only Chodorkovsky reinvented himself as the great political hope for Russia - which Gertler can hardly do for Congo.
Ossitzky didn't die in prison. He was released in 1936 and died from tuberculosis in 1938.
Really, don't you think that those books are boring? It's always about bad boys cynically "making" other people "fear". But for a cheap success those books eliminate the more interesting points of the story.
First, the real protagonists are nearly never cynics - they are as believing as their followers.
Secondly, propaganda relies on real experiences and conflicts - so wouldn't it be more instructive to write about those real matters?
Thirdly, you can't "make" someone fear, you can only cover his latent fears with
a kind of rational explanation. Latent fears rely on a deep sense of insecurity - so, wouldn't it be more instructive to write about why and how far people feel insecure (and don't they have a right to feel insecure?)
I've nothing against leftists creating a "territorialist" or "soil-ist" identity, be it in France or in Palestine. But would you please accept that, as long as you're not successful in creating such territoralist identities, in the meantime a lot of people still have "tribalist" identities, be it Jew, Arab or "Francaisdesouche". There's no reason to hate or to vilify people only because of the shape of their identity.
Occupying a building might be seen as a kind of nonviolent protest. The declared intention was promoting a referendum (about French immigration policy). There's nothing essentially different from leftist political methods.
Ms. Deger seems to have got the halal-cafeteria problem wrong. The problem is, that schools tend to order only one kind of meat, which would mean that halal meat is imposed on all children, haram meat is inaccessible for them. Which is, understandably, seen as ominous w.r.t. the survival of "haram" (native) culture.
In case someone's wondering about the word "Eiertanz"- it doesn't mean "dancing" in a strict sense, but moving around and around the eggs for fear to break them. It's mostly used for ways of thinking which are crooked out of fear to have someone insulted.
I wouldn't like to live in a state where my people can be outcompeted be it by number (as Jews) or by money (as Arabs). The logical solution would be the "Switzerland model" - one federation of four federal states: a protected-jewish state (Northern and Western Israel), a protected-arab state I (Northern and Western Westbank), a protected-arab state II (Gaza) and an unprotected common state (comprehending puffer zones between the jewish and arab states as well as the area around Jerusalem, the big settlements, the Negev to Eilat). In the unprotected state the peoples are equal and can compete with each other, in the other states they are protected as dominant culture.
Seems simple, and I wonder if anyone has proposed that before me.
I understand Ms. Satter's attempt to draw a clear line between good critique of Israel and bad antisemitism.
But I think that's too simplistic.
I'd prefer the idea that the right way is a middle way between getting "over the edge" (blaming Jews indifferently and mixing different old and new grievances) and getting "under the edge" (blaming only nonpersonal conditions or only some political and military elites, implying that the Israeli electorate or the members of AIPAC or the Jewish hasbara journalists have no responsibility in that matter).
Eisner: "But those episodes in history didn’t happen in America, which I believe has a far more tolerant DNA and, despite our sometimes ugly past, has a far better chance of guaranteeing the rights of minorities than any other place on earth."
Being a German myself, I can't evaluate the American "DNA". But if I were a Jew, I wouldn't trust too much in American exceptionalism.
Meseems that the Jewish problem is not so much getting a better kind of Gentiles than getting a better way of debating aggrievements between Jews and Gentiles.
The most important amelioriation would be a general rule: that any community who feels a collective responsibility to protect its victimized members, ought to take a kind of responsibility as well for its evildoing members and their victims.
I've read Counter-Punch now and then, but I never knew that Mr. Cockburn had ties to Germany (I'm a German myself). Does anyone know why he lived, or died, in Salzhausen?
When you quote Arendt, you must take into account that German Jews had in fact hardly a part in the belated colonial experiments of Germany. So she could look at Jews as basically free from colonialism. But what about British Jews? There was a long tradition of interactions between political and financial elites in the British Empire, and a "Little-Englander" like Chesterton saw both as inseparable.
The features of Ahmadinejad in those caricatures are quite similar to the features of Jews in traditional Nazi caricatures. Has anyone written about that?
You see, the most important thing for a warrior is to get part of the peaceniks on his side. So did F.R. Roosevelt when he connected WWII with the United Nations project. A strategy which connects War against Iran with a Near East peace project will work the same way.
It's not impossible that different peoples (tribes, "ethnies") grant each other an ethno-national state - in the same way in which different persons grant each other personal property like a house or a garden.
It's difficult, of course. The most natural feeling will always be: I must have a "homeland" of my own, and at the same time I must have complete and equal access to all other countries. An idea, which can not work and which has to be dismissed.
Both parts - the European nationalists and the Jews - have to go a long way to arrive at that goal. But it's not impossible, and it's not even more improbable than the leftist solution: that all ethno-national states are to be abolished.
The reasoning of Dr. A.J.Few of Georgia is indeed the reasoning of our time:
"it is utterly impossible for it (the Jewish state) to exist without it (the inequality of the Palestinians); therefore it is not sinful to hold slaves (Palestinians) in the condition and under the circumstances which they are held at the South (Judaea, Samaria)."
Grass was a youthful Nazi supporter, but deeply disillusioned at the end of the war. He may not have been open as an autobiographer, but he was quite open in his work: Some of his most renowned books (like "Hundejahre" or "Katz und Maus") are written just from the perspective of a youthful, but then disilliusoned Nazi supporter.
Yet - his generation which grew up within the cocoon of the Third Reich, may have learned about a "jewish danger" in school, but was not much personally obsessed with the fear from it - not at all in the way like people who had grown up before or after WW I.
So, there's no need to explain Grass as an antisemite. There's a much more simple explanation. The Grass generation was more than their elders or youngers obsessed by their war experiences; those were the men who had survived "at the skin of their teeth" and who felt that a third world war had to be prevented at all costs - the men who determined Germany to peacemindedness just till the nineties but who realize that they are losing control and feel a doom coming.
Problem is, it's infectious. Take neocons preaching the moral superiority of "the West"- misleading credulous Christians, which - as Christians - ought to remind that they are sinners among sinners.
I'm not much impressed by Slater's just war theory. First, it's an invitation to abuse. Just war theorists may name some necessary presuppositions for making war, but that's only an invitation for unscrupulous politicians (like FDR) to create or feign facts which cover those presuppositions.
Then, just war theory treats the problem as a categorical decision between peace and war, whereas it would be much better to treat it as a directional decision between escalation and deescalation. For example, if Britain and France hadn't declared war on Germany in 1939, the German expansion would have stopped in the middle of Poland - not nice for the Polish people, but a German occupation in peace time wouldn't have been harder than the occupation of Poland by Stalin or the occupation of the Westbank by Israel (which we all can put up with without declaring war to Israel). Escalation did make things worse, not better.
At last, just war theory neglects that mutual trust is the most important presupposition for peace. And a world in which every state reserves himself the right to make war whenever he deems that morally justified is by necessity a world in which no state can trust any other state.
Some publicists were contacted by the government before they began to write about that matter. Some weren't (above all the people who undersigned the three open letters against Iraq betweeen Bush I and Bush II) and don't have that excuse.
The best which we can get out of this muddle are more clearcut concepts about where intellectual responsibility begins and where it ends. At the moment, I can only propose two test questions:
1. If the war against Iraq had been a roaring success, would those publicists proudly have taken responsibility for it?
2. If Iranian publicists had published similar articles against Israel - would Kampeas hold them responsible?
And I suspect that the answer is yes and yes.
There's a lot of stuff I don't know about Ron Paul's personal likes or dislikes. But the core problem isn't personal.
If ever you want any kind of limited government, you have to accept (or put up with) the fact that anywhere in the world there will be some people that are out of your control and do things you don't want to have done (like Iran hanging gays, or states abolishing affirmative action or states making deals with Israel etc. etc. ). (The realm of limits and out-of-control area may be narrower or wider, but the principle is the same.) And that's a real argument with which neocons and leftists can make a point against Paul.
Every political animal, when it dreams - even I myself -, dreams of an unlimited government, where we can enforce all people to do only what's good and appropriate. It's only when we wake up and get sober that we learn to accept our limited power as the price we pay for having every other one limited as well.
"Ron Paul is either incompetent, cynical, or racist."
Indeed?
The Ron Paul Newsletters were somewhat similar to a modern blog with commentaries. There are blog owners who are rather rigid about commentaries and other blog owners who are rather lax. A libertarian like Paul will tend to be lax.
I don't doubt that there were some speculative assertions which he deemed at least possible or even probable, in any case worth to be debated. And in other cases, where people simply ranted (often over facts which were basically true but weighed out of proportion) he simply thought "let them rant".
What's about Phil Weiss? He has allowed people to quote Kevin MacDonald in a blog who bears his name. Does it make him either incompetent, or cynical or a racist?
I'd say that Ron Paul's relation to the right fringe is somewhat similar to the relation of Mondoweiss readers to Palestinians. Mondoweiss readers will make a difference between Jews and the dominant kind of Jewish activism; they don't get sentimental over the dominant kind of Jewish activism, but see that it can be ugly if you are on the wrong side of the stick - and so they will in a way put up with the fact (not accept) that some or many Palestinians tend to transfer their antipathy from Jewish activism to "Jews" as a whole.
But you have to see that all kinds of activism have their ugly aspects, above all if you are at the wrong side of the stick. It's the same with black activism (and MLK was hated not simply as a black and not simply for his personal actions but as a symbol of black activism) and with gay activism (I'm a homosexual myself and there's a lot of gay activism where I want to say "not in my name").
Saying that the Brossarts "stole" the cows is saying more than can be proved here and now. The cows may (or may even not) simply have wandered into their area. And probably there have been feuds with the sheriff before (which may even have lured for a crime to fix on them), and they are in any case not the type of guys who would assume that a sheriff comes in good faith. So when they attacked the police, it mustn't have been for the sake of the cows.
I suppose that most intelligent people agree over the basics.
1. There exists some antisemitism which is only intrapersonally rooted: fostered by the person's inner insecurities etc and afterwards "projected" on jews.
2. There exists a lot of antisemitism which is interpersonally rooted: fostered by experiences between jews and non-jews which are (perhaps mis-) interpreted and (more or less correctly) generalized.
Those two kinds mingle with each other.
That said, we must understand the message of the CST also in terms of strategical thinking.
Jews in Europe are deeply divided over matters of strategical alliance: (a) ally with the immigrants against the natives (them still being the ruling majority), or (b) ally with the natives against the Muslim immigrants.
What CST tells is basically, as Muslim antisemitism is not as bad as traditional Christian antisemitism, there's still room for an alliance with (the good of the) Muslims against (the bad of the) natives.
You are, of course, right in general. Many jewish publicists use double standards (as do, regrettably, a lot of other people, too).
But you're not quite right in that particular case . Limbaugh argued that jews, for the sake of their own interest, should have voted against Obama (and now might have learned that). That means - whatever his personal feelings are - he argued in the best (alleged) interest of "the jews". Whereas "Occupy" may perhaps argue in the interest of mankind, but -, even if it's not anti-jewish - doesn't argue in the interest of "the jews".
As for Foxman, he's a definite political actor; and as such, he has no "friends". He doesn't really regard Limbaugh as an "enemy", but as little as a "friend", but as someone who can be useful, but has to be intimidated from time to time in order to remain useful.
I didn't understand why Mooser and Dan Crowther objected to Pohl. Is it really a problem to call Israel in the 1950s/1960s (economically) "socialist"? Or does someone challenge the statement that Israel represented itself as post-/anticolonialist in those times?
My personal objection against Luban: He makes too much of the right/left resp. Republican/Democrat difference, underestimating the similarity between neocons and "liberal hawks". E.g.: the PNAC is here represented as a "neocon" organization, but in fact in Europe the organization recruited mostly politicians of the left (whose position is often described as "human rights imperialism").
Being a Christian, I'm somewhat sad about Phil's description with regard to "male anger" in and around the Cathedral. And the formula "our blood will redeem you" is rather perplexing from a theological point of view. But I hopefully think that the demonstrants were not apt to kill but rather to suffer.
As for the value of secularism or education I'm ambivalent. There has always been an undercurrent of pacifism in Christianity. It came to the surface with the Bohemian Brothers and Anabaptists which weren't educated, at least in a modern sense. So my question is rather: in what ways was the peaceful spirit revived at that time and in what way could it be revived in Egyptian Christianity?
There's one land swap which might make sense under terms of a two-state-solution. Namely swapping the Negev - which would give Palestinians the necessary connection between West Bank and Gaza strip.
Has no one ever proposed that?