Politics and Policy

Washington Power Shabbas Whispers

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Gershom Gorenberg

I try to get away from business on Shabbat. I don’t read newspapers. They make me feel like I’m at work. OK, if my kids are reading this, they’ll point out, gently I hope, that I don’t try very hard not to talk politics. I can’t go 25 hours without a fix.

In Washington last Shabbat, it wasn’t even worth trying. At a shul in an unrevealed location, people who work in Interesting Places drifted around the kiddush tables, handing me nibbles of rumors. It was a power Shabbas.

Even so, conversations on Shabbat are off-off-record. In fact, I never actually talked to anyone at all. Merely by the feel of the hall, I picked up these ideas. If they turn out wrong, I take no responsibility for a hint, a whisper and speculation. If they turn out to be true, I’ll take credit for my great sources.

Hint: Dennis Ross is in. He’ll be a special adviser to HRC. “Special adviser” isn’t an insult or demotion, despite what some people think. Dennis can’t be appointed special envoy to Iran, because Washington doesn’t yet talk to Iran. And no, it’s not strange that his appointment hasn’t been announced yet. First the cabinet secretaries, then the undersecretaries. Afterward, envoys and advisers.

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Gaza Failure, Precisely Parsed and Psychoanalyzed

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Gershom Gorenberg

Prof. Stuart Cohen has precisely analyzed why the war in Gaza failed – why, in fact, it was a failure when it began. The full piece is at the BESA website. Here’s a start:

In his classic work, On War, Clausewitz commented that: No one starts a war – or, rather, no one in his senses ought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational form. This is the governing principle that will set the course of the war, prescribe the scale of means and effort that is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail.

Looking back, did Operation Cast Lead meet those criteria? Were its objectives clearly defined? And were the measures taken commensurate with those ends?

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The Minister for National Fears

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Gershom Gorenberg

In 2007, I wrote an extensive profile of Avigdor Lieberman in the Atlantic. To complement Haim’s suggestion that we understand Lieberman’s voters,  here’s my effort to understand what drives the man himself.

Avigdor Lieberman is an oversized man in an undersized room. His beard, remorselessly trimmed to a narrow, graying stripe around his cheeks, frames a wide face with pale, icy eyes. As he speaks, he waves his tiger paw of a hand, holding a cigar the proportions of a small cannon. The cigar is not lit, but the laws of drama say it will be by the third act. In Russian-accented Hebrew, he is talking about his admiration for Peter the Great and Winston Churchill. Before World War II, he says, all the “lovely, liberal, progressive people” threw every insult at Churchill that they now throw at him-“warmonger, embittered, extremist”-except for having a beard and being Russian. He smiles at the thought. …

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Understanding Lieberman’s Voters

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Haim Watzman

Why do I really dislike Avigdor Lieberman? Because he’s forcing me to write about politics. When Gershom and I started this blog, I thought he’d take the political beat and leave me free to write about my country’s diverse and exciting culture and literature. But who can concentrate on books when the wolves are howling at the door?

A couple days before the election I had a long conversation with a young Palestinian-Israeli woman I often see at my favorite South Jerusalem café, The Coffee Mill. Like me, she was in despair over the likely results of the impending election, although unlike me, she wasn’t planning to vote.

I told her something that I’m afraid may shock some of SoJo’s readers, those who seem to measure us by the extent to which we conform to left-wing clichés. I told her that the Israelis who voted for Lieberman and his party aren’t evil people.

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Election Results: Racism Rising

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My apologies for being away from South Jerusalem, the place and the blog. I’ve been on the road, on a schedule that has allowed time for neither sleeping nor blogging.  Nonetheless, my first take on the disastrous election results is up at The American Prospect. Here are some excerpts:

Numerically, it would be possible for Livni, Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, leader of the shrunken Labor party, to form an alliance and leave Lieberman to rage from the opposition. Instead, both Netanyahu and Livni immediately sought Lieberman’s support. On Wednesday, Livni met Lieberman, and was quoted afterward as telling him, “This is a time of favor … It is an opportunity for unity and for advancing subjects that are important to you as well.” The competition for his support will allow Lieberman to increase his price, demanding control of powerful ministries and legislation favorable to his platform…

When Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996, Lieberman became his chief of staff, and earned a reputation as the enforcer who crushed dissent in the party. Eventually, facing a revolt from party veterans, Netanyahu eased Lieberman out of the job.

In response, Lieberman started his own party, initially appealing to the immigrants from the former Soviet Union who had poured into Israel in the 1990s. Many were professionals who found themselves working at semi-skilled jobs, competing with Israeli Arabs for jobs, living in towns that became immigrant ghettos. Some 300,000 were non-Jews, who were able to immigrant under Israel’s Law of Return because of their family ties to Jews, but who felt uncertain of their place in their new country.

The name of Lieberman’s party, Israel Is Our Home, spoke to the immigrants’ insecurities. With a stress on the word our, it also suggested that the country was not home to the Arab minority. It’s a classic gambit of the racist right: Bolster one group’s sense of belonging by attacking another as outsiders who threaten the nation…

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The Election Results–First Thoughts

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Haim Watzman

The exit polls show Tzipi Livni and the Kadima party slightly ahead of the Netanyahu and the Likud, but the right-wing nationalist block with a small majority. The Green Movement-Meimad did not achieve the two percent threshold.

So was my vote wasted?

There are two possible answers. Had the Green Movement-Meimad’s votes gone to Livni directly, she’d be in a stronger position, with a clearer lead over the Likud. And had they gone to Labor or Meretz, the left-wing block just might barely have tied the right wing block, meaning that Netanyahu could not form a government of the right alone. (Probably not, but maybe just.) From this point of view, my vote was wasted and in fact gave Bibi a boost into power.

On the other hand, even if such a tie between right and left had been achieved, the only government that Livni could form would be one much like the one she might just be able to form with the current results. That means a government that will be dependent on the support of at least two of the right wing and/or ultra-religious parties. And that means a government that would be unable to pursue the peace process or make significant progress on the other pressing issues facing the country. In that case, the votes cast for the Green Movement-Meimad would not have made much difference anyway.

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Drawing the Line

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Haim Watzman The sad story about the election Israel will hold tomorrow is that, no matter what the precise results, the balance of power will be held by a group of legislators contemptuous of the principles of democracy. Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party seems almost certain to become the country’s third largest parliamentary faction and, … Read more

Go Green!

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Haim Watzman Two months ago, I announced that I’d decided to vote for the Green Movement. I urged the Greens to form a joint slate with MK Michael Melchior’s Meimad slate—and they did. And since then, silence. Where the hell have I been? Skeptical journalist that I am, I’ve been doubting my decision. I’ve been … Read more

To George Mitchell, Arriving on the Shores of Despair

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Gershom Gorenberg

Following on my previous post on the appointment of George Mitchell as President Obama’s Mideast peace envoy, I’ve written an open letter to Mitchell. The full text is at The American Prospect. Here’s an excerpt:

…as I’m sure you know, in coming here from America now, the biggest difference you’ll experience is not the weather, language, or religion. You are coming from a land of new hope to the countries of despair. The collapse of the Oslo process and the playacting of the Bush administration’s Annapolis initiative have erased belief among Israelis, Palestinians, and our neighbors that negotiations can achieve anything. The al-Aqsa Intifada and Ehud Olmert’s inconclusive wars in Lebanon and Gaza proved that we will not moderate each other’s positions by blowing each other up. The mood, on both sides, is extraordinarily grim. If leaders don’t tell you that honestly, you should change into a cardigan, put a tourist’s day pack over your shoulder, and slip into a Tel Aviv or Ramallah café, where anyone sipping coffee will tell you the truth. Your task, Mr. Mitchell, includes changing the public mood and — even if you must avoid ever saying so publicly — encouraging a change in leadership.

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Shifting Winds

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Gershom Gorenberg

This is a story about politics.

My father was an engineer. He hoped I’d be one. Then he had a grandson. When my son was around 6, my dad got him a subscription to Invention and Technology.

Invention and Technology is a good magazine if the thing that interests you most about the art museum is how the elevators work. When everyone else ran stories on the anniversary of Hiroshima and wrote about the moral questions of using an atomic bomb, I&T ran a technical account, a really technical account, of how the bomb was invented. If it had been any more technical, you could have built one yourself in the garage. These are not the pages to find philosophy or politics. Judging from my father’s office friends, if the politics were there, they’d be conservative. I’ve never checked the stats, but I guess that as a liberal Jewish aerospace engineer, Dad was a rare bird.

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