Politics and Policy

Rogue Forces

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Why does the Israeli army defend illegal outposts rather than dismantle them en masse? Why doesn’t the political leadership give the orders for the army to act?

Yagil Levy, an excellent analyst, has a very good, and very frightening explanation, via Ha’aretz:

The bias of the army is naturally in favor of the settlers, over the Palestinians. This bias was strengthened by the deployment of the military force in three circles. The first circle is regional defense, reserve units, made up of settlers, that participate in the settlements’ daily defense. In this context, the army entrusted the settlers with weapons as reserve soldiers, and the result was the growth of armed militias in the territories…

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Hope Envy

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For nearly all of the 31 years that I’ve lived in Jerusalem, I’ve felt that this is where history happens, that my old friends in America are merely in the bleachers. For the past few months, and especially last night, the roles were reversed. Over there, back in the old country, they were making the world new, while we could only watch, applaud, and envy the renewal of hope. Yesterday was a rare moment that I wished I was over there – standing in an unexpected line to vote, celebrating afterward with friends in the streets of Washington, New York or Chicago, getting up this morning wondering what special blessing a religious Jews should say for such an event.

Hope is in short supply here. Next week in Jerusalem, we will have a local election in which the choice of candidates is, as Yossi Sarid put it well – he puts it well so often – a choice between plague and contagion. In February, we’ll have yet another national election. They come altogether too often, offering much too little. The only candidate with the ability to give a speech is the candidate of fear, of being very afraid, Bibi Netanyahu. Tzipi Livni, the only other realistic contender, has defined the election as a decision on whether to continue the peace process. (As leader of Labor, Ehud Barak seems destined to lead the party from irrelevance to extinction.)

Livni is right,

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Don’t Finkelstein On Me

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Haim Watzman

Oooh, how I hate to be associated with Norman Finkelstein, the anti-Zionist Jewish political science with the foul mouth who gives criticizing Israel a bad name.

I cross-posted yesterday’s post (Black and Blue: Obama and Golda) on The Huffington Post, where a reader with the moniker CastleBravo1 commented:

Thank you for your comments.
This past year, I had the honor of taking a 90-minute bus trip each way on three consecutive days to hear Dr. Norman Finkelstein speak at Cal State Northridge.
Every reminder that the far right does not speak for Israel is a victory for truth.

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Black and Blue: Obama and Golda

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Haim Watzman

There wasn’t much to read in this morning’s Ha’aretz. Nearly every one of the paper’s senior writers has written a piece about how amazing it is that the United States is on the verge of electing a black president.

It is amazing, of course, especially for anyone my age and above, those who can still remember segregation and Jim Crow. But there’s something patronizing about all this going ga-ga over Obama’s race–as if voters are choosing him because he’s black. In fact, it’s his policies and his personality that are attracting Americans; if he wins it will be despite, not because, he’s black.

Ha’aretz‘s swoon over Obama reminds me of how American Jews tend to melt inside when they talk about Golda Meir. Seeing Israel through the lenses of American liberalism, many American MOTs view Meir as a paragon of liberalism and feminism. After all, she was a woman elected to Israel’s highest political office at a time when American feminism was just taking off. So her choice must demonstrate the maturity and lack of sexism of Israeli voters.

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Ha’aretz Gets It Wrong in Jerusalem’s Mayoral Race

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Haim Watzman

So Ha’aretz has joined the gaggle of left-wingers who want to punish Nir Barkat. Barkat supports the construction of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which is incompatible with cutting a deal with the Palestinians creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. So a vote for Barkat is a vote against peace.

Now, we here at South Jerusalem think building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem is an awful thing to do. We advocate a two-state solution and we have noted time and again that when Israel builds for Jews on occupied land it often does so on land stolen from Palestinians or obtained under dubious circumstances. So, like Ha’aretz, we’re disappointed and disturbed that Barkat has jumped on the settler bandwagon.

But the Ha’aretz editorial neglects to note that Porush advocates building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem as well, as he says here (in Hebrew), on his campaign website. Of course, Porush wants the neighborhoods to provide housing for his ultra-Orthodox community, while Barkat wants them to be designated for students and the religious Zionist community.

So why is Ha’aretz eager to punish Barkat and not Porush?

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Barkat by Default

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Haim Watzman

I just got a call from Meir Porush‘s campaign central. Would I be voting for the Haredi candidate for mayor of Jerusalem, the polite young woman asked me? No, I won’t, I said. I’ll be voting for the rival candidate, Nir Barkat. And to hell with my blogging partner, Gershom, whose concern for an equitable settlement with the Palestinians in Jerusalem (justified) and his abiding suspicion of rich businessmen (somewhat less justified) has misled him into support for Porush (see “Sorry, Nir Barkat Will Not Save Jerusalem“).

Like Gershom, I’m extremely displeased rhetoric Barkat’s Greater Jerusalem rhetoric, which rules out any compromise with the Palestinians in the capital city. Barkat’s recent promise to build a new neighborhood for students in easternmost East Jerusalem seems to indicate either a willful ignorance of the state of the city’s Palestinian neighborhoods or a desire to pander to the extreme right.

But Porush is hardly a leftie on this issue. He, too, declares that he will keep Jerusalem united.

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Friends IV: Is America Irrationally Infatuated With Israel

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Gershom Gorenberg

My friend Shaul Magid has an essay up at Religion Dispatches looking at the one consensus subject in American politics: all candidates must profess unquestioned support for Israel:

The world markets are collapsing, Russia invades Georgia, the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, Pakistan is on the verge of imploding, we don’t even know if the dictator of a nuclear North Korea is alive (and, if not, who is running that country), Iran may be building a nuclear weapon, and they are crawling all over one another to pledge their allegiance to…Israel? What exactly is going on?!

Shaul suggests that no electoral calculus can explain this. Rather, there is a fascination with Jews as mythical creatures:

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Vote Till You Drop

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The price of being a citizen of two countries, it seems, is that elections never stop. So even before the American election winds up in one final festival of long lines, hanging chads, and voter intimidation, Israel is about to begin a new national campaign. Unlike the U.S. vote, the Israeli one will provide over 27 choices, none even close to satisfying. It’s like standing in front of the convenience-store rack of junk food when all you want is a decent meal.

Before we get started with that local madness, let me offer a last word on the American fever. If you are still arguing with a relative who thinks that the McCain-Moosehunter ticket will be better for Israeli security, my new article at the American Prospect provides some talking points:

My friends are frightened of the shame of a mother or uncle staining the family, or the tribe, with the wrong vote — a vote purportedly cast out of concern for Israel. From where I sit, this would be a shame, because the reasons Obama is better for Israel’s security are the same reasons he is better for American security.

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Bubbe, Call Your Grandkid for Obama

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Gershom Gorenberg

The premise of the Great Schlep was that young Jews of Obama should visit their grandparents in Florida to make sure they vote in a manner befitting members of the tribe. Behind that premise were several more suppositions: that Florida is in play, that rightwing hatemail labeling Obama as a Muslim and anti-Israel might finally bring Jews to shift rightward, and that older Jewish voters were more likely than younger ones to fall for the rumors and vote for the old white-haired dude.

According to the latest polling, only one of those suppositions is true: Florida is in play, so how your bubbe votes in Delray Beach could determine the future of Planet Earth. (Imagine that in 2000, 528 more Democrats had been schlepped to their polling places by loving grandchildren. No Iraq War. Global warming under control. Rich folks paying taxes.)

On the other hand, the Jewish shift to the Republicans – heralded every four years – isn’t happening. The tribe still votes left, thank God.

In September, pollster Steven Cohen at NYU polled nearly 1600 Jews – a hefty sample. With undecided voters eliminated, he found:

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Friends III: “Soldiers of Conscience”

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Gary Weimberg, the guy with whom I had endless conversations about what everything in the world means when we were both very young, grew up to be a producer of documentaries. He and his partner Catherine Ryan have produced a film called Soldiers of Conscience, about American soldiers who went to Iraq to fight for a cause they thought was right – and reached the difficult conclusion that no cause justified killing. The film is showing tonight in America on PBS. If you are in the land where PBS broadcasts, you can click here to find out when the show will air where you live. There will be a chat on the PBS site tomorrow.

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Friends I: Collective v. Individual Ownership

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My friend Samuel Fleischacker is writing a wonderful series on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sam is a professor of philosophy. To a subject normally discussed in the tones used by two overheated and underdressed young men standing next to the cars they’ve banged into each other, Sam brings a philosophical coolheadedness. He analyzes what people are really talking about, and explains where they use one word to describe several different things, thereby confusing matters.

His latest post, for instance, is about what it means when people talk about Jews or Arabs “owning” the land between the sea and the river. The question itself, he explains,

…brings us to a simple fact about the conflict over Israel/Palestine that often gets overlooked: it’s about collective rights, not individual ones… When Jews say that the land is inherently ‘Jewish’, they mean that the Jewish people collectively owns the land, that the political units on it should represent and foster Jewish culture. And when Palestinians say that the land is ‘Arab’, or ‘Palestinian’, they likewise mean to make a claim about its proper political and cultural character, not about individual rights.

But individual ownership and political rule are nothing alike:

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