Pondering the Priorities of AntiSemitism and Israel

 I have been thinking about the role of Israel in Jewish identity thing for a few years now, perhaps stirred by my trip to Israel in 2019 and definitely energized by the violence since October 2023.  And then I saw a piece about how the Anti-Defamation League essentially gave Musk a pass on being an antisemite (although there may be some regret, real or feigned) because he was "pro-Israel."  That really yanked my chain, so I am about to spew about this stuff, and it will probably piss a lot of people off, but so be it.  

As always, my caveat on this stuff: I have often said that my parents are Jewish, suggesting that I am not since I don't believe and never believed.  However, as Charlottesville reminded me, the antisemites don't care about belief, and I would be sent to the camps/gas chambers/ovens along with the devout.  The key here is that I really have never thought that hard about Israel in Jewish identity, and this will be where I do that thinking based not on a thorough examination of the Torah, the Talmud, or religious scholarship but based on my background as a scholar of ethnic (yes, to me, religion is one kind of ethnic identity) conflict.   So, some of my thoughts here may be wildly ignorant or sound stupid.

First, we have to say this as clearly as possible: being pro- or anti- Israel does not really tell us that much about whether one is pro-Jew or antisemite (I don't use "philosemite" for reasons I have explained earlier.)  Evangelicals who are pro-Israel also want to wipe out Jewish identity by converting all Jews to their version of Christianity or watch them burn after the Rapture (seeing Jews as a means to an end is inherently antisemitic).  The Musk-ness of it all is a reminder: he is supposedly pro-Israel, but he is also pro-Great Replacement Theory, which puts Jews at the heart of the conspiracy to replace white people in the US and elsewhere with non-white people.  And there is that Nazi salute and his very antisemitic AI and all the rest.  Likewise, you can have people who are pro-Jew who are critical of Israel--there are numerous left-leaning Jewish groups in the US and Canada who have been protesting the policies of Israel even before the utterly corrupt Netanyahu (friend of antisemites) took power and before the violence reached the levels of the past two years. 

So, the 2x2 of Israel-support and pro/antiSemitism illustrates the reality that while there might be a relationship, each box is filled enough that we have to add other variables to get anywhere (note that the ultra-Orthodox Jews would be pro-Jewish but oppose a Jewish state until the biblical requirements are met--the Messiah comes, thanks to a friend for pointing this out).

It makes clear that one's stance towards Israel does not actually say much on its own about one's stance towards Jews. 

Second, Israel is clearly central to Jewish identity, but I have to ask what we mean by "Israel?"  Do we mean the land, the people, or the state?  So much of the ancient history of that place is central to Judaism.  The centrality of the story of Moses in Judaism is a good illustration--this big hunk of doctrine/belief/whatever is focused on getting Jews back to the lands that God gave them (note, the Torah and other texts depict that whole getting that land from God as, well, quite violent--the land was hardly empty even way back).*  In the various prayers and songs and services, Jerusalem and the land of Israel feature quite prominently.  During the last set of services I went to, I was so very struck by the Israeli flag being on the bima (the podium)--which refers to the state of Israel but can be conflated with government (note that the Canadian flag these days means many different things thanks to the convoy assholes and other false patriots).  It is so much so that it is taken for granted, and I didn't really think that much about it until recent years.  That makes me a lousy Zionist, another way I could disappoint my father.  

But as I think about it now, I wonder about the conflation of land and government.  Yes, the Jews got their safe harbor after World War II and the Holocaust in the land they long identified with.  And once you control a land, you develop a state and a government.  So, Jews could identify with the state of Israel, but do they have to identify with the Israeli government?  This is the key point that has been gnawing at me.  All governments are flawed and are thus deserving of criticism. But a holy place in a religion is probably not supposed to be criticized--the Vatican, Mecca, and the like--and are beyond reproach.  So, maybe folks get a bit upset about the criticism of Israel because it is holy to Jews?  

Of course, there is the whole "should a Jewish state exist?" question, whether Zionism is legitimate or not, hangs over all of this, but I am going to put it to the side for now (I will get to it some day, really).  Right now, I am just teasing out what it means to care as much or more about Israel than about the plight of Jews.  Because the fundamental assertion here is that they are not the same thing especially if one is thinking of Israel as government as opposed to Israel as holy place.

Third, now I have arrived at the stuff that is partly responsible for my state of anger and frustration: the contradictions between the imperatives of antisemitism and of being pro-Israel.  The ADL article makes it pretty clear that the latter has taken over the former, and that is certainly the case in American politics as well--that the concern about antisemitism, a real thing, on American campuses is mostly a concern about people being hostile to the government of Israel (again, some of them may be hostile to the state of Israel or to the Jewish people, but Trump, the GOP, and others are not focused on those ideas/identifications).  The article inspiring my post clearly shows how the ADL and others are now identifying Jews who are critical of Israel as being antisemitic--Jew-hating Jews.  While there are such people in the world, to protest genocide, to want a non-far right Israeli government, to want an Israeli government to be led by non-corrupt autocrat wannabees, to question the wisdom or legitimacy of a theocracy does not make one antisemitic.  

In the piece, accusing Israel of genocide is called blood libel, which shows how far this has gone. Blood libel refers to the accusations/conspiracy theories about the Jews killing Christian babies so they can drink their blood, a truly awful set of ideas that have around forever.  That is not the same thing as looking at Israel's deployment of violence against the Palestinians and raising questions about whether there is an effort to eliminate in whole or in part the Palestinian people.  Have I committed blood libel in my recent post?  That is not only stretching a concept so much that it becomes utterly meaningless, but it essentially defines criticism of the Israeli government as akin to the worst forms of antisemitism, and by no accident at all, aims to silence all criticism of Israel.  

I have note that we live in a moment where truly vile antisemitic people are taking pro-Israel and supposedly anti-antisemitic stances to attack universities, to attack free speech, to disrupt the Democrats, to dazzle the media with bullshit, and to distract from other stuff.  The living embodiment of this is Stephen Miller, who, yes, is Jewish, but has betrayed every lesson from the Holocaust and has become essentially the Heydrich or Himmler of our time.

Fourth, I will make a particularly provocative claim: the job and priority of the ADL and other organizations as well as the first priority of Jews in North America should be ... the safety of Jews in North America and not the government of Israel (and not even the state or people of Israel).  It is the job of AIPAC and other lobbying organizations to be focused on policy towards Israel, but if antisemitism is a great threat (and I agree that it is), the focus should be on protecting Jews.  Of course, Israeli Jews will say that the safety of Jews depends on the safety and independence of Israel.  They will say that if Jews want to be safe, don't focus on improving their safety in the US or Canada, but move to Israel.  Indeed, my trip to Israel six years ago gave me the impression that Israeli Jews are not so fussed about the plight of American or Canadian Jews.  

Ethnic conflict digression: Thinking about it now reminds me of my work on Greater Hungary in the irredentism book I wrote with Bill Ayres--that the Hungary's Hungarians of the 2000s identify somewhat with the Hungarians outside of Hungary but not completely so.  That the outsiders may share the same language but they haven't experienced post-1956 Hungary, so they aren't quite the same.  I am positive that Israeli Jews identify somewhat with North American Jews, but these outsiders are not the same as, even lesser than because they have not committed fully--they haven't moved to Israel--and by not sharing the same experiences of being under rocket attacks, have not fought in the various wars, haven't been subject to terrorism, etc.

Fifth, why is there more antisemitism in the US and Canada these days? There is clearly more violence aimed at Jews lately yet the overall count is inflated by folks calling criticism of Israel as examples of antisemitism:

"There had been more than 3,000 antisemitic incidents in the three months after October 7, he said, a 360 percent jump over the same period a year before. But in January 2024, the organization’s researchers conceded to the Forward that the increase was in part derived from a change in methodology. “Anti-Zionist chants and slogans” now accounted for more than 40 percent of the total incidents"" From here.

 However, there clearly has been a significant increase in violence aimed at North American Jews (I am guessing there is more Islamophobic violence as well, but that, too, is a post for another day).  Obviously, the rise of far right parties and actors within the political systems and within the media goes a long way.  Trump and his team have been amplifying all kinds of hate since his first campaign started, and a core part of that has been hate aimed at Jews.  The elevation of Great Replacement Theorists, the Republican focus on George Soros as the boogeyman of our time, not unlike the centrality of the Rothchilds in European anti-semitism of yore, Musk amplifying Nazis on twitter--this is all really bad for TeamJew in North America (and Europe). The right wing antisemites also have permission to deploy violence given the appearance of antisemities like Nick Fuentes at Mar Lago and the White House, and I am sure they think they have greater impunity given Trump's abuse of the pardon power and the far right take over of the Department of Justice.**

Antizionist groups and speakers are not all pro-Israel or pro-Jew, of course.  There are plenty of actors out there that conflate hate of Israel with hate of Jews, and they are deserving of condemnation and criticism.  Are they new or are they a constant?  Again, if we have more of something, we can't explain that with a constant, so what has changed?  I don't want to go too far because everyone has agency, but if left-wing/progressive antisemitism has always been burning, what tossed gasoline to inflame that some?  I can't help but think that actions of the government of Israel have some responsibility for the increase in antisemitic violence in North America.  People are angrier now because Israel is laying waste to Gaza and so antisemites are now more energized to direct their hate towards Jews.  I am not justifying the increase in violence--I am opposed to all collective punishment, whether it is punishing Jews for what Israel is doing or punishing Palestinians for what Hamas has done.

Finally, the Intelligencer piece also includes info about how the ADL dropped a lot of its civil rights stuff of late. That after Trump was elected for a second time, poof, ADL's stuff on transgender, LGBTQ+, voting rights, racial justice, and the like had disappeared from the website.  That the lesson of Never Again was being narrowed--not Never Again shall a people face the threat of genocide or similar violence, but that Never Again will Jews be threatened.  I was taught the former definition, and it will be the one I stick with.  The various horsemen of hate ride together almost always. Being opposed to racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia, and the like is not a distraction from fighting antisemitism--it is the same damned fight.  That the ADL is selling all of that out to appeal to Trump and to appeal to the right as they focus on anti-Zionism as antisemitism is not only an incredible betrayal but quite self-destructive. 

Well, that's a lot.  I included way too many digressions but also dodged some obvious stuff.  What is my point?  That it is fucked up that organizations and actors that supposedly exist to fight antisemites are giving antisemites cover because of their pro-Israel stances.  That focusing so much on protecting Israel from criticism is doing lots of people a tremendous disservice and not just the Palestinians.  That there are great threats in the US to Jews, and we need to think about how to reduce those threats and giving Israel carte blanche may not be helpful in that endeavor.  That declaring any government to be immune from criticism is just wrong.

 

 *  One thing I learned when I visited Israel in 2019 is that so much of the land is, well, crappy.  Lots of rocks, especially around Jerusalem.  Sure, the beaches in Tel Aviv are nice, but the idealization of this land, well, always pokes at me.

** While all antisemitism is bad, I seem to be taking the opposite view of Israeli Jews and of Netanyahu in particular.  I think that right-wing antisemites are worse because they threaten far more violence (and they admire those who killed six million Jews) than left-wing antisemites. Netanyahu and his ilk don't mind so much the right-wing antisemites but deplore the left-wing ones, perhaps because they care more about their anti-Israel stances than they do about the threats to Jews in the west.   

 

Why is Calling It Genocide So Hard?

 I have been thinking about this for quite some time, and I have a few half-written blog posts addressing the G word: is the Gaza operation genocide?  I learned today that calling it such may be "anti-semitic" according to the standards of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, so that could be a deterrent.  However, since the guy who wrote the IHRA guidelines is opposed to the weaponization of his guidelines, maybe that shouldn't deter us.

One of the big challenges in calling something genocide is that it is supposed to require not just heaps of war crimes but proven intent.  I have gotten into arguments with a friend about this.  What counts as intent?  Heaps of statements by those in the Israeli government but not by Netanyahu himself?  Does Israel need to issue a statement that their intent is to commit genocide for us to call it genocide?  And to be clear, most genocide scholars have called it genocide while most holocaust scholars have not.  

Again, the crime of genocide is "“intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”  I find this strange because it makes intent more important than the actual reality of what is being done, and what is being done in Gaza and what is starting to be done in the West Bank is the destruction of a people because of who they are.  It is more than a few war crimes but an operation defined by war crimes--killing of kids and of journalists, destruction of hospitals and water facilities, and now the perfection of starvation.  For me, genocide is the attempted destruction of a people in whole or in part because of their identities.  How is what is going in Gaza not that?  I think we can discern intent from the fact that this has been going on for some time and that the violence has been systemic.  It is not an accident that the destruction has been this complete.  It is not an accident that Palestinians are dying of starvation.  I think we can infer intent from the patterns.  

Yet, for me and for others, it has been very hard to use the G-word.  Why?  There are two reasons, I think, with one being far more important than the other, but both probably matter.  The lesser reason is that if you call something genocide, you are obligated to do something about it.  The Genocide Convention and all the discussion around it involves not just an obligation not to engage in genocide, but also not to stand by when one observes it elsewhere.  I am old enough to remember when the Clinton Administration was reluctant to call the Rwanda Genocide what it was as it was happening because that would mean doing something about it less than a year after the mess in Mogadishu.  

How do you stop a country from committing genocide?  The efforts by countries to invoke international law have failed to stop Israel.  Of course, cutting off arms shipments would be a first step that should have happened long ago.  But that too would be insufficient given the commitment made by Netanyahu to stay in power to continue the war against the Palestinians.  Regime change?  That would seem to be the way to go, but that opens all kinds of questions that people don't want to consider.  But, still, I don't think that is driving discomfort with the G-word. 

The biggest problem for Jews to call it genocide is that it cuts to heart of Jewish identity.  Note that one of the IHRA restrictions is comparing Israel's actions to the Nazis.  Why is that?  While anti-semites may do that all the time, why is it inherently anti-semitic if the behavior is similar?  Because the Holocaust is so burned into Jewish identity, that Jews as victims, as survivors, is part of what it means to be Jewish.  As an atheist, I don't feel my Jewish identity when it comes to religious stuff,* but I feel it when the Holocaust comes up as a topic.  I have joked that I learned three things in Hebrew school (2-3 times a week, mostly afternoons after my public school education): how to read (not understand) enough Hebrew to barely get through my Bar Mitzvah, various mythologies about the creation of Israel (I cannot express how mind-blowing and nauseating it is to hear Israeli politicians refer to a second Nabka, which means they are acknowledging what was long denied--that Israel expelled the Palestinians in 1947),** and the Holocaust.  

It is now fundamental to Jewish identity that genocide was done to us.  Indeed, some of the discourse around the Holocaust is disturbing because it focuses on the six million Jews and not the eleven or so million victims, in an effort to make the Holocaust a uniquely Jewish experience, rather than including Roma, LGBTQ, the disabled, opposition politicians, and others.  Anyhow, if being the target of genocide defines in part what it means to be a Jew, how can Jews engage in genocide?  It is possible but really hard to recognize this reality, as it hurts.  It feels awful, it creates much emotional conflict within oneself and with others, including family.  It is far easier to label the behavior of others, such as Serbs in Bosnia, as genocide than to consider one's own people guilty of it, especially when it is key to one's identity.  

And, yes, another element is that others in bad faith use the genocide word.  But again, as the Superman movie reminds us (as did a series of books that have now been betrayed by their author), it is the choices we make, it is what we do that matters.  What the Israeli government is doing is horrifying.  The scale of destruction, of collective punishment, is appalling.  What is the appropriate life for a life ratio?  Yes, Hamas killed more than a thousand people in October a couple of years ago, but does that justify killing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands?  Again, collective punishment is inherently evil, it is what Nazis did to Lidice because of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.  

There I go, making comparisons to Nazis.  I guess that means I am anti-semitic.  I don't hate Jews, but I do hate the government of Netanyahu.  And there's the rub--Jews in Israel are protesting that government, so they aren't anti-semitic, are they?  So, if folks on this side of the Atlantic protest the actions of the Israeli government, does that make them anti-semitic?  I would think not, but the weaponization of the IHRA standards, mostly by actors of bad faith (the Trump administration and the GOP are full of anti-semites from the top down), says otherwise. 

There has been plenty of real anti-semitism directed at American Jews, including members of my family.  But what is not anti-semitism are accusations that Israel is engaged in genocide.  Sure, that makes Jews uncomfortable, but being made uncomfortable is not a hate crime.  Here's another parallel that will surely annoy people--being informed about the slavery and its legacy makes white people uncomfortable in the US but is not a hate crime and should not be driven out of classrooms.  Similarly, criticism of Israel for its war crimes and, yes, for its genocidal campaign, will make Jews uncomfortable, but is not necessarily anti-semitism. That depends on the speaker and, yes, their intent.  

So, yeah, what the government of Israel is doing is genocide.  It does not make Hamas right or justified or good.  Hamas is evil, perhaps more evil than Israel because it deliberately endangered the people they claim to represent to score points.  Israel, for all of the harm it does, is doing it in the name of protecting its people, even it is mostly about keeping Netanyahu in power and out of prison.   But one can think the two things at the same time--that Hamas is evil and Israel is engaging in genocide.  It is awful, it is uncomfortable as hell, but it is also reality.  

* I have long been a "bad Jew" not just for being an atheist but also for marrying a non-Jew.  So, devout Jews can take all of what I say and throw this blog post out.  But again, I feel this identity keenly when Nazis are back in fashion in the US as I know that I would be sent to the gas chambers along with those who believe.  

** Israel is also central to Jewish identity, something I am reminded of as I read Sandra Fox's book on Jewish summer camps.  But is it the government or the place that is central?  I think making any government central to one's identity to be problematic, but that is a topic for another day.  I have dodged all kinds of questions and issues, but this post is long enough.  We can discuss Zionism some other day. 

Some Basic Thoughts About Anti-Semitism, University Protests, and the Far Right BS Machine

 Watching students getting arrested and expelled was bad.  Watching them get pummeled by right wing assholes (Zionists or far right provocateurs) with the cops' permission and watching cops use "rubber" bullets that are super dangerous has been even worse.  I have many thoughts about all of this so let me spew a bit to figure some of this stuff out.

Some really basic stuff about identity and anti-semitism:

• No individuals or groups are actually acting on behalf of entire ethnic groups despite, oh my, all of the assumptions and data I used when I was an ethnic conflict scholar.  This means:
• Not all allies of Israel are Jews.  
• Not all pro-Palestinians are Muslims.  
• Not all Jews are pro-Israel at this moment. 
  
• What is anti-semitism?  Hatred of Jews.  Criticism of Israel can be anti-semitic but is not necessarily.  Israel is a country, and it has a government.  All governments can and should be criticized when they abuse people and engage in bad policies.  Identifying Israel with all Jews can be anti-semitic because it is generalizing about an entire group.  Not all Arabs or Muslims are pro-Saudi Arabia AND criticism of Saudi Arabia is not always Islamophobic.  

Are these various encampments and anti-Israel protests anti-semitic? It depends.  Sorry, but it is not clear--it depends on their demands, their statements, their treatment of Jews.  If they happen to have a bunch of Jews within them, then they are probably not anti-semitic. 

Back to basic stuff, this time about punishing students:

• Any punishment of students should involve some kind of due process.  No student should be evicted without a big hunk of due process.
  
• Students should not be suspended or expelled or evicted for engaging in collective dissent as long as it is not violent.  Universities are supposed to places where speech should be at its freest.  
• Such protests can be inconvenient and/or annoying--that is how they make themselves known. When I mentioned this on social media, someone raised the John Lewis line about good trouble.  
• What protests should not do and protestors can be punished for is threatening other students. But that raises two important distinctions:
• individual punishment, not collective punishment.  Entire groups of students should not be punished for the statements of individuals or actions of individuals especially if those folks happen to be off campus (see the non-students outside of Columbia)
• Saying negative things about Israel may hurt one's feelings but does not count as threats.  Again, not all criticism of Israel is anti-semitic.  The actual words and actions matter.  It may suck for Jewish students to be on campuses where there are protests against Israel as insults of those sharing one's identity does hurt one's own self-esteem.  But hurt feelings are not tantamount to violence or assaults.  
  
• No president of any university should be calling in the cops to arrest their students unless their students are engaged in or threatening to engage in violence.  Campuses need to be safe for all students, including those engaged in dissent.  Calling in the cops is an escalation that can and often leads to violence.  The students at many of these places have been harmed, way out of proportion to whatever their alleged crimes.  These universities have failed a very basic part of their mission--to protect their students.  Again, there are now cops on campus using rubber bullets and pepper spray.
• Everyone should have learned by now that no one controls the cops in North America AND they like to escalate AND infiltration is probably too benign of a word to address how deeply the far right is embedded in North American police forces.  So, calling the cops is worse than throwing gasoline on a fire because the latter has no illusion of deniability.

Now, let's get to the far right bullshit of all of this: Republicans, Fox, and the rest of the far right apparatus complaining about "anti-semitic" students on college campuses is just bad faith bullshit.  These folks are not interested in protecting Jews, or they might have spoken up a bit with all of the anti-semitism whipped up by the far right.  Charlottesville?  Remember that?  Where were these folks who are so concerned with anti-semitism when the Nazis were yelling about Jews not replacing "us"?  Where were these folks when George Soros was being used to incite anti-semitism?  Oh wait, many of these folks were doing precisely that.  Fuck all of them.  

Ok, one last thing: to put this into context, if Nazis have the right to march into Jewish neighborhoods, like Skokie, Illinois, then even if the students were all anti-semites, they have a right to protest.  So, again, why is it ok for far right anti-semites to protest but not far left?*  To be clear, I am not saying that the students are all anti-semites, but just making the point that if they were, they would still have a right to protest.  On college campuses?  I am not so sure since many have hate speech regulations.  

All I do know for sure is that the college administrators have failed their students and have also abetted the far right in undermining higher education. The urge to do something should have been ignored  The semesters in these places were winding down--they could have easily outwaited the students.  Move graduate ceremonies if you must, but for fuck's sake, don't invite cops onto campus to beat your students and professors!

* I fear far right anti-semitism more than far left.  Why?  First, the far right has far more power.  Second, if one did the math, I am pretty sure the far right anti-semites have killed far more Jews than the far left.  When Netanyahu and others hang out with ideological kindred anti-semites "since everyone out there is anti-semitic," they are just giving those with the greatest ability and the most violent history more deniability. 

Thinking about the G Word

Maybe not genocide, almost
certainly a war crime.

 I have been reluctant to call what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide.  I am not an international lawyer so my hesitance is less about the fine points of international law and more about how fraught the word is--that it is a very inflammatory accusation, that it turns people's minds off, that it ends conversations.  It is pretty much the worst thing you can accuse someone of doing, especially an Israeli given the history of the Jews.  It also raises in some people's minds a false equivalency between this event or that event and the Holocaust.  For the legal beagles, the question is of intent--is the aim to kill in part (the in part thing is important) or entirely a group of people because of their race, religion, language, or some other ethnic marker.*  For an excellent discussion of much of this, see Page Fortna's op-ed.

And then I got into a conversation with a family member about ethnic cleansing versus genocide.  I am far more confident that what is happening in Gaza is ethnic cleansing.  We have had a variety of statements from Israeli officials referring to this as a/the nabka--a repeat of something that had long been denied--that the new Israelis expelled the Palestinians from contested territories in 1948.  Reports that Netanyahu has been looking for other places to settle the Palestinians are very disturbing. The level of violence and its targeting, as this WP analysis illustrates only too clearly, is suggestive.  Israel has more done more damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure in a couple of months than other contemporary campaigns and it is not close. Remember, the 21k civilian casualties in Gaza is almost certainly an undercount that will get worse as the destruction of the health care system and the shortages of food and water kick in.

Israel and its fans will claim that they need to eradicate Hamas because it has genocidal intent.  I sympathize with that, but genocide is partly about power.  One cannot engage in mass killing unless one has the powers of a state or something close to it.  So, in the genocide conversation, one can argue that one side might have intent, but it is the other side that has the ability to engage in large scale destruction and is doing so.  Hamas may present a threat to engage in genocide, but it is Israel that is actually killing large numbers of people, mostly civilians including many, many children.

I need to mention one dynamic here: conflating all Palestinians with Hamas and arguing Hamas needs to be eradicated leads to the conclusion, intentionally or not, implicit or explicit, that to destroy Hamas, one needs to eliminate the Palestinians.  Which leads to the biq question:

Is the intent of Israeli leaders to eliminate all Palestinians?  Just those living in Gaza? Not so clear, so one could argue it is not genocide.  But that is really a quibble.  Israel is forcing Gazans to move south, and so-called safe zones are not so safe (which reminds me of Bosnia).  Israels and its supporters can argue about genocide/not genocide, and maybe that is a conversation that could be more comfortable than addressing the contemporary situation--Israel is killing large numbers of innocents out of revenge, rage, and/or a misconception that hitting much, much harder will ultimately lead to deterrence.  I included the bluesky post because it illustrates something very, very powerful--that Israel is engaged in a variety of horrific tactics and no strategy (if Israel had one) could justify it.  Attacking hospitals and refugee camps is simply wrong--it is immoral and it is also bad strategy.  Netanyahu recently said he was seeking to destroy Hamas,** demilitarize Gaza, and deradicalize the Palestinians.  This campaign may be temporarily successful at the second, but it will not destroy Hamas, and it will do the opposite of deradicalizing the Palestinians.  

I remarked that when Israel had hit the 20,000 casualty figure, was that disproportionate enough, given that something less than 2,000 Israelis died on or after October 7th? It is quite clear that Israel has violated international humanitarian law repeatedly and intentionally.  I get that Israelis think international relations is gamed against them--all the UN votes by countries that have deplorable human rights records, etc.  That international law is less important than survival, but some of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy--that Israel burned whatever goodwill it received in the aftermath of October 7th by engaging in a campaign of revenge and collective punishment.

One of thing that has been so disturbing is the realization that there are two meanings to Never Again--never again will Jews be victims or never again will we let mass killings take place.  It is clear now that Israeli leaders and their supporters believe that Never Again means that Jews will never be victims again, even if it means victimizing others.  The lesson I thought I had learned growing up was that Never Again meant fighting against oppression, persecution, victimization, regardless of the targeted group.  I can't help but think that all of this is a betrayal of what we were supposed to learn from the Holocaust.

All of this is awful.  Hamas is awful, Netanyahu is awful, terrorism is awful, collective punishment is awful.  Whether one wants to call it genocide or not, what Israel is doing is awful--it is counterproductive and it is immoral.  So, from a strategic perspective, Israel's campaign is bad.  From a moral perspective, it is wrong.  Hamas's gross violations of human rights do not justify violating international humanitarian law, even if it were producing a successful outcome, and it is certainly not doing that.

Thus, I avoid using genocide as a label for all of this because it is largely superfluous--one can condemn what Israel has been doing without it.

 

* The term politicide was invented to cover the attempt to kill many/all people of the same party or movement that is ethnically heterogeneous.

** None of this justifies Hamas or legitimates what Hamas has done.  The recent story about the systemic gender violence committed by Hamas makes abundantly clear that Hamas is an awful, awful organization.  That they deliberately use their own people as shield not to protect the organization but to raise the hypocrisy costs for Israel--that is, they are deliberately getting Palestinians killed--makes them utterly deplorable.  They should be defeated and destroyed.  But Israel is actually empowering Hamas by walking into the traps it has set.

Thinking About Israel and Palestine: Headaches and Insomnia

 I am not sure that the past month's headaches and insomnia are due to the challenges of thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I am going to use that as my intro to this effort to think through this stuff.

Usual caveats apply: I am not a political theorist or moral philosopher, I am not an expert on the conflict itself.  Oh, and I was raised Jewish and the education I got at Hebrew school did not adequately present the realities of the past.  I did take one Mideast politics course in college, and I did spend one week on an amazing and amazingly depressing tour of Israel and Palestine with a bunch of other academics four years ago.

Dueling Irredentisms: Always Bad, Never Inevitable

 I am not an international law specialist nor have I extensively studied the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I have written extensively about irredentism--the effort to enlarge one's country to include territories that are considered to be one's own by history and by blood.  So, when I see pictures like this, I get engaged:

The river to the sea, used by either side, is an inherently irredentist phrase: that the lands between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River belong to just one side of this means seeking to get all of the territory of the other.  Palestianians and their supporters have been saying this, and so have Israelis and their allies.  Irredentism does not have to be this maximalist--Russia has claimed just a chunk of Ukraine.  But these claims and efforts are inherently violent--that any effort to change one's boundaries to include territories governed by others will produce war because no country (or quasi-state) surrenders inhabited territory without a fight.  Not Ukraine, not Taiwan, not Israel, and not Palestine.

The thing is: all territory has been occupied by multiple groups, so there will always be competing claims pretty much everywhere on the planet except perhaps Antarctica.  Stuart Kaufman illustrated this nicely at the start of his book on Modern Hatreds:

So, if irredentist claims are possible everywhere, then why isn't there violence everywhere?  Despite the news suggesting otherwise, ethnic violence, including irredentism, is rare.  Ethnic conflicts do end, people do find a way forward without fighting. Remember that the key grievance between Germany and France for ... at least three wars ... was Alsace-Lorraine.  Yet that is not an issue these days.  

It is rare because irredentism is usually very self-destructive.  It didn't work out so well for Nazi Germany and not so well for 1990s Armenia, Croatia, or Serbia.  It has worked out well for China (Tibet), but Taiwan would be another story entirely.  Bill Ayres and I compared the irredentisms that occurred in the 1990s (the aforementioned Armenia, Croatia, and Serbia) and those that did not--Hungary, Romania, and Russia.  We confirmed that irredentism is very costly and self-destructive, but some countries do it anyway--when it benefits the politicians in power.  What is good for the politicians may not be good for the public, which produced our title: For Kin or Country.  Helping the kin abroad is often very bad for the country as war is bad.  Russia is paying a pretty high price for its irredentist campaign against Ukraine, but, thus far, Putin hasn't paid a price himself.  

So, when I see what is going on in Israel and Palestine, my bias is to watch the strategies politicians use to stay in power and see how that intersects with the nationalism of the country. Politics is in part about shaping the nationalism, defining the us, the them, and whether the them can be tolerated.  A central irony we found is that the nationalisms that were more willing to include the thems, the others, in the state, the more able they are to engage in irredentism since any successful expansion will generally lead to more thems as well as us's in the larger state.  Indeed, why do folks often oppose irredentism--a successful campaign would produce the equivalent of a massive wave of immigration, upsetting the balance of domestic politics.  For example, a Greater Albania including Kosovo would likely weaken those who currently hold power in Albania since there are a lot of Kosovars.  

And, yes, this gets to a key dynamic that the Hungarian case revealed--shades of identity, of us-ness.  That for Hungarians in Hungary, they identify with the Hungarians outside of Hungary (due to the Treaty of Trianon in 1920) but only up to a point.  Those Hungarians didn't experience post-1956 Hungary, so they don't have the same experiences and thus are not seen as quite the same.  So, Hungarians in Hungary want the Hungarians outside of Hungary to do well but to stay put--they don't want to share power or their welfare state with them.  

Anyhow, irredentism varies over time and over targets based on who matters to the politicians in power.  Somalia's irredentism from 1960 to 1990 varied depending on who was in power and whose clans they needed for support.  So, Somalia sometimes targeted all three neighbors, despite that being profoundly unwise, because the clans with ties to those in Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia all mattered in the domestic political game. At other times, only those in Ethiopia matters (1976-1977).  

Back to Israel and Palestine: the irredentist efforts of Hamas (it aims to eliminate Israel and govern the entire space) and of Netanyahu (his coalition includes many parties that seek to incorporate the occupied territories, hence the support for the crazed settlers)* reinforce each other, giving each set of politicians more support from those who fear the other.  Not unlike Milosevic and Tudjman being each other's best allies as Tudjman could get Croats to support him because of the threat posed by Milosevic, and Milosevic could do the same to get Serbs to support him.  

Have Hamas and Netanyahu delivered on other public policy issues?  No, they are utter failures, but they are hard to replace when the enemy is at the gates.  The coverage of this war has been quite clear that Netanyahu empowered Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority and perhaps also to keep the Israeli public focused on this than his own corruption.

So, what is good for the politicians--war--is bad for the public, but the publics go along with it because they don't see any alternatives.  That people on both sides are talking about claiming territory from the river to the sea is understandable and horrifying, given what it requires--lots more bloodshed. It empowers the worst leaders. It requires incredible leadership by alternative politicians to push in another direction. But until that happens, there won't be peace. BUT if that were to happen, you could have peace. Alas, extremists have killed or marginalized the peacekmakers. So, things are going to be grim. 

We did cover this a bit in the book when we survey the world's irredentist hotspots including Ireland, Kashmir, Taiwan, etc.

Anyhow, the focus should be on the politicians and their incentives. Irredentism is not inevitable, it can be sidelined.  But it can be really hard to stop once it gets started because of the media it generates, the fear it generates, and how the two sides can reinforce each other's worst instincts.

 

*Yes, killing the two state solution is a key part of an irredentist strategy.  Never really thought about that before, but two state solution inherently recognizes limits on expansion, so one must do away with that if one wants to add the desired territories.

Words Fail, Theories We Have Many

Gaza in the distance

 I have spent most of my career engaged in the five d's of dodgeball when it comes to the Mideast and especially the Israel-Palestine conflict.  Despite starting my career with the international relations of ethnic conflict, I managed a total of one piece of research on the Mideast, and that was more by accident than by design.  I got asked to join an edited volume project by a terrific Mideast scholar, Shibley Telhami, after one of my very best job talks (which did not produce a job).   

Bomb shelter next to a kindergarten if
I remember correctly

When I turned to doing civil-military relations, I was asked if I was including Israel in my multi-democracy study, and I said nope.  I have a better explanation for that--that as a very militarized society, its' civil-military relations are far less comparable.  

Bus stop, shelter in a town that
was probably overrun last weekend

But on the ethnic conflict side?  Maybe I refrained because the one time I raised it as an illustration in a job talk, it did not go well.  That lesson was certainly reinforced by the experience of teaching US Foreign Policy the semester the US invaded Iraq. That class quickly divided into pro and anti factions based on how the students identified with one side or the other of the Israel-Palestine conflict.  

Perhaps it is because of a conflict between my background/identity and my scholarly work.  I often joked that the three things I learned in Hebrew school were: enough Hebrew (barely) to get through my Bar Mitzvah, much about the Holocaust and the history of oppression of the Jews, and that Israel was empty before the Jews got there and everything Israel does is right.  The last is the most relevant although the second obviously hits hard when more Jews died in one day due to violence this weekend than any other time since the Holocaust apparently.  I definitely was miseducated about the history of Israel.  I was also conflicted about my upbringing since I hated Hebrew school (I never fit in or came close), never believed in the religion, and came to realize my identity as Jew is defined by the reality that Nazis would have included me in their roundups no matter what I believe.  That is, identity is not defined by oneself but by the interaction of oneself with others, and as long as folks saw me as Jewish, it was less relevant what I believed.

Open air prison ....

So, that ambivalence then hits the stuff I have picked up from the work on ethnic conflict.  I can see via those lenses that ancient hatred is not really what is going here, but political dynamics in Israel and in the Palestinian community.  There is outbidding and pandering to extremists in both, which then feed the outbidding and pandering in the other.  Netanyahu feeds Hamas, and Hamas feeds Netanyahu.  When I visited in 2019, my first visit, as part of a group tour of IR scholars, I got to see how much has been locked in, that bad decisions beget bad decisions.  That Israeli generals told me that the only response to violence is to hit harder than they hit you, as if this were Chicago with the Untouchables fighting Capone.  I could see their point of view, but again, it was a path to more violence.  I left Israel, like many of those on the trip, sad and frustrated--that the future of Israel and of the Palestinians was bleak--that there was no way out and no one in or near power was interested in finding one.  And this happens.

So, I see people saying that an unprovoked Israel deserves all of our support.  And I have to recoil a bit, as Israel has done a shit ton of provoking via its empowering of rabid settlers who have encroached on the Mosque and engaged in lots of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.  But I also recoil when I hear folks talk about Hamas being part of anti-colonial struggle, as, yes, the Palestinians do have legitimate grievances, but Hamas is an awful, theocratic, maybe nihilist entity that did truly barbaric things.  Yet, I also know that Israel is going to kill a lot of Palestinian kids in Gaza since, yes, the population of Gaza is about 50% under 18.  War crimes do not justify war crimes.  And more violence is not going cause this conflict to go away. 

Pretty sure those towers are now destroyed

Both sides need far better governance, actors who don't benefit from the other side being radicalized.  But the institutions and dynamics of each are perverse and reinforcing.  I hope that Netanyahu pays a high price for letting this happen on his watch, but I seriously doubt that Israeli politics is going to move to the center as a result.  The flavors of the more successful parties in Israel are all variants of far right.  The left/center was broken by the second Intifada, and I doubt that these events will resurrect them.  I know less and understand less the Palestinian side, but I am pretty sure that air strikes are not going to lead to moderates taking power.

 

 So, I have rambled without reaching a clear idea of who should do what. Which is probably fitting.  And also explains why I have been reluctant to discuss this stuff--not just a bad job talk in 1993, but because the reality is so difficult, twisted, and painful.

Update:

I got into a conversation with my sister during the weekly family zoom, and she pressed me on when have ethnic conflicts ended peacefully rather than through conquest.  I gave the easy answer: South Africa.  But that conversation reminded me of the basic rules of ethnic conflict:

1. Most ethnic groups, no matter their history, are at peace: violence is rare.
2. When there is violence, it ends. No place is constantly at war forever.
3. The past constrains choices but does not determine the present.  It is up to today's politicians to decide what to do, and the incentives the structures/systems provide influence but do not determine.  Agency remains.

Which means it didn't have to be this way, it didn't have to happen this weekend, while there are dynamics locking the parties in, those dynamics can be resisted, and, yes, outsiders could play some role in either exacerbating or ameliorating the nasty dynamics.

Quarantine, Week 61: The Hits Keep Coming

 Grading is done, the weather is warming, we keep on zooming with much anticipation for a better summer and fall and yet oy.

Today's oy is in reference to yet another senior officer in the Canadian Armed Forces being investigated for sexual misconduct.  MG Dany Fortin, who was the face of the CAF's involvement in Canada's vaccination rollout, was suspended yesterday.  We have now had the previous Chief of Defence Staff, the current (alas) Chief of Defence Staff, the Chief of Personnel (until yesterday), and the former commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command all facing investigations, suspensions, and more for sexual misconduct and/or abuse of power.  Fortin was the great hope for the CAF to help its image as he was seen as being very competent in both the doing and messaging of the vax rollout.  We don't know what the accusation is, and it is possible that his brilliant career may be salvageable.  Unlike, say, the Chief of Personnel.  I wrote this week that the Minister of Defence and the Prime Minister should move on from Admiral McDonald as the Chief of Defence Staff, as there is no real coming back.  The latest news just strengthens my argument.

On the bright side, Acting CDS Eyre did fire the Chief of Personnel yesterday, moving on from him.  Maybe Eyre will have set an example for those above him?  Stef vH and I had a great interview that we will be posting on the next Battle Rhythm on Wednesday, which energized us for the week.  More details to come probably on Monday.  I also had the chance to speak to a reservist unit in Toronto via zoom.  I talked about Canadian civ-mil in comparative perspective.  They asked lots of good questions.  I did get pushed on one of my comments about how we need to move beyond "warrior" as the key identity for the CAF, as one of the participants noted that it is an organization that trains to kill people.  My point is that while we have plenty of examples of women as warriors, the current social construction of that term has heaps of baggage, and we can call that baggage toxic masculinity.  That the way warrior is defined and expressed not only legitimates various behavior (hazing, for instance) but tends to exclude those who don't fit the image of a warrior--short people, immigrants, women, LGBTQ2S, etc.  

 Another bright spot was the forum my colleague Yanling Wang organized on Anti-Asian Racism.  I hate that she felt compelled by the rise of this racism to organize such an event, but it was moving and illuminating.  

In plague news, we have heaps of confusion as health authorities message poorly.  This week, it was the CDC's turn, saying that the fully vaxxed can go without masks ... but we don't know who is fully vaxxed, so what to do about mask mandates?  It seems like requiring vaccination in order work or go to school would be the thing to do, that vaccine passports would be provided by government so that stadia, theaters, restaurants, and others could sort.  But the Biden administration is opposed to vaccine passports.  Why?  Something, something, equity.  If there are equity concerns about the vaccines, get the vaccines to those who are on the margins and then give them a damn vax passport.  I got a yellow fever vax certificate for a trip I took a couple of years ago--the idea of vax passports are nothing new at all.  Making them work domestically is a bit of a move, but schools have long required measles and other vaccinations.  Perhaps the clever move is to empower private actors to be able to sort clients so that the imperative to get vaccinated seems less like it is coming from a government that the vax hesitant distrust and more from private firms.  All I know is that CDC's sudden announcement was not that well thought out.  

Meanwhile, in Canada, AstraZeneca, despite its amazing record of crushing the plague in the UK, is now no longer available for first shots due to fears about clotting.  I get it--that there is a potentially dangerous side effect, but the way this has been handled only creates more uncertainty and more vax hesitancy.  The good news is that the other vaccines are now arriving in big numbers here.  So, the question is, given how the rollout played out, will gen x get AZ for its second shots (please, give me) or will they wait to figure out the mixing of vaccines findings.  And of course, this means 100,000's of AZ vaccines sitting around while India burns.

Speaking of burning, the past week of violence in Israel and Palestine has reminded me of the despair I felt, along with most of the rest of academics that were with me, when I toured Israel and Palestine two summers ago.  It was clear then that the incentives were all wrong--that the Israeli politicians had no interest in really negotiating, that the Palestinians between Hamas and the folks in the West Bank had no interest in negotiating, that both sides were mostly satisfied with recurrent bouts of violence with no resolution in sight.  The peace camp in Israel was broken by the 2nd intifada so that Israelis could vote for different flavors of right wing politicians with varying levels of, well, irredentist claims.  We realized that the two state solution was dead, killed by the aggressive settling efforts on the one side and the threat of Hamas to to gain power in the WestBank on the other.  

What does one state where Israel incorporates much, if not all, of the West Bank look like?  And the answer is: Democratic or Jewish.  The demographics are pretty clear--if you give the people living in these territories voting rights, it is going to be hard to maintain an ethnocentric state.  But if you deny such a large group voting rights (and if you level buildings where journalists are based), are you really a democracy?  I tend not to write much about this conflict.  All I can say is that I was really struck by a discussion I had with one of the folks we met two summers ago.  An Israeli retired general exclaimed frustration and contempt with the Obama Administration for failing to escalate each time the US was attacked.  That this is the way Israel handles things--when they get hit, they hit back much harder.  And my point was--how has that worked out thus far, besides fostering a cycle of ever increasing violence?  His response was: what is the alternative?

And that is where we are now.  In another round of violence with no prospect of an alternative approach.  Hence my despair.

Be well and perhaps focus on the positive--that we are past the peak of the third wave and the average adult is at least vaxxed a bit. 

 

Israel and Anti-Semites--Unholy Bedfellows

When I was in Israel last week, one of the questions I asked several times was this: how could Israelis support a Prime Minister who pals around with anti-semites?  That Netanyahu has been buddying up with Viktor Orban, Hungary's anti-semitic prime minister/dictator wannabee, as well as other noted right-wing anti-semites.  And I wondered why Netanyahu was doing this and what price was he paying.

This piece speaks of an unholy alliance that gives some clues, but it was put a bit differently to me in Israel.  That the left wing in Europe is anti-semitic (some of it is, some of it is just critical of Israel--one can be critical of Israel without contempt for Jews, of course) and the right wing is anti-semitic so why not align with the ideologically similar?  Of course, this is extremely problematic for several reasons

1. What does one get from aligning with Hungary in any case?  Orban might have some sway among the right wing authoritarians in Eastern Europe, but Hungary has little power or influence.  Selling out one's soul for what?  A few shekels?  Because Hungary can't deliver much.
2. As Mrs. Spew reminded me last night, it is far, far more likely that the right-wing anti-semites would take the anti-semitic rhetoric and turn it into systematic violence than the left-wing anti-semites.  
3. Looking away when anti-semites rise was something that falls into the category of "Never Again," right?  What is the point of having a Jewish state if the Jewish state allies with those doing harm to Jews?

The reality of Israeli politics is that the right-wing dominates (the left got crushed in the aftermath of the second intifada), and that Netanyahu dominates the right-wing.  So, there is little penalty for Netanyahu to hang out with anti-semites in Europe or the US.  His coalition-making challenges do not center on his pal-ing around with Orban and his ilk, but on the conflict between two right-wing voting blocks--the Ultra Orthodox and the Russian Jews who hate the Ultra Orthodox.  So, no, besides some upset columnists, there was no cost for Netanyahu politically.

A related question I didn't really ask as much is how do the Israelis feel about being the means to an end?  Evangelicals want Jews to run the biblical lands since that is the requirement for the rapture/Armageddon/end of times (excuse me if I get the religious terms wrong), as these folks think they will go to Heaven or whatever.  These folks see Israel's Jews is a tool for getting what they want.  The response to my question was basically that Israelis understand this, but don't mind since they are using the evangelicals.  That the GOP now is firmly committed to uncritical support for Israel as it panders to these end of times-seeking evangelicals.  Of course, there is a cost, as Israelis are realizing that Netanyahu's treatment of Obama has helped to alienate Democrats, and they fear the day when the Democrats gain the White House.

But it is all about the short term--sucking up to those who are anti-Jewish (and, yes, evangelicals are anti-Jewish) for a few more years of support while selling out what the Holocaust has taught the Jews.

While the basic state of Israel-Palestine peace talks was depressing enough, this other dynamic was just gutting.  Strangely enough, I feel my Jewish identity more when I see Israel selling out the Holocaust.  Seeing these t-shirts being sold at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial), well, had a complicated effect on me.  I will eventually get to the post on how this trip affects how I see myself and my identity, but this one is a clue.

Israel, day 7: Palestinians and Palestine

The big day of the trip was the day we went to Ramallah, capital of the Palestinian Authority (for my previous posts regarding this trip, go to here, here,here, here, here, and here). ‘‘Twas the big day because it was least in the control of our hosts—the speakers were chosen by the Palestinians, so any effort by Academic Exchange to play us (see my wrap up post later) would be challenged here.

The day started with an Israeli retired colonel who works for a think tank that has been involved in the peace process. He did a nice job of explaining the series of events that followed the Oslo agreement.  A name that came up, General Keith Dayton, that struck me.  Dayton was head of the US effort to train and equip the Palestinian security forces.  He was also my boss in 2001-2002 as he was the boss of the European section of the J5. Anyhow, the idea was for the palestians to provide security in the parts of the West Bank where the Palestinians had authority (zone A) and then police zone B where the authority is a bit mixed (the Israelis run zone c which is 60% of the West Bank).  The speaker said something else that reminded me of the Balkans: the best cooperation is among the Israeli and Palestinian criminals.  I asked about Pal civ-mil, as there has not been an election in ten years (neither the incumbents nor the Israelis want Hamas to win, as they did in Gaza).  There was a coup attempt a few years ago, and Israel helped prevent it from succeeding.  Perhaps the most surprising news from my questions was that the amount of training Israel provides for occupation duty is very limited: three days! As most troops rotate among the three major missions—Gaza, the northern border, the West Bank—the IDF is putting poorly prepared troops into difficult spots.  That the conscripts are quite young and not that well trained leads to deviations from the rules of engagement and, thus, international law.  One lesson of the 2006 war in Lebanon was to increase the length of the command courses.  I am still unsure of how Israel’s civil-military relations work as I asked about that far too late in the trip (our shepherd is a retired general who was most generous but I didn’t get alone time until the ... last supper).

Then onto Ramallah, where the city was a mix of very modern, well kept buildings and cars and not so much.  We met with a series of Palestinian officials.  The first put together a case for,what Israel had done wrong with much exaggeration but also provided some of the narrative that helps to shape the discourse and dispute.  He did say something that echoed what we heard from Israelis near Gaza: Israel is afraid of nonviolent protest.  A common theme on this day was more criticism of Trump since anynthought of US has an honest broker is gone (more on multilateralism below).  He spoke about demanding equality rather than two state solution, which differed from the next guy.  He concluded by suggested that we should not be lulled by the current state of exhaustion since there was the same exhaustion before both intifadas.

The next guy, a negotiator, was very dynamic (slick some said).  He insisted that they had recognized Israel’s right to exist in the pre1967 boundaries.  He insisted, unlike the previous guy, that the only solution is the two state solution.  He argued that Pompeo among others is turning this into a religious conflict which helps ISIS.  There was not much discussion of ISIS re West Bank this week so this was pretty striking.  He said nice things about USAID, and a common theme of the day was how Trump’s policy changes are making things worse (so much for Trump tweets vs words). He had many negative things to say about the Arab countries and Iran “don’t try to be more Palestinian than us!”  Which led to a nice rant

• Real threat to Iran is Iran 
• Real threat to Arabs are other Arabs
• Real threat to Israel is the occupation 

He told a fun story where he met with Christians united for Israel who said: “only peace of Jews, Muslims convert to Christianity” and his response was that if Netanyahu does it, he would think about it.  He had much to say about Kushner, Greenblatt, and Friedman—the US negotiating team.  He also asked Trump “did you develop a technique to kill ideas with bullets?” Which Trump didn’t understand.

On a one state solution with equal rights, he said that we (the Palestinians) would change everything and the Israelis know it.  

We then met with a higher ranking politician, who argued that the world was with the Palestinians except for Israel and the Trump Administration, which disagrees with the previous speaker’s take on Iran.  The two state solution is the shortest path to peace, he said.  Again, 67 borders, don’t need 1948, ok with some land swaps.  He said they wanted security, willing to have a third party provide security in demilitarized Wesr Bank, including US or NATO with Jerusalem as open city.   He did tend to give US way too much credit as he said US was behind Hamas and was using Iran threat to distract everyone.  A key theme was that current situation was apartheid... which our resident Africanist could poke holes in, but i did keep,seeing “separate but equal”

His take on the recent meeting in Bahrain over economic development: these amateurs (Kushner, etc) think all we want is money: “there was no money in the first place. If there was money, Jared would be thinking about how to take it.”

The last speaker was from the PA foreign ministry.  She asserted that Arab states could not betray Palestinians without upsetting the Srab street, which was the first mention of the Arab public this week.  She pointed out that Trump was unilaterally deciding final status issues like Jerusalem.  She asserted that the Palestinian diaspora is less pragmatic than PA, which reminded me of my long dead diaspora project.  She had a great point about folsmsayinf Palestine is not ready doe statehood in two words: South Sudan.

She then went on to sound like Trudeau: that the PA wants to uphold the multilateral order.  Sure.  It makes sense that the vastly weaker player would want a multilateral solution rather than just working with Israel and Trump. Also, two stare solution as “we need separation”

We then returned back to the hotel for one last briefing and I was too tired to pay much attention.  We did get re-energized with a late night tour of tunnels under the western wall. Our guide tried to remember a concept he had once read about that would explain why the first temple’s loss hit so hard, and damn near all of us in the group either said endowment effect or prospect theory.  He gave us a good review so the history of this spot.

1. The middle of what is now the Temple Mount is supposed to be where God started when he built the planet
2. This is where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac
3. This is where they built the first temple
4. And the second, which Herod (nasty dictator but good builder) reinforced.
5. Where Jesus was killed, buried.
6. Where Mohammed flew to seventh heaven
7. Where the Golden Dome of the third holiest site in Islam was built.

Our tour of the tunnels, including three baths (one fed by a stream), was most interesting.  I can’t imagine being anyplace with a longer history.  The archeological effort here makes clear how far this stuff goes back.  

Lots and lots of path dependence on this day: that previous decisions shape the choices available to the next folks, whether that is how the British ruled, how the 67 war provided many opportunities, how the settlers are creating facts on the grounds, how leaving Gaza led to the rise of Hamas and shifted Israeli politics along with the second intifada.

In short: oh my.

Israel, Day 6: they are digging in the wrong place!

Today was a very different day (for my previous posts regarding this trip, go to here, here,here, here, and here), partly because it is the sabbath but mostly because of what we did. An Israeli archeologist met with us, briefed us on a few thousand years of history and then gave us a tour of much of the old city. Because I have an early morning and a very full day tomorrow, it is listicle time

• He drew a distinction between that which is and is not tied to the archeological record. Abraham and his folks? No.  Jesus? Yeah.
• Oh, and he was amazing
• I got a better grip of what the various temples were and even a bit about Islam’s history
• Once a site is holy, it is holy forever, so folks would on top of someone else’s site and again and again
• I didn’t know King David was also an ancestor of Jesus and a prophet in Islam
• The Maccabees were major league aholes.  Judah would have been very disappointed
• The Romans used local elites as agents.  Herod may have been awful in most things but he was a builder
• Monty Python was right: Romans did give them aqueducts 
• How to identify a Jewish place as an archeologist? Look for no pig bones
• Back to Maccabees, the Zionists looked around, looted Jewish history to find some warriors to build role models and symbols.  So, their dark side was ignored.
• King David was not buried where folks thought so all of the religious sites tied to it are in the wrong place
• We went to the Holy Scepture, where six Christian factions share it but long ago the keys were given to local  slim family so that none of the rival factions would lock out the rest.  The common areas within tend to get ignored until a pope visits
• This was where Jesus was killed, washed, and buried.  But not where his bones lie because of being resurrected.
• The western wall was not the temple’s wall but a retaining wall to hold up the stuff upon which the temple rested
• After the tour six of us went in search of falafel and hummus and we were not disappointed. We found a hole in the wall place in the Arab quarter.  Yum.
• In the holy scepture, I spotted art that depicts the moment I could not believe in the Jewish God

The story is of God asking Abraham, the first Jew, to sacrifice is only son Isaac, and then at the last minute, an angel intervened so he sacrificed a goat or a lamb.  While I was inclined to be sceptical, once I grasped this, I had two reactions (blasphemy follows):

A) the idea that God is more important than family is abhorrent to me. Abraham was willing to kill his kid?  I found this deeply problematic long before my father took a stand for a God he said later he didn’t really believe in over family.

B) God is an incredible dick to be playing this kind of mind game with his key supporter.  So, if God is like this, he is not my God.  I brought up the “hardening Pharoah’s heart part of the exodus story the night before.  Again, God seeking to establish his brand at great cost...

Ok, if you aren’t offended by that enough to read on, the other event of the day was that our traveling Rabbi who has accompanied us gave us an end of sabbath chat about religious Zionism.  It was a beautiful setting with great food and interesting people to chat with.  We did learn that the ultra
orthodox's kids make up 20% of first graders (the other supremely fertile group is the settlers) which means that since the males don’t work and rely on welfare, the Israeli economy is going to be screwed in the near future along with the political system.  Oh, and since the orthodox control the personal law stuff (who can marry, who is a Jew), the secular Russian immigrants who fought and died in recent wars can’t be buried in Jewish cemeteries.

My pessimism about Israel’s future hit rock bottom tonight.  We go to Ramallah to meet with Palestinians tomorrow... maybe there is a layer below this rock bottom?  The archeological experience would certainly suggest  we can always go further down....

Israel, day 4: Helos and Borders, oh my!

What did the Romans ever do for us?

Yesterday was such a long and busy day that I was too tired to write this post. We took helicopters up,to the Golan Heights, a bus from the landing pad to different spots among the various borders, a lunch with a Druse woman, and then back to Jerusalem for dinner and meeting an NGO guy (for my previous posts regarding this trip, go to here, here,and here)

What did I notice and think about along the way?

Agriculture outposts of all kinds with
nets mostly indicating banana farms.

The line on the left is the border with Lebanon,
the white buildings to the right are for UN base

A tourist destination--viewing spot of Syria
from the corner of the Golan Heights.

• The banana trees are covered in nets apparently to keep the flies in for sweeter bananas.  Which led to a mystery: lots of banana farms, no bananas on our tables.  Turns out Israel doesn’t import bananas and they are not in season.
• I have always scoffed at the “the Jews turned the deserts green” but seeing from the air the patterns of farming and such, the Jews here are mighty good at irrigation.  However, I am guessing that the Palestinians don’t irrigate as well because is the challenges of owning land in the occupied territories.
• The Golan Heights are never going back, as they are obviously super strategic given how the owner has big military advantage over the non-owner.  Plus not many Palestinians here so not that difficult (not that I support Trump’s recognition of annexation)
• We had a former SOF General as tour guide.  I didn’t buy everything he said (“we can destroy Hezbollah in a month next time) but he did provide some keen analyses like there being 7 different conflicts here (Sunni vs Shia; intra Sunni; secular vs religious in Syria; Turks vs Kurds; US vs Russia; those who prefer high oil prices vs low; Israel vs Iran)
• A common theme that several speakers have repeated:Israel has tried to pick leaders in the neighbors and they suck at it
• Israel has attacked Iranian targets in Syria over 400 times.  Which means that they have coordinated or deconflicted with those flying over Syria: US led coalition and..... Russia.  Hmmm.  Most of the attacks seem to be launched from planes flying over Israel.
• Israel would have to do more of US left Syria but nothing they can’t handle (including special ops)
• Iran is said to have a concept of ops: to support proxies to produce Shia led countries... 4.5 so far (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen) which works if a country has weak regime, civil war and some shia.  Jordan is next target but I asked: where are the Shia?  The general said they can be imported from Iraq.  I am sceptical, but Israel is working hard to prevent this.
• We had a fantastic meal made by a Druse woman, Mona, whose business is hosting tour groups like ours and explaining Druse identity, religion and life. ‘‘Twas very, very interesting.  The
  
  Druse didn’t choose to become Israeli citizens both to protect families in Syria and Lebanon and because they are hedging in case the border changes again.  Her tale might not be the average tale, however.
• We learned the story of Eli Cohen who penetrated the highest levels of Syrian govt in early 1960s--the statue to the right is of his wife waiting for him to come home see this wiki page

We then returned to Jerusalem, landing on a pad adjacent to the largest Jewish cemetery here.  We had a speaker after dinner who works for an advocacy group... but I was tired and he was not the best speaker.  Still, best day of the trip. I learned more than I reported here, including understanding better why the Israelis had contempt for Obama and now for Trump.  A post for another day.

Somebody before us put up some AE graffiti
at a former Syrian army hq in the Golan Heights.