So how long will Sarah Palin be McCain's running mate?

I think the thing that most surprises me about McCain's choice for V.P. is not her inexperience, or the transparent ploy of picking a woman on the presumption that other women only vote on the basis of who has ovaries, or her very right-wing politics (that's not surprising at all, that's his attempt to get the right-wing evangelical voters on his side) - but the fact that there is a scandal brewing about her in Alaska. I was under the impression that the campaigns did their best to carefully vet V.P. candidates so that they don't have any surprises about the person before Election Day. Anyone remember Thomas Eagleton? At least no one knew about his problems before he was nominated. Palin's ethics problems are being covered by TPM Muckraker in this very interesting story:

The scandal began on July 11, when Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was removed from his post with little explanation, a move whose abruptness quickly raised questions in Alaska. A few days later, Monegan decided to blow the whistle, and came forward to tell local media that he had been dismissed because he refused to fire trooper Mike Wooten, the ex-husband of Palin's sister, after having been pressured to do so by aides to Palin. (Monegan's replacement, former Kenai Chief of Police Chuck Kopp was only lasted two weeks on the job once past complaints of sexual harassment from 2005 were publicized.)

Critics pointed out that the effort to fire the trooper might have been directly related to the fact that Palin's family had a longstanding grievances with Wooten. In an internal state police investigation in 2005, Palin herself had accused Wooten of threatening to harm her father during the breakup of her sister's marriage. (The Palins claimed, among other things, that Wooten had used a taser on his 10-year-old stepson, and shot a moose without a permit.)

Since Monegan made his allegations, Palin has denied that she personally had a role in the effort to fire Wooten. On July 28, the state legislative council, a bipartisan panel of senators and representatives, appointed a special commission to probe the matter.

Her backtrack on her office's role was prompted by the preliminary findings of a separate ongoing investigation into the matter by the state Attorney General, launched on August 4, that she herself put into motion. At a press conference at which Palin revealed some of that investigation's finding, she acknowledged that in February, state troopers had taped a phone call from Frank Bailey, Palin's director of boards and commissions, whom she appointed in August 2007, in which Bailey appeared to push for the firing of Wooten on Palin's behalf.

In the call, Bailey appeared to say that Palin and her husband were frustrated that Wooten still had his job. "The Palins can't figure out why nothing's going on," Bailey said in the recorded phone call. "Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads ... 'Why is this guy representing the department, he's a horrible recruiting tool.' You know? So from their perspective everybody's protecting him."

The investigation could be particularly poorly timed for the GOP. Steve Branchflower, a former state prosecutor who is conducting the investigation, has a three-month contract for his work, which started August 1, and will end October 31, according to Alaska State Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Hollis French (D), who is overseeing the probe. French told TPMmuckraker that he expects Branchflower to release his report in the days before the November 4th presidential election.

A spokeswoman for Palin told TPMmuckraker that the governor's office would be fully cooperating with Branchflower.

Palin won the governor's office in 2006 as a squeaky clean reformer. "She portrayed herself as an open-government, ethical person," Rep. Mike Doogan, a Democratic state lawmaker, told TPMmuckraker. "You can see the obvious problem." He added: "These things don't help her [politically]."

And they may not help John McCain either.

(ed.note: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that the state legislature was in Democratic hands and ordered the probe of Monegan's firing. In fact, the senate is under the control of a coalition of Democratic and dissident Republican lawmakers and the House of Republicans. The state legislative council, which ordered the probe, is a bipartisan panel made up of members of both bodies.)

And this woman might be next in line to the presidency?!

Gustav in Cuba

And this is what Gustav just did to Cuba:

Gustav slammed into Cuba's tobacco-growing western tip as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane Saturday while both Cubans and Americans scrambled to flee the storm as it roared toward the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.

Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it hit Cuba's mainland after passing over its Isla de la Juventud province, where shrieking 150 mph (240 kph) winds toppled telephone poles, mango and almond trees and peeled back the tin roofs of homes.

It's happening again in New Orleans

Many in New Orleans Flee as Storm Grows

Hurricane Gustav grew significantly in intensity as it approached the Louisiana coast on Saturday, and officials issued increasingly urgent pleas for everyone to leave New Orleans....

City officials said if the threat worsened, as anticipated, they would to issue a mandatory evacuation order beginning Sunday morning, the first since Hurricane Katrina flooded the city three years ago.

Scary - they want everyone to leave. I hope it all works out better than it did three years ago, when anyone who watched CNN had a better idea of what was going on than President Bush.

Presidents' letter against UCU boycott call?

I've been following the recent discussions on Harry's Place and Engage about the arguments on the UCU activists' list with interest. And I've started to wonder what response there was to the UCU's renewed boycott call. Was there another call by U.S. university and college presidents to denounce the UCU motion? I don't remember that there was. (This is relevant to something I'm working on now). If any of my (not so numerous) readers know the answer to this, please let me know.

Am I liberal or a conservative?

Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly provides this summary of the Russia-Georgia war:

CHEAT SHEET....Since the Russo-Georgian war is complicated, I thought everyone might appreciate a quick primer:

* Shorter liberal view: "This isn't to condone Russia's conduct, but...."

* Shorter conservative view: "Yes, Saakashvili acted recklessly by sending in troops first, but...."

See? It's easier than you thought! You may now return to your regularly scheduled Olympics watching.

As far as I have been able to determine from reading *some* New York Times articles this week, I agree more with position B than with position A. So am I a conservative? I thought I was a liberal - after all, I'm enthusiastically for Obama....

So much for the helpfulness of political categories.

Terrorist Violence and Mental Illness

Dave Neiwert on Orcinus has an interesting post on right-wing violence and mental illness that I think can be extended to other forms of terrorism. His post is about the murder of the Arkansas Democratic Party chairman last week. He argues that despite the apparent mental illness of the perpetrator, political motivation also drove him to kill this man in particular. He writes:

Part of the problem is that we actually have seen this happen time after time after time: A mentally unstable person is inspired by hateful right-wing rhetoric to act out violently -- and yet because of that mental state, the matter is dismissed as idiosyncratic, just another "isolated incident." And over the months and years, these "isolated incidents" mount one after another.

But simply ascribing these acts to mental illness is a cop-out. It fails to account for the gross irresponsibility of the people who employed the rhetoric that inspired the violent action in the first place, and their resulting moral culpability.

I commented on his post -

Thank you Dave, for pointing out how mentally unstable people can be vulnerable to this kind of hate-mongering - either through the media or through recruitment by a violent group. Recently, while I was visiting Israel, there were two terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. The first one, which occurred in early July, involved a Palestinian man taking a large bulldozer and rampaging along one of the main streets in central Jerusalem. Three people were killed and many injured. In Israel, this attack was taken by the police, the media, and by ordinary people to be a terrorist attack motivated by hostility towards Jews/Israelis - given the context of Israeli-Palestinian hostility and the history of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. This was despite the fact that the man was a drug addict and had spent some time in jail for violence against a former Jewish girlfriend (whose child he fathered).

When I returned to the U.S. and was discussing this case with a friend, she referred to it not as a terrorist attack but as the attack of a mentally ill person - a conclusion which the American media had apparently made about this attack. I was very surprised to hear her say this (she is herself Jewish and pro-Israel so it wasn't motivated by her political beliefs).

And there was another attack of the same type the day I left the country, July 22 - another man used a mechanical digger to attack people on another main street. In this case he did not kill anyone, but injured about 20 people, including one man who lost his leg in the attack. This man lived in a Palestinian village that was known as supportive of Hamas, and his uncle was in an Israeli prison because he was a Hamas elected official from the West Bank. The assumption in Israel was also that his attack was politically motivated. Neither of these men was a member of any group (like Hamas itself, for example), and they had not been sent by any group.

For this latter reason, it seemed that some media outlets in the U.S. were unwilling to say that even the second attack was a terrorist attack. It seems to me that this involves a fundamental mistake - not all terrorism is committed by people involved in organized groups. Some terrorist attacks occur because of a mixture of personal motivation or instability and political inspiration - propaganda by the right wing in this country, or by Hamas in Palestine. Saying that someone with mental instability only acted because of that illness ignores the political context of the act.

And now for some home-grown terrorism

Yesterday morning, Jim Adkisson shot and killed two people in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

According to an AP story today, the police are reporting that Man shot churchgoers over liberal views.

Chief Sterling Owen IV said Monday that police found a letter in Jim D. Adkisson's car. Owen said Adkisson was apparently frustrated over being out of work and had a "stated hatred of the liberal movement."

Sara Robinson of Orcinus just wrote a very moving post on the events at the church, including describing how one church member, Greg McKendry, protected others from the gunman's shotgun blasts (and was killed) and how the gunman was tackled by church members. She describes the history of Unitarianism in the U.S. and how tough the members of the church have had to be to stand up for their convictions.

Some updates: David Neiwert reports on some of the items found at the gunman's home:

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show...

Adkisson targeted the church... "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

Adkisson told officers he left the house unlocked for them because "he expected to be killed during the assault."

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

Neiwert also commented on Orcinus - In Tennessee, eliminationism is no longer 'just a joke'.

Another blogger comments that the church had put up signs welcoming gays and lesbians to the community.

Other terrorism....

I suppose one might consider this a rather morbid preoccupation of mine, but these two headlines caught my attention this evening:

Istanbul Bombings Kill 15 Evening Strollers.

Two bombs exploded within minutes of each other late Sunday in a crowded pedestrian area of Istanbul, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 100 in what the city’s governor called a terrorist attack.

The double bombing appeared to be the worst incident of terrorist violence in Turkey in nearly five years and seemed to take the Turkish authorities completely by surprise. There were no immediate claims of responsibility, although Kurdish separatist militants were initially suspected. The Istanbul neighborhood that was targeted, which is almost completely residential, had no obvious reason to be the object of a terrorism plot....

The double-bombing appeared to be the most serious terrorism attack here since twin truck bombings at two Istanbul synagogues killed 23 people and wounded more than 300 on Nov. 15, 2003. An obscure group linked to Al Qaeda took responsibility for the synagogue blasts, which were the worst in a series of explosions blamed on Islamic extremist groups that year that killed more than 60 people.

At least 45 killed in explosions in India.

For the second time in two days, small explosions rocked an Indian city, this time in Ahmedabad on Saturday evening, killing at least 45 people. The Indian government said cities across the country had been put on alert for similar attacks....

On Friday, a series of similar low-intensity blasts went off in the southern technology hub of Bangalore, killing one woman.

In this case also the government does not know who set the bombs.

Shuki Kramer - injured in terror attack

The man who lost his leg in the terrorist attack on Tuesday afternoon describes what happened to him.

Shuki Kramer says he "remembers everything." The attorney who was seriously wounded and lost his leg in the latest bulldozer attack in Jerusalem told Ynet the memory of the attack "lives on inside him" but vowed not to let the injury stop him from enjoying life.

"It was a regular work day," Kramer says. "I was supposed to meet an old colleague so I rushed for the meeting. I made a mistake by deciding to take my Mercedes instead of the motorcycle I usually ride."

At first, Kramer says, he failed to realize he was in the midst of a terror attack.

"I was talking on the phone, and suddenly I felt someone hitting me from behind ... I came out of the car, and saw a bulldozer charging in my direction," the attorney said. "At that point I immediately realized this was a terror attack. I was completely focused and aware . . . I told myself: 'Shuki, you'll come out of it.' I tried to run to the sidewalk. He drove wildly towards me; I could feel terror getting closer."

Kramer says he also clearly recalls the moment he was hurt.

"I got away, but I felt that my left leg was hurt . . . I saw the Mercedes upturned next to me, and my leg was in the other direction, barely connected to me," he says, but notes that he was treated within a matter of seconds.

"A young guy showed up, he had curly hair and a beard. He was about to go on a trip so he had a first-aid kit. A short time later, a paramedic arrived from the King David Hotel," Kramer says. "At that point, I made my first phone call. When I'm in distress I always call my wife, Tammy....later my wife told me that I yelled on the phone: 'They killed me.'"

As a result of the injury, the doctors had to amputate Kramer's leg, yet he is optimistic despite the injury: "I'm surrounded by family and friends and I'll do everything possible, times a hundred, time a million, to go back to a normal routine. I won't give up anything in my life, not even sports."

Kramer says he is only angry at authorities for allowing the bulldozer driver who had a criminal record to drive such heavy machine.

"How do they give a guy with a criminal record and convictions such lethal weapon?" he says. "This is something that can be fixed immediately. This isn't for my sake, but for the next 'Shuki Kramer,' so at least other people will get to keep their legs."

At home with the family

I'm currently sitting in my family's vacation home in Westport, Mass., and my niece is trying to persuade my father ("Grandpa") and my brother (her father) to get them help her pay for a new MacBook. There are three of us sitting here and working on our laptops - and Eve (my stepmother) just took a photo of all of us working on our computers (although to tell the truth I think that only my brother is actually working). It's rather amusing here.

Outside, it's cool and rather humid - quite a change from hot and dry Jerusalem.

My niece is trying her best persuasive arguments but hasn't quite made the sale yet.

Another terrorist attack in Jerusalem

This afternoon there was another terrorist attack in Jerusalem, also committed by a driver who took his tractor and attacked a bus, cars, and pedestrians on King David St., close to the intersection with Keren ha-Yesod St. A friend of mine works in an office right there and heard (and saw) what happened. No one was killed by the terrorist, although quite a few were injured, one very seriously (leg severed). The terrorist himself was killed by a Border Policeman.

I happened to be near Jaffa Gate at the time - I had just come to the end of Mamilla St. closest to Jaffa Gate (after strolling down there - my intention was to go into the Old City and buy some photographs of old Jerusalem as gifts), and when I walked up the steps to the plaza before Jaffa Gate I heard a lot of police and ambulance sirens. With a lot of other people, I looked over the bridge towards the King David Hotel and wondered what was going on. Lots of police cars went under the bridge and up the road to where they could turn onto Hebron Rd. It didn't seem so good.

I started asking people what was going on and it turned out that there had been another tractor attack, this time on King David St. I called my friend and she told me what she had seen. I was rather shaken up and wondered what I should be doing. I walked inside the Jaffa Gate and stood around. The usual men trying to get one to buy from their shops came up to me, and I asked them if they had heard anything about what was happening - which they hadn't. I then saw more police and soldiers rushing out of the gate - two policemen on horses and a number of soldiers on foot. I went out a few minutes after they had gone and talked to a haredi guy I had previously spoken to - he said that they had headed for the Sultan's Pool area and further on below Yemin Moshe. They told people to get away. (I read on the news just now that apparently the police were chasing two men they thought were accomplices of the terrorist).

My friend on King David St. told me that there were shots then - this is when they shot at the driver and killed him. I went back inside the Jaffa Gate and went into a shop at the beginning of David St. - a watchseller where there was a television on showing the Israeli news. The shopkeeper and I watched the news for a while and then I went out again.

After I had calmed down a bit, I went into the Old City and found the photo shop that I had been looking for - Elia's Photos on 14 Hanka Rd., in the Christian Quarter. The man who owns the shop is Armenian, and the photos he sells were taken by his father, a refugee from the Armenian genocide, who came to Jerusalem in 1924. I bought a few for gifts and then decided it was time to go.

I went back to the Jaffa Gate and tried to figure out what to do. It seemed unlikely that a cab would be able to get me back to my apartment on Shimon St., because the police had closed off King David St. I started to walk, going back on Mamilla St. to King David and then walking down towards Gan ha-Pa'amon. At Mapu St. the road was blocked by police tape, so I turned onto Mapu St. and passed the bus that had been damaged by the tractor - the windows had been knocked out.

I then turned on Keren Ha-Yesod heading towards Baka and came to the intersection with King David, where there were still many police and soldiers, as well as the international press. People were standing around and looking - including me - and I could see a damaged car and the tractor itself. It wasn't as big as the one that wreaked havoc on Jaffa Rd. three weeks ago, but sufficiently big to overturn a car and run into others. It's really a miracle that no one was killed.

The Lubavitchers had set up a big banner right in the intersection - something about how the Rebbe thinks the government should be overturned. (Of course, the rebbe is dead, something these particular Lubavitchers don't acknowledge, since they think he's the Messiah and still alive - shades of Christianity). I thought it was pretty disgraceful that they had decide to come here to this place to shove their political opinions in our faces, and I told them so. I then continued down Keren ha-Yesod to where Emek Refaim and Bethelehem Rd. meet, and there my friend picked me up in a (thankfully) air-conditioned cab. And so I came home and took a shower.

Not what I wanted to experience on my last day in Jerusalem.

Oh, and by the way, this was actually a terrorist attack - the previous attack was considered by the BBC (but not by any Israelis) to be the attack of a disturbed man. The perpetrator of this assault is related to a Hamas official who is currently in an Israeli prison.

Radovan Karadzic captured

Some unequivocally good news (via Drink Soaked Trots) - Serbia captures fugitive Karadzic. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes and genocide over the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, in which at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys were killed. He was also charged over the shelling of Sarajevo and the use of UN peacekeepers as human shields. See this BBC story for more details on the charges. Ratko Mladic, who was chief of the Bosnian Serb army, has still not been captured - may it happen soon!

Benny Morris - nuclear war against Iran

Benny Morris has an utterly terrifying article in yesterday's New York Times arguing that Israel should bomb Iran's nuclear sites sometime after the U.S. presidential election and before the next president is sworn in - or else there will be a nuclear war between Israel and Iran.

Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.

He admits that if Israel's conventional strike fails, there will be Iranian counterattacks, both directly and through Iranian proxies like Hizbollah and Syria. He also says that it's unlikely that Western countries will then force Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which Iran will in turn work on even more strongly. His argument then slides into the possibility/probability that Israel will launch a nuclear first strike against Iran before Iran succeeds in building a nuclear weapon.

Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best — meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.

Morris should not have written this article and the New York Times should not have published it. I think that this is one of the most irresponsible articles I have ever read. I think that it is quite possible to read Morris' article not only as descriptive of what might happen, but also as urging Israel to attack Iran conventionally, and if that doesn't work, launch a nuclear war against it. The Israeli government doesn't even admit publicly that it has a nuclear capability.

I assume that Morris really cares about Israel - if so, why is he writing such inflammatory words in an already dangerous situation? Not to speak of the moral implications of such a possibility - hasn't Morris thought about the absolute immorality of launching a nuclear first strike on a nation which has not attacked Israel?

Physicians for Social Responsibility produced a report in 2006 on the consequences of an American nuclear strike on Iran (using nuclear bunker-buster bombs with the purpose of destroying its underground nuclear installations in addition to conventional bombing). They estimate that about 2.6 million people would die in the first 48 hours after the attack. In the wider region, over 10 million would be exposed to significant radiation. (See the article for complete information and how they arrived at the numbers).

Gershom Gorenberg has a far more reasonable article on Iran and Israel in the most recent American Prospect, laying out the reasons why such an Israeli attack would be unwise and ineffective.

We should not be listening to Benny Morris and I hope that someone high-up in the Bush administration is informing the Israeli government right now that such an attack should not even be contemplated.

Regev and Goldwasser

It's just been announced - the bodies have been positively identified as those of Regev and Goldwasser, and the army has sent officers to their families to give them the official announcement of their deaths.

In about an hour and a half, the handover of the Lebanese, including Samir Kuntar, will occur.

What can one say?

End of the Second Lebanon War

Two years and four days after it broke out, as Yaron Dekel of Israel Radio just said, "The Second Lebanon War has just ended."

Hizbollah just handed over two black coffins to the Israelis at Rosh Ha-Nikra, on the border between Israel and Lebanon. The Hizbollah spokesman announced, "Here are Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser." He was asked - "Are they alive or dead?" He said: "Now you will know their fate."

The Israelis will now proceed with making sure that these are indeed the bodies of Regev and Goldwasser, and when they do so, they will hand over to Hizbollah Samir Kuntar and the other Lebanese terrorists.

An article in today's New York Times says, "Hezbollah has said it carried out the 2006 raid in a bid to win the release of Mr. Kuntar, whom Hezbollah celebrates as a hero. Past attempts to secure his release include the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985."

Freeing Samir Kuntar

Haaretz reports on how the exchange will be conducted tomorrow to return Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser to Israel, in exchange for five Lebanese terrorists. They were abducted on July 12, 2006 - the attack by Hizbollah that sparked the Second Lebanon War. It's unclear whether Regev and Goldwasser are still alive - a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, was asking the military rabbinate to declare them dead, and there was a report in today's Haaretz that said that one of them was killed during the abduction two years ago. The Lebanese government has announced that tomorrow will be a national holiday to celebrate the "liberation of prisoners from the jails of the Israeli enemy and the return of the remains of martyrs."

I wrote about Kuntar before, on August 10, 2006, and about the horrendous crime he committed. It's disgusting that the Lebanese government is celebrating him.

One of the other things that Hizbollah is giving to Israel is a report on Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 and hasn't been heard from since. Olmert rejected the report that Hizbollah has already delivered, saying that it's unsatisfactory and didn't give Israel the information it needs about him.

If Regev and Goldwasser are still alive, then it will be worthwhile to set Kuntar free. Their lives and freedom are more important than he is. But if they are not - then is it worth it to set free this murderous, unrepentant terrorist?

Bradley Burston says it better than I can:

For Israelis, even after all these years, the release of Kuntar is a form of self-inflicted torture. So heinous, so unpardonable were his crimes, that American Jewish author and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, himself a veteran of the IDF, wrote on The Atlantic Monthly's Website last week, "As unbelievable as this sounds, Israel is actually thinking of swapping Samir Kuntar in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. Kuntar is perhaps the most terrible person held in an Israeli prison, a man who crushed the skull of a Jewish child against a rock. Sometimes, these prisoner exchanges don't seem worth it."

What are they for, these prisoner exchanges? Perhaps only for this: that when sending their troops into battle, Israeli commanders can continue to look them in the eye and say with candor and in good faith that if they are taken prisoner, Israel will spare no effort to bring them back.

It may be all we have left to endure this torture. But it may also be the essence of what we are.

Uniting Jerusalem through architecture?

On a cheerier note, today I visited a new pedestrian mall in Jerusalem that has positively beautiful architecture. It's an outside mall in the neighborhood called Mamilla, which is between the Old City and west Jerusalem. Before the 1948 war Mamilla St. was a lively commercial street, but then for 19 years (from 1948 to 1967) it was located in the no-man's-land between Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem. After Israel took the rest of the city in the 1967 war, it retained its no-man's-land look (sans road barriers and barbed wire) for a very long time. When I first came to Jerusalem to live, in the summer of 1987, it was a mess. In fact, it was a mess up until last year. Now, the whole area is being vigorously redeveloped. The new pedestrian mall includes the facades of buildings on Mamilla St. that were painstakingly moved, stone by stone, from Mamilla St. to the new mall. You can still see the numbering on the blocks.

It took me a little while actually to find the entrance to the walkway (which was quite unpleasant because it was so hot today) but it was definitely worth when I did. This new walkway provides a very useful service, in addition to its inherent worth - it creates the first real architectural connection between west Jerusalem and the Old City since 1967. Prior to this, if you wanted to walk to the Old City from west Jerusalem, you had to start at the end of Jaffa Rd. (near the old Jerusalem city hall), cross one of the busiest intersections in the city, and then walk along the outside walls of the Old City until you reached Jaffa Gate. When I first came to Jerusalem in 1987, this wasn't a bad walk, but there really wasn't anything there on the sidewalk - no stores, houses, nothing. In the last few years, every time that I've visited, there's been construction going on that's made the walk quite unpleasant.

They've now finished reconstructing the giant intersection and it's much more pleasant. It's possible to see what the goal of all the mess was - to create the connection between the eastern and western parts of the city.

Unfortunately, architecture alone has not managed to actually unite the eastern and western parts of the city. The divisions between east Jerusalem (Arab-Palestinian) and west Jerusalem (Jewish-Israeli) are deeper than ever - only underscored by the terrorist attack last week.

Some recent anti-semitism

I thought it would be interesting to highlight two recent examples of anti-semitism, one from the left and one from the right. The first example comes from Harry's Place and is a quote from the International Socialist, published by the (British) Socialist Workers Party:

Where would a socialist be who decided their political attitude to Malcolm X on the basis of his reactionary religious beliefs as a member of the Nation of Islam, to Bob Marley on the basis of his belief in the divinity of that old tyrant Haile Selassie or even to Hugo Chavez on the basis of his self-proclaimed Catholicism and admiration of the pope? Unfortunately some would-be socialists who have no difficulty grasping this in relation to Chavez or Marley, under the pressure of intense bourgeois propaganda are unable to apply the same approach when the religion in question is Islam. To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate, conservative, superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically).

The second example is from The Plank (TNR blog): Pat Buchanan Advertises His Book On Neo-Nazi Radio Show.

On June 29th, MSNBC personality and three-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan appeared on a neo-Nazi radio program to promote his new revisionist history of the Second World War, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. James Edwards is the host of the program "Political Cesspool," the stated mission of which is to "represent a philosophy that is pro-White." Edwards and his colleagues seek "to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races" and believe that "Secession is a right of all people and individuals. It was successful in 1776 and this show honors those who tried to make it successful in 1865."

According to the researchers at the Anti-Defamation League, who listened to the show, Buchanan defended Charles Lindbergh, saying, "…his reputation has been blackened because of a single speech he gave and a couple of paragraphs in it where he said that … the Jewish community is beating the drums for war … but frankly, no one has said what he said was palpably untrue."

Leaving the UCU - Norman Geras

I've been following the discussions on the Engage list and on Normblog about the responses to the UCU motion 25, which in effect is calling for a boycott of Israeli academics. (See my prior discussions here and here). A number of people have finally made the decision to resign from the union, including Eve Garrard, who made a particularly eloquent statement of why she is doing so. Today Norman Geras wrote about why he would resign from the union, if he were still teaching. There's one paragraph that I particularly like, because it expresses my feelings about the need not to be craven in the face of anti-semitism:

This, for me, is the decisive point. To be a Jew in UCU today is to be, in some sort, a supplicant, pleading with the would-be boycotters and those unmoved to oppose them and deliver them a decisive defeat, pleading for Israeli academics to be accepted as having the same status as other academics world-wide, pleading that Jewish supporters of the rights of academics in the Jewish state should not be made to feel isolated in their own union, like participants willy-nilly in an anti-Semitic campaign. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, shove that. Not today, not tomorrow, and not any time. To be a supplicant Jew is not a choice I would be willing to contemplate. I should come and entreat within the UCU for the same consideration for Jewish academics in Israel and Jewish academics in Britain as are extended to academics of every other nationality? Forget about it.

What he's expressing, it seems to me, is a simple manner of self-respect. (I don't know if he'd think it was simple, but it seems simple to me). I understand why some people are staying in the union, to fight the boycotters - but the choice to leave for the sake of one's self-respect seems paramount to me.

Women and Qumran

I went to a panel discussion tonight on the question of whether there were women among the Qumran sect. It was very interesting, with quite a variety of speakers. This was the sole public event of a three-day conference sponsored by the Israel Museum on the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. For abstracts of the talks, click here. The conference is being webcast live (not that my browser can probably stream it!). If it were open to the public, I might go to some of the sessions. Tonight's panel discussion was in Hebrew, while the conference is entirely in English.

Jodi Magness spoke on the archaeological evidence, specifically on whether there were skeletons of women found in the Qumran cemeteries. She said that there were some skeletons of women, but many more skeletons of men. The next speaker was Larry Schiffman, who discussed the halakhah at Qumran, which assumes the presence of women and discusses such things as laws of marriage, purity, Shabbat, etc. Tal Ilan was the next speaker, who discussed the phenomenon of sects in Second Temple Judaism in general. She compared the evidence for the Dead Sea Sect with accounts in Josephus of the Pharisees and in Philo of the Therapeutae. Her contention is that women tend to be involved in sects that do not have political power, so that women supported the Pharisees, and as we know there were both men and women among the Therapeutae. She cited a few Qumran texts, including one which specified that a woman may be a witness against her husband for transgressions he may perform. 

The next speaker, Eyal Regev, pointed out that a central Qumran text, Serekh ha-Yahad, which is usually taken as evidence that the sect was monastic and included only men, in fact never discusses whether only men can belong to the group. He contrasted this with discussions in other communities, such as early Christian monastic groups, or the Shakers, about whether women could belong an what the relations between men and women should be. Since the Serekh ha-Yahad doesn't mention any disputes like this, he assumes that it should not be taken as evidence that the sect only consisted of celibate men. 

Adolfo Roitman, the final speaker, who is the director of the Shrine of the Book (part of the Israel Museum, where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed) presented part of a movie that the Shrine of the Book made to show to tourists visiting the site. Originally it included a few scenes alluding to internal conflicts among the men of the community over whether to act on their attraction to women. These scenes were excised from the film because religious people in Jerusalem objected to them. From what he showed, the film seemed to run counter to everything the other speakers were suggesting - it assumed that the entire Qumran community was male and celibate, and run according to the rules of the Serekh ha-Yahad. He said that after the panel discussion tonight, a third edition of the film might include another point of view on that issue.

A number of people asked questions afterwards - most of which were in fact mini-lectures - but the panel members were finally able to address the questions. 

All in all, a very interesting evening.

Early Morning, Jerusalem

I woke up about an hour ago (5:30 a.m. my time) because the light woke me up. I got up and opened the door - and felt the nice cool, damp air of early morning. The birds were singing, and it was still cloudy. I looked up at the misty air breezing past. What I didn't hear (or see) were the sounds of other human beings. Across the street there was a woodpecker pecking away in a tall palm tree. Then a man walked by, holding his tallit bag (bag with his prayer shawl in it). He went into the synagogue next door. According to halakhah (Jewish law) the earliest time to say the Sh'ma ("Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one") is before sunrise, when it is possible to distinguish a white from a blue thread.

The pomegranate tree in the garden.

I went back inside to my little apartment and lay down again, trying to fall asleep. I began to hear more sounds of the city awakening, and finally decided to get up, despite wanting to get more sleep. I opened the door again to the garden (I have a one-room studio apartment that is attached to a much larger apartment with a nice garden) and saw a couple of other men walking by carrying their tallitot. Just sitting here now I remembered that it was Thursday morning, and the Torah is read in synagogue on Monday and Thursday mornings - this was the reason for the earlier service (I imagine it was earlier, but since I try to be asleep at this hour of the morning, I'm not sure). When I opened the door this time I could hear the sounds of the men praying next door.

(update, 6:42 a.m.) I can now hear the Torah reading from next door.

Just a normal, quiet, Jerusalem morning.

Terrorist attack in Jerusalem

There was a terrorist attack earlier today in Jerusalem - a Palestinian from east Jerusalem drove a bulldozer (which he drove as a part of his job working on the construction of the light rail in the city) into a couple of city buses, some cars, and pedestrians on Jaffa Rd., near to the old central bus station. At least 3 or 4 people were killed, and dozens were injured. I was sitting here in the National Library reading "Joseph and Aseneth" (a pseudepigraphic work about Aseneth, the wife of Joseph) when I checked the news and saw the first reports of the attack. Scary and unnerving. May it be the last one.

Gay Pride in Jerusalem

Balloon arch.

I went to the gay pride march in Jerusalem on Thursday night (see here for posts on past Jerusalem gay pride marches, including the one I went to last year). It was much more relaxed than last year. Only about 2,000 police (still a lot!) were on hand for security (instead of the 7,000) last year. They were much less ubiquitous than last year. Apparently the leaders of the haredi community in Jerusalem decided that it wasn't worth holding protests against the parade - it would only call attention to it, so the police felt less need for a massive presence to protect the marchers.

However, at about 3:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon (while I was getting ready to go over to Independence Park, the starting point of the march), I received a very strange phone call. I picked up the phone, expecting to hear a friend's voice, but instead I heard someone shouting in Yiddish. It turned out to be an automatic phone call, telling the listener about an anti-gay rally in Shabbat Square (the center of Meah Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem) set to begin at 4:00 p.m., and imploring attendance at this rally. I heard later on the radio that there had been a protest in Meah Shearim and that some garbage bins were set on fire (a favorite tactic of ultra-Orthodox agitators when they're protesting something).

I also saw some anti-gay graffiti in the city, but that was really the extent of the anti-gay action that occurred this year.

The parade this year seemed to me to have more younger people, and fewer of the liberal Jerusalemite pro-human rights crowd than last year. There was a hearty representation of Hadash, the Israel communist party, as well as of Meretz (a left-wing Zionist party). The communists in particular chanted very loudly for the whole length of the march. There were also representatives of Bat-Kol, an organization for religious lesbians which I hadn't heard of before. People also came from other cities - Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva - in organized groups to support their Jerusalemite kin.


Red flags - note the hammer and sickle!

At the end there was a rally in Gan Ha-Pa'amon (Liberty Bell Park) called in Hebrew a "happening" (הפניג), the sixties word which has charmingly remained in Hebrew. It lasted about an hour, with several speakers. The MC was a drag queen who was very funny. The head of the Open House (the Jerusalem LGBT center which organized the march) spoke, as did an openly gay member of the Jerusalem city council, someone from Meretz, a couple of transgender people, and a representative of Bat Kol.


Bat Kol balloons.

All in all, a satisfying march, unmarred by the commercialism that seems to have taken over gay pride marches in the U.S.

Visiting Israel!

I just arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a month's stay, most of which will be spent in the National Library working on two chapters of my book - Angels’ Tongues and Witches’ Curses: Women and Ritual Power in Late Antique Judaism. I'll be working on researching two chapters.

Chapter 4 is “‘She Spoke in the Language of the Cherubim’: Women and Revelatory Experience in Early Jewish and Christian Literature,” and chapter 5 is “Does God Reveal His Mysteries to Women?” Chapter 4 compares early Jewish and Christian literature that depicts women as recipients of divine revelation. The Jewish texts include Philo’s On the Contemplative Life, the Testament of Job, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo, while the Christian texts include Montanist literature and the apocryphal acts.

Chapter 5 discusses rabbinic interpretations of biblical stories of women’s encounters with God and the angels (for example, the matriarchs, Hagar, and the mother of Samson), which occur mostly as announcements to women that they will bear a significant male child (for example, the announcement to Sarah that she will give birth to Isaac, recounted in Genesis 18).

So far, I've not gotten any work done, since Thursday was spent suffering from jet lag, and then Friday was erev Shabbat. I'll be heading to the library tomorrow to get some work done.

Obama Claims Nomination

Obama Claims Nomination; First Black to Lead a Major Party Ticket.

Yes we can!

Obama Quits His Church

I think it is a good thing that Obama quit his church. Much as I like him, I do find it difficult to understand why he remained a member of the church for so long. I saw the "performance" of Rev. Michael Pfleger on CNN the other day. Pfleger "delivered a tirade against Mrs. Clinton that included fake tears, a high-pitched voice and top-of-the-lungs screaming." Pfleger is white, and the sermon seemed to me to be an attempt to (badly) imitate a black preacher's style in order to appeal to the congregation of the church. It was very strange, and I found it very offensive. I also didn't understand how he was even able to make such a partisan political sermon in the face of the Catholic Church's prohibition of priests getting involved in partisan politics.

The text of Resolution UCU 25

This is from the Stop the Boycott website:

Motion 25: Palestine and the occupation: University of Brighton - Eastbourne, University of Brighton - Grand Parade, University of East London Docklands, National Executive Committee

Congress notes the

1. continuation of illegal settlement, killing of civilians and the impossibility of civil life, including education;

2. humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel and the EU;

No mention, of course, of the role of Hamas in making it nearly impossible even to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza - for example, the bombing of the crossing points by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.

3. apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy;

This is the part of the resolution that is a demonstrable lie. Most of the Israelis whom I know who work against the occupation are, in fact, academics, teaching at a variety of colleges and universities in Israel. I would think that if one were calling for a boycott of Israeli academics that one should ascertain whether in fact they support the occupation.

4. legal attempts to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions; and legal advice that such debates are lawful

Legal attempts to prevent the UCU from taking a step that is illegal under British law! Whose legal advice is it that such debates are lawful? The legal advice that was given last year, and which stopped discussion of the boycott, stated that even in discussing such a boycott the union was coming close to violation of the Race Relations Act.

Congress affirms that

5. criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-semitic;

6. pursuit and dissemination of knowledge are not uniquely immune from their moral and political consequences;

Congress resolves that

7. colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating;

8. UCU widely disseminate the personal testimonies of UCU and PFUUPE delegations to Palestine and the UK, respectively;

9. the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions;

10. UCU facilitate and encourage twinning arrangements and other direct solidarity with Palestinian institutions;

11. Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.

British academic union passes boycott motion

I think that the most disheartening detail in Eve Garrard's description of the University and College Union's Congress passing the motion to boycott Israeli academics was this item: "There was a real, palpable desire in the meeting to take some action against Israel. An otherwise rather somnolent audience woke up at the first mention of Palestine, and applauded every suggestion that action should be taken against Israel. A congress which had just passed very moderate motions on Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan, about solidarity with trade unions and asylum seekers, and putting pressure on governments, quite clearly felt that these measures weren't sufficient for Israel's crimes: that for Israeli academics, nothing but punishment would do."

So Israel is worse than Burma, Zimbabwe, and Sudan? What is wrong with these people? What else is this other than anti-semitism?

McCain repudiates Hagee - when will Jewish leaders follow?

An article in the Huffington Post - McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will - seems to have made enough waves about pastor John Hagee to persuade John McCain it was time to reject Hagee's endorsement of him. Sam Stein, the Huffington Post writer, learned of an offensive sermon by Hagee from Bruce Wilson's website, Talk 2 Action.

A couple of days before this I was cruising the Talk 2 Action site and came across the audio clip from one of Hagee's sermons in the 1990s, in which he referred to Hitler as a "hunter" who was sent to harry the Jews into Palestine. Wilson introduced the clip by referring to Hagee's book Jerusalem Countdown: "In his 2006 book 'Jerusalem Countdown', Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive."

I just took a look at Jerusalem Countdown (the revised 2007 edition, available on Amazon) and discovered that Hagee put almost the same words as he uttered in his sermon into the book (pp. 132-33).

The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agents God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.

“But now I will send for many fisherman” declares the Lord, “and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.”
Jeremiah 16:16 (NIV)

I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for the Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.

A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God’s fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.

God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler’s Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have – Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God’s Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become reality.

This passage is part of a longer discussion about how the return of Jews to Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel fulfill God’s plan to restore Israel, as outlined in Ezekiel 37. He maintains that even though the state has physically been established, it is still waiting for spiritual life (p. 131).

At the conclusion of Ezekiel 37, the nation of Israel had been physically reborn. Today they have a flag; they have a constitution; they have a prime minister and a Knesset. They have a police force, a powerful military might, and the world’s best intelligence agencies. They have Jerusalem, the City of God. They have a nation. They have everything but spiritual life.

Like the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, Israel waits the spiritual awakening of the breath of God and the coming of Messiah.

Even without discovering the sermon, anyone who read Hagee's book could have found out that he considered Hitler to be the "hunter" who providentially made sure that the Jews (minus the six million who died at the hands of the Nazis!) returned to the land of Israel. For Hagee, Hitler did God's will. I guess those who died in the Holocaust were just the collateral divine damage to enable the state to be established, in Hagee's opinion. For Hagee, this is a sign of God's "boundless love" for the Jewish people. Mass death=love?!

I don't understand how anyone could believe in a God who would do that. As Yehuda Bauer (well-known Israeli historian of the Holocaust) wrote in 2000:

For me, the existence of God after the Holocaust is impossible from a moral point of view. It makes belief in God a vast problem, quantitatively and qualitatively. One and a half million children - of the Chosen People - under the age of thirteen were murdered! This is not a question of free choice because the children didn't have any free choice. It is the Nazis who had the free choice, not the children. So if there is a God that in one way or another controls the destiny of the world - even if that God retires and does not wish to do it, he can and he knows; otherwise he's not a God. He's responsible for the murder - no way out. No answer, human or divine, is satisfactory for the murder of one and a half million children - and if there is an answer from high above, then it is the answer of Satan, and rather than believe in Satan, I will not believe.

I don't come to the same conclusion that Bauer does - that it is impossible to believe in God after the Holocaust - but I agree with him that if one believes that God permitted the Holocaust to occur, that one believes in a Satanic God.

What's more, Hagee is saying that the only place Jews should be living is in Israel - so those of us who live in the United States and other countries are defying God's will, and presumably should suffer the divine consequences.

Tell me again why this man is considered to be "pro-Israel" or "pro-Jewish"? Tell me again why "Jewish leaders" like Joe Lieberman are willing to cosy up to Hagee because of his supposed "support" for Israel?

For my previous posts on Hagee - click here.

Full-blooded Americans?

Kathleen Parker's op-ed last week in the Baltimore Sun is bizarre, especially this section:

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values and made-in-America. Just as we once had and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Mr. Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Full-bloodedness? Blood equity? Roots? What do they have to do with patriotism or heritage? Parker seems to be arguing, in an extremely inept way, that Barack Obama isn't a true American because his father was Kenyan. During the rest of the article she slams on the usual suspects of multiculturalism and illegal immigration. Her real point seems to be an insistence on a "blood and soil" definition of Americanism.

Feh.

Update: Or, as Molly Ivins said of Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican convention: "It sounded better in the original German."

Why won't some people vote for Obama?

An article in yesterday's Washington Post makes it clear that some white voters don't vote for Obama because he's black (or because they believe the lie that he's a radical Muslim) - Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause. Campaigners for Obama in some states have run into rank racism.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

On another race that's being decided tonight - in the Mississippi first congressional district, the Democrat (Childers) is defeating the Republican (Davis) 53% to 47%, with 58% of the vote counted. It would be remarkable if Childers defeated Davis, as this article from Talking Points Memo describes.

Lebanese bloggers

For those interested in blogging by Lebanese bloggers on the current fighting in Lebanon between Hezbollah and many others (may it not actually turn into the new Lebanese civil war), I've found these blogs very insightful:

Jeha's Nail
Blacksmiths of Lebanon
Across the Bay
Beirut Spring
From Beirut to the Beltway
Bad Vilbel

Obama and Lebanon

More on Obama and the Middle East, this time Lebanon. An aticle by Lee Smith on Michael Totten's website - The Tea Boy - calls into question his knowledge and tendencies in Lebanon, which according to his analysis might lead Obama to be much too accommodating to Syria. This would definitely not be good for Lebanon, which is backing Hezbollah in its attempt to take over the country. See also the analysis of Jeha - Between the lines. He says: "Could someone tell that neophyte that he is not yet President of the United States? He will have plenty of chances to “engage” with Syria at our expense, when or if he becomes "President of these 57 states". We may be down, but we're not out yet..."

Obama in North Carolina and Indiana

It's very interesting watching the presidential primary results tonight. The television networks called North Carolina for Obama as soon as the polls closed, but they still haven't called Indiana (apparently because one county in the northwestern part of the state is waiting to report all of its votes until after completing the counting of all the absentee ballots). It seems unlikely, however, that he'll take Indiana, even if he does very well in Lake County. It's pretty close, though.

Jeremiah Wright on Zionism and Israel

I used to have hope that Barack Obama's candidacy was really a sign that this country was changing - that it was possible that a black man might actually be the Democratic presidential candidate and even win the presidency. I didn't expect miracles from him if he became president, but his candidacy gave me hope. Now, even since before the Pennsylvania election last week, I started to lose hope - because of the attacks of the Clinton and McCain campaigns, the malicious nonsense being spread about how he's a Muslim and hates Israel, the attacks from a whole host of right-wing pundits. Now, Jeremiah Wright seems to have decided that he wants to completely destroy Obama's chances for becoming the Democratic candidate - out of his own selfish desire to make a name for himself. He made a speech today at the National Press Club. I'm not going to write about all of what he said, only the part that upsets me the most.

As I said on the Bill Moyers' show, one of our news channels keeps playing a news clip from 20 years ago when Louis [Farakkhan] said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion.

This is a nonsensical statement. Zionism is a political movement, not a religion. And Louis Farakkhan did call Judaism a "gutter religion." (See this pro-Farakkhan website for a corroboration of that statement - Blacks and Jews).

And he was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter is being vilified for, and Bishop Tutu is being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago.

Which UN resolutions is he talking about? The 1975 resolution that declared that "Zionism is racism"? Or the one that abrogated that resolution? Somehow I suspect that he's referring to the first one.

Later on in the talk Wright said:

MODERATOR: You have likened Israeli policies to apartheid and its treatment of Palestinians with Native Americans. Can you explain your views on Israel?
WRIGHT: Where did I liken them to that? Whoever wrote the question, tell me where I likened them.
Jimmy Carter called it apartheid. Jeremiah Wright didn't liken anything to anything. My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist, that Israelis have a right to exist, as I said, reconciled one to another.
Have you read the Link? Do you read the Link, Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding, where Palestinians and Israelis need to sit down and talk to each other and work out a solution where their children can grow in a world together, and not be talking about killing each other, that that is not God's will?
My position is that the Israel and the people of Israel be the people of God who are worrying about reconciliation and who are trying to do what God wants for God's people, which is reconciliation.

I'm glad to hear that he thinks Israel has a right to exist, but why should Israel be expected to be the "people of God" in his Christian terms? Does he make the same demand of Palestinians or other Arabs? I certainly don't see it in this speech.

Now what about the group "Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding"? The name rang a bell, from my reading online about Daniel McGowan, the anti-semitic Holocaust denying emeritus professor from Hobart and William Smith College. And in fact, it's the same group that's published some of McGowan's prose on its website. The website is: AMEU and the Link is its newsletter.

From what I can see from its website, AMEU isn't interested in dialogue or reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians - it's interested in the dissolution of the state of Israel. And this is the group that Wright is recommending to us a source of inspiration for reconciliation?

My fear about Obama is that no matter what he says about Wright now - however harshly he denounces him - that this means the utter destruction of his campaign.

AAR & SBL - together again?

The AAR has finally come to its senses and decided that it's okay for the AAR and SBL to hold their Annual Meetings at the same time of the year and in the same city.

April 14, 2008

Dear Fellow Members of the American Academy of Religion:

I write today to alert you to an action taken by your Board of Directors at its meeting this past weekend.

In light of the scheduling and logistical problems connected with the proposed Independent Annual Meetings, and given the views our members expressed in our recent member survey, the Board, in its April 12, 2008 meeting, approved a recommendation that the AAR begin scheduling concurrent, yet independent Annual Meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature as soon as is feasible....

I cancelled my membership in the AAR because of its unilateral decision to stop organizing Annual Meetings together with the SBL. I learned of this decision because of an e-mail from the SBL:

The SBL Council discussed this announcement at its meeting on April 26, 2008, and offers the following comment to SBL members.

We are pleased to hear of this new development, and wish to reaffirm our continued interest in meeting at the same time and in the same city as the AAR. The SBL was not involved in the original decision by AAR; nor have we been involved in the present one. We will certainly discuss with AAR the feasibility of meeting in the same city at the traditional time (the weekend before US Thanksgiving) as soon as it is possible given present scheduling commitments and contractual arrangements. We are already scheduled through 2012 (Chicago) and 2013 (Baltimore). Once discussions commence with AAR regarding future concurrent meetings, the SBL Executive Director will report regularly on the progress in making this a practical reality. We firmly believe that holding the SBL Annual Meeting at the same time and in the same city as other organizations involved in the advancement of biblical, religious, theological, and related academic studies is a good idea. It brings together people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds to exchange ideas and build relationships.

Great! It made no sense to stop holding the meetings together, and I hope that the two associations will start working immediately to make the joint meetings possible again.

How predictable!

IAEA head slams US for holding back info on Syrian reactor. "Additionally, 'the director general views the unilateral use of force by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the nonproliferation regime,' it said."

So if the US and Israel had informed the IAEA ahead of time about this reactor, would the IAEA have done anything about it? Or would there have been a long and fruitless series of discussions with the Syrian regime, first trying to get permission to see the reactor, then getting permission to do tests - by which time it would have been fully operational. This way, the reactor is destroyed and the North Koreans are outed as having helped the Syrians. What is bad about that?

Obama's Pastor

Obama is going to have to denounce the statements of the pastor of the church he's belonged to for many years in much stronger terms than he has previously if he has any hopes of becoming president. This ABC news story has many very damaging quotes from Obama's Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11.

This is what I find the most offensive - Jeremiah Wright speaking in terms very reminiscent of Ward Churchill's vile article after the September 11 attacks:

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

He even uses the same metaphor as Churchill - chickens coming home to roost.

And Obama's campaign hasn't been nearly forceful enough in its denunciations of Wright -

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

I don't really care if Obama doesn't think of the pastor of his church in political terms - a lot of other people will, and will identify him with the comments that Wright has made over the years. He has to denounce him, and quickly. I don't believe for a minute that Obama believes the same things as Wright does - but he has to make that crystal clear.

Leon Greenman

This is a moving obituary of "the only Englishman to be sent to Auschwitz," Leon Greenman, who died on March 7 at age 97.

Leon Greenman was the only Englishman to be sent to Auschwitz. His wife and son died in the gas chambers, and for two and a half years he was a slave labourer, subjected to beating and experimentation. He vowed that his life thereafter would be devoted to keeping the memory of such horror alive. His final decades were spent in unceasing testimony against the crimes of Nazism, and determined campaigning against any modern revival of fascism.

South Jerusalem

Matthew Yglesias just tipped me to this new blog - South Jerusalem - written by Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman. Haim's entry on why I like South Jerusalem really encapsulates my favorite things about South Jerusalem - Emek Refaim, Baka, Katamon, Talpiot. This is my place in Jerusalem. I love this line - "Add to that the fact that South Jerusalem is the only place in the world where you can be a left-wing, skeptical Orthodox Zionist Jew and feel like you are part of a mass movement." Amen!

Why do writers pretend to be Indians?

This article - Why do writers pretend to be Indians? - may shed some light on the psychology of Ward Churchill.

To the Westerner who 'understands' the terrorist

Another great column by Bradley Burston - To the Westerner who "understands" the terrorist - on yesterday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem.

Today's dead

1) Terrorist attack on Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Kiryat Moshe kills eight yeshiva students, one as young as 15.

2. Islamic Jihad terrorists blew up an IDF jeep on the Gaza border, attacked a rescue crew and killed one soldier. About the roadside bomb that blew up the jeep - "Israeli officials said that the explosive device was large, shaped and sophisticated. They suggested that it was built by militants who had received weapons training in Iran, the main sponsor of Islamic Jihad." Could this be one of the explosively formed penetrators that have been so devastating against American armored vehicles in Iraq? They were used by Hezbollah in the Lebanon war in 2006.

3. Workers at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha came under fire from the same group of Islamic Jihad terrorists.

4. A Palestinian terrorist was killed by a Israeli airstrike on a rocket-launching team.

5. Seven Qassams were fired into Israel, two hit houses in Sderot, including that of Elisheva Turjeman.

Jews and Hagee

Two good articles on Hagee & Jews - one from Gershom Gorenberg, one from Matthew Yglesias. Both address the question of why there hasn't been more Jewish outrage about Hagee's support for McCain.

Gorenberg, who has written on the type of Protestant theology that Hagee adheres to - dispensational premillennialism (in his book The End of Days) - points out that Hagee's 1996 book, Beginning of the End: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist "expressed uncommon sympathy for" Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin.

Hagee is a fine man to be supporting John McCain - someone who thinks that political assassination is a legitimate way to change a nation's policies!

More on Obama and the Jews (and a little Ralph Nader thrown in for good measure)

The same talk that Obama gave to Jewish leaders in Cleveland (which I quoted from in my last post) also has some more interesting statements from him, as well as the latest slime from Ralpha Nader.

He [Obama] also again noted his disagreement with some of the critical statements on Israel made by the pastor of his church, which he ascribed to the latter's support for the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa at a time that Israel continued to trade with the regime there.

"He is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with," he said. "And I suspect there are some people in this room who have heard relatives say some things that they don't agree with, including, on occasion, directed at African Americans."

He concluded, "I understand the concerns and the sensitivities, and one of my goals constantly in my public career has been to try to bridge what was a historically powerful bond between the African American and Jewish communities that has been frayed in recent years."

Also on Sunday, Ralph Nader, while declaring his third-party candidacy for the US presidency, attacked Obama for allegedly concealing his "pro-Palestinian" feelings.

"He's run a brilliant tactical campaign, but his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself," Nader charged on NBC's Meet the Press. "He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state senate... Now he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people."

Nader called the Palestinian-Israeli conflict a "real off-the-table issue for the candidates," including Obama, whom he described as "the first liberal evangelist in a long time" to run for president.

"The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He's got no credibility," an Obama campaign adviser said about Nader.

Obama's campaign on Monday responded to Nader's attacks on the senator's position on Gaza.

"Barack Obama's longstanding support for Israel's security is rooted in his belief that no civilians should have to live with the threat of terrorism," the campaign statement said. "In Gaza, Hamas continues to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians every day, and that's why it is long past time that Hamas renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist and abides by past agreements."

Democratic National Committee consultant Matt Dorf, who also does Jewish outreach, also dismissed the Nader accusations as off the mark and meaningless.

"If he thinks there are voters out there to be had by demonizing Barack Obama's record, including on Middle East issues, he's not going to find them," Dorf said. "Nader's going to get even less support than he got last time."

I guess Nader has decided that once again it's his turn to play the spoiler role vis-a-vis a Democratic candidate for President. Nader is a star example of the principle that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." He is seeking perfection, and can't abide anything less than perfect that might actually succeed. For him, ideological perfection is much preferable to doing something that actually might bring practical results.

Obama on Israel

James Kirchick, one of the bloggers on the New Republic's blog Plank, has just posted a dumb comment about something that Obama recently said. He's getting all in a lather at the following statement:

"I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.

"If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress," he said. He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than "just crushing the opposition" is being "soft or anti-Israel."

Obama made the comments in a closed-door meeting with several members of Cleveland's Jewish community, who will be participating in the crucial Ohio primary to be held next Tuesday.

The candidate stressed his commitment to a secure, Jewish Israel and to pursuing robust diplomacy - while keeping all options on the table - to ensure that Iran doesn't acquire nuclear weapons, according to a transcript of the off-the-record event.

Obama defended - and distanced - himself from criticism that has been leveled at him about some of his campaign advisers and endorsers, but he suggested that too black-and-white a perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict helped no one. He described the debate in Israel as "much more open" than it often is in the United States.

"Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the US pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation," he continued. "All I'm saying, though, is that actually ultimately should be our goal - to have that same clear-eyed view about how we approach these issues."

Kirchick seems to think that Obama is interfering in Israeli politics by mentioning Likud, and compares him to Jim Moran, who said, "I'm never going to satisfy people who think we should be giving unequivocal support to the Likud Party." About this Kirchick says, "Such protestations about the all-encompassing power of 'Likud' is a trope in the victimization rhetoric of peace-processors who constantly blame Israel for the region's woes while pretending to be valiant friends of the Jewish State."

Obama isn't making a statement about Likud being "all-powerful" (which at the moment it certainly is not, since it's in the opposition, not in the government). Instead, he's pointing out that one can be pro-Israel without going along with all of the political positions of the Likud party, a point which is in fact often forgotten in the pro-Israel community. AIPAC, for example, seems quite able to welcome the support of someone like John Hagee (who is really advocating the destruction of Israel in his end-time theology), but does not countenance even mild criticism of Israel's actions.

What I like about these quotations from Obama is that they reveal a real acquaintance with the different political views in the American Jewish community, and a willingness to be a true advocate for peace alongside a firm support for Israel. I hope that this doesn't sink him in the end with Jewish voters who get too scared at what he is saying and misread his willingness to work for peace for a lack of support for Israel.

I think that he is spot on about why the pro-Israel community in the U.S. is often more protective (than Israeli opinion). This is an impulse that I have often felt myself, even though my politics are much to the left of the Likud. I get very tired of hearing the reflexive anti-Israel opinions of the American and European left, many European nations, and of course all of the U.N. resolutions that condemn Israel without also condemning Arab actions against Israel. In the face of that onslaught, it's tempting simply to support Israel and everything it does, out of the conviction that even if Israel adopted the methods of "flower power" tomorrow, it wouldn't matter to those who routinely savage Israel.

American religious groups

I just took a look at the Pew religion survey (which I referenced in the previous entry), and figured out the numbers for each religious group according to the percentages from the survey. I multiplied the percentages by the current number for the U.S. population, which I got from the Census Bureau's website - 303,549,926. Since I was using the Pew survey's percentages, the figures are identical for those religions which had the same percentage in the survey, which is obviously artificial. What has really gotten attention in the press is the fairly large number of unaffiliated people (16%), but I think all of the numbers are interesting.

Following up on an earlier series of posts about the relative numbers of Muslims and Jews in the United States, this survey estimates that the Jewish population is 1.7% of the American population (around 5.2 million people) and that the Muslim population is .6% of the American population (about 1.8 million people). The Muslim figure is at the lower end of the estimated number of Muslims in America. The Jewish figure is in accord with lower estimates of Jewish population made by various recent Jewish population surveys.

Other interesting facts that come from the survey - the total number of Catholics is not much less than the total number of Evangelical Protestants: about 79.8 million vs. 72.5 million. Buddhists and Hindus are 2.1 million and 1.2 million respectively. Unitarians are a little over 900,000, while New Age (including Wiccans and pagans) is about 1.2 million.

American religious groups - estimated total numbers

Evangelical Protestant - 79,833,630
Historically Black Churches - 20,944,944
Mormon - 5,160,348
Orthodox (Christian) - 1,821,299
Jewish - 5,160,348
Muslim - 1,821,299
Unaffiliated - 48,871,538 [this includes: Atheist - 4,856,798, Agnostic - 7,285,198, Nothing in particular - 36,729,541]
Mainline Protestant Churches - 54,942,536 [this includes mainline Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglican/Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalist, Quaker]
Catholic - 72,548,432
Jehovah's Witness - 2,124,849
Buddhist - 2,124,849
Hindu - 1,214,199
Unitarians and other liberal faiths - 2,124,849
New Age - 1,214,199

More on McCain/Hagee

Another thing that I don't understand about McCain's acceptance of Hagee's endorsement is what he thinks the effect that Hagee's anti-Catholicism will have on Catholic voters in the general election. Isn't this just a gift that McCain is giving to the Democratic nominee, who can present him or herself as the candidate of religious tolerance? Hasn't it sunk into McCain's consciousness how many Americans are Catholic (it's the largest single Christian denomination in the country, much bigger than the Southern Baptist Convention)? And Catholics don't like having their religion dissed any more than anyone else does.

What Hagee really believes about Jews

Bruce Wilson of the Talk to Action blog has posted a long story about John Hagee's views about Jews - in which it becomes quite clear that he is anti-semitic in so many ways! And this man not only has endorsed McCain for president (and had his endorsement enthusiastically welcomed by McCain), but has also been welcomed by AIPAC (at their annual conference last year). Why are our so-called Jewish "leaders" so oblivious to the dangerous flaws of the people they've embraced as our "friends"?

Israel blues - המצב

Another few events have recently occurred that have made me feel even more hopeless than usual about the situation (המצב) in the Middle East. First of all, the escalation of fighting between Hamas and Israel - the killing of a student at Sapir College, the increase in the range of Hamas rockets to northern Ashkelon. Any response that Israel makes to the Hamas attacks is condemned - if it's military, then because innocent civilians get killed (which they do); if it's through an economic blockade, because innocent civilians, again, are being harmed for the actions of the terrorists. Israel has withdrawn, totally, from Gaza.

Why should Israel be expected to aid people who respond only with violence? Even when Israel opens the crossings between Israel and Gaza to allow humanitarian shipments in, there are attacks at the crossing points themselves. Why can't aid go through Egypt? I actually thought it was good when Palestinians knocked down the wall between Egypt and Gaza and were able to go to Egyptian Rafah and buy supplies. Why can't that be made permanent? (I suppose one of the problems is that this would make it easier for trained terrorists to enter Gaza, which seems to have been the case - some Iranian-trained terrorists who had entered Gaza recently were killed by an IDF strike, which was one of the factors that led to the escalation from Hamas).

I was talking to a (non-Jewish) friend the other day and brought up the topic of Israel/Palestine. I was saying that about 2/3 of Israelis in a recent poll had said that they were willing to negotiate with Hamas for a cease-fire. She pointed out that it's unlikely that Hamas itself actually wants to negotiate with Israel, since what they want is the destruction of Israel. This same friend has met members of the Israeli peace camp and knows that not all Israelis are right wing (and in fact that they are very ill-served by their political leadership). It was actually quite nice talking to her and having the expansive feeling that it was possible to be pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-Palestinan at the same time.

Then there's U.S. politics. Barak Obama is being attacked by right-wingers because he's supposedly anti-Israel (because he actually expressed compassion for Palestinians, among other things). But actually he's just as pro-Israel as Clinton or McCain. Read his recent speech to AIPAC. He says the same thing the other candidates say. One of the things that was giving me some hope was his capability to see that there is right on both sides.

And then McCain gets endorsed by John Hagee, the right-wing nut case who believes that the best way to love Israel is to hope that it gets blown to smithereens in the final war of Armageddon. And the same media that's all over Obama for not renouncing Farakhan vigorously enough does nothing to pressure McCain to renounce Hagee's support. The same Hagee that some deluded Jews have started to believe is really "pro-Israel." I recently received a book in the mail (unsolicited) by someone named David Brog, called Standing with Israel, with a foreward by John Hagee. The purpose of this book is to try to prove to Jews that we should welcome support from the evangelical right wing that supports Israel because it fits into their theological end-times scenario. No thanks, I'm not interested in this pseudo-support, which will turn to outright anti-semitism when Jews or Israel don't act according to the way they've scripted us into their scenario.

And then, from the left side of the spectrum, I found out that local "peace" groups are bringing speakers and an exhibition to Ithaca in order to inform us all about the "Nakba" and the unmitigated disaster that was created sixty years ago when Israel was established. The speakers and exhibition are completely one sided - there's no acknowledgement that there could be any right on the Israeli side, or that there's moral/political ambiguity in this situation.

I think that what's really depressing me the most is that these events, both in Israel and in the American presidential campaign (as well as in the parochial world of Ithaca) lead to a real narrowing of the political space for anyone who does not want to belong to one of the extremes. For a while it seemed to me that Obama's candidacy was helping to create slightly more political space for this middle ground on Israel/Palestine. But then the Hagee endorsement and the attacks on Obama's "anti-Israel" stand are doing their best to make that space vanishingly small. I think that most American Jews are actually in the middle - we support Israel and we want the best for it, we are concerned about the human rights of Palestinians as well as of Israeli Jews, and we want to see a compromise solution that will allow for the creation of a Palestinian state, both to lessen the misery visited upon the Palestinian people and to give Palestinians fewer reasons to want to attack and destroy Israel.

But the extremes of both the left and the right are not interested in any compromise. According to them we must be ideologically pure - anything else is a betrayal of our principles. I don't believe in purity in politics anymore. My basic political premise now is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. The search for purity just ends up with a lot of injured and dead people.