Recently, a group of Evangelical Christian leaders let loose an Evangelical Manifesto upon the world (short summary here). By attempting to save Evangelical Christianity from the political and religious excesses that threaten believers and non-believers alike, the authors point to possible way forward for Muslims living in western countries, attempting to be good liberal democratic citizens and maintain their faith at the same time.

"Insistently moderate" as Alan Jacobs calls it, the Manifesto abjures a sound-biteAmerican Muslims: American, as well as Muslim discussion of Christianity and criticizes the whole spectrum of the Evangelical movement from right to left, including its own authors. And it extends beyond its own tribe, asking secular humanists and new atheists and liberals of all stripes if they are satisfied with the relationship that society and religion currently have, and taking a pox-on-both-thy-houses approach to "French style secularism" as well as "Islamist violence."

Evangelicals must not, the authors contend, become "useful idiots" to any political party --- no doubt a reference to Republican operatives like Karl who call Evangelicals "loons" behind their backs --- and they must not try to coerce or force other people to believe in their way. They must not try and depict themselves as the apex of truth. They must not be fundamentalist (yes, the manifesto uses the f-word), must help the poor, the under-trodden and needy. Over and again, the document condemns the "dangerous" alliance between church and state, denying that Christianity deserves special treatment because it's the majority faith, contending instead that "no one faith should be normative."

What's more the emotional and argumentative crux of the Manifesto --- the claim that "Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally" --- draws a necessary and important distinction between religious and other kinds of identities that should be instructive to people of all faiths, and to western Muslims in particular.

Is there such a thing as a "Muslim vote" or "Muslim politics"? And if there isn't should Muslims try and vote as "bloc"? Or should there be Muslims for Ron Paul, Muslims for Obama, Muslims for George Galloway, Muslims for Ken Livingstone, and Muslims for Joe Lieberman? Should mosques endorse candidates? Should our national organizations pander to politicians? Should there be "Muslim" PACs or "Muslim" foreign policy initiatives?

The Manifesto says "no," loudly. Muslims should define themselves theologically and not politically, socially, or culturally. They should see that their primary relationship to Islam isn't utilitarian but salvific, and that "Muslim" identity isn't a fulcrum with which to advance certain ends in the public sphere, but simply a pact with God, whose rewards are identity reaped in the next life.

Many Muslims will be quick to retort that given the current climate --- where they are under attack not just from fundamentalists among them but Islamophobes of every stripe --- taking such an apolitical approach to being Muslim is virtually impossible. Every day, Muslims are asked to condemn bombings, and address beheadings, and talk about foreign wars against their co-religionists. How, then, can anyone suggest that when Muslims talk about Islam, they should focus on the afterlife? Even if we wanted to, Muslims will say, other people wouldn't let us!

The Evangelical Manifesto has an ingenious response to this problem, interpreting it as a "cost of discipleship":

Unlike some other religious believers, we do not see insults and attacks on our faith as offensive and blasphemous in a manner to be defended by law, but as part of the cost of our discipleship that we are to bear without complaint or victim-playing.

In other words, when Muslims are put in a position where others are speaking for them --- and putting them into political and social and cultural categories --- it will be up to them to resist the temptation of accepting these categories. Rather, they, as the Manifesto suggests for Evangelicals, will have to say:

[W]e insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our --- true motives and our --- real agenda.

By taking this approach to political debates, even debates about Islam, Muslims could at last enter the debate not as Muslims, but as Americans. Or, say, as Philadelphians. Or as lawyers.

Perhaps precisely because Evangelicals have had the experience of acquiring massive political power and squandering it, they are singularly qualified to provide a lesson to American Muslims, who have virtually no power as a religious community. When religion becomes inextricably tied to partisan politics, it can be bought and sold like stocks, simultaneously cheapening the faith and corrupting the secular principles of liberal government. Addressed to every faith community in the US, the Evangelical Manifesto is a warning American Muslims should heed. To be accepted as full members of a liberal polity, they have to be prepared to accept that their profession of faith is just one feature of their identities among many, and not the one that should dictate their engagement with politics.

Playing farce in the history of the Cinco de Mayo Week '08 to the tragedy of the possible conquest of Lebanon by Iran Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting off allegations that he accepted bribes from American Jewish businessman Morris Talansky to help fund his wife's art career, and unlike previous Olmert scandals, this one credibly threatens both Olmert's political career and the viability of his Kadima party.

Toni O'Loughlin: "The scandal threatens to demolish the already shaky coalition government and raises questions about whether a general election would be required if Olmert resigns. It also risks overshadowing next week's visit by the US president, George Bush, who has scheduled the trip to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary and to shore up the faltering peace talks with the Palestinians."

Avi Green: "I see that Ehud Barak is still stalling and biding for time...All he's doing is stalling out of his apparently being more interested in a government seat than in true responsibility. I suggest he start to rethink his position, because his colleagues are getting very restless."

Nathan Guttman: "The [Talansky] case is being described in the Israeli press as the most serious of three investigations currently being conducted into Olmert’s affairs...Talansky and Olmert first crossed paths when the Long Island businessman directed the American fundraising operation for Shaare Tzedek Hospital and the then-mayor was a guest at events organized by the group in the United States."

Amir Oren: "The investigation into Olmert's relationship with the man dubbed 'Mr. T' has once again proven two ancient truths about the media. One is that 'the medium is the message,' as Marshall McLuhan averred in his classic work, entitled Understanding Media. The other is that the presence of the observer alters the outcome of the experiment he is there to observe. The proof can be found in the surprising twists that the press has woven into the story's plot by reporting on it. The media midwifed the affair, kept it from dying and has turned itself into the arena for the coming rounds."

Bernard Avishai: "Indeed, the best scenario is not unlikely --- not if the Bush administration supports it actively, and helps keep restless ministers (like former Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz) bailing water instead of abandoning ship. It is that Livni and Barak will govern together for a year or so, and reconstitute the Israeli center, while putting the taint of corruption behind them. Only this will deny Netanyahu his second act. Something must."

The eastern world seems to be exploding this week. After the US-backed Future Movement government in Lebanon declared Hezbollah's private telecommunications network illegal, the Iran- and Syria-backed militia responded by attacking Beirut and seizing control of much the city.

Jeffrey Goldberg: "Hezbollah has been doing a bang-up job this week undermining Lebanon's future on behalf of its sponsors, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Syrian intelligence. It is simultaneously doing effective work undermining its apologists in the West. We've heard the arguments over and over again: Hezbollah is social service agency; Hezbollah wants to join the Lebanese political process; Hezbollah is not in fact dominated by murderous Jew-haters. And so on. It's been a tough year already for Hezbollah's apologists...."

Nicholas Noe: "The open question then, as it has been for the last 30 years, now seems to be whether the Israelis might be the ones to intervene if March 14 steadily loses its capacity to cling on to its remaining levers of power - or whether Israel might be content to sit back and watch its bitter enemy fight its own countrymen. Nasrallah certainly thinks the former might be the case, saying yesterday that Hizbullah is well equipped to fight on two fronts. Either way, having reached a point where the spectre of yet another Israeli invasion and/or another civil war is being seriously discussed as imminent...."

The Beirut Spring: "Unleashing the sectarian monster can seem like a good idea to Islamists allied with the Future Movement and to the Saudis, but they had better think twice before letting that genie out of the bottle. All parties, including the Future movement should actively portray this as a security and political situation, not a sectarian one."

Abu Muqawama: "Hizbollah may very well get the government to back down...But the fact is, if civil war does break out, Hizbollah is going to get the blame from basically everyone but Syria, Iran, and other Shia worldwide. This is not 2006 and this is not Israel that Hizbollah is staring down. This is 2008 and these are other Lebanese --- Sunni and Druze and Christian. Hizbollah can't count on the support from anyone but a few pariah states."

Michael Young: "Now the party's true intentions are out there for everyone to see. Hizbullah can no longer hide behind its 'resistance,' a fictitious 'national opposition' or imaginary social protests. It is confirming on a daily basis that its minimal goal is to keep alive a Hizbullah state within the state and to force most Lebanese to accept this, even as the party infiltrates the government bureaucracy and has free rein in the airport and ports."

Charles Malik: "Hezbollah's militant takeover of Beirut and its systematic destruction of the authority of the state and freedom of the press suggests a sophisticated and planned campaign to take power."

Christopher Albritton: "When I entered Lebanon on July 13, 2006 to get to the war, an Iranian man came in at the same time — I saw his passport. We exchanged glances and went our separate ways. Friends in Hamra and nearby ‘hoods report that Hezbollah gunmen have taken the streets and are telling people to stay indoors. They’re also taking pro-government people from their homes. One friend near Sporting Club reported a Shi’ite man in her (mixed) neighborhood was taken by gunmen as he was screaming, 'I’m from the Dahiyeh!'"

Lee Smith: "A Shia-Sunni conflict in Lebanon might well damage Iran's own efforts to jump the sectarian divide. What level of control does Tehran have over Hezbollah at this stage while the Party may well be in an existential fight over its role not just as an armed militia, but as a Lebanese party? Further, and perhaps most importantly to Washington, what will Hezbollah's actions, and Tehran's decisions, say about Iran's war against the US-backed order throughout the rest of the region – from Gaza (Hamas vs. Israel and Egypt), through the Arab Gulf states, and most especially Iraq?"

Two weeks before Cindy McCain swore to NBC's Ann Curry that her "husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all," Commentary's Jennifer Rubin spoke to John McCain on a conference call and baited him into describing Barack Obama as --- simultaneously --- the stealth candidate of Hamas, the Sandinistas, and the Weather Underground. Obama responded yesterday on CNN, saying that McCain was "losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination."

How would the campaign Abe Greenwald assures us is the veritable Platonic form ofSenator Tamburlaine the Great: McCain's Potemkin stroll through a Baghdad market in April 2007 allowed terrorists to set up an ambush that killed 21 people...and provided his campaign with a fitting metaphor maturity and masculine wisdom react? Why, with a near-instantaneous hysterical shriek from senior aide Mark Salter, of course. Salter, who seems to have earned his seniority as the campaign's point-man on hysterical shrieking, wants to make it clear just how offensive was Obama's "not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue" --- presumably at least slightly more offensive than when Salter called Arianna Huffington "a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva" for telling the truth about Salter's boss.

But Salter's real point is to make sure the journalists on his mass-mailing list clearly understand the difference between "legitimate" and illegitimate campaigning. For example, calling your opponent an enemy of the state is a totally "legitimate question...about his judgment and preparedness." However, for Obama to respond to that charge with the charitable interpretation that it's an example of the toll running for president can take on someone's mind (rather than, say, an asshole being true to his nature) is an illegitimate attempt "to delegitimize" the legitimate question of whether Obama is an enemy of the state.

Now, I confess that I can't quite see the conceptual distinction the McCain camp is trying to draw, but then, I didn't learn virtue from a segregationist who taught me to put aside any "reservations about my destiny" of dying an honorable death in battle and going to Valhalla, so I'll have to defer to the expert. Here goes:

So: Unfortunately I still don't get it. Maybe the McCain line between legitimacy and illegitimacy looks incredible to you, too, perhaps even evidence of a candidate having lost his bearings in pursuit of the presidency, but that just goes to show that you and I need to study the Episcopal School Code of Honor a little harder.

You Don't Have To Go Home: but you can't stay here?At Slate, Emily Bazelon recently explored the rarely-discussed issue of African immigrants in Israel, noting that PM Ehud Olmert has complained about how many Africans sneak into Israel every year—a situation that raises issues of immigration, religion, economics, and infrastructure. These Africans are Christians and Muslims, which means they’re not eligible for Israeli citizenship, but Israel won’t extradite them back to their home countries because of their potential persecution for being affiliated with a Jewish State.

Many are sent to detention centers, where they languish doing manual labor in poor conditions, and others are sent to Tel Aviv, where they end up living near the bus station, in slumlike conditions that may be worse than the refugee camps they’ve fled in Africa.

Of course, this is nothing new: We previously posted about Darfurian refugees who were imprisoned when they arrived in Israel, because Sudan is technically an Arab country. After sneaking in via Egypt, they were kept on army bases, or put under house arrest on kibbutzim in the North while the Israeli government tried to figure out where to send them.

We also let you know when, more than a year later, 600 Darfurian refugees were granted temporary residency, and 2,000 illegal immigrants from Eritrea were granted work permits when it was made clear that their lives would be in danger if they were sent back to Eritrea.

I initially heard about this problem firsthand when an Israeli friend, who recently returned from his reserve duty in the Sinai desert, told me about the time he spent guarding the border with Egypt. He said some nights they caught as many as fourteen Africans in twelve hours, all trying to sneak into Israel. From Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and the Ivory Coast, many of them sought out the Israeli soldiers, who “arrested” them, which entails having them checked out by doctors, given food, and sent to detention centers. In search of safety and well-paying jobs, hundreds of Africans attempt to cross into Israel via Sinai every year.

According to my friend, many are killed by guards on the Egyptian side of the border.

Israel likes to brag about reaching out to other communities in need after natural disasters and taking in Vietnamese boat people, but ultimately, Israel can’t and shouldn’t be the place that the huddled masses of the world turn to for good jobs and opportunities. I’m not one of those people who constantly worries about the survival of the Jewish State, and I’m not suggesting that illegal African refugees are somehow going to take over the country, but I’m not sure the current policy does enough to deter Africans from risking their lives and illegally entering a country that already has its proverbial plate-full of problems. Of course, those who make it in shouldn’t just be shipped back to their homes countries—that accomplishes little, and is inevitably expensive and politically problematic. Instead there should be a more organized policy for dealing with the border and, if necessary, Israel can grant more temporary work visas to bring African workers in legally, for a limited amount of time.

Wait a second. Did I just join the Republican party?

Tzipi Livni, Soon-To-Be-PM?: Certainly beats the hell out of Bibi Israeli journalists are pre-celebrating Israel's sixtieth with a big, compelling story, yet another police investigation of Ehud Olmert over possible bribes he accepted from an American Jewish businessman. But their tone, this time, is subtly different from the past. The reports of interrogation (of Olmert himself, former staffers, etc.,) are less sassy. Ministers are keeping their counsel instead of rushing to Olmert's defense. There are confident leaks that the "situation is grave." The police seem to have got their man -- anyway, if their case is not bullet-proof, it is they who should be investigated for doing this to the public, of all times, now.

So reasonable people are preparing themselves for the possibility that Olmert will soon have to resign. This would be bad news -- and good.

First, the bad: I have not hidden my personal fondness for Ehud Olmert, which makes me completely unremarkable. Olmert is a likable, glad-handing centrist, a poster-child for Israel's rising professional and entrepreneurial élites, who has cultivated Western journalists and back-and-forth Israelis like myself for years. But this is not personal. It is business. Waiting in the wings, liking the polls, is the worst government imaginable, a Bibi Netanyahu coalition of Likud's hardest-liners, back-to-the-Land-of-Israel cultists, ultra-Orthodox claustrophiles, Russian reactionaries and oligarchs, and general opportunists. Resignation could bring the demise of the Kadima Party, as former Likud people scurry back to the fold.

True, Olmert's prosecution would be a tribute to Israeli democracy, in a way --- to the rule of law and the procedures for electing what's next. But new elections would almost certainly bring to power the most antidemocratic coalition in Israel's history, just at a time when negotiations with the Palestinian Authority hang by a thread, a new administration is coming to Washington, and Israel's own Arab minority is inching toward wholesale alienation. I am not sure Israel could take five more years of this. I am sure the West, Arab moderates, etc., cannot take five more years of this Israel.

The good news, however, is that there is an obvious replacement for Olmert, who has always stood a much better chance of holding Kadima together by the force of her popularity. I mean, of course, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, a straight-talking, very bright, and evolving politician (profiled here by the New York Times' Roger Cohen).

Livni, unlike Olmert, was not tarnished by the 2006 Lebanon fiasco. As Akiva Eldar implies, she might well revive Kadima and draw new, younger forces to it. She is also more likely to advance the peace negotiations (which she nominally runs), or at least bring them to the national agenda. She provides Labor's doves a leader to rally to while their own leader, Ehud Barak, continues to posture as the new Ariel Sharon, the IDF's real commander, the scourge of terrorists. She could add the leftist Meretz Party, which said it would never join a government led by Olmert after Lebanon.

Indeed, the best scenario is not unlikely -- not if the Bush administration supports it actively, and helps keep restless ministers (like former Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz) bailing water instead of abandoning ship. It is that Livni and Barak will govern together for a year or so, and reconstitute the Israeli center, while putting the taint of corruption behind them. Only this will deny Netanyahu his second act. Something must.

Latinos are the fastest growing demographic group in the nation and will play an increasingly decisive role in elections for the foreseeable future. George Bush got re-elected in 2004 by pulling off an eighteen point swing in the Latino vote versus 2000. Hence Republicans should get down on their star-spangled knees to give thanks that their party stumbled, with one hilarious pratfall after another, into nominating John McCain. He's not just the only Republican candidate with even an outside shot of winning this year's election. He's the only one not emphatically determined to reduce the GOP to a rump Anglo regional party of the old Confederacy.

Juan McCain's Shocking Plan Revealed: ¡Aztlán o muerte! ¡No a la rendición! So while the eyes of the nation were fixed on the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic primaries, McCain used the occasion of Cinco de Mayo to quietly step up his outreach to Latino voters, launching a Spanish-language version of his website featuring endorsement spots en español (naturalmente) from several prominent Mas Canosistas, and agreeing to speak at the upcoming La Raza conference. That's the right thing to do on the merits, bodes well for McCain administration immigration policy (i.e., being for it), and strikes a blow against racism and xenophobia. Also, it's the smart thing to do politically, not just for this election and for McCain personally, but for the long-term viability of his party.

Naturally, paranoid psychopaths on right alternate between thinking McCain is an unwitting dupe of a nefarious plot to reverse the outcome of the Mexican war, and thinking he's personally scheming to force-teach Wetback speech to every American, the better to understand landscaping and fruit-picking orders from our new greasy mustachioed overlords.

Can I give a word of advice to my Republican friends? The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is quite secure, I promise. If somebody somewhere on the internet says otherwise, this is one of those rare cases where somebody somewhere on the internet is wrong. What's more, however impeccable Michelle Malkin's credentials on the urgent need to deport all Arabs and put the Mexicans in concentration camps (or is that the other way around?), she doesn't have any actual proof that John McCain is the Manchurian candidate of the conspiracy to restore the Aztec empire, just a lot of craziness and projection. As McCain might put it, if we've been occupying Aztlan for a hundred years with no American casualties, why stop now?

Far from being a Mexican secret agent, McCain is the best thing that could have happened to you. True, he may not really care about your domestic agenda one way or the other. But as long as you're willing to keep supporting his vision of an enduring peace built on a character-building Hobbesian war of all against all freedom, he'll give you young, healthy, virile supreme court justices who'll snip whichever rights you don't approve of out of the Constitution (unlike those liberal pussies Scalia and Thomas); he'll mortgage your great-grandchildren's houses to  sustain the Bush administration's explosion of government size and scope; hell, he'll even torture some evil-doers. All you have to put up with is just a little salsa caliente rhythm in the step of strawberry-pickers 2000 miles from your house.

The surprising, spectacular, and deeply encouraging failure of populism to move Democratic primary voters is only part of the story of the long overdue demise of the Clinton dynasty in North Carolina and Indiana Tuesday night. Just as decisive, if not moreso, was the near-total collapse of Hillary Clinton's support among African-Americans.

I'm not talking about the familiar collapse of Clinton's black support after Barack Obama proved himself to be a viable mainstream presidential candidate by winning the lily-white Iowa caucuses. A second mass exodus of black voters away from Hillary Clinton made Indiana a statistical push, fattened Obama's margins enough to completely wipe-out Clinton's pyrrhic, pointless victory in Pennsylvania, and broke down the wall of bullshit sustaining the idea that the Democratic primary didn't end in February.

After Obama's win in Iowa, her surrogates' public musings about Obama's possible history of crack dealing, and Bill Clinton's now infamous trashing of the Palmetto State as a consolation prize for darkeys, Hillary Clinton still managed to pull in about one fifth of the black vote in South Carolina. Yet from one Carolina primary to the other, roughly two thirds of Clinton's remaining black support dissolved, only slightly less steep a drop, proportionally, than her fall from this October poll in which she actually led Obama in black support, to the South Carolina exit poll. If she had maintained her South Carolina performance among blacks on Super Tuesday, Potomac Tuesday, Super Tuesday II, and this past tuesday, the net shift would have been more than 500,000 popular votes --- enough to shrink Obama's popular vote lead to near parity, and perhaps take the lead on not terribly extravagant assumptions about non-black liberals who were turned off by the Clinton tactics.

The African-American Vote: Between the CarolinasThe handy chart to the right tells the story graphically. (I've explained my methodology below.) Clinton's share of the black vote declined by about one sixth between South Carolina and Super Tuesday --- a period when national polling showed Obama's support rising across all demographics, and Clinton's falling --- and declined a bit more than another fifth between Super Tuesday and the Potomac primaries at the peak of Obamamania, when (again) all his numbers were improving and hers were going in the other direction. When either economic and demographic factors or Plagiarismgate, Goolsbeegate, and various other pseudo-scandals broke Obama's winning streak in Ohio and Texas, Clinton's black support rose slightly (by about one sixth) --- just like her white and brown support.

Then the Wrightmare struck, a thousand innumerate pundits were launched on a quest to prove that Obama's candidacy was undone before the slightest credible evidence emerged to support their case (they were stunningly wrong, as we now know), and Clinton was only too happy to embrace a wild long-shot electoral strategy of trying to stoke white resentment against a strange, dark, foreign, religiously suspect crypto-Communist who hangs out with sundry terrorists when not spewing elitist contempt for good, decent, ordinary folk. And what happened to Clinton's black support? It plummeted by a catastrophic 44.6 percent between the bookends of the Wrightmare (and nearly a full fifth just between Pennsylvania and Indy/NC), to the point where Hillary Clinton can barely attract half the level of black support of George Allen in his 2006 senate campaign (8.2 percent versus 15). Repeat: barely half the black support of George "Let's welcome 'Macaca' here to the real world of Virginia" Allen. All the while Obama's black support rose.

It's sort of incredible that this needs to be said, but future aspiring presidents, observe the ruins of the House of Clinton and take note: If you want to be the Democratic party's nominee, you will need some black votes, and 0 percent is worse than 5, which is worse than 10, which is worse than 20. So avoid basing your campaign on the argument that your party's most loyal constituents are worthless. They will (eventually) notice.

* * *

How I crunched the numbers: South Carolina is taken as a theoretical starting point, representing the performance among black voters Clinton could have managed even after the emergence of an electable black presidential candidate and her campaign's tactical decision to royally piss off a lot of black people. I track Clinton and Obama's subsequent performance on the four multiple-primary nights since South Carolina --- Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primary, Texas and Ohio, and Indiana and North Carolina --- by calculating the total number of votes cast by African-Americans on each election day and the share of the aggregate African-American vote each candidate received (that way, e.g., Obama's 86 percent in Delaware, 66 percent in Massachusetts, and 61 percent in New York, are weighted to reflected the tiny, medium, and huge populations of each state; for similar reasons as well as the distorting effects of political machines in individual states, I treat single-state primary days as statistical noise and ignore them). Figures are generated from the Real Clear Politics state voting totals and CNN's exit poll estimates of black turnout and vote shares. No caucuses were included since primary and caucus voting pools are incommensurate and too few caucuses had data on black voting to allow for a separate graph of black voting trends in caucus states. Likewise, the New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. primaries had no available data on black voters.

You can download the spreadsheet here and double-check me, or if you're curious and industrious, plug in new values in the C, D, and E columns and track the voting trends of any demographic group.

Qassam rockets rain down on Negev towns; suicide bombings have reappeared; Israel is maintaining a blockade on the Gaza Strip with periodic invasions that are growing in severity; Hezbollah is re-arming itself in a chaotic Lebanon; and the fear of a nuclear Iran remains. It seems an odd time to say that Israel is now in the best position it has ever been to normalize its existence.

But that is precisely the case, and Israel's sixtieth birthday is the perfect opportunity to see this.

Israel has been at the center of global intrigue for so long, it's hard now to recall the idealism in which it was born. But sixty years ago, the first citizens of Israel dreamt of a country that was both Jewish and democratic, and that was welcomed fully into the family of nations and at peace with its neighbors.

Today, the view of Israel around the world is at its lowest point ever. Yet it has also been offered full recognition and normal relations by the entire Arab world, and all the negative press it has received has not eroded the general support in the West for its continued existence as a Jewish state.

Had this Arab offer been proposed even twenty years ago, most Israelis would have wept in joy at the prospect and leapt at it. But today, Israel is hesitant to extend its hand to that offer, even while it has acknowledged it as a positive step. What's changed, and how can we change it back?

Living By The Sword

Beginning with the very birth of the country in 1948, Israelis have lived each day with the sense that their neighbors want to destroy them. One can debate whether Arab determination toward that goal has waned, but that doesn't change the very real feelings Israelis have or their historical basis.

Modern historical research has shown that the Arab effort in 1948 to eliminate Israel in its infancy was half-hearted, but the war still cost Israel one percent of its population. Even if the facts on the ground were not in line with the mythos of the Israeli David triumphing over the Arab Goliath, it was still a stunning triumph, and one which cemented the central place the Israeli military holds in Israeli hearts and minds.

Technically, that war never ended. An armistice was reached, but a state of war remained with Egypt until 1979, with Jordan until 1994, and is still in place with Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

War flared again in 1956, 1967 and 1973. Israel learned to live by the sword, and this was only reinforced as it moved away from fighting other countries back toward fighting the Palestinians.

The 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to Israel's eighteen year occupation of southern Lebanon, an era many compared to America's Vietnam quagmire, was followed five years later by the first Intifada. Even the Oslo years were marked, in the mid-1990s, by an upsurge in terrorist attacks and, until early 2000, by the ongoing violence in southern Lebanon.

In the twenty-first century, Israel has seen the worst violence with the Palestinians since the 1948 war. In 2006, it also experienced its first significant cross-border conflict since 1973, as war broke out with Hezbollah.

That's a lot of fighting, and it's meant that Israel, which from its birth has focused on its military abilities, has become even more mistrustful of diplomatic initiatives. This feeling has been reinforced in recent years by the Israeli government's embrace of George W. Bush's style of international relations. That style is best described as "shoot first and ask questions if it happens to be convenient later."

The Right Flowers and the Jewish Mainstream Wilts

It isn't hard to see that with all that militarism in the mix, and the very real threats Israel has faced, an aggressive, right-wing element has moved consistently closer to the forefront, in both Israeli politics and among Israel's supporters throughout the Jewish world.

Continue reading...

Our long national Wrightmare is finally over.

With his unexpectedly impressive win in North Carolina and equally unexpected draw in Indiana last night, Barack Obama has successfully withstood a substance-less campaign of defamation from the Clintonites and their allies in the GOP to put to rest any lingering unreasonable doubt over the outcome of the Democratic primary campaign. The Clintonites are still making a show of staying in the race, but they've clearly been sapped of the defiant élan of the last few months, have tellingly retired their character assassinations against Senator Obama, and are effectively resigned to watching their superdelegate and high-level surrogate support leak like a sieve.

Salt Of The Earth: Didn't Woody Guthrie Sing An Ode To Slack-Jawed Idiocy? So what did the zombie campaign do to finally get its brain killed? Somehow, it managed to disprove one of Barnum's laws, and went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. (That is, literally went broke; last month Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $6.4 million, on top of the at least $5 million she's already lent herself.) Needless to say, this is encouraging news not only for Obama supporters, but all Americans. Here's how it happened.

The Clintonites, whose respect for middle America consists entirely in buying every single crude stereotype about it, simply assumed that the white working class is a) the only part of the electorate that matters and b) monolithically slack-jawed, liver-damaged, unemployed, resentful, paranoid, and gullible. Consequently, they premised their Indiana and North Carolina primary campaigns on the Nigerian 419 gas tax scam, blowing up either OPEC or the moon, the immolation of 72 million innocent Iranians in a nuclear holocaust, leveling the playing field in the housing market by preventing anyone from buying a house for years to come, and generally making sure never to listen to experts just in case they might once in a blue moon be right about their field of expertise. (Under a Hillary Clinton administration, Megan McArdle writes, "no one has to worry about oil or houses, because there won't be any to worry about. That's just the kind of thoughtful, caring politician she is.")

And sure, the Clinton platform may in reality have been what quote-unquote experts describe as "fucking retarded." But as salt of the earth pundits like Joe Scarborough explained, working-class whites just want a bit of help with their bills and aren't interested in lectures from eggheads. And as spokesmen for the last redoubts of Clinton backers further noted, Obama's skepticism about the appreciation working-class people would show to a rich woman offering them a piddling bribe bespeaks a profound elitism and arrogance sure to turn off blue collar voters.

But then a funny thing happened. In Ohio, Obama won 34 percent of the white vote and 42 percent of voters making under $50,000 annually. In Pennsylvania, those numbers were 37 percent and 46 percent, respectively. And in Indiana, 40 percent and 50 percent. In other words, through two months of relentless and increasingly absurd populist pandering and racebaiting, over three primaries in three bordering, demographically similar rust-belt states which one would intuitively expect to be susceptible to the Clinton tactics, Obama consistently if slowly improved his performance among white voters and working-class voters. The Clinton campaign's descent into surrealist performance art bought them less than nothing.

Meanwhile, Obama's share of the college-educated vote, which dipped slightly in Pennsylvania thanks in part to the strength of the Ed Rendell machine, bounced back with a vengeance last night. It seems people who've studied a bit of economics don't take well to being told that up is down; nor, in all likelihood, are they wild about being being called "Gucci-wearing, latte-drinking, self-centered, egotistical people that have damaged our lifestyle" while a presidential candidate looks on smilingly.

So apparently, in 2008, having the audacity to hope that Americans --- even white working-class Americans --- aren't drooling simians can pay off in the end.

Putin With His New Model Wife?: Those responsible for false reports will pay It was quite possibly the greatest gift to journalists since bars started offering free Wi-Fi. Vladimir Putin, who steps down as Tsar of All The Russias this week, had secretly divorced his wife of 25 years, Lyudmila, and shacked up with a medal-winning rhythmic gymnast and model-turned-politician half his age who had hitherto been known principally for her "extreme flexibility."

The rumours had been circulating in Russia for some time, but only Moskovski Korrespondent newspaper had the balls to run with the story, which unsurprisingly went global with dizzying speed. After all, a quick Google Image search for the young lady in question, Alina Kabaeva, tends to turn up photos of a foxy-looking girl wrapped only in furs (courtesy of a photoshoot for the Russian edition of Maxim) or else pirouetting on the spot with one leg wrapped behind her ear. What, frankly, is not to like?

The only thing is, it wasn't true. Well, apparently. Not only did Mr Putin and Ms Kabaeva flatly deny the story, but, more to the point,  so did the newspaper's billionaire owner, Alexander Lebedev -- not noted as an ally of the outgoing President. And Moskovski Korrespondent is perhaps more accurately described as an ex-newspaper; immediately after the story was printed, its editor was fired and the presses shut down. Two weeks on, the paper's future is still in limbo. Lebedev has withdrawn his financial support, citing "conceptual disagreements with the newsroom" but insisting in a statement that "this has nothing to do with politics and is solely a business decision". But that's an entirely false dichotomy, because in Russia, criticizing your leaders is rarely good business.

Anna Politkovskaya And Alexander Litvinenko: Died mysteriously; Putin knows nothing At least the hacks in this case have merely lost their livelihoods. Many have been unluckier, most notably the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose murder in October 2006 just might have been connected to her strident criticism of the regime's human rights abuses in Chechnya and elsewhere. Twelve days later, her friend and fellow dissident Alexander Litvinenko stood in the Frontline Club in London and issued a stirring denunciation of those he believed were responsible. "I'm totally confident", he said, "that there is only one person in Russia who could kill Anna Politkovskaya with her standing, with her fame. That is Putin." Five weeks later, Litvinenko himself was dead in the most macabre of circumstances.

Reporters Sans Frontieres estimated last year that 21 journalists had been murdered during Putin's reign, and while not all of these deaths can or should be laid at the door of the government, there is little doubt that exposing corruption and human rights abuses in Russia is not a great career choice. But outrages like the Politkovskaya murder are merely the most ugly symptoms of a much deeper malaise; press freedom is the canary in the mine for any democracy, and in Russia it died long ago. In 2003, Freedom House moved Russia from the "partly free" column to "not free" in its annual survey of press freedom. The following year, the same change was made in its general survey of civil liberties.

All five of the major TV stations toe the government line. Regional media is usually under the direction of local authorities. Coverage of government is uniformly bland and sycophantic; coverage of opposition scant and biased. (Think Fox News as parodied by the Simpsons.) There are few independent newspapers, and most of the larger ones are controlled either by billionaire oligarchs or companies like Gazprom or Promsvyazbank with close ties to the Kremlin. While Michael Moore and company were sounding off about the value of Cheney's Halliburton shares, these guys were creating a real live petro-dictatorship. Expose that, though, and there's no Palme D'Or waiting for you.

The curious case of Vladimir and his supple ‘girlfriend' is trivial by comparison, not least because it may really just be a tabloid invention to shift a few more copies. Yet in one sense it demonstrates a more chilling truth about the media in modern Russia. Beyond the headline cases of crusading journalists being locked up for attacking the government, or risking death to report on human rights abuses, there has been a more pervasive erosion of the very idea of an independent press. Never mind radioactive sushi or gun-toting assassins; now it takes only a threatening glance from those in power to shut your operation down. Once you live in that sort of a society you're screwed, even if she wasn't.

And, at the risk of stating the obvious, this doesn't just concern Russians, either; not with $100 oil, economic warfare against her neighbours, and ICBMs being paraded in Red Square, just like the old days. No, an executive unfettered by the kinds of checks and balances that stop BushCheneyCo from murdering you in your beds is bad news for everyone. The West is pinning its hopes on the new President, Dmitri Medvedev, being a new and more moderate voice, and not merely the puppet for a continued Putin supremacy. We shall see; but the signs aren't good.

As for Anna Politkovskaya, she predicted her fate long before it befell her. Her words should serve as more than a mere epitaph:

We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

Dear Israel,

Your son, the poet Yehuda Amichai, once described you as a land divided into two districts: memory and hope. The residents of each district mingle with each other; they are, Amichai tells us, either returning from a funeral or a wedding.

Contemplating you at sixty I find myself planting my feet in both of your districts of memory and hope --- a man simultaneously returning from a funeral and a wedding.

At sixty, you are a wedding of land and idea, a fantastical union over two thousandYehuda Amichai years in the making. It is no wonder that it took the imagination of a playwright to father your present incarnation into concrete existence. People doubted you all along. They said of your parents (who are also your children) that they are dreamers; that they have no right; and that they are going against the hand of God. But your fathers and mothers replied, "If you will it, it is no dream!" That “history gives us a right.” And that sometimes “miracles need help to materialize.”

Having had you as a constant during all of our lives, it is hard for us to really appreciate how implausible your existence really is. How implausible of you to have maintained an identity throughout your long and deracinating winter of exile. How implausible of you, after two millennia, to have found your way back home. How implausible of you after just a few decades to revive a civilization and create one of the most scientifically, artistically, and intellectually able countries in the world. I look at this giant mountain of implausibility, and I see you in your true glory.

Indeed, you have taught us the virtue of patience, tenacity, and optimism. You have, once again, given us a home. A home that in the coarse voice and words of my grandmother, a woman who survived that terrible night under the European skies, is the only place in the world where the words "dirty Jew" mean a Jew who has not taken a shower. At sixty years young, you are an amazing success story and we are your grateful children.

But grateful does not mean blind. When you shine a light on an object, you are also bound to get its shadow. And there is no escaping the fact that your shadow is Palestine.

Today, dear Israel, you are standing on the back of another people. A people who have become a broken mirror image of yourself. They dream your dream, fear your fears, and suffer your pains. Just like you they drink from the wellspring of their grandmother's tears and they nourish their souls on their grandfather's scars. Just like you, they are rooted in holy soil, and they too are inheritors of an unholy land.

It is true that you vowed to "never again" let your children experience homelessness and hell. It is also true that many times you were provoked. But you have wielded your power at great costs. Time and again, your insistence on "just being" has blinded you to your divine and historical purpose: To be a light onto the nations. To carry forward the great wisdom, ethical, and spiritual teachings of your ancestors.

The funeral that your son Amichai spoke of is not just for your fallen sons and daughters. It also for your fallen ideals and morality. No, dear Israel, I do not want you to be a handicapped civilization. Like everyone else you have a right to defend yourself. But today, your feet are planted on someone else’s districts of hope and memory. Could there be a more profoundly un-Jewish place in which to stand?

Your history has taught us that as long as you do not leave Palestine, she will never leave you. The truth of the matter is that the greatest gift that you can give for your birthday is to lend a hand in creating a birthday for the Palestinian state. Don't settle for just removing yourself, help construct a positive future for your sister nation. I know these are difficult words to comprehend and accept. But with sixty years comes experience and wisdom. I have faith in you. After all, you have overcome more implausible challenges.

With Love,

Roi

Hillary Clinton is not content to bring a lawsuit against OPEC for hoarding oil thatSlightly Less Likely Than A Clinton Presidency doesn't exist—a lawsuit that would have no standing in the WTO, that wouldn't succeed if it did have standing, and that wouldn't achieve anything if it did succeed. Instead, she has upped her game and is now threatening to obliterate OPEC entirely.

How do you rid the world of all known diseases? Monty Python may have influenced Clinton's new approach to policy: "Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again." You know you've made it into the Clinton policy shop if the doctor you become is Dr. Strangelove.

From my vantage point, the platform of the latest incarnation of the Clinton campaign includes

1. funneling tax revenues to oil companies and allowing our transportation infrastructure to decay by means of a scheme to encourage Americans to pollute the environment;
2. crushing Iran, seeing Iranians driven before her, and hearing the lamentations of their women;
3. leveling empty threats that won't reduce energy prices or consumption, but could (if they haven't already) piss off a bunch of important trading partners;
4. parleyin' with pointyhead know-it-alls about their letters, signs, and times tables, reckonin' what they's for, and bein' agin' 'em.

Last week, a North Carolina union boss gave a lot of faint-hearted liberals the vapors when he talked up Hillary's "testicular fortitude"—was that gay-bashing? went the thought—shortly before denouncing "Gucci-wearing, latte-drinking, self-centered, egotistical people that have damaged our lifestyle." For out-of-touch elitists who don't get the reference, "testicular fortitude" is a coinage from WWE (neé WWF) owner Vince McMahon.

It's taken a while, but I think I've figured out what Clinton is up to. Her preposterous pugnaciousness in policymaking and campaigning is not only an effort to connect to rasslin' fans in the electorate, but to give her a hedge in case this presidential run thing doesn't work out --- namely, a career in professional wrestling. As with her platform, the whole thing is a contrived spectacle, but that doesn't mean she won't open up a can of whup-ass on you if you call it 'fake.' Either that, or she can just star in the next Conan film.

Obama Shoots And Misses Jewcers in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Oregon, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota still have a chance to cast a vote in the Democratic party's primaries and caucuses. Here are a baker's dozen substantive reasons not to support the senator from Illinois:

1. He has at least rhetorically embraced a phony, cringe-inducing populist critique of free trade glaringly incompatible with his consistent history of economic liberalism (especially since he got religion on markets from Austan Goolsbee).
2. Admirably, he rejects the notion that the economy and society are zero-sum games, in which one man can prosper only if another struggles --- but he has marred this mutualism by scapegoating foreigners.
3. Relatedly, he's been signaling support for corrupt bargains to protect the power of the odious Teamsters Union and free them from legal oversight.
   
4. According to the Congressional Budget Office, his domestic policy proposals would add trillions of dollars to the national debt, perhaps as much as $1.9 trillion.
5. He has caved in to the lowest, cheapest sort of fearmongering by giving credence to the paranoid quack notion that there is a link between autism and vaccination (a cave-in, by the way, that makes the country less safe to the extent that anyone follows up on even candidate Obama's vote-scaring).
6. He has tried to shade away from his admirable position in favor of diplomatic engagement with hostile regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana, and elsewhere.
7. He has not very deftly fled from an admirable and courageous position in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.
8. He sometimes runs away from an equally admirable position in favor of breaking up the power of the teachers unions with merit pay, charter schools, and experimenting with vouchers.
9. At the Democratic presidential debate in Nevada in January, he had an opportunity to repudiate the pernicious Solomon amendment, which reinforces a policy of weakening our national security by blackmailing schools into supporting state-sanctioned discrimination. He declined the opportunity.
10. His plan to navigate through the subprime mortgage meltdown involves potentially expensive direct subsidies to struggling borrowers. In addition to their expense, such subsidies potentially encourage moral hazard (i.e., in this case, reckless borrowing and lending.)
11. In addition to the subsidies, Obama proposes lifting statutory restrictions on bankruptcy courts imposing binding renegotiations of home mortgages, thereby opening the door to unforseeable risks to investors and potential legal challenges.
12. He supports a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies, which is either an ugly pander to populist resentment of oil companies, or more alarmingly, is a token of a general principle that the government can dictate how much profit an industry is entitled to make.
13. He's largely unwilling to defend Second Amendment rights except in cases where it's uncontroversial.

And these are just reasons that move me. There are plenty of other substantive reasons not to vote for Obama for those who don't share my priors. For example, if your top priority for the next presidential administration is an escalated war with Iraq, a new hot war with any of Iran, Syria, or North Korea, and/or a new cold war with Russia and China, Obama's not your candidate. Ditto if, instead of beginning long overdue improvements in the country's infrastructure and mass transit, you'd prefer the energy policy version of the Nigerian Letter Scam.

On the other hand, if you do share my priors, then despite his imperfections, Obama is better than either of his rivals on nearly all the issues on which he's flawed --- sometimes by a wide margin. On other issues, though his position isn't perfect, it's still vastly better than anything a major party presidential candidate has ever offered.

But see? Cogent, substantive criticism of Obama that doesn't resort to race-baiting or redbaiting, and is at least minimally relevant to justified grounds for voting decisions, isn't that hard after all. I just did it, and I like the guy.

Now, how about you try this exercise out on your candidate? If you're supporting Clinton or McCain (or Nader), I can help. 

Zeek Contributing Editor (and Velveteen Rabbi) Rachel Barenblat asked Rabbis Camille Angel (Reform), Lynn Gottlieb (Renewal), Fred Guttman (Reform), and Meyer Schiller (Orthodox/Hasidic) to discuss the impact of the Israeli state and its politics on their rabbinate.

Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with?

Schiller: I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general.

The right of Orthodoxy and the Modern Orthodox share a certain fear and demonization of the Other. It's difficult to offer a different perspective than that of the comunities in which I live. I try, but by the time I come in contact with students, attitudes are already set. It's very difficult to move people from a sense of victimhood, from a sense that there's one side to the conflict and the failure of the world to recognize that is an indication of the world's persistent antisemitism.

Zeek: Do you think there's a sense in which your own background, coming originally from a secular family and choosing Orthodoxy as a pre-teen, has an impact on how you approach this?

Schiller: Absolutely. Because I went to public school; my parents shared a sense that the non-Jews amongst whom we lived were people like ourselves in many ways! It's always been difficult for me to make my peace with those who don't view the world that way.

There are inklings of an alternative perspective within Orthodoxy. I think the German Orthodox experience of the nineteenth century was different. There are individuals in Israel like Eliyahu MacLean who are active in reconciliation efforts. There are echoes within Orthodoxy, but it is lonely.

Gottlieb: Camille [Rabbi Angel] and I were both laughing, not because this is funny but because this is so difficult; we share with Rabbi Schiller across the spectrum how difficult it is to help people overcome their fear of Palestinians. Which of course is necessary for us to build the kind of peace we hope for.

Angel: My experience is in some ways similar to Rabbi Schiller's, although from the other side. I'm in the Bay Area in San Francisco; this is the first time in my life I've been surrounded by so many Jews who developed a Jewish identity post-'67. By and large they're from secular backgrounds; they've felt marginalized by the mainstream for all sorts of reasons, and are deeply suspicious of mainstream ideas--and being pro-Israel is largely a mainstream idea.

When I went to Israel as a high school student, I believed -- hook, line, and sinker! -- that Israel was defending itself appropriately in every way. I have a cousin by marriage who told me that Israel committed human rights atrocities, and I thought she was from Mars!

Over the years I've been here, I've worked to bring people to Israel in order to begin to get a clearer idea of what Israel is. In turn, our visits have involved me going on trips into the occupied territories, being with Israelis and Palestinians who can help me to see how deeply complicated and pained both sides are.

Guttman: I'm pretty much a centrist on Israel and Israeli politics, and my community for the most part shares my perspectives. I do try to help our congregation learn to love Israel; the land, the people and the country. Naturally there are those to the right and left of me.

I also try to help our congregation understand the existential difference between being here and being there. I may have feelings about what the government of Israel should do on a particular issue, but the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of those policies will fall upon the people of Israel and not their supporters in the United States. Having served extensively in the IDF and in the West Bank when I lived in Israel, I can fully appreciate the difference between living here and living there.

Zeek: Rabbi Guttman, you've used the phrase "administered territories." Say more about that?

Guttman: That's the nom de jure that the Israeli government uses, that these are "administered" territories. This has been the term used since shortly following the Six Day War. "Liberated" would have implied no intention to ever give these territories back. "Occupied" might imply the intention to give all of the territories back. However, the interpretation of Resolution 242 by the governments of the United States and Israel for the past forty years has been that in return for peace and security, Israel will return territories occupied in 1967.

The feeling then, and now, as reflected in the Geneva Accords, is that there will need to be some sort of territorial adjustments made to the 1967 borders. The word "administered" implies that Israel is controlling these territories until an agreement for peace (God willing!) can be reached. The recent events in Gaza sadly seem to make such an agreement more unlikely in the near future.

Angel: "Occupied Territories" is a term I use now that I wouldn't have used before. I also use "Disputed Territories." It depends on the audience. I want my congregation to try and understand multiple perspectives, just as they have helped me to broaden mine.

Gottlieb: I want to offer some strategies for coping with this. I've been involved in Palestinian-Jewish reconciliation since 1966, when I met Atallah Mansour, the first Palestinian journalist for Ha'aretz. He told me the story of the Naqba, their term for their experience of 1948, and I realized there were at least two competing narratives. And how tragic the situation was and is.

Guttman: But the conflict didn't commence in 1948 with what the Palestinians call the Naqba. Jews were already being murdered in Palestine half a century earlier. Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians have the right to an independent state of their own. Unfortunately, that view is not shared mutually by the Palestinians, who have yet to recognize our legitimate rights (remember, I hold dual citizenship!)

The Jewish belief that the land was given to us by God from the Nile to the Euphrates is not mainstream. But it is mainstream in the Arab world to believe that Jews have no right to their own state in the Middle East. The Palestinians have been offered a partition of the land so many times and have always turned it down. Unde