Historical Image of the Day

Harry Truman and David Ben Gurion, late 1940s

Hit Piece

Steven Zipperstein's hit piece on the newly deceased Tony Judt in the Chronicle is unfortunate to say the least.

Zipperstein's claim that Judt did not think in a nuanced fashion about Israel because he turned against Zionism is absurd and not backed up by Judt's writings on the subject. Rather, we are again reminded here that no one can speak against the state of Israel and come away unattacked, not even one of the world's most prominent Jewish intellectuals.

And I don't care about speaking ill of the dead, but it seems somewhat inappropriate for Judt's former friend Zipperstein to publish this when Judt can no longer defend himself.

Verbatim Marty Peretz: "I'm Sick of Nancy Pelosi, Her Sanctimony, and Her as Speaker; Maybe She Should Hand the Gavel over to Jane Harman"

Marty really outdid himself this time.

He goes on:

Nancy Pelosi is one of those Democrats who is trying to keep the ghost of George Bush alive so that his dishonesty and bumptioun continue to deflect from what's going on in Washington now.

Have to love this--here's a man who will jump at every possibility for references to Munich getting after someone for remembering a past that is all of 3 1/2 months ago!

Of course, the real reason Peretz doesn't like Pelosi is that she doesn't like torture and she's not entirely in the pocket of Israel. That he would name Jane Harman as a better choice is hilarious. Harman is the California representative who met with AIPAC (the leading pro-Israel lobbying group) and agreed to help kill the espionage case against members of that group lobbying for her to keep her position on the House Intelligence Committee.

But for Peretz, the only thing that matters is the fealty one is willing to show Israel. A secondary concern is how racist you are toward Arabs and brown people more generally. And Harman fits at least the former to a tee.

As commenter charles1649 says:

I can't believe Marty Peretz just griped about someone else's sanctimony. He's been spewing this Israel first stuff for years under the guise of some sort of moral fortitude- making Joe Lieberman look positively nuanced and thoughtful on the issue. Pot meet kettle?

Indeed.

How Pork Changes History

One of the great things about being an environmental historian (and social historians at the very least can say the same thing) is that you realize how sometimes things like nature or food or sex or fashion or so many other things change history. Take the recent Israeli election. Netanyahu is taking over, the settlements are likely to be expanded, and more people are going to die. Political scientists are going to spill an endless amount of ink over analyzing these issues. But via Yglesias, Jeffrey Yoskowitz suggests what might have led to the far right Yisrael Beiteinu party being the key to Netanyahu taking power?

Pork.

Specifically, that an ultra-Orthodox party that aligned with Likud alienated both secular and Russian immigrant voters who really like pork. These voters are the core consistuency of far-right, proto-fascist Avigdor Lieberman. And they vote for him in no small part because he supports their right to eat pork. He threw his support to Netanyahu. And there we have it. Lieberman rather than the extreme Orthodox party is making the government possible, thus making the Israeli government even more stridently nationalist than it already would have been.

Lieberman's core platform promised both the security of their borders as well as their culture--meats, cheeses, and all. It is not surprising, then, that Lieberman's gains in support coincided in a drop in support for Likud--which, according to the last published poll before the election (released the day before Yosef's speech), was slated to win a slim lead over the Kadima party. To be sure, many Russian immigrants were also attracted by Lieberman's ultra-nationalism; but the secular-religious rift embodied by the pig controversy seems to have been enough of a factor to siphon sufficient votes from Likud to prevent Netanyahu's predicted victory.

In an ironic twist, the likeliest governing coalition to emerge from the inconclusive election results is a right-wing alliance of Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Shas. But as illustrated by the pork posturing during the campaign season, the deep animosity between Yisrael Beitunu and Shas will make for a tenuous alliance that even security concerns may not be able to hold together for very long.

Wow.

Shameless Self-promotion blogging: The Economic Crisis as Security Concern

Another piece of mine went up at Global Comment this weekend.

Those “Oh my god, the Bush era is over” moments are getting fewer and farther between now as the Obama administration settles in.

The easy-to-accomplish changes have happened, and now the hard work has set in. Congress fought bitterly over the economic stimulus plan, and a second nominee for the Commerce department has dropped out before confirmation hearings.

But in the car Friday morning, I had one of those moments where I pounded the steering wheel and cheered for the voice on the radio again.

The voice this time belonged to the new director of national intelligence, retired four-star admiral Dennis Blair. And what he said was, “The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications.”

The director of intelligence, the person in charge of keeping the United States safe from external threats, said that the economy is the biggest security concern.

read on.

Also, my partner in crime Matt has a great piece up there about Avigdor Lieberman and the Israeli election.

The Middle East, Food, and Water

This New York Times story does a great job of summing up the most important problems the world faces in the 21st century. The Middle East faces huge problems concerning population growth, food, and water. There are already far too many people living in the region. Given the lack of birth control in these Islamic nations, these numbers continue to skyrocket. The biggest problem with this is the dry and increasingly degraded environment of the region. They don't have enough water for their people to drink and they can't grow enough food for their people either. This is forcing these nations to make difficult choices, none of which are likely to have positive consequences.

Should they export their food growth to poorer countries, as Saudi Arabia is doing? Not a terrible idea on one level except that it turns these other nations into colonies and could exacerbate political instability. Plus as nations like Pakistan also continue to see their populations explode, they will need that land and water for their own people.

Should they commit themselves to growing food wherever they can? This is a short-term solution at best because the soil is bad and because they increasingly don't have the additional water it takes to grow crops in the desert.

Should these nations protect the valuable farmland they have? Yes, but it's not going to happen. Land along the Nile and other major agricultural areas is also valuable for industrial developments and human habitation. Developers and industralists have more money and power than farmers. There is no sign that nations will go down this track.

Equally, there is little sign that the kind of population control necessary to bring these problems under control will happen either.

Of any Middle Eastern nation, it is not surprising that Israel is in the best situation. Their agricultural programs are the most modern and the best for conserving resources. And although many religious Jews and some policy makers are concerned that Israeli Jews are not having children at the rate of their Arab neighbors, in the long run their limited population could provide them with the best internal stability. Unfortunately however, as these same problems spiral out of control in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and among their neighbors, they will be surrounded by nations with massive social problems, huge populations, and very little internal stability, thus making Israel's security all the more tenuous.

Israel and Genocide

Gershom Gorenberg's article at TAPPED, "The Israeli Government's Genocide Politics" accurately sums up the hypocrisy of Israel's policy toward Darfur refugees and the Armenian genocide. While Gorenberg's ignores Israel's own policies toward the Palestinians, he turns a white hot lamp on the failure of Israel to embrace Darfur's refugees and to go along with Turkey's continued denial of their 1915 massacre of Armenians.

Is it too much to ask of Israel to have them stand in as a leader of world human rights given the conditions leading to the founding of the country? I would say no, but perhaps I am asking too much of a vulnerable nation surrounded by enemies. However, as Gorenberg points out, "The underlying issue is that, pragmatically, Israel can claim it must protect its interests, even if that means indulging an ally ashamed of its history. It can argue that refugees pose a security threat. It can reject refugees in order to maintain its ethnic balance. But if it does those things, it has no grounds to speak about Western countries who turned away Jews in 1938."

Absolutely. What Israel can't do is have it both ways. They can't act as cold-hearted as the rest of the world to suffering while forcing everyone else to remember what happened to the Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s. That is rank hypocrisy. Personally, I think we do need to remember the Jewish Holocaust all the time. But we also need to remember the Armenians, the Native Americans, Darfur, Australian aborigines, and other peoples who the world has failed.

Those Compassionate Israelis

Israel has again shown that it doesn't give one whit for social justice if Jews aren't the oppressed party.

Last night, Israel sent a group of migrants back to Egypt. Included were about 50 refugees from Darfur.

You would think that Israel would be particularly sensitive to human rights given the experience of Jews in World War II. This of course has not been the case. Not only does Israel oppress the Palestinians with glee, but they show no interest in hosting refugees from other conflicts.

While there are lots of wonderful Israelis who do make the connections between their own past and human rights today, as a whole I don't think there is a democratic country with such consistently disgusting policies. Even our own.