Allison W. Good

Hear ye, hear ye!  Netanyahu says settlement construction won’t affect a final peace deal with the Palestinians!  He said he doesn’t think it’s an obstacle to continued direct negotiations.  I agree that it may no longer be an issue, but that’s because, according to the JPost, Netanyahu “lacks a majority to pass a new moratorium on housing starts in Judea and Samaria in any possible forum of ministers.”

Legally, aides to the prime minister acknowledge, Netanyahu would have to bring a further freeze to a vote in either the cabinet or the security cabinet. Such a vote would be necessary in order to require the commander of the Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria to issue another injunction barring housing starts. The seven-member inner security cabinet has no statutory role.

There are five “definite” freeze supporters in the security cabinet, but Netanyahu would “need all three remaining votes in order to pass the freeze.”  Two of those are Likud ministers who, while loyal to the prime minister, are against renewing the freeze.  The regular cabinet, made up of 30 members, has 16 definite votes against a renewed freeze, but the article doesn’t say how many votes something needs in the cabinet for it to go through.  But even if the inner security cabinet passed a renewed freeze, it wouldn’t matter because that cabinet has no statutory role.   Sorry kids, no more freeze.  But kudos to the JPost for actually conducting original “research”!

A second reason why settlement construction may not matter anymore is that the Palestinian Authority is allying with the UN to unilaterally declare a state in September 2011.  It’s not like the UN has real authority or anything, but they always love a good human rights cause, even if it perpetuates the whole colonial-post-colonial dichotomous context that we should be moving away from in the twenty-first century.  However, Abbas has apparently “hinted that the Palestinians would try to persuade the United States to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, if Israel kept up its refusal to freeze settlements,” even though Netanyahu won’t stop saying that direct negotiations are the only acceptable path for creating a Palestinian state.  And lest we forget, the PA and Hamas would have to come to an agreement before any Palestinian state could be established.

What does the U.S. think that its role should be?

“There are no guarantees in this process. We do know this: That the process works best and has its maximum of working if the United States is actively engaged in the process of bringing these two parties and these two sides together,” Gibbs said, adding that the sides aren’t going “to make progress if the United States is not involved.”

This is true, but there are caveats.  Clinton’s Camp David summit in 2000 failed, and that was the most active involvement on the part of the U.S. in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  When it comes to foreign policy, I think we (and by we I mean everyone who voted for Obama) knew that our current president was a bit of an amateur.  And I just don’t see Sec. Clinton or Speciaal Envoy Robert Gibbs as peacemakers.  If something actually does happen, if this administration by some act of something makes peace, I won’t be surprised if Dennis Ross comes out of the woodwork.  There’s also the issue of negotiating theory and that it doesn’t apply to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Research says that directive strategies–i.e. producing proposals and pushing parties toward a solution(s)–are more effective than facilitating interaction and acting as channels of communication.  It’s very, very hard to be successfully directive in terms of this conflict because the issues are so deep-seated.  No one is going to give up the Temple Mount.  Israel needs to remain Jewish and democratic, but that negates any right of return for Palestinian refugees who would not want to live in a Palestinian state created from the West Bank and Gaza.  Who lives where exactly?  Also, domestic politics are a major obstacle.  The Israeli government is always a coalition and it never truly agrees on anything.  Netanyahu can make deals all he wants, but the Knesset has to pass all of them.  The PA has always been messed up.  There was only one Arafat, and Salaam Fayyad is great but he’s too focused on economic development and not enough about Islam, which must irk those Hamas folks in Gaza.  So third-party mediation is great, but it must reflect the fact that the decision to make peace ultimately lies with the Israelis and the Palestinians.  The U.S. can’t make the choice for them.  Sorry about that.  Blame it on the thesis.

Now on to “Crunch Time,” the title of Roger Cohen’s column in yesterday’s NYTimes.  Basically, the international world knows that a Palestinian state must be created, but Israel isn’t “there” yet.  Israel is worrying about that whole can-Netanyahu-do-what-he-never-dreamed-of-doing conundrum, but Netanyahu is a good Likudnik and still holds on to the idea of the Land of Israel as the State of Israel.  Israel is worried that Obama might side with everyone else who wants a Palestinian state when the UN inevitably passes that resolution next year, and this could be leverage over the Israelis for an actual deal.

This is the right way to be a third-party mediator: not impartial, fearless, and assured.  But can Netanyahu be persuaded?  As Cohen says, “Netanyahu will stall. He will say the right of his center-right coalition would break at the point of explicitness about Israel’s borders. He will say he needs security guarantees before talk of borders.”  This is exactly what happened with Ehud Barak in 2000, except that was different because he used his crumbling government as a means for convincing Clinton to convene a summit.  But the thing is that this excuse has always swayed American administrations to the Israeli side.  Perhaps they feel bad for parliamentary democracy in general.  But unless Obama can harness Israel’s fear about next September, his role in the peace process is doomed to failure, and he’ll be another president who came and went without ending the most intractable conflict in human history.  I guess it’s a good thing he thinks he did well with health care.

Here’s something you won’t hear about from the American media: the Yesha Council, which essentially runs the West Bank settlements, is in the middle of a huge PR initiative.  Ynetnews reported yesterday that NYTimes publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and executive editor Bill Keller visited Ariel this week, and that they “were given a tour of a number of settlements” and also met with Netanyahu and Fayyad.  Yesha made sure to emphasize that it has both Israeli and Palestinian interests at heart by showing them the Barkan Industrial Park, which employs both groups, and the Ariel University Center of Samaria, where Arab students are apparently enrolled.  Those settlers are such kind and gentle do-gooders.

And finally, is there a ray of hope for Israel-Turkey relations?  There has always been tension between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but how about this analogy: Jerusalem is to Ankara as Tel Aviv is to Istanbul.  Haaretz editor in chief Aluf Benn, who recently attended a conference on the crisis in Israeli-Turkish relations in Istanbul, wrote this week that:

Istanbul and Tel Aviv can fix what Ankara and Jerusalem broke. Mutual trade has increased by 30 percent since the beginning of the year. Israeli tourism has gone down, but it can return to its previous levels. And the prospect of bringing together the secular elites of both countries – who share the dream, and the challenges, of integrating into the West, as well as the anxiety over religious ascendance – is an opportunity. Secular Turks are similar to secular Tel Avivians; There is a new restaurant in the Pera quarter of Istanbul, “Bird”, that attracts a stylish crowd and it’s tough to get a table, just as in Rothschild Boulevard’s Cantina.

I think he has a point.  Even if formal relations do not flourish, there are other avenues, because the interest is there.  Turkey wants to Westernize and eventually be accepted into the European Union (which won’t happen), and Israel can help with economic and cultural development.  There might actually be something to this.  Nothing like a bit of optimism on a Friday.  Whatever that means.

From the JPost:

A new grassroots effort is beginning that is modeled after the American conservative social movement. The Israeli version promises to be just as patriotic, just as provocative and just as antagonistic to US President Barack Obama.

The movement will hold its opening rally on Sunday night at the Zionist Organization of America House in Tel Aviv under the banner “Saying no to Obama.”

The immediate goal of the movement will be to pressure Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to give in to Obama’s demand that Israel renew the construction moratorium in Judea and Samaria.

This event is sure to be well-attended by Likud members and settlers, but I think that it’s not going to go anywhere.  The reason why the Tea Party has been so successful in America is that America only really has two parties.  Israel, on the other hand, has 12 parties in the Knesset.  That doesn’t leave much room for grassroots movements, and there were tons of parties that ran that didn’t get seats because they didn’t have enough votes.  To be successful, movements in Israel have to be political, like Ariel Sharon’s Kadima.  Also, Likudniks and settlers in general are not majority native Israelis.  They’re either Americans/Europeans or descendants of them who grew up in American/European communities in Israel.  The fact that the event is hosted by the Zionist Organization of America is very telling.  Sure, their statement will make it into the papers, but it won’t go beyond publicity.

Maybe BP’s new chief executive Bob Dudley thought that since all the hoopla surrounding April’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has relatively died down he could start in on the Tony Hayward-esque gaffes.  From Reuters:

BP’s new chief executive said its rivals and the media had helped cause a climate of fear during the summer when the oil giant’s blown-out Gulf of Mexico well caused the worst ever oil spill in the United States.

In an address to the annual conference of British business lobby group, the CBI, Bob Dudley said there had been: “A great rush to judgment by a fair number of observers before the full facts could possibly be known, even from some in our industry.
“I watched graphic projections of oil swirling around the gulf, around Florida, across and around Bermuda to England — these appeared authoritative and inevitable. The public fear was everywhere,” he said.

Dudley’s comments on Monday echoed those he made early in the 87-day crisis during a television interview, when he said scientists who argued the well was gushing up to 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) were “scaremongering.”

Dude, the well was gushing.  Get over yourself.  BP messed up, and Gulf Coast wetlands, wildlife, and residents will be paying the price for decades.  I mean, your claims process was just as bad as FEMA’s post-Katrina.  The “scaremongering” was legitimate.  Even though the real bpd was actually a few thousand below that purported by the scientists, it’s reasonable that people would be worried about things like wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico.  The wetlands, or what’s left of them, slow down hurricanes that might be heading in the direction of my hometown.  The gulf is the South Louisiana fisherman’s source of income.  When you’re left unprotected and jobless, the fear begins to set in.  Even when you live in New Orleans and have been virtually untouched by the spill, you still feel the fear.  Something would have been terribly wrong had there been no “scaremongering” after the spill.  The bottom line is that BP still doesn’t get it.

Moving on now to a New York Times piece.  The oil never got to St. Pete Beach in Florida, which is home to the TradWinds Resort:

After the explosion on April 20, there were some cancellations, but what really wrecked the summer for TradeWinds was the countless number of people who feared that oil was about to hit St. Pete and never called in the first place. By Mr. Overton’s calculations, his profits from April to late October sank by slightly more than $1 million, compared with his average earnings during the same period for the last three years.

Of course, anyone who bothered to look at a map would have known that St. Pete Beach — and hundreds of other vacation spots throughout the Sunshine State — would have pristine beachfronts through the summer, even under the worst of the worst-case scenarios.

Overton doesn’t blame the public and the media, the article continues.  He blames BP, and thinks they should pay up.  And here’s the million-dollar question: “Should companies like TradeWinds collect damages from an oil spill even if their beaches were never sullied?” Apparently, “virtually oil-free” Florida is poised to “hoover up the bulk of BP’s settlement money.”

And what if hotels, restaurants, gas stations, miniature-gold courses, amusement parks, grocery stores, retailers, movie theaters and others want more than just those losses? What if they demand future lost revenue, too — money that would have come to Florida next year, and the year after, but won’t because people who spent their summer vacations in, say, South Carolina decided that they liked it enough to go back?

None of this should be very hard to imagine — because it’s happening. According to the estimates of plaintiffs’ lawyers, more than 100,000 entities in Florida will make what are known as proximity claims, which are based on arguments of indirect harm.

How close is close enough, and how far is too far away?

The theoretical possibilities are endless. A restaurant owner in Boston: “I had a Gulf shrimp scampi special that was off the menu for months. Pay me.” A T-shirt maker in Tennessee: “I’m stuck with 10,000 ‘I Love Pensacola’ shirts. Pay me.” These examples are just conjecture, but real ones are piling up. Thousands of claims from all 50 states have already been filed.

Ken Feinberg, the lawyer and mediator in charge of the spill fund, initially said he wouldn’t consider these claims because of these possibilities, and also because it’s unclear how they will hold up in court.  Feinberg is expected to make a decision about proximity claims within the next few weeks as the November 23 application deadline for emergency payouts related to the spill approaches.  The biggest issue is the potential depletion of the BP fund:

Then there is the matter of resource allocation. To the extent that there is a limit to what BP will pay, this is a zero-sum game, and in Louisiana, there is growing anxiety that proximity claims will siphon money from those suffering the most.

These claims are tort claims, so all of these people have to claim that BP was “negligent and owed the plaintiff a duty.”  However (and this should be painfully obvious), “The further away a plaintiff is from the defendant — physically, or as part of a causal chain — the harder it is to win a lawsuit.”

I’m really worried about my fellow Louisianians.  Everything in my post about economic uncertainty in a variety of sectors only adds to my frustration that, as the NYTimes article stated, even Key West and Miami are lawyering up.  No offense to Atlantic Florida, but you’re not on the Gulf Coast.  Maybe you lost a few million, but your safety net is much bigger than that of shrimpers in Grand Isle who actually don’t have anything if they can’t fish.  If BP could pay for everything, then I would say that you guys deserve a tiny slice of the pie, but the economic survival of my statesmen and women is at stake.  When I had to do that article on Westwego seafood vendors, I met that couple who had to sell their truck and were putting their house on the market because market prices were high and no one was buying due to perceived health risks.  We had the most oil, we get the biggest cut.  You had no oil, you get nothing.  It sucks that tourism was down where you are, but it sucks even more for the people who lost a year’s worth of revenue.  Maybe they lost even more, considering the dying oyster beds.  I saw it with my own eyes.  The very real damage was done in Louisiana, not in Florida.  So that’s where the money should go, period.

The bottom-bottom line of the six month anniversary, though, is that it passed quietly.  The NYTimes has an op-ed today about urging Congress to pass an oil-spill bill that will reduce the chances of another drilling mistake, but reports on the state of the Gulf Coast are scarce.  Even the Times-Picayune didn’t say much.  I know that midterm elections are coming up, but the lack of coverage is inexcusable.  I spent my entire summer learning about, thinking about, and writing about the worst environmental catastrophe in this country’s history.  Don’t tell me it’s over.

Last night, the Vassar Student Association Council allocated a total of $2850 to campus political organizations so that they can attend Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity this Saturday in Washington, D.C.  I was going to skip blogging about the rally, but this really got to me.  Three thousand dollars can go a long way, and there is always much to be done on college campuses.  The money could have been used for anything, since it came from the council’s discretionary fund, which is “used to sponsor proposals and investments.”  I can’t come up with any particularly brilliant ideas at the moment, but how much of an investment is this rally, exactly?  And why is my tuition money sending these kids to a rally that’s really about nothing at all?  I think that parents would be shocked if they really knew what the VSA was spending its money on.  After all, it’s called the “Council Discretionary Fund.”  This time, however, it obviously wasn’t used with any discretion at all.

And now, on to the rally.  The Rally to Restore Sanity.  When was politics ever sane?  Campaigning has always been dirty, candidates have always been mudslingers.  That’s how you play the game, and this fact is understood throughout the world.  I don’t think this rally would go over too well in many places.  Everyone cares about politics in Israel, knows that political posturing is what keeps the country going.  When French people are frustrated with politics, they riot.  Insanity, in my opinion, is the key to healthy political competition and an involved civil society.  Only when the going gets tough, when races are really close, does civil society really step up its game in terms of participation.  There was much insanity behind the Cult of Obama in 2007 and 2008, and where would we have been now without that?  Politics is not sane.

I understand the reasoning behind the rally, that things have just gone too far and it’s time for people to be decent human beings again (but were they ever?).  However, rallying around restoring sanity to politics will only encourage apathy and complacency.  Journalists are saying that the 2010 midterm elections may be defined by the lack of youth voters, which will give the GOP and the Tea Party an edge.  The rally will be held in close geographic proximity to the Capitol, the White House, and the Supreme Court.  What does that say?  That we reject the political process in favor of an intangible “sanity”?  That insanity equals participating in politics?  We look to Jon Stewart as the voice of reason on “The Daily Show.”  This is completely acceptable, and I’ve been a fan since junior high.  But it’s a temporary escape, not the real world.  Stewart is trying to bring the idea behind his show into the real American political landscape, the playing field beyond his late-night slot, where it honestly has no place.

A few more thoughts about Israel’s loyalty oath, since I obviously have nothing better to do in the wee hours of Sunday morning during my October Break except wallow in my Israel separation anxiety.  First, the oath is apparently part of a deal Netanyahu made with Yisrael Beiteinu when he formed his coalition.  I guess the agreement was that he would get it passed in the Knesset.  But this is actually the second attempt at the loyalty oath.  In late May 2009, right after the elections, the cabinet defeated a proposed loyalty oath 8 votes to 3.  So why were they victorious this time?  I think the Freedom Flotilla incident provided the extra fuel needed to pass it in the cabinet, but we’ll see how it does in the Knesset.  I just pray it doesn’t go through.

And now for a lesson in international law, courtesy of Wednesday’s Transitions in Europe lecture.  States, for the most part, base citizenship on one of two legal principles: jus sanguinis and jus soli.  Jus sanguinis is citizenship based on having cultural ties to or ancestors who are natives of the nation.  It’s citizenship based on ethnicity.  Jus soli, on the other hand, is citizenship based on right of the soil, on birth in a particular state.  A lot of former members of the USSR have adopted policies of jus sanguinis, whereas the jus soli is only observed in 16 percent of the world, including, of course, in the United States.

Israel, with the Law of Return, practices jus sanguinis, and yet it has this precarious situation where 20 percent of its residents are Arab.  Not to mention that it doesn’t really have internationally recognized borders.  The loyalty oath only serves to reinforce jus sanguinis, because I’m sure that Lieberman is adamant about the term “Jewish” connoting not only a religious identity, but an ethnic one as well.  Danny Ayalon obviously is:

Some defenders of the new wording argue that the inclusion of the word “Jewish” should not be seen as a religious designation. “While many like to constrict the term as merely referring to a religious belief, its meaning is far greater,” wrote Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, in a Jerusalem Post column defending the new oath. “To be Jewish is to be part of a nation, civilization, culture and people. I frequently tell visiting dignitaries who are similarly uncertain that Jews are to Israel as the Chinese are to China and the French are to France.”

Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu want non-Jewish immigrants, and potentially all Arab residents of Israel in the future, to swear to Israel’s jus sanguinis, but jus sanguinis in the context of a civic duty to also uphold Israel’s democratic character.  The original 1952 Citizenship Law required immigrants to swear loyalty to the State of Israel, and that was it.  Jus soli is more in line with the concept of civic duty because citizens are bound together by the ideals of the state in which they were born, ethnicity aside.  All people born in the US are expected to act in accordance with an American civic duty to uphold Constitutional rights and defend democracy, for example.  The primary objective in Israel, however, is to defend its Jewish character, even though it’s a Jewish democracy.  Israeli officials usually only speak about its democratic character when they declare that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.  The Anat Kam-Uri Blau case of house arrest and censorship from this past spring comes to mind, and I think that Israel is trying to perform the impossible feat of combining the basics of jus sanguinis and jus soli. But even this jus sanguinis is weird because only non-Jewish immigrants have to recite the oath in the event the legislation passes in the Knesset.  Sure, nation states may be modern constructs, and we live in the 21st century, but Israel has to find a way to live in the world.  It really needs to be careful with the loyalty oath because it does not have a constitution.

That might have been my nerdiest post ever.

When it comes to Israel’s new loyalty oath, passed by the cabinet on Sunday, I have two very different and diametrically opposed thought processes.  This new oath, an amendment to the Citizenship Law, requires all non-Jewish immigrants to pledge loyalty to the Jewish, democratic state of Israel.  Besides creating a rift between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, and this is a very rare moment during which I will quote Al Jazeera, “were the bill to be passed by the Knesset, the people immediately affected would be Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who either want to marry a Palestinian-Israeli citizen or have already married and are waiting on their papers to be processed.”  And what does this mean for Jews?  The Jerusalem Post, in another very rare moment, published an op-ed by Barry Leff, a co-chairman of Rabbis for Human Rights, which definitely goes against the Jerusalem Post’s right-wing leanings.  Instead of taking the Haaretz view that this oath will turn Israel into a republic, or worse, a Saudi Arabian-esque theocracy, he talks about the ramifications for the people who don’t actually have to say the oath:

WHAT DOES it mean to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state? Does it mean anyone who would prefer to see Israel as a secular democracy – a country like America, for example – is disloyal? Does it mean anyone who does not keep kosher or observe the Sabbath is disloyal? Oops, Netanyahu and Lieberman probably don’t mean that, do they? If being Jewish means the haredim can force women to ride in the back of the bus, if Jewish means the haredim can force women to one side of a public street and men to another, if being Jewish means the state can arrest a woman for carrying a Torah scroll at the Western Wall, if being Jewish means the Chief Rabbinate can deny marriage to people with halachicly correct conversions because they don’t like a particular rabbi – I would not swear an oath to such a state either.

The Anti-Defamation League actually said yesterday that Jewish Israelis should take this oath because the United States makes its naturalized citizens pledge allegiance to America.  But America is built on the Enlightenment tenant of the separation between church and state, so our pledge of allegiance has us swearing in the name of the republic, not a particular religion.

As for the Israeli cabinet ministers, Netanyahu and Lieberman are really pushing this amendment, while Livni and Barak are against it, and Barak tried to make changes to the proposed amendment that obviously didn’t go through.  Netanyahu’s argument in favor of the amendment:

“The State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish People and is a democratic state in which all its citizens – Jewish and non-Jewish – enjoy fully equal rights…To my regret, today, there are those who are trying to blur not only the unique connection between the Jewish People and its homeland, but also the connection between the Jewish People and its state,” he said.

Before I get into my personal feelings about the oath, I have to say that it seems Netanyahu is trying to preempt final status issues, such as the recognition of the State of Israel by the Palestinians and the question of Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.  About a week or two ago it was announced that the Israelis and Palestinians were working on a two-month extension on the settlement freeze in exchange for the continuation of negotiations with support from the United States.  Then Netanyahu said he’d extend the freeze in exchange for PLO recognition of Israel.  And then Yasser Abed Rabbo, the chief negotiator for the Palestinians, said they wouldn’t recognize Israel until it returned to its 1967 borders.  If the bill passes in the Knesset, Palestinians will be forced to recognize Israel as a Jewish democratic state, and this means that a crucial piece of negotiating leverage on the Israeli side is now gone.

Thought Process #1: Israel is the Jewish homeland, duh!

Israel is a refuge for all Jews everywhere.  It is the physical and ideological manifestation of Zionism and the Biblical promise of the Land of Israel to the Israelites/Jews.  If I want to someday immigrate to Israel, all I have to do is prove that I have at least one Jewish grandparent and I am automatically granted citizenship.  It is a haven.  It is a place that I will always want to return to.  I cry when I go to the Kotel.  I cry when I sing Ha’Tikvah.  I cry when my plane lands in Tel Aviv.  There’s an Israeli flag hanging in my room at Vassar.  If Israel and the United States ever went to war against each other, I would fight for Israel.  I love the beach, I love falafel, I love the music, I love the political upheaval, I love the opinions, I love the way the sun sets on the Mediterranean.  Without Israel the Diaspora is an even more painful reality.  Without Israel I would feel even more displaced than I already do.  Israel is something tangible that will always welcome me back with open arms, even if the haredim don’t want to sit next to me on the bus, even if they throw rocks at me when I drive on shabbat.  Israel was founded as a Jewish and democratic state, and the government should do everything in its power to preserve that character.  It’s true that Palestinian birthrates outpace Israeli ones, endangering the Jewish democracy.  The United Nations and various pro-Palestinian countries constantly condemn Israel.  Israel has a right to defend itself.  If non-Jewish immigrants don’t pledge their loyalty to preserving the Jewish democratic nature of Israel, that could be interpreted as undermining it.  Palestinians who choose to live in Israeli territory know that Israel is Jewish and democratic, so they shouldn’t complain if non-Jewish immigrants who are Arab/Palestinian, who choose to live in Israel, have to swear an oath of loyalty.

Thought Process #2: This is dangerous and goes against my postmodern, post-colonial intellectual self.

Israel doesn’t have a constitution.  Did you know that?  This amendment to the Citizenship Law will replace such a constitution with a theocratic rule of law.  The loyalty oath actually makes Israel un-democratic by preventing freedom of expression and freedom of speech.  If a Palestinian who is a citizen of Israel and a reporter for Al Jazeera writes an op-ed condemning the Jewish and/or democratic character of Israel, will he or she be indicted on charges of slander or treason?  Will this loyalty oath necessitate the creation of a new criminal code?  Does Israel have a right to force its Jewish character on naturalized non-Jewish citizens?  On Jewish citizens?  Because some Jews don’t even think that Israel is Jewish; it’s ultra-Orthodox.  All of the important people who make the important decisions are Orthodox.  So I could be disenfranchised as well.  This poses risks for me, a Jew.  Today I learned about the dilemmas of post-Soviet Latvia and Estonia.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, both countries’ populations were barely dominated by Estonians and Latvians.  Nearly 50 percent of their residents were Russians.  What should be done with these Russians?  They are the colonizers, or the descendants of the colonizers, and now they are stateless.  Do we kick them out?  Grant them citizenship?  Grant them temporary residency?  Perhaps make them swear allegiance to the Latvian/Estonian nation state?  Israel is a colonizer.  It might make immigrant Palestinians sign this loyalty oath.  This is structural violence in the most Derrida-esque sense, built on the foundations of the modern phenomenon of colonialism.  Structural violence can result in physical violence, especially when it comes to colonialism.  I can’t sit in a seminar about Francophone Africa each week and not think about Israel in that context.  I can’t learn about the negative repercussions of creating a singular national identity in my Political Theory seminar and not think about Israel.  There’s also the question of whether the Jewish people indeed constitute a single people, a nation, and how that fits into the definition of a Jewish state, but I’ll save that for another time.

In conclusion, there’s a tug-of-war happening inside my head that won’t stop.  Somehow, I’ve learned how to separate what’s in my head and what’s in my heart.  I think you can tell the difference.  And now I must get back to my midterm paper about the constraints on the economic and political reforms of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

From Haaretz:

David Be’eri, known right-wing activist and director of City of David, says he accidentally hit the children with his car after they hurled rocks at his vehicle.

This guy actually works to settle Jews in the City of David, which is in East Jerusalem.  I had actually already heard of him because Haim mentioned his oh-so-peaceful initiative the day we toured the Old City.  I’ve seen those houses in the City of David that proudly display their Israeli flags, and I think there’s also some huge monstrosity somewhere around the Mount of Olives that’s part of his land reallocation project.  So while he has personally enabled the revolutionary archaeological dig in the City of David, his real objective is to displace Palestinians and undermine their claim on Jerusalem.

Both kids suffered physical injuries.  And yet Be’eri was in the car with his young son, and he tried to swerve so that he wouldn’t hit the Palestinian kids (key word “tried”), but he had to do something because they were throwing rocks and Be’eri feared for his and his son’s life.  Honestly, I really think Be’eri just wanted to be able to say that he stopped the Third Intifada before it started.

I would also like to use this post to lodge a public complaint.  Hebrew U’s Rothberg International School is really, really bad at sending out transcripts.  I made a request in mid-May to have mine faxed to Vassar, but it never was.  My Fulbright app is due Sunday, and I had to get a FedEx account to have the f*cking transcript shipped internationally in time.  Providing, of course, that it does get here in time.  I really don’t understand this because I’m applying with a Hebrew U affiliation, so can’t they just give the transcript to Israel’s Fulbright committee which is headed by Hebrew U faculty?  Unfortunately, the logic that derives from our natural ability to reason never applies in Israel, where you either have connections, or you don’t.  I’m off to the Bayit to remedy my grievances with chocolate chip challah.  Shabbat shalom!

When this article came up on my Twitter feed today, I was confused and, oddly, intrigued.  Basically, this rabbi named Ari Schvat has recently ruled that “female agents of Israel’s foreign secret service, Mossad, who may be required to have sex with the enemy in so-called “honey-pot” missions against terrorists” may now do so with his blessing.  Yes, illicit sex with foreign enemies is now kosher!  Apparently, Israel has a rich history of honey-pot missions, but they really have their roots in, wait for it, “Biblical lore”!

Queen Esther, who was Jewish, slept with the Persian king Xerxes around 500 BC to save her people, Schvat noted. Yael, wife of Hever, slept with the enemy chief of staff Sisra to tire him and cut off his head, according to tradition.

But here’s the caveat, because of course there’s always at least one:

There is a catch, however, for married honey-pots. “If it is necessary to use a married woman, it would be best [for] her husband to divorce her. … After the [sex] act, he would be entitled to bring her back,” Schvat wrote.

“Naturally, a job of that sort could be given to a woman who in any event is licentious in her ways.”

I can’t even begin to understand that rabbinic logic, nor do I want to, but honestly I’m glad to see that the rabbis in Israel are keeping up with the ever-changing times.  Now if they could just legitimize Reform rabbis, we’d be all set!

One thing I learned last year is that in order to be a journalist I must be very, very skeptical of lobbyists.  It wasn’t so hard for me because I’ve always shied away from mass pro-Israel movements due to the fact that I have formed my own opinions independent of those influences.  I’m not the doe-eyed freshman who went to an AIPAC conference and came back inspired to advocate on their terms.  That’s not what I do.  I didn’t have similar feelings about J Street, AIPAC’s center-left rival sibling, because it’s at that toddler stage of development, and I’m still skeptical that it can have any influence at all on Capitol Hill (whereas AIPAC is the second most influential lobbying group in the country).  But no matter how old or new it is, J Street should know that no one on the Hill is ever immune to scandal.

Last week The Washington Times, a right-wing publication, broke a lovely story about tax forms.  Apparently, “Hungarian-born financier and liberal political activist” George Soros and his two children “contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009,” in spite of “previous denials” that it had accepted funds from him.  According to J Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben Ami, that money “was part of a $750,000 gift from the Soros family to his organization made over three years.”  Why so controversial?  It’s not like Soros is an anti-Semite (like that guy from CNN who said all Jews are like Jon Stewart) or an Israel hater, but he has criticized the country’s “policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Bush administration’s decision in 2007 not to recognize a Palestinian unity government that included the militant Islamist Hamas movement.”  The article also mentions that he’s anti-AIPAC, but I don’t think that matters much because that’s why J Street exists in the first place.  But support for a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas is definitely a very left position that would not sit well with those at the center to whom J Street also caters.  At the end of the day, though, something that J Street denied has turned out to be true.  Do people learn nothing from Bill Clinton?

Two days after the Washington Times published that story, J Street counterattacked with its own blog post straight from Mr. Ben Ami(‘s staff) himself:

I accept responsibility personally for being less than clear about Mr. Soros’ support once he did become a donor. I said Mr. Soros did not help launch J Street or provide its initial funding, and that is true. I also said we would be happy to take his support. But I did not go the extra step to add that he did in fact start providing support in the fall of 2008, six months after our launch.

The leak of our tax return at this moment is less than helpful, I know, in keeping our eye on the real challenge we face: ensuring we seize this historic opportunity to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a peaceful conclusion.

But seriously, this Soros business isn’t the creepy part.  J Street’s tax returns tell another story, this one about a “single donor in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, named Consolacion Esdicul.”

When asked about Ms. Esdicul, the Happy Valley, Hong Kong based donor of nearly half the group’s revenue for the 2008 to 2009 fiscal year, Mr. Ben Ami said she gave J Street the money in multiple wire transfers at the urging of William Benter, a Pittsburgh-based philanthropist and the chief executive officer of Acusis, a medical services firm.

“She is trying to make the Middle East a Happy Valley,” Mr. Ben Ami said. “She is a business associate of Bill Benter and Bill solicited her for the contribution.”

J Street’s explanation:

Some press reports have also noted a large contribution on our return from a resident of Hong Kong named Consolacion Esdicul. The explanation for this is straightforward. Bill Benter, a philanthropist and political activist from Pittsburgh, is a major supporter of and contributor to J Street. He is a generous donor to a range of causes related to his hometown, national politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and a passionate advocate for peace.

Ok, I’ll buy it for now, but what’s up with that ridiculous quote about this woman in Hong Kong wanting to make the Middle East a Happy Valley?  Aren’t prominent lobbyists supposed to be a bit more eloquent than that?

So all of that was around September 24-26, but then on Friday The Washington Times reported that “J Street approached several US lawmakers in November 2009 asking whether they would be interested in meeting the author of the UN report on the war in Gaza, to ask him questions on his findings.”  But the Jerusalem Post said that Ben Ami told them “that his staff had made ‘two or three’ such phone calls to US politicians and relayed their response onward. However, he stressed that after those initial inquiries were made, his organization decided not to become involved because of Israel’s attitude toward Goldstone.”  The same article also reported Ben Ami as saying that “the report regarding his group’s contact with Goldstone was full of inaccuracies.”  Then he very prudently blamed the right-wing conspiracy:

Ben-Ami said the appearance of two unfavorable stories about J Street in the Washington Times over the past week were part of a concerted effort by the right-wing media to undermine his organization and its message at a critical period of time in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Theoretically, Jews aren’t supposed to engage in schadenfreude, but I’m pretty sure AIPAC is basking in this media run on J Street.  They’re having their cake and eating it too.