I’d like to introduce a new term: rekaB Street. That’s Baker Street spelled backwards, and it represents the opposite of Sherlock Holmes’ approach: rather than notice the anomalies and detect evidence of criminal or shameful activity that people have deliberately tried to conceal, residents of rekaB Street systematically ignore any clues that violate the expectations/demands of their preconceived narrative, sweeping aside the anomalies and highlighting precisely what has been created to mislead. It is, in a sense, a process of auto-stupefaction.

RekaB Street exists in many fields.

In a sense, Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, focuses on the problem, in particular, on the resistance to anomalies that contradict the paradigm. He cites a study by Bruner and Postman about how the resistance to anomalies that violate expectations can be so strong that people can literally not see that a deck has some playing cards with red spades and black hearts. The authors note the psychological discomfort felt by people confronting these anomalies (which their minds literally do not want to see).

In my own chosen field of medieval history, I have found precisely this kind of resistance. My early (and now current) work focused on a substantial trail of evidence indicating that for over half a millennium, Latin Christians had been tracking the advent of the year 6000 from the Creation (at which point the millennial kingdom would begin), but that as the date approached, the clergy (our unique source for documentation) dropped the dating system and adopted another that pushed off the apocalyptic date. Among the many events of note that coincided with the advent of these disappeared dates was the coronation of Charlemagne, held on the first day of the year 6000 according to the most widely accepted count, but dated by observers as AD 801.

I argued this “silence,” on something so critical reflected not indifference, but deep anxiety. Like Conan Doyle’s “Silver Blaze,” the main clue was the dog who did not bark. In response, I found that medievalists clung to their view of Charlemagne as someone with his feet firmly planted on the ground, who would never be moved by such silliness. As a result they handled the evidence in ways that resembled the work of clean-up and construction crews rather than that of detectives and archeologists.

Since 2000, the reigning approach for understanding the Middle East conflict between Israel and her neighbors has focused narrowly on the what’s called the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The resulting (or founding) paradigm for such an approach is what I’ve called either PCP 1 (politically-correct paradigm) or PCP 2 (post-colonial paradigm). In both cases, the framing conceit is the Israeli Goliath and the Palestinian David. And so powerful is the underdogma that governs this view that all evidence to the contrary gets swept aside. So insistent are the demands to support the underdog, that the cost of ignoring empirical reality seem a small price to pay.

What results, is a process of determined, deliberate stupefaction, in which we must inhabit rekaB Street, we must ignore critical evidence, bow down to ghoulish idols, literally render ourselves stupid. We must not talk about honor-shame culture much less adopt a paradigmatic view that privileges such concerns in understanding the Arab/Muslim hatred of an independent Jewish state in Dar al Islam. We should not discuss Islam’s triumphalist obsession with dominating and humiliating non-believers. We cannot discuss anti-Semitism or the Holocaust without equating it with Islamophobia, lest we offend people we might identify as agents of a new blood-dimmed tide. We cannot discuss the repeated evidence that our humanity is being systematically abused to benefit people who literally embody everything that we progressive, democratically-minded people abhor.

And as a result, we are fully misinformed by our media and our academics, who think that “attacking the most powerful” is a sign of courage regardless of who’s right, who prefer to preen about their moral superiority even at the direct cost of empowering those holding their morality in contempt, who attack their critics savagely even as they embrace their enemies; who can’t tell parody from reality because the procrustean beds they impose on the evidence have led them to invert empirical reality.

Thus babies killed by Hamas become the occasion of cries for sympathy for Gazans assaulted by Israel. And terrorists who disguise themselves as journalists become the occasion for accusing Israel of deliberately killing journalists.  An army which undergoes a disastrous defeat, gets handed laurels of victory for their performance. The world’s army with (by far) the best record when it comes to reducing civilian casualties on the other side in urban warfare get’s painted at the world’s most brutal army. And people who target civilians at any cost, including suicide, get painted as heroes of resistance.

The inhabitants of rekaB Street will not break step with the parade of the naked emperor no matter what that reveals about their own stupidity.

Of course were this merely a children’s tale for adults, the tailors merely financial tricksters, the emperor merely vain, and the court merely foolish and frightened of losing face, it might be alright (don’t want to impose too high standards here). But when the tailors are malevolent agents of a ruthless cognitive war of aggression, when the “new clothes” are icons of hatred designed to arouse genocidal fury against the very people witnessing the parade, and when the courtiers are aggressively dishonest, some alarm bells should be going off. We – the Western intelligentsia in particular – are in the running for a Darwin Award.

If we do survive this challenge, there will arise an entire field of scholarly research dedicated to exploring the tendencies of intellectuals to commit civilizational suicide.

Here’s a classic. Let’s start with the ghoulish display of sorrow over the body of a dead boy, allegedly killed by Israeli bombing. It’s aimed right at the heart of a someone like Annie Lennox who, upon seeing bombs falling on Gaza immediately imagines Palestinian babies on the receiving end, rather than Hamas militants targeting Israeli babies. And, of course, the news media snatch up the photo-op.

Haniya and Egyptian PM Kandil mugging for the cameras Remember this from Kafr Qana, Lebanon, July 30, 2006: Green Helmet Guy with dusty baby and clean baby toy clip, July 30, 2006. And, of course, the media run with the story. It’s all so obvious. Boy dead from explosion, Israelis bombing Gaza. As the Palestinian “general” in charge of the investigation of Al Durah’s death put it, “there’s no need to investigate when we know who did it.” But wait, what about the evidence, asks Elder of Baker Street? Jodi Rudoren, who for all her flakey early noises when she was assigned the Middle East beat by the NYT, shows some signs of independent journalism writes:

It is unclear who was responsible for the strike on Annazla: the damage was nowhere near severe enough to have come from an Israeli F-16, raising the possibility that an errant missile fired by Palestinian militants was responsible for the deaths.

And Karin Laub, the AP reporter, adds significant detail:

Israel vehemently denied involvement, saying it had not carried out any attacks in the area at the time. Gaza’s two leading human rights groups, which routinely investigate civilian deaths, withheld judgment, saying they were unable to reach the area because of continued danger. Mahmoud’s family said the boy was in an alley close to his home when he was killed, along with a man of about 20, but no one appeared to have witnessed the strike. The area showed signs that a projectile might have exploded there, with shrapnel marks in the walls of surrounding homes and a shattered kitchen window. But neighbors said local security officials quickly took what remained of the projectile, making it impossible to verify who fired it.

We’ve seen this scenario before. In the summer of 2006, most of the Ghalia family were killed in an explosion on the Gaza Beach. The Palestinians, with the help of dramatic but dubious footage of their young daughter, meandering in wild grief among the wreckage, sold the western news media, who immediately broadcast their claim that the family, while relaxing on the beach, was shelled by Israeli naval ships. Classic Pallywood. Evidence piled up that the Israelis had not been firing there, that the hole caused by the ordnance did not accord with an Israeli shell, that despite claims to the contrary, Palestinian sources and their unofficial spokesman, Mark Garlasco of HRW had no ballistic evidence of what caused the explosion. When it came time to send two of the youngest victims to Israeli hospitals, and at risk to their lives, the doctors hastily removed the shrapnel from their bodies.

In this case, however, journalists begin to show some signs of forensic acuity. To be fair, them to us, and we to them, both the NYT’s Jodi Rudoren and AP’s Karen Laub actually mention the anomalous evidence: the explosion was too small to have been fired from a plane; the clean up crew visited the site before the journalists. Indeed, the Algemeiner contacted a ballistics expert who confirmed Rudoren’s suspicions:

After reviewing CNN’s footage of the scene of the blast, Yiftah Shapir, a ballistics expert who is the Director of the Middle East Military Balance Project at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel confirmed to The Algemeiner, “It is reasonable to say that this damage is from a relatively small explosion at close range.”

“You see a lot of small holes,” he added, “If it was a very heavy bomb the damage would be worse, and at long range the shrapnel would be spread much more widely because of the long distance.”

This is obviously a huge step forward over the Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg’s, appraisal on October 1, 2000, of the wall behind barrel that Muhammad al Durah and his father had hidden behind, the previous day. From Nahum Shahaf’s archive.

Told that the Israelis had fired for 40 minutes of “bullets like rain” until they killed the boy, Goldenberg looked at the dozen or so bullet holes that looked suspiciously like they were shot from “head on,” rather than the 30% angle of an Israeli bullet would have to travel to leave marks on the wall, and pronounced the cluster “proof that the Israelis had targeted the boy.”

Apparently, now, almost thirteen years later, some journalists have at least problematized the Israeli-Goliath/Palestinian-David framing story: maybe that doesn’t cover all the cases. It is after all, a journalistic task to give us the relevant evidence. Obviously more investigation is called for, but thanks for the allusive scraps. Those who argued that Israel should have let journalists into Gaza for OCL in 2008/9, because they would have provided quality control over the kind of footage that would come out of Gaza from unsupervised Palestinian “journalists,”have evidence for their claim in this kind of reporting. Similarly, watchdog groups like NGO Monitor have read the riot act even to Palestinian NGOs, notorious for their anti-Israel advocacy brand of “human rights” defense. Notes Elder of Baker Street:

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights , which is keeping track of everyone killed in Gaza (and which admits that most of the dead have been “militants,”) did not list Mahmoud Sadallah or Aiman Aby Wardah in their list of victims of Israeli airstrikes, although they even include one person who died of a heart attack.

So far so good. Now I don’t want to grade elementary school students by too high a standard, but, an alert journalist’s antennae should quiver at the comment, “no one appeared to have  witnessed the strike.” In one of the most densely neighborhoods of “one of the most densely populated areas in the world”? No one noticed? Omerta? Possibly. Probably, if it were a Hamas explosive.

How many journalists or readers even think on the role of intimidation in shaping the news they get?

And yet, another datum corroborates this hypothesis: Laub informs us, “local security officials quickly took what remained of the projectile.” Two questions:

1) Are we sure it was all “projectile”? What if part of it was the mangled body of a rocket launcher that blew up on the launchers, killing the neighbors, including the four-year-old boy?

2) Does one imagine all these cleaners did was run in, remove the item(s) in question, and leave without also informing those watching them not to speak about the event? Indeed, I wonder who was the brave person who reported about the clean-up crew?

Implications for the Cognitive War

Meditate on this picture:

Here is the head of Hamas, whose boys systematically fire from the midst of civilians, in order create civilian casualties they can then blame on Israeli counter-strikes, exploiting a death directly caused by his men, in order to appeal to western sympathy. It would be hard to imagine a more stunning portrait of the most depraved hypocrisy (and contempt for viewers who believe this display of compassion). If hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, then this brazen hypocrisy is the contempt vice shows for the pathetic stupidity of the supposedly virtuous.

After all, it is hard to imagine a more grotesque expression of a mutual corruption: trying to demonize your enemy before an outside audience whom you expect to side with you in the name of empathy for the very children you victimize. How disordered must the emotional and moral world of someone subject to this kind of manipulation?

Not only that, but Haniyah dragged into this humiliating display, the prime minister of Egypt’s new “Muslim Brotherhood” government, trying to show support for her Palestinian branch, Hamas. Prime Minister Hesham Kandil jumped right in, kissing the baby, and subsequently testifying (in what BBC Correspondent Wyre Davies found to be a “powerful statement”: “his blood is still on our clothing.” Kandil’s a fool eagerly trying to join in the morbid circus Haniyah and Hamas so frequently stage. Haniyah, thinking he could get away with it, has dragged Kandil into this shameless pornography of death.

One last reflection. Hamas’s strategy has long been to attack from behind civilians to provoke Israeli retaliation and then use the collateral damage of those victims as a way to blame Israel. This is in fact a key element of their asymmetrical war with Israel. As one Gazan explained to an Italian reporter towards the end of Operation Cast Lead (OCL):

The Hamas militants looked for good places to provoke the Israelis. They were usually youths, 16 or 17 years old, armed with submachine guns. They couldn’t do anything against a tank or jet. They knew they were much weaker. But they wanted the [Israelis] to shoot at the [the civilians’] houses so they could accuse them of more war crimes.

In other words, Hamas engages in the exceptionally rare wartime act of actively victimizing one’s own civilian population – specifically a war crime – in  order to win a victory in cognitive war. And they can only do so, if a corrupt media on the scene (including NGOs and UN agencies), rather than expose their criminal strategies, play along and present the images of dead babies in the framework of the Palestinian narrative of Israeli victimization.

The fact that Hamas thought they could clean up the scene and pull off a Gaza Beach, successfully blaming the Israelis for the tragedy, speaks eloquently of their exceptionally low appraisal of the forensic acumen of the Western press (or their power to indimidate). And they have good reason to so believe. After all, Goldstone, in his investigation into the abuses of the Palestinian people during OCL, never once looked into this kind of human shielding. Imagine if he had!

Similarly, when so acute a journalist and commentator as Max Fisher puts his mind to analyzing this data and these issues, he ends up coming out with the empty-handed meme about “both sides…” It’s hard to know whether he is just incapable of siding with Israel on so simple and fundamental an issue, or he’s actively trying to do damage control for Hamas. In either case his readership is hardly served by his moral obfuscations in the name of even-handedness.

Alas. It’s hard to believe that if the press had learned the lessons of al Durah they’d still be suckered by this grotesaque display.

Now meditate on this picture, provided by Electronic Intifada to weaponize the tragedy against Israel.

Are you prepared to say, “so what if Hamas killed the boy, this picture symbolizes Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israelis anyway”?

An earlier version of this essay, one that includes all the pictures, appeared at Pajamas Media, and the evolving version is at the Augean Stables.

Reflections on Palestinian Thanatography and Western Stupefication

Max Fisher, formerly of the Atlantic Monthly, now the WaPo’s “foreign policy advisor,”  just posted a reflection on the war of images in the current Gaza operation. In it he makes every effort to be “even-handed.” And in the end, comes up empty-handed. A remarkable example of how intelligent people can look carefully at evidence and learn nothing. If I didn’t know better (which I don’t), I might think he was doing some “damage control,” if not for Hamas (in which case, presumably it would be unconscious), then for the paradigm that permits him not to acknowledge Hamas’ character.

The Israeli-Palestinian politics of a bloodied child’s photo

Posted by Max Fisher on November 16, 2012 at 3:17 pm

In a column on Judith Butler and the anti-Semitic left, you put out a challenge to those of us who would still like to consider ourselves “on the left” but don’t have Israel Derangement Disorder.

The logic of the left is the same logic its ancestors used to defend Stalinism in its heyday — the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the enemy of the left is Western democracy, as it exists in both the United States and Israel. Butler’s anti-Americanism and anti-Israel posturing defines the left.

Isn’t it time for good men like Landes and Geras to face reality, and to stop trying to get the left to change its tune? The fight to defend Israel must henceforth include the effort to fight the left, whose agenda, as always has been the case, leads to horrendous ends.

I’d like make a distinction between a “demotic” left and revolutionary left, and then address why the sharp differences between those two styles of “being left” have been lost in the last decade(s).

First, everything that you describe as “left” is actually “revolutionary left.” They are the ones who served as useful idiots for the Stalinists back then, and who, today, as Dan Pipes chronicles, serve as useful infidels for the Islamist Jihadis. They in fact pursue – like Marx – a profoundly apocalyptic millennial agenda that wants to radically transform/perfect society and the world now. So while they derive their ideology from demotic leftist principles – egalitarianism, anti-imperialism, dignity of manual labor, un-coerced cooperation and sharing – their impatience draws them into a whirlwind of emotions that end up compromising the very principles they began with. Marx made some very fine distinctions between crude (rohe) Communism, based on “universalizing envy” of others, and (presumably) the real thing (based on generosity?).

I’d like to define demotic principles (which are also “liberal” principles) as the behavior of free people, entering with personal dignity into uncoerced relations with others (Die Würde freiwilliger menschlicher Interaktion). This means the renunciation of coerced, domineering relations at multiple levels in social and political interaction. These are the basic principles that underlie fundamental demotic values like the dignity of manual labor (rather than stigmatizing laborers), equality before the law (rather than legal privilege, apartheid), and the value of every human life (rather than the sacrifice of the well-being of the many for the pleasure of the few). These are the basic cultural building-blocks of successful democracies, that is societies of abundance in which commoners are empowered. Carl Schorske argued that there’s no Liberal Party in England is because the liberals won: both the Tories and Labor were liberal (in comparison with real authoritarians).

Now in fascist revolutionary circles, where violence is redemptive and coercion, even mega-death, an attractive tool with which to crack the eggs necessary for the omelet, many of these fundamental commitments to non-coerced relations become problematic. (Judith Butler tries to maintain her technical virginity on this point in her statements on Hamas.) This is what happened with terrible consequences in the 20^th century, including the mega-death of tens even, in total, a hundred million.

The real question is, how, with our knowledge of how these demotic principles got hijacked by revolutionaries on the left in the 20th century – Hitler’s initial “party” was the DAP, the German Workers Party – and the knowledge of how appallingly some of the most brilliant (and not so brilliant) intellectuals of their day behaved as fellow travelers – George Bernard Shaw, Heidigger and Jung, Jean-Paul Sartre, Noam Chomsky) in their defense of revolutionary state terrorists (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot) – the main figures on the left have (collectively, consensually) not learned anything from this, but instead gone from being useful idiots for a demotic millennial ideal to being useful idiots for one of the most abhorrent and regressive cultural and religious movements in recorded history.

I think Bruce Bawer’s recent book offers one of the most important bases on which to pursue the answers to these questions, and personally, I would, had I some graduate students, set them to work on exploring the millennial/messianic dimension of critical theory, the impossible utopianism built into the theory and practice (transgressive performativity as apocalyptic deed, as a form of what students of early Christianity call “realized eschatology”). I think an analysis of their post-apocalyptic cognitive dissonance (since the fall of Communism in particular), helps understand how they can get into such ludicrous oxymorons such as “gays for Palestine” or “Hamas is a progressive social movement and part of the global left.” The book I want to write is entitled, They’re so Smart cause we’re so Stupid, and it was inspired by Fort Hood, but works as a key to understanding lots of things, like the stunning success of so cheap a product as Pallywood and its most poisonous and much relished fruit, the Muhammad al Durah bloodless libel.

When Judith Butler attacks Berlin gays for being “Islamophobic” and humiliates them publicly, and yet calls homophobic Hamas a “progressive social movement,” she does so out of the best and most sincere of motives, as she herself insists. But she effectively betrays them despite the fact that it was conceptually “on their [‘queer’] backs” that she rode to theoretical prominence. Not much gratitude in her karma. She both adopts aspects of the authoritarian personality (with the weak) and identifies with the aggressor.

So personally, I think most every decent person is on the demotic left, in the sense that they treat others (including women) with respect and dignity; they agree to abide by the isonomic principle “whoever’s right, my side or not” (i.e., limits to the “my side right or wrong mentality); and they use violence only to defend themselves from unwarranted aggression and not to dominate others. Obviously in the real world, no one (or very few) can sustain this positive-sum ethos all the time, and judgments about what is aggression and what is defense always arise.

How the Left could mistake the Israelis defensive moves as right wing aggression (the “Nazionism thesis”) when they are among the most committed culture to demotic  principles on the planet (e.g., the size of their camp of suicidal self-abnegators), and correspondingly mistake the Palestinians for the innocent victims of Israeli hegemonic aggression, when their most salient cultural product is a cult of death and hatred with few rivals on the globe, is a major question that needs addressing. But it includes the fundamental understanding that we’re not trying to understand the “left” whose principles of fairness we all wish to see implemented, but a deviation from that. Let’s call the non-violent, useful infidels like Judith Butler, who go down this path of betraying the very values they think they embody, and who refuse any “reality testing” lest it prevent them from performing their redemptive deeds on the global stage, the “self-destructivist left.” Such people flock to Human Rights NGOs and journalism.

And behind the moral preening, lies intimidation. These self-destructivists heap the criticism on powers that do not strike back (i.e., hegemons committed to non-coercive principles like the US and Israel), and don’t dare criticize those who do (Hamas and the revolutionary left). Like journalists covering the Arab-Israeli conflict (and the Islamist-West one), they are too cowardly to resist intimidation, too in need of success to admit the intimidation to their audiences, and too vain to admit it to themselves, so they become “advocates for the underdog.” Appeasement, as feeding everyone else to the crocodile with the hope that he’ll lose his appetite before he gets to you, is a classic form of this behavior, played out right now with Iran. All the self-destructivist left is against a strike in the name of peace, and the Israelis, who seem to be the only grown ups in the room to understand that a nuclear Iran will be a catastrophe for the entire global community, are considered warmongers.

I see it as a massive case of the emperor’s new clothes, starting in October of 2000 with Al Durah as the icon of hatred, paraded in the streets by an advocacy-driven media, as an act of “solidarity” with the oppressed Palestinian people. This arouses widespread loathing of Nazi-like, apartheid Zionist settler-imperialism. This narrative, which, for the West is suicidal, and which animates a genocidal Muslim apocalyptic narrative, in which all infidels will be rendered dhimmi,  has so strong an appeal, that the voice of the “youth” speaking the truth is (still) drowned in the cheers for high priestesses of the self-destructivist “left” like Judith Butler. And if I had to write a Jared Diamond-like book on how civilizations die, I’d pay special attention to the suicidal versions of this leftist folly.

But right now, I’m still working to avoid that suicide, not conduct an autopsy.

Our problem now, as I see it, is that these self-destructivists, who have lost their moral compass even as they think themselves at the (millennial) cutting edge of moral performativity, dominate the public sphere. They’ve mistaken the most responsible hegemonic behavior in the recorded history of mankind (and therefore, ironically, the most successful and productive) for the worst, and the worst political culture for misunderstood children who just need their moment in the sun. They somehow imagine themselves closer to Islamic radicals than what they derisively call “right-wingers.” In fact, in comparison with the political culture of the Middle East, the most right, authoritarian wing of our mainstream is on the margins of their demotic left wing. And this drives our self-destructive culture wars. The massive failure/refusal to understand that, accounts for why Islamism has had such massive victories in the cognitive war during the brief years so far in the 21^st century.

Time to turn it around. Maybe what we need is something other than the “left-right” political dichotomy.

Thanks for the challenge. Hope you find it useful.

Richard Landes

rl.seconddraft@gmail.com

www.theaugeanstables.com

Two Cheers for Double Standards

By STANLEY FISH

What is a double standard? It’s a double standard when you condemn an opponent for doing or saying something you would approve or excuse if it were said or done by one of your buddies. The double standard that is in the news these days concerns Rush Limbaugh, who called Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, a “slut” and “prostitute” because she told Congress that her university’s health plan should cover the cost of contraceptives.

Limbaugh has not had many defenders (Mitt Romney said weakly that he wouldn’t have used that language), but some on the conservative side of the aisle have cried “double standard” because Ed Schultz was only mildly criticized (and suspended for a week) for characterizing Laura Ingraham as a “right-wing slut,” and Bill Maher emerged relatively unscathed after he referred to Michele Bachmann as a “bimbo” and labeled Sarah Palin with words I can’t mention in this newspaper. If you are going to get on your high horse when Limbaugh says something inappropriate, shouldn’t you also mount the steed when commentators on your team say the same kind of thing? Isn’t what’s good for the goose good for the gander?

These questions come naturally to those who have been schooled in the political philosophy of enlightenment liberalism. The key move in that philosophy is to shift the emphasis from substantive judgment — is what has been said good and true? — to a requirement of procedural reciprocity — you must treat speakers equally even if you can’t abide what some of them stand for. Basically this is the transposition into the political realm of the Golden Rule: do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Don’t give your friends a pass you wouldn’t give to your enemies.

So if you come down hard on Limbaugh because he has crossed a line, you must come down hard on Schultz and Maher because they have crossed the same line; and you should do this despite the fact that in general — that is, on all the important issues — you think Schultz and Maher are right and Limbaugh is horribly and maliciously wrong.

These are not so much judgments based on content so much as attributions of venal motives. Limbaugh is “malicious” – i.e., it’s not that he’s wrong, he’s bad. For Fish not to note the shift from content to character, from substance to ad hominem, seems rather sloppy. Presumably he knows the difference.

(Some left-wing commentators have argued that there is a principled way of slamming Limbaugh while letting the other two off the hook, because he went after a private citizen while they were defaming public figures. Won’t wash.)

Interesting that he waves away this option, which is the preferred rationalization among many. I am not particularly impressed with the distinction (everyone’s a public figure here in the sense that they’re weighing in about public policy in the public sphere).

The idea is that in the public sphere (as opposed to the private sphere in which you can have and vent your prejudices) you should not privilege your own views to the extent that they justify treating those with opposing views unequally and unfairly. (Fairness is the great liberal virtue.) This idea is concisely captured by the philosopher Thomas Nagel when he says that in political life we should regard our most cherished beliefs, “whether moral or religious … simply as someone’s beliefs rather than as truths.” In short, back away from or relax your strongest convictions about what is right and wrong and act in a manner that grants legitimacy, at least of a formal kind, to the convictions of others, even of others you despise.

It’s quite striking how often the gut emotions appear here – “despise…” “malicious…” “can’t abide…” Are political disagreements so visceral for Fish?

But there is an alternative way of looking at the matter and it is represented in a scene (which I have discussed previously in “The Trouble With Principle”) from the classic western movie “The Wild Bunch.” Two outlaws, played by William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, are talking about the gang of railroad detectives pursuing them. What rankles is that at the head of the gang is one of their old comrades. Borgnine’s character is dismayed at what he takes to be the treachery of a former colleague. Holden’s character explains that he gave his word to the railroad. Borgnine’s character shoots back, “That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give your word to.” What counts is who your friends and allies are. You keep your word to them and not just to anybody. Your loyalty is to particular people and not to an abstraction.

This is the classic notion of asabiyya described by Ibn Khaldoun as the highest moral principle: “my side right or wrong.” It is, by modern, civilized standards, a primitive notion associated with tribal warriors, self-help cultures (like the mafia), and patriotism (Gott mit uns). It’s precisely what people so often condemn among Zionists (communautarisme, “Israel-firsters,” “Israel right-or-wrong crowd”). That Fish would invoke it in a moral discussion in a culture based on “whoever is right, my side or not,” is rather astonishing.

The same disdain for choosing principle over family and friends was displayed by the Chicago Mayor Richard. J. Daley when he was accused of nepotism for having steered the city’s insurance business to his son’s agency. Nonplussed, Daley asked (rhetorically), “Isn’t that what fathers are supposed to do, help their children get a start in life?”(“Liberty in America”, by rtbohan, June 18 , 2008).

Precisely. And it’s the act of breaking up “old boy networks” and making way for merit-based promotion that lies at the heart of modern democracies.

Another assertion of the primacy of family loyalty is found in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” when Satan describes himself as a “faithful leader.” The angel Gabriel retorts, “Faithful to whom? To thy rebellious crew? / Army of fiends?” Like Daley and like the character Borgnine plays, Gabriel rejects a notion of fidelity that is indifferent as to its object. Your faith is not binding simply because you have pledged it; it is binding only if it is pledged to the right people. (What counts is who you give your word to.) If you’re going to be faithful, be faithful to the Father who made you and not to a bunch of ungrateful apostates. Obligations are not owed to everyone, but only to those who are of the right sort.

If we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?

This is pretty breathtaking. It illustrates the claim made by “right-wingers” that while the right thinks the left is wrong, the left thinks the right is evil. Schultz and Maher are the good guys? Always? My side right or wrong? Fish acknowledges no requirement to continuously assess claims rather than just adopt the positions espoused by “my side”?

There is no answer to that question once you step outside of the liberal calculus in which all persons, no matter what their moral status as you see it, are weighed in an equal balance.

And on what basis do you take that step? How can you call the liberals and progressive “good guys” even as you dump the principles that make liberalism strong?

Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently.

Now we get into matters of faith (or what Maher might call religulosity). The whole point about reaching moral convictions is weighing arguments. The idea that once we’ve come to a conclusion, we should then close the gates and rally round the flag is breathtakingly regressive. What human being on the planet is sure that he/she (and his/her associates) are always right? This is just the kind of flakey thinking that produced the fellow travelers who defended mass murderers. Hitler’s bad; but Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot…. they’re trying to do the right thing.

Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they’re basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. “Fair” is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.

On the contrary, giving up on fair, gives up on the permanent demand to examine and re-evaluate. It rushes to stereotypical judgments based on prejudice. It not only doesn’t adopt the “who are we to judge?” meme so popular among the “good guys” that Fish admires, it rushes to judgment.

Fairness is a profound moral value precisely because it involves a fundamental commitment to exegetical modesty, an ongoing admission that as much as we believe we are coming to the right conclusion, doing the right thing, we may be mistaken, and the basic respect for our fellow citizens demands that we listen to them with the same respect we would like them to listen to us. Anyone who dumps this under the impression that they don’t need opposition reveals a level of ego inflation that should disturb everyone around them.

Replacing “moral” for “fair” shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the principles behind fairness. It is, in some deeply disturbing ways, a form of McCarthyism in which “we” can do all kinds of things that “they” cannot because “we” know that “we” are the good guys and “they” are the bad guys.

I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule “don’t do it to them if you don’t want it done to you” the rule “be sure to do it to them first and more effectively.” It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.

Wow. Who could ask for a better illustration of the devastating thesis articulated by Stephen Hicks in Explaining Postmodernism: the “relativism” of the post-modernists is actually a mask for the politics of a subversive left. Who could ask for a better illustration of how easy it is for groups who, when in the minority, plead for fairness, but when feeling powerful, drop the pretense and go with power politics? Actually, isn’t that what the bien-pensant “left” always accuses Zionist Jews of doing?

This is just the kind of thinking that led so many “beautiful French souls” to come to the defense of Charles Enderlin even when his colossal error in judgment became public: “he’s one of ‘us’, one of the good guys.” It’s also what just happened to George Zimmerman, the “white hispanic” whom the MSNM decided was one of the bad guys and about whom they had no hesitation “shaping” the evidence.

If you have a problem imagining how the media (or academia) could have become populated by people willing lie, cheat, and distort for the sake of (what they believe is) a good cause, start right here for reconsideration.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this column is where it appears: Campaign Stops. In a sense it’s a charter for a biased coverage of the campaign, especially at the NYT. “Obama’s the good guy; Romney’s the bad guy. Why on earth should we, the journalists and pundits, play fair? We didn’t last time; why should we this time?”

But in the still larger picture, it’s a further deterioration into a culture war we cannot afford. The difference between Limbaugh and Maher may seem huge to some, but it pales in comparison with the nature of our real enemies. For liberal good guys (“us”) to declare war on the right-wing bad guys (“them”) — Limbaugh, Palin, Netanyahu — while claiming that such groups as the Muslim Brotherhood or individuals as Mahmoud Abbas are “moderate,” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s going on.

I can’t live with this, and if Stanley Fish had intellectual integrity, he would feel ashamed. But I guess, as long as his peer group keeps patting him on the back, he has honor, even if it is rooted in shamelessness. Might makes right, but a very brittle kind.

UPDATE: Ursula Duba, a writer of great integrity and courage has posted the following.

“The sentence “Norway’s justice minister blames Israel for Muslim rape wave” which is posted on Robert Spencer’s wall on FB (the link has been removed in the meantime, even though the headline  is still on Robert Spencer’s wall) and is also quoted on Professor Richard Landes website The Augean Stables should be considered a lie. The statement by Norway’s justice minister was allegedly quoted in a headline in ARUTZ SHEVA by Gil Ronen. From there it spread around the globe like wildfire. I never saw that headline in Arutz Sheva of Dec 5, 2011. As of yesterday or even earlier, the statement attributed to Norway’s justice minister is nowhere to be found in Arutz Sheva, nor does Gil Ronen offer an explanation as to why he altered the headline to “Muslim ‘Rape Wave’ Reported in Oslo” at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150378#.TuQadvKa8qM. Without proof as to when and where the alleged statement by Norway’s justice minister was made, the statement itself should be considered as untrue and as slander.

We owe Norway an apology. I herewith apologize to Norway for this slander. I hope that all decent people will join me in a) apologizing to Norway and b) will make sure that any such statements are in fact TRUE. Quoting a sixth or seventh blog as a source is totally unreliable. This is how lies and defamation run amok on the internet. I will have none of it.”

After more than a week of waiting for the people involved in this story to get back to me about what the real sources are, I have come to the conclusion that this is the most appropriate position to take. I apologize to Norway for running this unverifiable approach, and hope that they show the courage necessary to tackle this grave problem of rape.

The Guardian’s anti-Israel Jews, and a letter to my teenage nephew
August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Antony Lerman, Comment is Free, Guardian, Hamas, Hezbollah, Nazi Analogies, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Seth Freedman, Theobald Jew | by Adam Levick

CiF’s Jewish Israel defamers

When joining the team here at CiF Watch, and attempting to understand why Jewish writers for the Guardian are often among the most vociferous in expressing their contempt for Israel, and so willing to demonize the state’s Jewish supporters, I had to get up to speed on the term “Theobald Jew.”

I soon learned that:

According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.

The CiF contributors I refer to include Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Antony Lerman, Seth Freedman, Tony Greenstein, among others. These Jewish writers don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions. Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies – the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation. Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with.

Freedman, for instance, has suggested that Israel is a theocracy – one which is on moral par with Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. Gordon has on several occasions accused Israel of ethnic cleansing – once advancing such an ugly calumny in the radical anti-Zionist magazine, Counterpunch. Tony Greenstein has ardently defended the ugly comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, typically advanced by extremists. Richard Silverstein has called the behavior of Israelis serving in the IDF “subhuman“, and has defended Hamas from “charges” that they are an extremist movement. Naomi Klein actually accused Israel of being so cruel and sadistic as to “bury children alive in their homes.”

While, for the Guardian, employing the services of Theobald Jews serves to inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism, such Jewish writers, in return, receive the progressive and universalist credentials they so eagerly seek.

The Misnomer of the “Self-Hating Jew”

To be fair, I always found the term “self-hating Jew” to be at best misleading, at worst a complete misnomer. First, because we typically have no way of knowing these writers‘ inner-thoughts. But, more importantly, I never thought that it was an apt description of the anti-Zionist Jews I’ve met over the years. If anything, most seem to possess a belief that they are indeed “better Jews” for being hyper-critical of Israel, opposing their own community, and rejecting the very idea of a Jewish nation-state.

Many seem singularly focused on being seen as a “progressive”. And, as the progressive movement has moved further and further away from identification with Israel – and, to some degree, further away from identification with Jews as such – the need to be seen as progressive (“righteous”) in the eyes of others, has taken precedence over the seemingly parochial desire to identify with, and defend, their own community.

I have thought long and hard about the phenomenon of Jews who oppose their own community, have read and written about it, and there appears to be four dynamics worth exploring:

1. Moral Vanity

I was particularly inspired by Anthony Julius’s long two-part essay published at the American Jewish Committee site, Z Word. The piece was called Jewish anti-Zionism Unravelled: The Morality of Vanity. (Pt. 1 & Pt. 2). Julius also rejects the notion of such Jews as being “self-hating”. Instead he refers to them as moralisers who continually desire affirmation from the non-Jewish world as to their righteousness.

The moraliser makes judgments on others, and profits by so doing; he puts himself on the right side of the fence. Moralising provides the moraliser with recognition of his own existence and confirmation of his own value. A moraliser has a good conscience and is satisfied by his own self-righteousness . He is not a self-hater; he is enfolded in self-admiration. He is in step with the best opinion.

In his book, Trials of the Diaspora, Julius calls them “scourges,” a term I prefer because it relates to their self-anointed role as prophets, whipping the wayward Jewish people into line.

2. The Temptation of Innocence

Ruth Wisse, in her book Jews and Power, identified the tendency of some Jews to vociferously oppose their own community as a dynamic which she, in part, attributes to a Jewish uneasiness with the projection political power and a tendency to almost fetishize the Jews’ history of powerlessness. Wisse concludes that Jews who endured, or know the history of, the powerlessness of exile are in danger of mistaking it for a requirement of Jewish life or, worse, for a Jewish ideal. This puerile desire not to be corrupted by the complexities, and occasional compromises, necessitated by possessing moral agency is described by Pascal Bruckner as “The Temptation of Innocence.”

3. Jewish Fear: Assimilation and Altruism as an Inoculation from Harm

More recently, Barry Rubin, director of the GLORIA Center (Global Research on International Affairs), in an illuminating and penetrating piece, entitled “Explaining Jewish Political Behavior“, said:

[historically] Jews were attacked for allegedly having too much power, even when they had little or none, the emphasis was on being eager to make concessions, not to gain victories through threat or pressure.

…How would this strategy try to succeed? By proving Jews were good citizens, by showing they were unselfish and sought nothing for themselves, by demonstrating their willingness to dissolve the bonds and customs of their own community…and by showing that being nice to them would benefit everyone or almost everyone. In other words, altruism was a central element in the strategy

“…A key element of the assimilationist doctrine has been to deny there was a [Jewish] collective communal interest, and to avoid making collective demands.

Rubin, who, it should be noted, fleshes out his argument more fully in his book, Assimilation and Its Discontents, continues:

large parts of the Jewish elite are proud to stand aloof from their own people and deem it virtuous to abandon it and reject any notion of communal interests (including Israel and religion). Indeed, they think they can best prove their credentials by championing the causes of other groups even–sometimes especially–those in conflict with Jewish interests.

…The elite Jew’s emphasis is often to escape identification with the community, proving he is a cosmopolitan with a universalist identity, being the first to demand the dissolution of any community loyalty and viewing the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood—Israel—as an impediment to those goals. While antisemites charge that all or almost all Jews in positions of power pursue a distinctively Jewish interest, the exact opposite is the truth. This explains how left-wing Jews extol multiculturalism and self-determination for other peoples even as they hold the exact opposite attitude toward their own people, whom they are determined to show are not their own people.

…many Jews, particularly in elite positions, are eager to prove their credentials by criticizing their own people or Israel.

4. The Adversarial Jew: Skepticism and relativism disguised as reasoned political thought

I think there’s one last dynamic at play – an insight I came upon as a result of an email exchange I had with my 16-year-old nephew recently.

He reached out to me to seek my advice on this phase he was going through. It seems that he’s going through an early “existential crisis” of sorts – a frame of mind (I warmly noted to him) that most don’t arrive at until college. He mentioned that, lately, he’s been questioning everything – every social convention, everything he’s ever been told, and wondering whether the wisdom, mores, and customs he‘s been brought up by his parents to believe in and abide by are indeed worthy. He said that, since this struggle, he wasn’t misbehaving, but had resigned himself to merely “going through the motions” – but wasn’t really buying into what he always believed to be true. He wanted to know what I thought.

In my reply, I assured him that what he’s going through is perfectly normal, and was a sign that he possessess a vibrant, active, and healthy mind – and, that, indeed, such existential crises were the inspiration for great works of poetry, literature, and philosophy through the ages. I said that I also went through a similar mental orientation – that I, during the first couple years of college, questioned everything ever taught to me by my parents and my community. I even looked down on the adults in my life, and their seemingly conventional thinking. In my arrogance, I said, I believed that I saw things they didn’t see…had arrived at answers to questions that had perplexed not only my a parents and relatives, but the most brilliant minds in my time and in generations past.

However, I also told him that I eventually learned to have a bit of humility about it all, and eventually realized that I didn’t know much about life, at that early stage in my life, at all. And, that my parents, the older I got (and as my adolescence receded) seemed to become wiser and wiser with each passing year – in what I increasingly identified as their decency, sobriety, and plain common sense.

So, I asked my nephew if he would at least try to avoid the audacity of imagining that he alone possessed the wisdom and insight that has eluded his community – the Rabbis, sages, political, and community leaders – in his generation and though the ages. I asked that he not assume that because his father claims that something is true, that the opposite must indeed be what’s actually correct. I asked that he be patient and assured him that, with time and experience, he’ll eventually not be so quick to question the intentions of those who guide him. I expressed confidence that he will come to see that a healthy skepticism about “conventional thinking” is indeed normal, but that he’ll eventually understand that such thoughts need not devolve into a knee-jerk rejection of all the traditions and values of those who have come before him and have guided generations of Jews through often dark and harrowing times.

Julius, in his Z Word essay, dissected the potential moral pathos of many such renegade Jews:

He holds that the truth is to be arrived at by inverting the “us = good” and “other = bad” binarism. He finds virtue in opposing his own community; he takes the other point of view. He writes counter-histories of his own people. It is not enough for him to disagree, or even refute; he must expose the worst bad faith, the most ignoble motives, the grossest crimes. He must discredit.

My nephew is a smart, decent, and level-headed young man. And, I have no doubt that he’ll maintain his bearings during this intellectual “crisis” and not allow himself to surrender to hubris, nor develop a malevolence towards the family and community that has supported, nurtured, and guided him through the complexities of everyday life – those who love him dearly and have tried with all their heart to provide a path to protect him from the maddeningly complicated world he lives in.

It’s a simple lesson perhaps, but a vital one. And, its wisdom that many of the Jews who write for the Guardian, quite shamefully, don’t even meagerly possess.

As Anthony Julius put it so pungently, “they’re proud to be ashamed to be Jewish.” Honor-Shame culture turned on its head. And when hooked up with Arab scapegoating gives us the toxic marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism. World, beware Jews who bears the gifts of loathing their own people. Nothing good can come of it, for Jews or for the other nations.

In any epistemological crisis, as the anomalies become both abundant and painful to those who must cling to their paradigm of reality, there emerge almost comic moments, moments when the absurdity of this kind of dance of denial becomes laughable.

This happened recently in Europe – more specifically in Luxembourg. For 15 years, the French philosopher Robert Redeker has published a weekly book review for the Tageblatt, even after he ran afoul of radical Muslims who threatened his and his family’s life and drove him into hiding. And just last week, without any warning, they fired him.

This happened, not because of his “Islamophobic” remarks, but because of his choice of book to review – and to review favorably. The book? The latest study of the European descent into anti-Semitic madness in the 21st century by Pierre-André Taguieff, La nouvelle propagande antijuive. The journal not only rejected the review, but ended any association with Redeker.

But perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the story is the reason the editor gave for rejecting the review:

The readers would not understand that someone might be favorable to Israel.

In an irony that only the sane can appreciate, Taguieff had written specifically about the mentality the editor articulated. As Redeker noted in his review:

The blanket demonization of Israel is the daily bread of the media. That Israel is Evil seems to be self-evident. And yet, these opinions, that mutate into passions, are ideological constructions disseminated by a clever work of propaganda which Taguieff examines exhaustively. They recyle the old – the traditional Anti-Jewish stereotypes – in new forms.

Apparently, in reading those lines, the editor found not a description of her own mentality, but an assertion so absurd she could not allow it to be published. (Alternatively, this was just an excuse not to admit the real source of her anxiety, namely the fear that a favorable review of a book that tore the mask off of the Jihadi-Leftist hatefest might alienate the wrong people.)

As Kofi Anan said in 2002 about Jenin, echoing what Ehad Ha-am said in 1892 about the pogroms: “Is it possible that the whole world is wrong and the Jews/Israelis are right?” Don’t be ridiculous.

Robert Redeker, interdit d’écrire du bien d’un livre

lundi 14 juin 2010, par Emmanuel Lemieux

Le supplément littéraire du quotidien luxembourgeois Tageblatt a refusé la critique favorable du livre de Pierre-André Taguieff, La nouvelle Propagande antijuive (PUF), mettant également un terme à une collaboration de 15 ans avec l’auteur de l’article, l’écrivain Robert Redeker menacé de mort par des islamistes.

Robert Redeker, agrégé de philosophie, écrivain et ancien chroniqueur du supplément littéraire du Tageblatt.

“J’avais ma page dans le supplément littéraire du Tageblatt depuis 15 ans, je n’ai manqué aucun numéro. C’était l’analyse d’un livre, généralement de philosophie. Pour le numéro de juin, j’avais choisi d’écrire sur le dernier livre de Taguieff. J’ai écrit un texte favorable à ce livre. C’est ce texte qui m’a valu d’être censuré. La directrice de ce supplément m’a écrit : “notre collaboration s’arrête là”.

Sec ! Viré ! confie Robert Redeker. D’après la rédaction en chef, les lecteurs ne comprendraient pas qu’on fût favorable à Israël ! ”

Extrait significatif de l’article de 5 000 signes traitant du nouveau livre du philosophe Pierre-André Taguieff, La Nouvelle Propagande antijuive (PUF) :

La diabolisation sans nuances d’Israël est le pain quotidien des médias. Qu’Israël soit le Mal semble aller de soi. Pourtant, ces opinions qui se muent aussi en passions, sont des constructions idéologiques répandues par un habile travail de propagande que Taguieff démonte exhaustivement. Elles recyclent du vieux – les stéréotypes antijuifs traditionnels – dans du neuf.”

Tageblatt suit la doxa journalistique selon P.-A. Taguieff

Contactée par L’Annuel des idées, la responsable du supplément Livres n’a pas, pour l’instant, souhaité répondre à nos questions. C’est en revanche la directrice du Tageblatt qui nous a répondu :

“Notre rédaction n’était pas au courant de ce qui semble être “une affaire” chez vous. Vous comprendrez que nous ne souhaitons en rien être pris à partie. Ce d’autant que notre groupe de presse n’a jamais eu, au cours de sa longue histoire, de reproches à se faire.”

Le quotidien luxembourgeois, sans confirmer l’information, tient essentiellement à se démarquer des choix éditoriaux de son supplément.

This illustrates a particularly important trait characteristic of our time: the bystander effect. I had a student react to the presentation of the Al Durah dossier by noting that, while it all seemed very convincing, she felt uncomfortable agreeing because it would mean “taking sides” and “I don’t want to take sides in this conflict.” If anti-Semitism is triumphant, it will be because people, good people, stood on the sidelines refusing to take the side of the Jews, the prime target of Jihadi (and European) hatreds.

Pierre-André Taguieff

De son côté, Pierre-André Taguieff fulmine :

« La mise en accusation quasi-planétaire d’Israël est moins le résultat de la propagande palestino-islamiste qu’un effet du fonctionnement du système médiatique. Les professionnels des médias réagissent dans l’urgence, sans prendre la peine de faire un véritable travail d’investigation, en se contentant de s’inspirer des dépêches d’agence, recopiées sans esprit critique. À cela, il faut ajouter une sélection des informations selon un critère idéologico-politique dominant : les médias choisissent de privilégier les récits allant dans le sens des présupposés de la culture politique de gauche, qui est largement majoritaire dans le monde professionnel des journalistes. Or, l’anti-israélisme et le propalestinisme, depuis les années 1990, se sont inscrits dans la doxa journalistique, reflétant le parti pris « antisioniste » partagé, avec plus ou moins de virulence, par toutes les gauches. »

[The quasi-planetary indictment of Israel is less the result of Palestino-Islamist [nice phrase] propaganda than an effect of the functioning of the media. Information professionals react in the moment, without taking the time to do any real investigative work, and are satisfied with the news agency releases, which they copy without any critical sense. To that one must add that they select their information along the criteria of the dominant ideological-political posture: the media privilege the narratives that support the presuppositions of leftist politics, which includes the vast majority of the world of professional journalists. It so happens that anti-Israelism and pro-Palestinianism, since the 1990s, have become the journalistic doxa [teaching], reflecting a partisan commitment to anti-Zionism shared, with more or less virulence, by all the leftists.]

As Bill Maher put it so succinctly:

I think most of them do [take the Palestinian side] because I think the media, to take up your point, mostly – is way too stupid to understand the issues. So what they do is they go toward, ‘Oh, who’s a victim?’

Except that in Europe, the media are both smarter and nastier. Jim Clancy’s a country bumpkin compared to Jeremy Bowen.

Toujours sous protection policière

Professeur de philosophie, Robert Redeker, 56 ans, a du cesser d’enseigner après sa tribune intitulée “Face aux intimidations islamistes, que doit faire le monde libre ? ” et publiée dans Le Figaro. Le quotidien avait été interdit de vente en Egypte et en Tunisie. Sous la pression, le journal avait présenté ses excuses via la chaîne Al-Jazeera, tandis que l’association Reporters sans frontières soutenait Robert Redeker menacé de mort par des islamistes et placé sous la protection de la gendarmerie.

Depuis 2006, “je vis toujours dans une semi-clandestinité. Je continue d’être sous protection policière. Tous mes déplacements officiels sont encadrés par le SPHP-SPPM.” indique Robert Redeker à L’Annuel des idées. L’article du philosophe sera publié dans le numéro de L’Arche, une revue toute acquise à ses analyses et donc, sans surprise. Le non-débat continue.

How pathetic is that. I was critical of the American media not coming to the defense of the Europeans in Danoongate. But this takes the cake… so far.

Elie Wiesel published a major ad, “For Jerusalem,” in several US newspapers, prompting President Obama to meet hastily with him and reassure him that he understands the importance of Jerusalem to the Jews. Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street responded with his own ad featuring a counter-attack by Yossi Sarid, one of the unrepentant architects of the Oslo process, that dismissed Weisel as misinformed, misled, deceived, and, worst of all, “imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues.”

This last accusation is particularly significant. Any religious affection for Jerusalem on the part of Jews appears on J-Street’s radar as messianic attachment, and since, by J-Street’s analysis, compromise on Jerusalem is a sine qua non of achieving peace, such feelings are impediments to reaching a “rational” solution.

Now one of my greater gripes with J-Street concerns the inconsistency with which they apply their principle that pressure should be put “on both sides.” When in doubt, their motto seems to run, squeeze Israel. I am open to correction, but I am unaware of one formal position that they have taken in which Palestinian concessions are the principle target of their actions or declamations.

So here, the fact that the Muslim claim to Jerusalem is not only historically weak, but filled with messianic overtones, indeed Jihadi messianic ones, at the core of an unrestrained apocalyptic struggle, has no bearing for him.

Only the Jews should be restrained from messianic urgings; indeed they should restrain their messianic yearnings to make room for those of the Muslims. Then we’ll have peace.

Barry Rubin, in a brilliant study of Assimilation and its Discontents, pointed out how Jews, eager to succeed in the modern world, found their talent for self-denial one of their most valuable tools, and, for example, would champion any people’s liberation cause but that of their own people. J-Street steps right into the mold, and in so doing, reveals just what levels of contempt it feels for anyone whose sensibility gets in the way of their own sure-fire recipe for peace.

And what if… what if such a strategy of self-denial and sacrifice for the sake of peace ends up backfiring? The fact that J-Street would have Israel carve up its capital to make Palestinians happy, without any attention to the religious stakes for Palestinians, speaks eloquently for a perspective I think as cruel to Jews as it is unwise.

For J-Street, Palestinians need not compromise on Jerusalem as their “capital,” despite the fact that when it lay in Arab hands, Palestinians showed no interest in making it their capital. It matters not that their attachment is part and parcel of a violent and irredentist demand for Palestine from the “river to the sea” for both Fatah and Hamas. It matters not that, in their demand for control of the sacred precincts of their “third most holy city,” Muslims treat Jewish claims with dismissive contempt.

Question for Jeremy and Yossi Sarid, and all the other believers that unilateral compromise will bring peace: What if Israel’s agreement to share Jerusalem, pressured by the Obama administration, produces the opposite effect on Palestinians? What if, rather than empower the moderates to produce matching Palestinian concessions, as you seem to fervently believe, it strengthens the position of the irredentists who argue “East Jerusalem today, Palestine from the River to the Sea” tomorrow?

J-Street: Is there a plan B here?

The talk did not directly address the “Gaza Fact-finding Mission Report” as Goldstone referred to it, but it did tackle the subject of “Accountability for War Crimes,” and Goldstone brought in Israel on occasion as an example of the issues he raised.

Perhaps the single most striking feature of the talk was its staggering superficiality. Goldstone might have a reputation (at least among those familiar with his report) for being biased, but not for being a lightweight. And yet in the less than forty minutes of his formal lecture, at no point did one get the impression that one was listening to a trained legal mind, much less a brilliant one. Most of the lecture could have been written by an undergraduate who combined entries at Wikipedia on International Law, Nuremberg Trials, Geneva Convention, and Rome Treaty, with a warmed over version of “war is not the answer,” and “why can’t we all just get along and follow the law?”

In the world of academia, where presumably we have high standards, such a mediocre performance – especially when widely praised – attests to a distinct deterioration in academic discourse. That people, like Phillip Weiss (below), can find Goldstone’s presentation “brilliant” and “wise” suggests that we are (once again) in an age of misapplied superlatives, grade inflation, and partisan judgments.

Goldstone’s initial discussion sounded quite reasonable: in order for “universal jurisdiction” to work in a court like the ICC, they have to deal specifically with “grave breaches.” The court has to have credibility, it must be trusted for its fairness, in order for it to work. And in order to gain that kind of credibility, it needs to focus on deeds that are “so shocking to the minds of people that they constitute crimes against humanity.” Proportionality is a matter of judgment, and in such cases, great leeway is given to commanders in the “fog of war” in making such judgments.

So far so good, although I confess I couldn’t figure out from these remarks why he ever took on the Gaza Mission. Could that letter to the Times from Amnesty International signed by three of the four future members of the Gaza Mission, including Goldstone, be a clue? After all, the signatories had expressed how the recent events (not the previous eight years of suicide bombings and rockets aimed at civilians), “have shocked us to the core.” Nothing similar appeared from these signatories at the death of some 20,000 civilians in Sri Lanka only months later, nothing about the millions in Congo. But the Israeli attacks on Gaza, in which, even by the most hostile Palestinian counts, fewer than a thousand civilians were killed, that “shocks to the core.”

I kept thinking to myself, “how could he, with these principles and concerns in mind, have accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity”?

That impression was further confirmed when he began his most “interesting” discussion, of the principle of “equality.” Initially, the discussion seemed to reinforce my puzzlement. Equality relates intimately to human dignity: [below is a paraphrase taken from notes, the lecture will be available online in about a week]

…if some are given greater rights, the greater the inequality the greater the indignity… Most if all human rights violations are the product of such indignities… Without dehumanization people don’t commit crimes against humanity; the people who engage in genocide have already dehumanized their targets.

Isn’t this precisely what Elihu Richter and Maurice Ostroff had warned Goldstone about in their memos about the way Hamas operates. How could the man who says this have gone to Gaza and come out without a word about the industry of hatred and dehumanization that rules the public sphere there? Worse yet, how could this man say these things when his own report had allowed and highlighted a Palestinian “witness” accusing Israel of this execrable practice.

Then he took a strange turn (paraphrase):

Equality means that there should not be a different law for powerful and for weak nations: powerful nations like the USA, by refusing to be judged on the same basis as the lesser countries, undermine the credibility of the court… In international relations there should be equal votes, equal vetoes, equal treatment of nations.

Now how he got shifted from a discussion of applying egalitarian rules in the International Criminal Court to challenging the notion that Security Council members have veto rights, and that every country in the UN, dictatorship or not, is to be treated as the equal of countries that actually uphold democratic principles, I’m not quite sure, but it’s quite a segue. I suspect it’s irritation at the way the US can block his report from implementation, but maybe it’s even more “principled” – and therefore even more incomprehensibly foolish.

Indeed, in the midst of this discussion of equality, he made the point that “I have no doubt that the world would be better and more peaceful if everyone did what the UN charter calls for…” In this context he also urged the US to submit to the court “as an example” for the rest of the world. This sophomoric naïveté from someone who has investigated the kind of staggering war crimes that occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia, calls into question either the man’s sanity or his intelligence. In any case, in the framework of the GHWB Jr. Lecture in International Relations, it struck me as an insult to our intelligence.

But once he had the bit in his mouth, he went after the “big and powerful” countries (Israel is among them) who have the nerve to want immunity from international justice. Bush was the worst offender with Boulton as his henchman, undermining the authority of the UN and the ICC. Instead of leading by example, and submitting themselves to international justice, the US acted like a rogue agent. More recently, the Israeli government, claimed Goldstone in a characteristic misrepresentation of his opponents, have claimed that the laws of war should be rewritten so that they can engage in disproportionate responses.

He concluded with some astonishing remarks about what he called “complementarity.” If a nation that subscribes to the jurisdiction of the ICC does its own credible investigation into possible war crimes, then the ICC has no jurisdiction over them. This, he suggested, is the solution to the problem of nations that don’t trust the ICC: they can, by accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction, but doing their own investigation, avoid being called before the ICC. (When asked, in the Q&A session, who decides whether an internal investigation is credible, he responded, “the ICC.”)

He then proceeded to discuss how important it was for the sake of its value to the world community, that the ICC both be, and be seen to be, fair, “objective” (he really used the word), and unbiased… “unlike the people to my right.” (Here he referred to a banner that had been unfurled comparing his Gaza report to the Dreyfus Affair and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), and refused to continue until it was taken down.

And then it was over. Not one genuine insight, just a long list of platitudes in which he introduced notions that, admittedly, have high levels of “judgment” involved — complementarity and what a “credible investigation” entails, proportionality and what was the justifiable ratio between civilian casualties and legitimate military targets, “objectivity” — and treated them as if they were clear cut principles that could be applied like mathematical principles.

It’s all quite clear he seemed to argue: everyone signs on, everyone plays by the rules, starting with the democracies, and the world is a much better place.

The Q&A was largely critical of him and his treatment of Israel. Phillip Weiss of Mondoweiss was there and has blogged on this in his own inimitable fashion. I append my comments to his:

At Yale, Judge Goldstone faces down his accusers
by PHILIP WEISS on JANUARY 28, 2010

Judge Richard Goldstone gave a speech at Yale last night and though he said he would not be talking about Gaza, his report came up again and again, and in fact the anti-Goldstoners tried to turn the event into a circus. They waved Israeli flags, and two of them held up a banner comparing the judge’s report to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the accusers of Dreyfus. A group followed the judge afterward into the wine-and-cheese on the second floor, and surrounded him and some barked at him, and though now and then the judge held up his hand and turned away at a loud voice, he seemed ready for anything, and more than held his own, and left the crowd with an education in what it means to try and advance the regime of international law.

That’s an interesting read of the situation. I was one of those who talked to him, found him fairly reluctant to do more than a single answer to any question, and, for someone used to courtrooms and (presumably) someone capable of taking what he dishes out, surprisingly fragile. In an exchange with me (below) he actually gave a lesson in just how not to advance the regime of international law, but since Phillip shares the good judges blind spots, I don’t suppose he would have picked up on that.

Indeed, Weiss shows himself here to be utterly innocent of some basic (and sound) post-modern principles: in such instances there are no “grand narratives” but multiple ones, and one must consider them all. He shows no understanding of the “other” side, of how people like me might walk away thinking “fool or knave” but not “wise and convincing.” (Or, conversely, someone walking away and thinking, “Well, we sure showed him.”) I for one find Goldstone’s approach a formula for degrading the regime of international law. But Weiss and Goldstone seem to be of the “damn the icebergs, full speed ahead” school.

Goldstone’s references to the report in the actual speech were pointed. It is fine if Israel wishes to evade international investigation and prosecution by doing an investigation of its own. That is a core principle of international law– complementarity– the idea that it is preferable that localities apply international standards law themselves. But that investigation must not be behind closed doors, by the military, it must be open and credible. I will get the actual quotes in a day or two.

He said that equality meant dignity; and when we deny the dignity of other human beings, we dehumanize them, and pave the way to human rights violations. The persecution of Gaza was all through that statement.

Yes, precisely, the “persecution” [sic] of Gaza was all through that statement, although not in the sense that Weiss imagines. (Does he mean Goldstone’s prosecution of the Israelis, the Israelis persecution of Gaza? or Hamas’ largely frustrated persecution of Israel and extensive persecution of Palestinian opponents [not]?) The dehumanization of the “other” in the Arab-Israeli conflict is entirely one way, and comes from the very people Goldstone found so cooperative – Hamas – and constitutes an item that, despite multiple urgings, he failed to investigate.

If militants are attacking you from the roof of a hospital, it does not mean that you can bomb the [whole] hospital; it means that you must take care; and yes maybe some civilians will die when you are going after the militants there, but it violates the principle of proportionality to fire missiles at the hospital. The judge spoke of a hypothetical; but it was a clear reference to the missile attacks on Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City that the Goldstone Report details–though the report never states that there were militants on the roof.

And, typically, the wrong example. (Weiss refers here to ¶466, where the Report accuses the Israelis of deliberately attacking al Quds hospital with white phosphorous, one of the typically misguided passages in the Report, both for its assumption that the phosphorous was used as a weapon rather than an obscurant, and for its belief that the testimony of the hospital staff that Hamas was nowhere to be found is credible.) But if we follow Goldstone’s guidance here, doesn’t that mean that Hamas can therefore set up on hospital roofs and fire unopposed? What are the consequences of this “mercy to the cruel”?

But the real question Goldstone should have raised is: if the enemy leadership has set up its HQ underneath a hospital (al-Shifa) can you wipe them out by bombing the hospital, is that a valuable enough military target to make it worth acquiring despite the deaths of patients and doctors (it would put an end to the war, and possibly save many more future civilian casualties)? I’ll grant you that it’s a judgment call, and I wouldn’t want to be the person deciding either side of the argument, but this dilemma is the issue. And it gets to the heart of Hamas cannibalistic strategy. In any case, clearly this question never occurred to Goldstone since, despite being warned that it happened, it’s a situation he admittedly failed to investigate (¶467).

The Q-and-A was all Gaza. A white-haired professor with an accent said, why should any country, Israel, Serbia, yield power to an international court, when we all know how political such courts can be. Goldstone said it was a great question, then pointed out that such courts can only establish confidence through the steady application of legal processes and the cooperation of the powerful nations. Why, he said, in ‘96 Bill Clinton had specifically asked Nelson Mandela to allow Goldstone to extend his tenure as prosecutor in the international tribunal of the former Yugoslavia, even as American troops were going in there, because Clinton regarded him as a fair judge. (So much for the US congressional resolutions condemning Goldstone, and Obama’s dismissal of the judge; no, it’s Palestine, Jake).

What Goldstone did in Bosnia (and it’s controversial) does not guarantee the work he did in Gaza. The idea that the US Congress has to welcome the latter work because Goldstone had a good reputation from earlier work is a good case of “credibility” by association. Each work deserves its own examination.

A frenetic man at the back got applause when he said that Goldstone’s standards were unequal. What Israel did in Gaza doesn’t come anywhere near what happened in Rwanda, or in other countries that routinely violate the rule of law. Look at Sri Lanka. 20,000 Tamils were killed last year during the sectarian violence. Where is the investigation of that?

That would be me. I think the “frenetic” is because I twice followed up on his answer and continued to challenge him, much to the annoyance of Goldstone’s supporters around me. But I think it’s a telling characterization, because speaking with Goldstone supporters at the reception, I was struck by the constant refrain: “he’s calm and reasoned; his opponents are emotional.”

The question I asked was:

You made a surprising turn in your discussion of equality. From discussing the importance of treating everyone equally to the idea that the big and powerful should not receive special treatment. But you yourself, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, admitted that what Israel did in Gaza cannot be compared to what went on in Rwanda and Bosnia. So the idea that the “powerful” should be treated “equally” when their crimes are not equal, seems like a strange move, as if you’re overlaying a post-colonial paradigm of the powerful and the weak over a legal paradigm of the vicious criminals and the nations that try and wage war by the rules of the international community. Do you see the distinction? And do you consider the possibility that, in proceeding in this manner, you are undermining the very credibility of the very court whose reputation for fairness you claim is so important to its effectiveness?”

Now I was actually prepared for this topic because Goldstone made the same shift in his interview with Christiane Amanpour, which is the subject of my latest “Dialogue with the Media.” Weiss’ appraisal of Goldstone’s answer is unpredictable only in the sycophantic rhetorical excess.

A good question, and the judge was brilliant. “I recognize the distinction you seem to be making. Similar crimes should be treated similarly” without exception. But that’s in a perfect world. “It’s not going to happen.” If ten murders are committed in New Haven, and only one is prosecuted, the murderer who’s prosecuted can say, I’m treated unequally, nine peole are getting away with it. And “morally and philosophically no one can disagree.” But it’s an “unfair” world. Just because you can’t go after them all doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go after any. The thrust of his remarks was, We will never have a regime of international law until we begin to apply that law, to develop it, and if that means singling out the accessible, well we must do so. And the reference to New Haven reminded us that all law is applied unequally.

Now if Weiss thinks that’s a brilliant answer, it tells us something about his judgment. The analogy is actually silly, in Goldstone’s own terms. It’s not that Israel is one of the murderers and mass rapists along with Sudan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Serbia, etc. (Note that Sri Lankans did not hesitate to bomb the whole hospital when they even suspected that Tamil Tigers were hiding there; Israel did not bomb Shifa.)

Morever, as my father points out to me, if the cops knew who the other murderers were and didn’t go after them but instead expended all their energies going after someone guilty of, at worst, involuntary manslaughter, then indeed the victim of this treatment could complain of unfairness, and any impartial observer would find the New Haven police’s procedure dubious at best. And as my daughter pointed out, if the New Haven PD were to consistently go after African-Americans guilty of manslaughter and ignore serial murderers, Phillip Weiss would be the first to accuse them of racism.

So I followed up on this comment at the reception afterwards. “It’s not ten murderers and you only got one. It’s ten murderers and at best someone guilty of involuntary manslaughter, using your own yardstick of comparison between what Israel did in Gaza and these other countries have done.”

Goldstone’s response was quite revealing: “I think democracies should be held to a higher standard.”

“But that violates the principles of equality. You end up pursuing people for far less and letting the real criminals off.”

“I think it’s far more shocking when a rabbi or a priest rapes someone than an ordinary citizen.”

This remark is particularly revealing on several different levels:

1) It’s shot through with what Charles Jacobs calls the “Human Rights Complex” – if you want to know what gets the Western “human rights community” exercised, don’t look at the victim or how badly the victim suffers, look at the perpetrators. If they’re white… high dudgeon; if they’re of color… embarrassed silence.” And if the “white guy” is a Jew, then even greater indignation.

2) In this particular case (Goldstone and Israel), I think we’re dealing with a phenomenon of
a kind of disappointed messianic hope. In a sense, he’s saying, “Israel should be a light onto nations, and if it isn’t — more precisely, if the nations don’t see it that way — then they deserve all the opprobrium they get (including mine).”

3) Like his homocides-in-New Haven analogy, it’s fundamentally flawed. If we’re comparing Israel’s behavior in Gaza to Serbian mass rapes as policy in the Balkans, then the proper analogy is “It’s more shocking when a rabbi or a priest makes an advance to one of his congregants, than when an ordinary citizen rapes and murders a woman.” Of course, that would be a ludicrous statement to make. And it illustrates just how far off track the “human rights community” have been taken with their moral equivalence. But Goldstone doesn’t see it.

The question was framed again, sharper this time. A woman with an accent said– and I think there were a ton of Israelis in the hall– Why the double standard? A few million people are killed in Africa, and nothing happens.

The judge was wise and frank. “You know it’s a complex issue… It’s a matter of politics, not of morality. The United Nations has a dominant group of the non-aligned movement, and the issue of the Palestinians has assumed a tremendous importance to them, and they’re using it.”

I like that “wise and frank” comment. In fact, some of us might find these remarks, coming from someone who had just droned on for 40 minutes about high legal and moral principles, frankly hypocritical. It’s politics that Israel gets picked on by a clearly biased UN body that is dominated by a majority of cruel authoritarian regimes who do far worse than she, but, hey, we got to hit somebody… why not Israel?” But if, like Weiss, you share the judge’s animus, no matter how it violates his own principles of equality, why not call it wisdom?

It used to be the South Africans, he said with equanimity. There were many more UN resolutions passed against South Africa than against Israel.

Is he just shooting from the lip? Has he looked at the UN record of resolutions against Israel (including the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution of 1974)?

“Humbly may I ask you, why you allow yourself to be used?” the woman said.

“I don’t see it that way at all. I accepted what I regarded to be an evenhanded mandate. I didn’t see myself as being used. I heard exactly the same from the Serb leaders. Why was I allowing myself to be used by an organization set up against Serbia by the United States. You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Applause from the silent majority.

Upstairs the circle of accusers formed around him near the door. They angrily quoted his own words to him from clippings, or said he was afraid to debate Dershowitz, or said he was publicizing “untruths.” Goldstone’s a man of medium height with a round face and narrow owlish eyes and a calm slightly dour expression. My friend said it’s a face out of a 19th century oil portrait; and the judge did not ever crack– a smile, a wince.

The Orthodox man who had held the banner about Protocols said he would convey the judge’s words to the people of Auschwitz, and the judge turned away. A woman said he was holding Israel to a higher standard, and the judge said that he was, you do that to countries that say they are democracies. When someone said he should call it apartheid, he said that was an emotionally-laden term, so he avoided it–but in fact they did not have separate roadways in South Africa, as Israel does in the West Bank.

Weiss left out the most significant part of this exchange. The rabbi said to Goldstone, “you realize that when these matters are sorted out, the vast majority of your accusations will prove false. What will you do then?” To which Goldstone responded, “I’ll rejoice.”

What? After you’ve done your damage? After you’ve put your imprimatur on a report that proves wrong repeatedly? Figuring out the multiple layers of psychological dysfunction in this response is a job for Shrinkwrapped. The rabbi’s comment: “I feel sorry for you.”

What’s wrong with Phillip Weiss and his hero Richard Goldstone? They have confused their inchoate messianic hopes for a world free of war crimes (and, given how they define the issues, a world free of war) with their commitment to fairness. They forge ahead in pursuit of their fallen heroes (democracies) rather than face the much more daunting prospect of challenging the really nasty players in the drama of crimes against humanity.

Why didn’t Goldstone investigate whether Hamas used Shifa as a HQ? Why didn’t he plan a surprise visit to the hospital and walk the lower floors looking for locked doors? Was he more afraid that he might get kidnapped, than he was that he might be used?

Cowards masquerading as human rights champions… legends in their own minds. The responsibility now falls on us, the silent majority, to wake up.