Can Israelis ever recover from the self-inflicted damage of becoming a brutal occupier?

Dark Truths About the Israeli Occupation
By Daniel Levy

Edith Zertal and Akiva Eldar end their exhaustive study of Israeli settlement policy with a poignant question: Is it possible, they wonder, that Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will become a “first step in Israel’s journey of liberating itself from the enslavement to the territories that it occupied in 1967, and which have occupied [it] since then and have brought it to the verge of destruction”? Negotiations that have been set in motion by the Annapolis peace conference in November will likely provide a partial answer. Zertal, a leading Israeli historian, and Eldar, a chief political columnist and a former Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, have recently published Lords of the Land: The War for Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. It is a detailed history of Israel’s nearly forty-year occupation of Gaza and the West Bank with a painful contention at its core. The occupation, say Zertal and Eldar, has wounded Israel’s very psyche, damaging both its sense of self and its moral standing in the world. “The prolonged military occupation and the Jewish settlements that are perpetuating it have toppled Israeli governments,” write the authors, “and have brought Israel’s democracy and its political culture to the brink of an abyss.”

The Hebrew version of this book was a best-seller in Israel, and sparked a debate there on the devastating realities and consequences of Israeli settlement policy. It would be useful to replicate that debate here in the United States — in the belly, as it were, of the enabler. The book’s unflinchingly provocative title is matched by a narrative that pulls no punches, and the cast of villains (there are precious few heroes) runs the gamut from Jewish militia terrorists and their supporters in the Rabbinate to Labor Party apologists for the settlers and feckless judges who looked the other way as settlers created illegal outposts within Palestinian territory.

There are two sides to the settlement coin. The first is the settlers themselves, who are for the most part religiously inspired, unswervingly motivated, and highly effective. Religious Zionism was very much in the backseat of the Zionist enterprise until 1967, but once Israel assumed control of Judea and Samaria (as the settlers refer to the West Bank), the national religious camp saw its moment to seize the ideological steering wheel of state.

Their method was to create facts on the ground — that is, to quickly build settlements — and then get the political system on board by a number of means. The first step was persuasion (”We are all Jews surrounded by a sea of enemies”), followed by integration (the settlers’ tentacles reached into all branches of government), and then coercion (the use of intimidation, threats, and violence). Any dubious action could be “koshered” by a shared appeal to Jewish history and Zionist destiny. If all else failed, there was the threat of Arab terror, which the settlers had a key role in encouraging. For believers, there was a religious justification and meaning — a theology of settlement, if you like. The final ingredient was an approach to the Palestinians that was at best colonial and at worst murderous. The new Lords of the West Bank arrogantly dismissed the region’s indigenous population, and when the Palestinians showed opposition, settler militias and terrorist groups were formed (yes, Jewish terrorist groups). In 2001, an Israeli group named the Committee for the Defense of the Roads claimed responsibility for the drive-by killing of a six-month-old Palestinian baby and her family. Similar groups carried out additional attacks, and between 1980 and 1984, before the First Intifada began, twenty-three Palestinian civilians were killed in violent attacks by settlers, mostly involving firearms (often army issue). American readers might be shocked to discover that a religiously sanctified cult of martyrdom and “redemptive death” among elements of the Israeli settler community even exists at all, and then horrified at the extent of its destructiveness.

For the rest of the story, click here. 

Is the delegate count becoming more important than the big mo?

Momentucrats vs. Arithmecrats
By Timothy Noah

The front pages of the Jan. 28 New York Times and Wall Street Journal suggest an emerging and perhaps historic fissure within the momentucracy.

Previously I explained (here and here) that the presidential nomination process was governed by an informal network of political reporters and TV talking heads that gropes collectively toward naming the winner before any candidate has the requisite number of delegates. These momentucrats perform their task by interpreting candidate momentum. Because momentum does not yield to scientific measurement, momentulogy is a subjective enterprise that blurs the distinction between predicting an outcome and determining it.

Over the past two decades, the primacy of momentum has become so great that this year five states—Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Wyoming—defied the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee by moving up the dates of their primaries and caucuses, prompting the national parties to punish them by refusing to seat many of their convention-bound delegates. (The Democrats stripped Michigan and Florida of all their delegates, while the Republicans stripped all five states of half their delegates.) The prodigal states calculated that this disenfranchisement was worth it if, in exchange, they could help influence early voting trends. In effect, they calculated that contributing momentum in January was more valuable than contributing delegates in February or March, when as likely as not the momentucrats would already have designated the nominees.

But is momentum still king? The unpredictability of this year’s primary season is creating a crisis of confidence within the momentucracy, and some momentucrats are now reverting to the plodding delegate-counting method of bygone days. They are morphing into arithmecrats.

Case in point: Adam Nagourney of the New York Times. In a Jan. 28 Page One story (”Races Entering Complex Phase Over Delegates“), Nagourney announces that this is “the first time in over 20 years in which the campaign has turned into a possibly lengthy hunt for delegates, rather than an effort to roll up a string of big-state victories.” On Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), 22 states will hold primaries, including populous and delegate-rich California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, and Georgia. Among this big six, only New York and New Jersey will award delegates on a “winner take all” basis, and then only for Republicans. Otherwise, these six states will distribute delegates proportionally. In a race with no clear front-runner for either party nomination, that means candidates will end up battling not at the state level, but at the congressional-district level, where delegates are awarded. Among other things, this means that if you are an Obama supporter who happens to live in Clinton’s adoptive home state of New York, where she’s heavily favored, your Obama vote nonetheless has a fighting chance of doing your candidate some good.

In a separate story posted online Jan. 28, Nagourney writes that “both [Democratic] campaigns are looking at the contest now” as “a race for delegates.” But they aren’t necessarily consistent in spinning it that way to reporters. Clinton aides, for instance, are apparently trying to sell reporters on the idea that the Jan. 29 Florida primary will likely create momentum for Clinton, who is expected to win there. Never mind that the Florida primary won’t deliver any Democratic delegates. Similarly, the Obama campaign oversold its South Carolina victory—not because Obama’s support was disproportionately black, but because the proportional distribution of delegates representing all races still gives Clinton 12 delegates to Obama’s 25.

For the rest of the story, click here. 

State Of The Union Address

President Bush delivered his last State Of The Union Address last night. What do you think?

Adam Leatham,
Crossing Guard
“He’s right. No one can deny the results of No Child Left Behind, because thanks to the program, no one has any basic reasoning skills.”

Karen Blaney,
Lab Tech
“It was a great speech, but my only problem was that President Bush failed to address why our government is doing such a shitty job.”

Ed Helal,
Food Vendor
“I wish there were a way to find out what’s happening in this country more than once a year.”

TheOnion.com

Today’s photo of the day comes from MLK Day, where George W. Bush spoke to a group of Black people. Looks like little homie ain’t feelin Dubya… Feel free to add your own caption/thought bubble!

Today’s video of the day is “Honey” by Erykah Badu. This is a dope video and song from her new album, New Amerykah, which will be in stores next month.