Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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Cheney says in the debates marriage rights are for the states to decide, and then Bush last month calls for a federal marriage ammendment. Now, from the AP, yet another demonstration that the “federalism” of the Republican Right represents a defense only of “states’ rights” to be more conservative than the federal government:

California and other states that want to make marijuana available to sick or dying patients are flouting federal drug laws in much the same way that Southern states defied national civil rights laws, a senior Bush administration lawyer said.

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Jacob Remes deserves, depending on your judgment, the credit or the blame for pitting Josh Cherniss and I against each other over Tony Auth’s recent cartoon. His original take on Auth’s work is here; his more extensive, and fairly moderated, take, in response to my earlier post, is here. In responding to his eloquent piece, I should start by noting that there is a great deal about which, in principle, Josh and I agree. We stand by the importance of distinctions between anti-Sharon, anti-Israel, and antisemitic sentiment, and recognize that, as he says, “many extreme and dogmatic defenders of Israel,” as well as too many critics of Israel, “casually ignore this distinction, to their great dishonour.” We both maintain that, as Josh says, “we should be careful in how we employ symbols — and may with justice criticize others for not taking such care — ESPECIALLY when we agree with the point they were trying, or may have been trying, to make.” Josh and I both share with Tony Auth an opposition to the “separation fence,” the occupation, and the settlement project. And like Josh, I’ve felt and expressed a special frustration with those who use unjust tactics or offensive rhetoric in the service of a cause I share. The case of Professor Qumsiyeh, to which I alluded in my previous post, who sent to the Yale Coalition for Peace listserve what he believed was the membership list of the pro-war Yale College Students for Democracy, and was actually the list for an Israel discussion listserve, is for me the most telling recent example. Instructively, but not surprisingly, after I and then other students in Yale Peace rebuked him over the listserve, the story was spun as further evidence of the antisemitism of the left without mention that leftists had been the first to condemn his actions.

It doesn’t seem worth devoting too much space to defending myself from an accusation of having “an ideological persecution complex,” especially given Josh’s admission of using my “minor side-comment as an opportunity to express [his] thought” about the attraction of the victim posture. I’ll just say that I agree that demonstrating persecution is not a substitute for demonstrating virtue (Josh’s word choice), while sharing that I think accusations of a “victim mentality” are too often – in other contexts – a substitute for confronting the arguments offered by, or the injustice witnessed by another. I don’t believe (despite being called a Nazi, a self-hating Jew, etc. on occasion) that being a Jewish critic of Israel makes me a victim of some sort. But I also don’t believe that making the personal and empirical observation that much left criticism of Israel “come[s] under fire…as not only critical of the Sharon government but anti-Israel, and not only anti-Israel but antisemitic” represents “a wallowing in victimhood, a sheer love of whining and feeling put upon,” or even a lesser shade of such.

Josh suggests that because Sharon does not appear in Auth’s cartoon, it must be anti-Israel at the least rather than anti-Sharon. Terms like “anti-Israel” are as ambiguous as they are charged – the cartoon is only anti-Israel, as I see it, in the sense that it presents a strident critique of Israel and uses the central symbol of the state in connection with oppression. That may pass Josh’s bar for anti-Israel – I wouldn’t render that inherently anti-Israel any more than I would a depiction of, say, the Statue of Liberty carrying Japanese into internment camps anti-American. To me the cartoon is anti-Sharon in the sense that it dramatically criticizes a policy of the Sharon government, even if Arik himself is absent from the cartoon. But at the center of our dispute isn’t how to draw different shades of political criticism of the state but how to draw the line between political criticism of the state and religious bigotry – the charges being leveled at Tony Auth now are not primarily of offering anti-Israel criticism but rather of offering antisemitic criticism – although much of the criticism comes from people and organizations, I should note, who seem to be interested in charging the latter only when it offers an opportunity to discredit the former.

Josh reads me incorrectly as seeing “the ‘appropriation’ of the Star of David as the symbol for Israel — and, thus, the symbol for supporters of Israel, including diehard Likudniks (and worse) — as somehow making it cease to be a symbol of the Jewish people.” Not at all. The Jewish star today is identified as a symbol of the Jewish faith and people, and as a symbol of the state and government of Israel (while I maintain that the Jewish star is used and has been as a religious symbol, Josh is right to remind me that the historical root and dominant use of the Jewish star is as a symbol of the Jews more than of Judaism). But just as the political symbol doesn’t erase the historic meaning of the star, neither should the latter invalidate the former. Josh seems to be suggesting either the reverse of the statement he attributes to me – that the use of the star as a symbol of the Jewish people makes it invalid as a symbol for Israel – or that the star is a valid symbol for Israel but inaccessible to Israel’s critics. Either of these arguments seems to me rather troubling, both, I think, for obvious reasons. There’s little of substance I would disagree with in Josh’s characterization of the historical and current resonance of the Jewish star – as he says, “It has been worn — sometimes proudly and voluntarily, sometimes forcibly and with shame and fear — by Jews throughout history.” No one could reasonably argue with Josh’s admonishment that “given how potent and fraught symbolic politics are, we should be careful how we employ symbols…” But that said, we should also be careful how we read symbols. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Auth to use the star in the cartoon as representative of the state which imposes the fence on the civilians – the fence and the civilians being the second and third symbols of the cartoon. And I strongly reject the idea – one promulgated on print and around the web, but one which in fairness Josh implied in his original post but seems to have backed away from – that to do so makes Auth a bigot. I can’t think what the better symbol for this particular cartoon would be – the menorah, in my judgment, which appeals on the seal of the state, is a distant second as a national symbol. It also co-exists as a religious symbol (and an evocative one which, like most Jewish symbols, is tinged with memories of oppression), and it lacks the currency in the American consciousness that the star has as a symbol for Israel. Josh’s conclusion may be that a cartoon of this type – combining the national symbol of a state with a symbol of the oppression it’s visiting on others – simply shouldn’t be drawn. I don’t think that’s an easily acceptable conclusion. .And again, I think it’s illustrative that the Israeli government, Israeli politicians, and right-wing lobbies all plaster their material with the symbol of the star. While I might sometimes find such use of the star (much like much of the use of the American flag) tasteless, I wouldn’t deny them that symbol from their vocabulary.

Incidentally, if Auth intentionally adapted a similar-looking Nazi cartoon, obviously that would be tremendously problematic. But absent that, as aesthetically unsettling as the similarities might be, I don’t think the argument that Auth’s cartoon resembles a Nazi one is an effective critique

Josh seems to fail, or decline, to distinguish between provocative and offensive commentary – or between that which offends and that which is offensive. Political cartooning is a provocative medium, and some of its best achievements are among its most provocative. Tony Auth’s cartoon after the lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah on October 12, 2001 (I remember because I was in Hod HaSharon at the time), redrawing the photo of one of the Palestinian killers pressing his blood-stained hands against a window and replacing him with the image of Yassir Arafat, was highly provocative (and like much of Auth’s work, not overly clever). And provoking intentionally – a charge Josh levels against Auth – doesn’t strike me as poor behavior on the part of an artist. But if offensive works are to be condemned (but not – I assume Josh agrees with me – censored), then offensiveness must be some quality – like, say, religious bigotry – beyond being observed to offend some people. I agree with Josh that, “It should be very easy to criticize Israel on its merits right now, and not be open to imputations of anti-Semitism from any reasonable person.” But when critics of Israel are subjected to imputations of antisemitism, we should ask ourselves whether the problem is the critics of Israel, or the critics’ critics. Josh shifts in his post between criticizing Auth for being offensive, and criticizing Auth for opening the left up to attack from the right, for giving “a gift to the Likud.” And while I agree with Josh that one mistake peace movements make is a failure to disavow bigotry promulgated in their name, I’d contend that another mistake peace movements make is allowing themselves to be cowed out of making difficult charges by the threat of being tarred with unjustified accusations of bigotry. There are few to the left of Alan Dershowitz who can criticize Israel in a manner that CAMERA would approve. One of the major obstacles to the execution of a coherent Jewish response to genuine antisemitism is the frequency of spurious charges. As Uri Avnery argued, antisemitism used to be a charge that people shrunk from with haste. Now the real antisemites have safe cover among the increasing ranks of non-antisemitic critics branded with the label. In other words, absolutely there’s a difference between Die Sturmer and (as much as I hold its cartoons in about the same estimation the writers of Seinfeld do) the New Yorker. Which is why treating the New Yorker like Die Sturmer is such a mistake. I’ll admit to being somewhat mystified by Josh’s narrative in which the Likudniks and their American allies were “slinking about silently trying to ignore the marriage law” before Tony Auth spurred them on and rendered them “suddenly up in arms” – I think this may be another case where the “blogosphere” fails to reflect the pulse of the broader populace.

Was Auth’s cartoon the most effective image to convey his message? I’m not sure. But the charges of bigotry leveled against it are unjust, and in many cases, quite suspiciously motivated. I’m glad Josh has backed a few steps away from them. Where Josh accuses Auth of poor political judgment, or failure to advance the cause of the peace movement, I’m skeptical. But his charges of foolish offensiveness I have to reject.

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The Times is now reporting that Charles Taylor has finally stepped down.

In his farewell speech broadcast nationally Sunday, Taylor said he was a “sacrificial lamb” stepping down to spare his people more bloodshed.

Sacrificial lamb? Given that he’s a brutal war crimminal conveyed off to comfortable asylum in Nigeria, those aren’t the first words to come to mind. If Pat Robertson gives him his own show on the 700 club, will that make him feel better?

Meanwhile, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf offers some historical perspective by looking back to Samuel Doe’s seizure of the country in 1985:

That was 1985. Sadly, the military stuffed ballot boxes and burned ballots, and Samuel Doe, a sergeant who had seized power in a 1980 coup, declared himself the winner. Liberians’ hopes were dashed by American recognition of the results. It is hard to imagine that Chester Crocker, the Reagan administration’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was not being deeply ironic when he praised Doe at the time for claiming only 51 percent of the vote. It was, he said, “unheard of in the rest of Africa, where incumbent rulers normally claim victories of 95 to 100 percent.”

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The Times on the scene of the election building on the deadline to file to run in the CA recall:

There was the 100-year-old woman from Long Beach who was sponsored by the 99-cent store chain; the busty pornographic film star; the cross-dresser in pink; the soul food restaurateur; the angry car salesman; the techno geek; the student too young for whiskers; and the structural engineer worried about earthquakes.

It’s strange how many anti-populist conservatives have had a convenient change of heart just in time to herald the recall as the epitomy of the democratic process. This election is, in many ways, the strongest case for instant run-off voting. For those who don’t know, instant run-off voting essentially allows each voter to rank their preferences among several candidates. In the first round, every voter’s vote is counted towards his/her first choice. The candidate receiving the lowest votes is eliminated, and in the second round, everyone who voted for him/her has their vote counted for their second choice. The process continues, eliminating one candidate each round and counting each voter’s vote for their preferred candidate of those remaining each round, until only two candidates remain, and the one of the two who’s preferred by the majority of the voters wins.

Let’s say, for example, that the eight candidates above are the only ones on the ballot, and my preferences are:

1st: Cross-dresser in pink
2nd: Soul food restaurateur
3rd: 100-year-old woman from Long Beach
4th: Student too young for whiskers
5th: Busty pornographic film star
6th: Structural engineer worried about earthquakes
7th: Techno geek
8th: Angry car salesman

In the first round, my vote is counted towards the cross-dresser, and the angry car salesman (apologies to any angry car salesmen who are reading this site…), who was the first preference of the fewest voters, is eliminated. In the second and third rounds, my vote is still counted for the cross-dresser, and the student too young for whiskers and the 100 year-old woman are eliminated for being the favorite (out of the remaining candidates) of the fewest voters in the second and third rounds respectively. In the fourth round, the votes that had been going to the angry car salesman (in the 1st round), the student too young for whiskers (in the 2nd), and/or the 100 year-old woman (in the 3rd), spread mostly between the structural engineer, the techno geek, and the busty pornographic film star, and the soul food restaurateur has a strong base because of his outstanding corn bread, but the cross-dresser, who automatically receives my vote as long as he’s in the race, is the preference of the fewest voters and is eliminated. In the fifth round, my vote goes automatically to the soul food restaurateur because he was my second choice, and the techno geek receives the fewest votes and is eliminated. The sixth round thus pits the soul food restaurateur, the busty pornographic film star, and the structural engineer against each other. Most of the voters whose votes had been going to the techno geek had marked the porn star as their next choice (thought it would be the structural engineer, didn’t you?), and the soul food restaurateur has a strong enough base to come in second, eliminating the structural engineer, who hopefully will continue to worry about earthquakes in some not-gubernatorial capacity. In the last round, thus, every voter’s vote is counted either towards the restaurateur or towards the porn star. Someone who rated the restaurateur 7th and the porn star 6th, for example, is now automatically voting for the porn star. In this final round, while my vote goes to the restaurateur – an unreconstructed liberal Democrat whose politics are my favorite second only to the more radical cross-dresser – more people are drawn to the, well, platform of the busty pornographic film star, and she emerges the winner of the gubernatorial race.

The advantages of this system are clear. It demonstrates the actual level of support for various candidates by allowing everyone to rank them based purely on how much they’d like to see them in office. It eliminates the fear of hurting your second – (or maybe eleventh-) choice candidate’s chances by supporting your first-choice. Unlike the California recall, instant run-off voting is a sustainable, viable measure which would increase the democracy of our republic – and, not coincidentally, rock the casbah that is the two-party system. That’s why it’s been part of the platform of the Green party for years, and is part of the platform of its candidate in the recall, Peter Camoje, who I would likely vote for first in an instant run-off election, followed by Arianna Huffington, then likely Cruz Bustamante. That’s why you don’t hear a lot about it from the Democrats – who came up with progressive reforms like the recall election and now are suing to to have it stopped – or the Republicans – who become populists overnight when it means embarassing the Democrats.

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Norman Solomon of FAIR suggests the type of corrections we should be seeing in the news:

For the 958th consecutive week, the Daily Bugle published a Business section each day without ever including a Labor section in the paper. This tacit identification with the interests of capital over the interests of working people is inconsistent with the values of independent journalism. The editors regret this chronic error…

The Daily Bugle published a wire-service story yesterday that flatly reported: “The events of 9/11 changed everything in America.” But Sept. 11 did not really change everything. For instance, widespread hunger among low-income people has persisted in this country. To take another example, 9/11 did not change the society’s basic financial structures, which continue to widen already-huge economic gaps between rich and poor. It is inaccurate and irresponsible journalism to report that “9/11 changed everything.” The Daily Bugle regrets that it has gotten caught up in this media myth…

A news report in the Daily Bugle on Thursday stated that Secretary of State Colin Powell is “a moderate.” This assessment should have been attributed rather than being presented as an objective fact. The lengthy article did not mention Powell’s record of strong efforts for the contra war in Nicaragua, the invasion of Panama, two massive assaults on Iraq and other wars waged by the Pentagon: a record some would contend hardly merits characterization as “moderate.”

…News articles and editorials about regulatory issues related to the media industry have not included the relevant information that the Silverado Newspaper Group, the chain that owns the Daily Bugle, stands to gain or lose millions of dollars in profits depending on the outcome of deregulation proposals. The editor regrets the lack of appropriate disclosure and disclaimers…

The funny thing about media bias is that the bias which identifies itself as such garners the most attention and also presents the least danger. This past year, for example – to switch for a moment to the question of bias in the classroom – my political science professor first semester made a derisive remark at one point about Florida having “cost us the election,” blushed, and apologized. My political science professor second semester devoted a significant part of the course to explaining why criticism of Congress as an institution is borne of lack of understanding of Congress, impatience, and lack of commitment to democracy. The pro-Gore partisan bias is much more likely to be flagged, or potentially to be marshalled as a further anecdote of the liberal bias of the academy. But the pro-Congress ideological bias, precisely because it’s subtle and it doesn’t present itself as one of two or more alternatives, is much more persuasive and problematic. Part of the important work FAIR does is exposing and challenging the unspoken assumptions and fixed paradigms through which the supposedly liberal media filter their narrative.

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When I first talked to Bob in 2001 about his leaving the corporate sector to come to Yale, he expressed the concern that if his family preferred to remain in Boston, the weekly commute might take its toll, and, unfortunately, this has proven to be the case. In Bob’s two years here, we have benefited from his attention to improving our business practices and his warm and genuine embrace of the institution and its values.

President Levin’s previously-discussed letter announcing the abrupt end of Bob Culver’s time as Yale Vice President for Administration and Finance is here. It’s an open question whether the reference to “embrace of the institution and its values” includes telling workers that money for training them for more advanced jobs was “money down the drain.” What “improving our business practices” has wrought will – barring an administative change of heart – be dramatically proven yet again on August 27

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Steve Martin on weapons of mass destruction:

See, I can “have” something without actually having it. I can “have” a cold, but I don’t own the cold, nor do I harbor it. Really, when you think about it, the cold has me, or even more precisely, the cold has passed through me. Plus, the word “have” has the complicated letter “v” in it. It seems that so many words with the letter “v” are words that are difficult to use and spell. Like “verisimilitude.” And “envelope.”

Therefore, when you ask me, “Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction,” I frankly don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you mean currently? Then why did you say “did?” Think about “did.” What the heck does that mean? Say it a few times out loud. Sounds silly. I’m beginning to think it’s just the media’s effort to use a fancy palindrome, rather than ask a pertinent question.

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This Tony Auth cartoon has caused a stir in several Philadelphia, Jewish, and on-line circles since it was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer last Thursday. The cartoon, which depicts a fence in the shape of a Jewish star dividing Palestinian civilians, has come under fire – as do most on the left about Israel – as not only critical of the Sharon government but anti-Israel, and not only anti-Israel but antisemitic. And, as in most but not all cases when Israel is the topic and antisemitism is charged, the charge doesn’t hold weight.

At the heart of the issue with this cartoon is the symbolic use of the Magen David, the Jewish star. Because Auth uses a religious symbol, the argument goes, the cartoon represents a religious – rather than political – slur, a blood libel. Because the star is employed in connection with a depiction of oppression, the cartoon’s message must be that the religion, and the coreligionists, associated with the star are oppressive. But this argument disregards the appropriation of the Jewish star a century ago for the flag of the State of Israel. The star, which appears in the center of the flag framed above and below by horizontal stripes, is its only recognizable symbol, and appears solo in a range of administrative contexts, as understandably is also a mainstay of pro-Sharon lobbies. So why the Magen David does not belong to the lexicon of acceptable symbols for Auth is seems to me difficult to argue.

This may seem like a belated nitpick, but there’s a larger and more persistent issue here. Whatever one believes about the religious nature of the state, I think intellectual honesty demands a recognition that any self-identified religious state inherently blurs the discourse, insofar as most of us legitimize and call for judgments of states and political actors of a type that we don’t want or legitimate of religions or religious groups. But pundits on both sides can fall prey to a desire to have it both ways. A couple months ago I called a Yale professor active on the Yale-Peace listserve on a seeming inability or willful refusal to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Likudniks, Israelis, and neoconservatives. But the double standard on the right is more subtle and more ubiquitous: Groups that defend the Israeli government are pro-Jewish and speak for Jews, but when critics of Israel conflate the state and the religion it’s bigotry. It would be gratifying to see more politicians willing to distinguish the Jewish community and Arik Sharon when it comes to commentary they agree with and commentary they don’t.

Katha Pollitt, in an essay on flags after September 11, wrote that symbols are doors and it’s time to walk through them (when I asked her in person what she had meant by that quote, she said she didn’t remember ever writing it). Symbolic politics is inherently potent and inherently fraught. And all cartoons are charicature. As cartoonists go, Auth isn’t a particular favorite of mine, although he has his moments. But Auth’s cartoon has three symbols. The first, as described above, is perhaps the primary symbol of the state. The second, Palestinian civilians, exist by the millions in the territory occupied by that state. And the third, the fence in question, is lengthening even now. The criticism of Auth for using the symbol, and the implication that his symbolism is akin to Nazi propaganda and/or is comparing Israelis to Nazis to Nazis, makes it easy to forget that in this case life preceded art. The actual fence, in fact, looks a lot uglier than portrayed in the cartoon. Auth chose to make a statement – not a particularly new one – about the construction of the fence in the name of the star and its impact on men, women, and children. Debatable? Sure. Bigotry? No.

Disagree? Eidelson@Yale.Edu

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Elton Beard at BusyBusyBusy has devoted his site as late to sentence-encapsulations of pieces by authors of the right (and whatever that place is that Tom Friedman is of), making sometimes for cheap shots and other times for biting satire. His summary of this Condoleeza Rice piece is right on the mark:

Shorter Condoleezza Rice:

We attacked Iraq without provocation in order to transform it into a democracy and so enhance world peace, as countries with elected leaders do not attack other countries without provocation.

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From HRW – speaking of war crimes…

The United States recently withheld military assistance from 35 democratic countries because of their resistance to bilateral immunity agreements (BIAs), which exempt U.S. citizens from the first global court to try those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. These agreements, in the form requested by the United States so far, are not only contrary to article 98(2) of the ICC treaty but also to international law as
they defeat the “object and purpose” of the Rome Statute…

Latvia has joined the EU and 9 other EU accession states, as well as a growing group of countries that have reaffirmed their principled stance against impunity by refusing to sign a BIA with the United States. EU’s strong position regarding BIAs was renewed last June 15 with the adoption of a new Common Position that called on EU member states to assist states in withstanding U.S. pressure to sign a BIA.

The United States’ punitive measures often go above and beyond the mere implementation of the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA), a piece of anti-ICC legislation passed by Congress last year. A senior Latvian diplomat told Human Rights Watch that the Bush Administration has even decided to withhold $2.7 million in promised supplemental funding to support Latvian troops in Iraq. At the same time, the United States will still financially support Lithuania’s participation in Iraq although additional military aid is still being withheld.

This blackmail (of “New Europe,” no less – or has Latvia become Old Europe since the Iraq War?) is presumably defended by the contention that the International Crimminal Court, the most elaborate, multinational project of its type ever carried out, and with checks and balances often exceeding those of the US Justice system, is hopelessly arbitrary, vindictive, and partisan – unlike the approach for assessing, approaching, and adjudicating threats to international law represented in, say, the Bush Doctrine.