Archive for July, 2009

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Where Amazing Happens

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Critics of President Obama’s Middle East policy like to say the Palestinians have “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” It’s a twist on the quote from Abba Eban, the Israeli diplomat and politician, who said after the Geneva Peace Conference in 1973: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Their point is that the Israelis do not have a partner for peace, and until they do, there should be no peace process. Moreover, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank is extremely weak. In the absence of a partner, Israel certainly should not be pressured to make concessions.

I’ve always believed this line of thinking stands logic on its head. It’s the peace process (not unilateral Israeli moves) — including the active engagement of the United States bringing Arab nations along – coupled with economic improvement for Palestinians on the ground, that will over time create the partner.

An article on the front page of the New York Times today, “Signs of Hope Emerge in West Bank,” is a reason for optimism.

The first movie theater to operate in this Palestinian city in two decades opened its doors in late June. Palestinian policemen standing beneath new traffic lights are checking cars for seat belt violations. One-month-old parking meters are filling with the coins of shoppers. Music stores are blasting love songs into the street, and no nationalist or Islamist scold is forcing them to stop. …

For the first time since the second Palestinian uprising broke out in late 2000, leading to terrorist bombings and fierce Israeli countermeasures, a sense of personal security and economic potential is spreading across the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority’s security forces enter their second year of consolidating order.

The International Monetary Fund is about to issue its first upbeat report in years for the West Bank, forecasting a 7 percent growth rate for 2009.

Police checking cars for seat belt violations? Are we in Nablus, or suburban Central Jersey?

The article is accompanied by a photo of Palestinian teenage girls – hair straightened, wearing rhinestone-studded jeans, glittering belts, and showing some skin — buying movie tickets in front of a huge poster of Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean. It chronicles a surge in car sales, the success of a seven-story home furnishing store that sells the latest espresso machines, and a growing trust between Israeli and Palestinian forces, some of whom have been trained abroad.

If social and economic conditions continue to improve in the West Bank, isn’t it possible — despite all the heated rhetoric and even anti-Israel propaganda — that moderation will ultimately attract more disciples than fundamentalism? And that if this is coupled with continued engagement by President Obama, in a regional strategic approach with the Arab states, it could strengthen West Bank leadership, and embolden them meet the Israelis half-way?

“Twice in recent months we have been amazed,” an Israeli general told the New York Times, speaking about the seriousness of Palestinian security forces, who in June clashed ferociously with Hamas terrorists, fighting them to the death.

The West Bank. Where amazing happens? It’s only twice, but it’s a start.

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Posted in Israel, Jewish Interest, Obama, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Clinton: Arabs must ‘Prepare their Publics to Embrace Peace’

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Following on the heels of President Obama’s meeting with Jewish leaders this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an important foreign policy address yesterday, calling on Palestinians and Arab nations to do their part for peace.

“We know that progress toward peace cannot be the responsibility of the United States – or Israel – alone,” Clinton said at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”Ending the conflict requires action on all sides.

The Palestinians have the responsibility to improve and extend the positive actions already taken on security; to act forcefully against incitement; and to refrain from any action that would make meaningful negotiations less likely.

And Arab states have a responsibility to support the Palestinian Authority with words and deeds, to take steps to improve relations with Israel, and to prepare their publics to embrace peace and accept Israel’s place in the region. The Saudi peace proposal, supported by more than twenty nations, was a positive step. But we believe that more is needed. So we are asking those who embrace the proposal to take meaningful steps now. Anwar Sadat and King Hussein crossed important thresholds, and their boldness and vision mobilized peace constituencies in Israel and paved the way for lasting agreements. By providing support to the Palestinians and offering an opening, however modest, to the Israelis, the Arab states could have the same impact. So I say to all sides: Sending messages of peace is not enough. You must also act against the cultures of hate, intolerance and disrespect that perpetuate conflict. 

(You can watch the speech and read the full transcript here.) 

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Clinton did not specify what steps should be taken by the Arab nations. However — and this is important:

Obama administration officials have suggested allowing Israeli commercial airlines to fly over Arab nations and enhancing business ties short of full diplomatic relations.

The timing of this speech, just days after Obama assured Jewish leaders that “forceful” pressure is being applied on the Palestinians, indicates just how sensitive the Obama administration is to perceptions in the Jewish community that Israel is being pressured unilaterally to freeze settlements.

Moreover, the Obama administration is explicity rejecting the notion that the Saudi peace plan by itself is enough, and is pressing for concrete concessions on the Arab side, beyond the sometimes ephemeral demands to reign in terror and take action against incitement.

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Posted in Israel, Jewish Interest, Obama, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

We’ve Lost the War

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

By all accounts, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will eventually be confirmed by the Senate as the first Latina on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yet, I can’t shake this nagging feeling that while we will win this battle, we’re losing the war.

Issue No. 1 in her Senate confirmation hearings, which are ongoing as I write this, is whether Sotomayor would let her Hispanic ethnicity or gender shape her rulings. She has spent the better part of two days trying to assure ranting Republican senators that it would not.

Which is not only patently false, it confirms for me that Republicans have won the broader debate in this country: Progressive jurists quake in their boots at the mere thought of being labelled “activists” who “legislate from the bench” by letting who they are and how they feel about it impact their decisions.

(As if conservative jurists don’t do this all the time.)

The front page of the Akron Beacon Journal this morning includes an AP article headlined: ‘Sotomayor denies racial bias’:

An attempted play on words ”fell flat” in a speech in 2001, Sotomayor told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., referring to remarks in which she suggested that a ”wise Latina woman” would usually reach a better conclusion than a white male.

”It was bad because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that’s clearly not what I do as a judge,” Sotomayor said.

The New York Times plays it the same way:

”My words failed, they didn’t work,” she told Senator Cornyn, who zeroed in what he said were several instances in which she asserted that “a wise Latina woman” might reach a different, even a better, decision than a white male.

All this fuss is about a 2001 Berkeley lecture on law and cultural diversity, in which Sotomayor said:

“Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. … I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First … there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

With a richness of her experiences. That’s the part media accounts leave out. And yet, that was Sotomayor’s point. Are Republicans suggesting that a white male who has lived on a remote mountaintop studying U.S. law all his life — never once venturing down into the messy and confounding and beautiful streets of America, but with a “perfect” understanding of the law — would somehow be their ideal candidate?

Sotomayor’s comment is not only utterly refreshing, it highlights an unassailable truth. If our society was perfect, we might not need judges with varied backgrounds and experiences. If we had not had slavery and Jim Crow, maybe there would have been no need for Thurgood Marshall. If women had always had the right to vote, and earned equal pay for equal work, perhaps we could have lived without O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  If gay Americans had the right to get married and serve openly as U.S. soldiers, the Court might not need a gay judge.

But they don’t, and we do, and hopefully one day we’ll have one.

By forcing Sotomayer to contort her legal self into a barely recognizable shadow of her ethnic self, minority Republicans remain on offense, in control the broader message, which will continue to have ramifications for a long time to come.

In my ideal America, Judge Sotomayor would look those Republican senators in the eye and say: Absolutely, my experiences as a Latina woman, to say nothing of my experiences growing up in a South Bronx housing project, will affect how I rule on the nation’s top court, just as Chief Justice John Roberts’ experience at Roman Catholic grade school and boarding school, and Justice Clarence Thomas’ experience as a beneficiary of affirmative action, surely affect their decisions.

That’s how it should be. It’s a big part of the reason why, over time, our vast, relatively young system of law bends slowly, achingly toward justice.

Thank you, and God bless America.

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Posted in Supreme Court | 4 Comments »

U.S. ‘Gaining Ground’ on Arab Street

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

President Barack Obama’s overtures to the Arab world are working.

That, according to an important new report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a powerful D.C.-based think tank devoted to a strong U.S.-Israel alliance.

Several new polls suggest that the United States is gaining ground in the Arab street, and that President Barack Obama’s latest overtures, specifically his June 4 speech in Cairo, were well received by some important Arab constituencies … Students of Arab public opinion would regard these numbers as surprisingly encouraging. In contrast, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad’s popularity has slipped dramatically in the Arab world … Approximately half of the Arabs questioned even agree that “if Iran does not accept new restrictions and more international oversight of its nuclear program, the Arabs should support stronger sanctions against Iran around the end of this year.”

(You can read the full report here.)

The report notes that these marked shifts in public attitudes provide a “window of opportunity,” in which Arab governments, fearful of a dominant Iran, will be increasingly receptive to cooperating with the United States. It argues that the Obama administration “should accelerate and publicize defensive military cooperation with friendly Arab countries.” And it concludes that the U.S. should continue trying to engage Iran, while at the same time actively enlisting broader Arab support for sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Which is to say that, despite the loud naysayers on the right, President Obama’s bold outreach to the Arab world is already paying crucial dividends.

It should be noted that the Washington Institute is not by any means a left-leaning think tank. Its board members range across the political spectrum (from former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger and Warren Christopher, to Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic, a staunch pro-Israel hawk). According to SourceWatch, the Institute burst on the scene in 1988 with a paper urging that the U.S. “resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough (on Palestinian-Israeli peace issues) until conditions have ripened” — a report that was extremely influential in the George H.W. Bush administration.

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Posted in Iran, Israel, Jewish Interest, Obama | No Comments »

Jewish Leaders in the White House: Take Two

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

President Barack Obama spoke directly and powerfully to the concerns of the Jewish community today.

Obama invited 16 Jewish leaders from 14 organizations into the White House for a wide-ranging discussion focused on Israel, Middle East policy, and Iran. There’s no transcript, but what comes through in press reports — based on interviews with those in attendance — is President Obama’s iron-clad support for Israel as a safe, secure Jewish state.

Most fundamentally, he addressed head-on community concerns that by calling on Israel to freeze settlements, he is applying more pressure on Israel than he is on the Palestinians.

The National Jewish Democratic Council’s executive director Ira Forman, one of the 16 invitees, told Politico’s Ben Smith that Obama ”said we have been very specific with the Arab world on incitement, violence, commitments on accepting the reality of Israel and conveying that to their street as well.”

According to The Forward, the president said that “forceful” pressure is being applied to the Palestinians to move forward on the peace process — flatly contradicting claims by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that all Palestinians have to do is sit and wait for Israel to make concessions. The president told the group that among other things, he has sent letters to all the Arab states, urging them to join the peace process.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

One participant quoted the president as saying that “There’s not a lot of courage among the Arab states; not a lot of leadership among the Palestinians.” …

“The view was expressed among the organizations at a minimum there was concern about an imbalance in pressures placed on Israel as opposed to on the Palestinians and Arab states,” Alan Solow, the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JTA. “The president indicated he had a sensitivity to the perception of that imbalance and had to work harder to correct that perception.”

Moreover, Obama specifically said, according to the Jerusalem Post, there’s a “likelihood that Israel would retain the major settlement blocs in any final peace deal with the Palestinians, but said it was an issue that needed to be resolved between the parties.”

And yet again — and this always strikes me about Obama — he didn’t kowtow to his audience by telling them only what they wanted to hear. This, for example, is from the AP report:

Some participants in the meeting flatly told Obama that only when the United States are Israel are in lockstep support is any progress made. Obama replied that there was no distance between the U.S. and Israeli positions for the last eight years, and that no progress was made under President George W. Bush.

“Where people pushed back, the president stood firm,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, a pro-Israel and pro-peace political action committee and lobby.

“I don’t think the peace process will be advanced by hiding natural disagreements, disagreements within the family,” Obama was quoted in The Forward as saying. 

Which, ultimately, gives him infinite credibility when his White House puts out statements like this, as it did after the meeting today: “The President reiterated his unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security and reiterated his commitment to working to achieve Middle East peace.” 

“[Obama] talked about Israel as a Jewish state with no hesitancy,” Forman told ABC News.  “He also reiterated what he has said before about the fundamental bond between Israel and the United States and the fundamental commitment the U.S. has, no matter what disagreements there are, to Israel’s peace and security.”

It’s high time for the skeptics in the Jewish community to take him at his word.

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Jewish Leaders in the White House: Take One

Monday, July 13th, 2009

The message reached the president.

The other day, I blogged that the time is right for President Obama to visit Israel, noting that his support in Israel is slipping. If he makes his case directly to the Israeli public, I wrote, he would likely win crucial Jewish support for his Middle East agenda.

Today, during a meeting at the White House with American Jewish leaders, Obama was pressed on this point, directly. This is from the Jerusalem Post’s coverage: 

At the end of the meeting, Americans for Peace Now President Debra DeLee suggested that Obama visit Israel to deliver his message directly to Israelis as a way of emphasizing his commitment to Israel and reassuring Israelis that he is concerned about their well-being.

While Obama did not respond to the request at the time, according to those in the room, there has been discussion that the president might make such a trip as part of his policy of active engagement in the Middle East.

In addition to the 16 Jewish leaders from  14 organizations, “those in the room” included, according to The Forward, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisor David Axelrod, and Daniel Shapiro, who heads the Middle East division of the National Security Council.

That an Obama trip to Israel is under consideration is very good news.

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Posted in Israel, Jewish Interest, Obama | 1 Comment »

Whales and Forgiveness

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

There is a moving, terrible, strange, sublime cover story by Charles Siebert in the New York Times Magazine today. The headline, “Watching Whales Watching Us,” doesn’t quite get to the heart of it.

The main point of the article is startling: Despite all that humans have done to whales in the last two centuries — hunted, destroyed and decimated entire species — whales have learned to trust us again.

What grabs you by the throat and forces you to pay attention, first and foremost, is the prose:

Eighteen feet of boat on open seas is in almost any circumstance a tenuous alignment. But to suddenly find yourself in that same small vessel above a fleet, 40-foot-long midsea mastodon — one whose fluke alone could, with a cursory flip, send you and your boat soaring skyward — is to know the pure, wonderfully edgeless fear of complete acquiescence. I watched, wide-eyed, the soundless slide of that “moving land,” as Milton once described whales, everywhere beneath our boat, and suddenly felt the whole of myself wanting to go away with her; to hop on for a long ride downward toward some dimly remembered, primordial home.

Siebert is a contributing writer for the magazine. According to the blog animalinventory.net, which tracks animals in popular culture, Siebert is known for his “searing analysis of human-animal relationships.” He’s written about chimpanzees, animal shelters and elephant culture. His book Angus: A Novel, is written from the perspective of a Jack Russell terrier.  He’s on familiar terrain.

For this article, he set out for the open waters of Baja California Sur, in Mexico, in search of gray whales. He surveys some of the violent, bloody history of our relationship with whales (“By the middle of the 20th century, worldwide stocks of nearly all the earth’s whale species had been … depleted”), then poses the question: “Why [would] present-day gray-whale mothers, some of whom still bear harpoon scars … take to seeking us out and gently shepherding their young into our arms?”

 If an article like this can have a nut, here it comes:

A combination of anecdotal evidence and recent scientific research into whale biology and behavior suggests that there may something far more compelling going on in the lagoons of Baja each winter and spring. Something, let’s say, along the lines of that time-worn plot conceit behind many a film, in which the peaceable greetings of alien visitors are tragically rebuffed by human fear and ignorance. Except that in this particular rendition, the aliens keep coming back, trying, perhaps, to give us another chance. To let us, of all species, off the hook.

To put a fine point on it: the whales – creatures known to mourn their own dead, teach, learn, scheme, cooperate, grieve, dream, and recognize their friends – are trying to let us know they forgive us.

Toni Frohoff, a marine mammal behavioralist, tells Siebert: “There are reasons why something like forgiveness is a possibility … There’s something very potent occurring here from a behavioral and biological perspective.”

What Siebert doesn’t answer, directly, is why this matters. And not just matters. Why the soaring prose? Why the artwork, accompanying the piece, instead of photos? Why remind readers of the floating factories used by whalers in the early 1900s, that allowed for “immediate on-board flensing and refinement of the carcass”?

There’s a clue in his final anecdote, I think, about a female humpback whale that, in 2005, became hopelessly entangled in a vast crab-trap net off the coast of San Francisco. A rescue team arrived, and, with the whale near death, divers risked their lives to cut the net.

When the whale was finally freed, the divers said, she swam around them for a time in what appeared to be joyous circles. She then came back and visited with each one of them, nudging them all gently, as if in thanks. The divers said it was the most beautiful experience they ever had. As for the diver who cut free the rope that was entangled in the whale’s mouth, her huge eye was following him the entire time, and he said that he will never be the same.

We live in a culture, in a political moment, when anti-environmentalism is not only alive, it’s celebrated. Remember, Sarah Palin fought tooth and nail against putting not just polar bears, but beluga whales, on the endangered species list (so as not to restrict off-shore oil and gas development), and, if Frank Rich is to believed, she is still the standard-bearer for a huge swath of the Republican party. And don’t think it’s just the fringes. When the Supreme Court recently overturned two lower court rulings that restricted the Navy’s use of sonar devices having a murderous effect on whales, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, sniffed: “For the plaintiffs, the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of marine animals that they study and observe.”

The whales are trying to let us know they forgive us, but we have navies to run, shipping lanes to fill, crabs to trap. Which may explain why we’re too busy to notice.

How do those alien movies end, again?

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