A Disappointing Visit from Israel

Last night the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Music Director Zubin Mehta, visited Davies Symphony for the latest installment in the Great Performers Series hosted by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). This ensemble has been hosted by SFS frequently since 1984, always with Mehta on the podium; and their last visit took place in 2011. In spite of that impressive track record, last night was seriously disappointing, leaving the kind of disturbing memories that haunt the mind just like all of those dark spirits that frolic every Halloween.

The program was straightforward enough. The intermission was preceded by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 425 (“Linz”) symphony in C major and followed by Franz Schubert’s “Great” D. 944 symphony, also in C major. The overture was a suite that Amit Poznansky composed from the music he provided for the soundtrack of the film Footnote. This was a brief piece; so, for all intents and purposes, the evening was “owned” by Mozart and Schubert.

Sadly, neither composer came out of the experience very well. Indeed, by the second half of the evening, I found myself toying with the idea of using “Tedious Mush” as my headline. Fortunately, my better angels discouraged me; but, in the more sober context of this article, it is a phrase worth unpacking. The fact is that the overall sonority for both symphonies had a consistently murky (or mushy, if you prefer) quality; and the problem seems to have originated with how Mehta decided to deploy his string section.

Those who know Mehta’s background know that he shares with his colleague Daniel Barenboim a great admiration for the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. When Mehta was profiled by The New Yorker, the article went to some length to explain how Furtwängler’s approach differed from that of Arturo Toscanini; and one could probably also hold up Herbert von Karajan as a similarly contrasting example. Last night, however, Mehta seemed to be guided by Karajan’s precept that there is no such thing as too many strings.

To be fair, Mehta did reduce (by about 25%) the size of his string section for K. 425. Nevertheless, the result was a disturbingly unbalanced mush of sonorities. As this site has observed in the past, the best Mozart symphony performances are the ones that take stock of how the winds and brass are represented and then scales the number of strings to balance those “forces of breath.” Last night much of the writing for the winds was close to inaudible except for the “chorale moments,” when the strings drop out entirely.

This leads to the other major problem with last night’s performance. In the midst of this lack of balance of sonorities, Mehta never managed to put together an overall logic that guided each of Mozart’s movements from beginning to end. (Whether or not the entire symphony has such a logic can be left to others to debate.) Thus, it did not take long for tedium to set in, leading to here-we-go-again reactions to any manifestation of recapitulation. In other words this was very much a “tedious mush” account of Mozart in the literal sense of those two words.

Schubert did not fare much better. As he had done in 2011, Mehta placed the octet of wind players (pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and horns) in front of his maximum-strength string section. This provided an unconventional approach to improving the balance. Unfortunately, it also meant an unobscured view of the first oboist, who seemed more interested in channeling his friends in Spinal Tap than in just sitting there and playing the music. However, if the winds were more audible, the strings still had that mushy quality that sapped the life out of every phrase that Schubert composed for his D. 994 symphony. As a result, the piece just slogged its way through the score; and I suspect I was not the only one to check my watch at the end of the third movement.

I had considered going on a rant about this event being an affront to serious listeners. However, I realized that it was probably the case that most of the audience was there for socio-political reasons, rather than musical ones. There is considerable support for this ensemble by the local community; but it is support in the same vein as the pro-Israel lobbying efforts in Washington. Those who are most supportive of the Israel Philharmonic probably show up just to “see the flag;” and what make this most ironic is that the flag itself is literal, rather than metaphorical. It was right there at the front audience-right corner with the American flag on the opposite front corner. This is the only visiting ensemble that begins a program by playing its own national anthem after having played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” These concerts are all about allegiance, rather than the music being performed.

Being a Jew Today

I was glad to see that the DC Dispatches blog for Al Jazeera English ran a post about the fact that the protesters in the anti-Netanyahu rally outside AIPAC, where he was giving his speech, included Jews. I also appreciated that the unnamed author post took the time to interview Jews that were inside listening to Benjamin Netanyahu's speech. One of them was Rabbi Eric Solomon of the Beth Meyer Synagogue in North Carolina. One particular quote from Solomon, however, stuck in my craw: "to be a Jew today - an active, proud Jew - means to be a Zionist."

I have never been a serious practitioner of Judaism. Indeed, I have been calling myself an atheist for several decades. However, since I was born Jewish, I think I have learned a thing or two about what it means "to be a Jew;" and my disagreement with Solomon may be representative of why I no longer with to have anything to do with any organized religion. The bottom line is that "to be a Jew" comes down to living by the precepts of the Old Testament; and, if one is very serious about this, one will take into account the considerable lore of how the text should be interpreted, involving the observations of rabbis going all the way back to the Babylonian Captivity.

Now I suppose that being a Zionist may involve accepting the text from Genesis citing the extent of the land that God granted to Abraham. However, much of the Old Testament involves that old adage, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." Over the historical period covered by the Old Testament, land was gained, and land was lost. Furthermore, there are Old Testament stories that illustrate that battles lost often had to do with God punishing the Israelites for their pride. Apparently, these are portions that Solomon does not spend much time (if any) reading.

As a result, I side with the protestors on the outside, who collectively probably know more about Judaism than all of the AIPAC members on the inside.

Confidence or Con?

A BBC News report quotes Secretary of State John Kerry on the current round of efforts towards peace in the Middle East as follows:

We have six months ahead of us on the timetable we have set for ourselves and I am confident we have the ability to make progress.

Does Kerry really mean this, or is this just another example of obligatory jawboning. To Kerry's credit, the BBC report also included the following sentence:

Mr Kerry reaffirmed Washington's rejection of Israeli settlement activity as "illegitimate".

I would guess that, in this case, Kerry meant what he said. However, I have to wonder if it will have any effect. It may certainly help in getting the Palestinians to trust him as an "honest broker," which would be a significant improvement over the conditions that I last examined at the end of 2010. The problem is that it is next to impossible to believe that anyone with any power of substance in Israel will take that comment with anything other than a grain of kosher salt.

As "outside observers" we need to recognize that the Executive Branch of our government has little (if any) influence over what happens in Israel. Any influence that does exist at a governmental level derives all of its substance from the American Israel Public Affair Committee (AIPAC). While AIPAC is ostensibly a lobbying organization, we may assume that it can choose to apply its generous budget to objectives other than buying off members of Congress. Indeed, in the spirit of Charlie Wilson, AIPAC could conceivable finance operations in Israel that run contrary to any positions taken by any elected representative of our government.

Meanwhile, public opinion is rallied around the proposition that Israel must be supported because it is the only "real" democracy in the Middle East. (Note the scare quotes.)  Those who continue to embrace this proposition would do well to read Chris Hedges' recent column on Truthdig, a book review of Max Blumenthal's Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel released under the headline "Imploding the Myth of Israel." The bottom line is that what we know about Israel comes entirely from a well-financed propaganda effort and is nothing more than toxic Kool-Aid. Some might even argue that 9/11 was the first serious symptom of its toxicity, but the consciousness industry had thus far been successful in keeping those voices inaudible. Whether or not Hedges' voice suffers the same fate will be up to those of us still willing to read with an open mind.

Rejecting God’s Choice (again)

Perhaps the most valuable experience I had while I was teaching in Israel came when someone (I can no longer remember whom) recommended that I read the essays of Ahad Ha’am. Fortunately, the first such piece I read turned out to be his interpretation of the concept of a “chosen people.” His thesis was that the Jews had not been chosen to receive the bounties of the land of Canaan. Rather, as I have previously put it, “they were chosen to be role models for all those other cultures that had rejected their One God.” If there is any validity to American support of Israel as a country, it would be through the past examples that country has set through its embrace of democratic principles moderated through the rule of law.

On the basis of a story filed on BBC News about an hour ago, that past validity has now been thoroughly undermined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Is that too extreme a statement? Draw your own conclusions after reading the opening text:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of 300 new homes at the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank. 

The announcement came hours after Israel's parliament rejected a bill to legalise settlement outposts. 

Mr Netanyahu, who opposed the bill, said he would honour a Supreme Court order to demolish homes on private Palestinian land at the Ulpana outpost. 

The issue has been a source of tension between settlers and the government. 

All settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The settler outposts are also illegal under Israeli law and the government agreed to remove them under the 2003 Road Map peace plan.

In other words, while Arab Spring protestors try to keep up the good fight against authoritarian rulers that reject their parliaments as duly elected representatives of their citizens, Netanyahu has embraced precisely the sort of authoritarianism that the protestors insist on rejecting. Needless to say, the United States has not been much better at setting a proper example lately. Perhaps that is why our country continues to persist in its right-or-wrong allegiance to Israel (or, perhaps more accurately, to the lobbying power of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which seems to have no room for reflection over their endorsement of Netanyahu).

Ahad Ha’am must be turning in his grave; it is time for Jews around the world to recognize that the philosophical foundations of Judaism count for far more than the political machinations of the state of Israel.

Swords for Rattling, not Ploughshares

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah may have spoken of a time when nations would “beat their swords into plowshares;”  but Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be paying as much attention to these words as Isaiah’s contemporaries did.  He is apparently more interested in saber-rattling, particularly when it comes to standing firm against any objections President Barack Obama may have towards Israeli domestic and foreign policy.  Netanyahu is in town for the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC);  and, while Obama’s address last night tried to focus on diplomatic channels to address the possible nuclear threat from Iran, all that seemed to matter to Netanyahu is that he read Obama the riot act over Israel’s “right” to act unilaterally against Iran.

It is worth noting the timing of the AIPAC event.  The 2008 meeting provided a platform for Presidential candidates to woo this lobby for its support.  Sure enough, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum are all scheduled to address the convention this year.  It is a bit ironic that they will be doing so on Super Tuesday, right after each candidate has taken his last shot at winning over those who will vote on that day.  Since Romney has now gone on record with the statement that “if Barack Obama is re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” one can imagine that he is a prime candidate for Netanyahu’s blessing;  but whether that will transfer to AIPAC support remains to be seen.

Prospects for the Middle East

After doing a bit of browsing, I discovered that I wrote the following in November of 2007:

Perhaps we should recall the wisdom of Georges Clemenceau ("La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires.") and recognize that peace in the Middle East is too serious to be entrusted to political leaders.

The fact is that the only motive behind Barack Obama’s speech yesterday at the State Department was political, not only with respect to the American electorate but also as a head-on confrontation with those who lobby on behalf of Israel, timed the eve of a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  There is no question that Netanyahu’s reaction to Obama’s “redistricting” proposal to address Palestinian needs was more predictable than assuming that the sun will rise tomorrow.  (Wait a minute, aren’t there folks out there convinced that this will not happen?)  The more important question is whether either Obama’s speech or Netanyahu’s reaction is in any way relevant.

To some extent this was a recurring theme in the survey of reactions released on the BBC News Web site, all from countries currently contending with the consequences of the Arab Spring, each in its own way.  Far more relevant is likely to be a piece by Lucy Ash profiling grass roots efforts towards peace originating with an individual Palestinian and an individual Israeli, respectively.  For people like these, the predictability of the rising of the sun is far less important that whether or not you will live to see that next sunrise.  Without peace one cannot plan for a future, because one is far too uncertain about whether or not there will be a future.

In this respect I find it a bit ironic that medici.tv, a French Web site that streams videos of classical music performances, should schedule an event particularly relevant to those who strive to pursue the cause of peace without carrying any political baggage.  This Saturday at 10 AM San Francisco time, there will be a live webcast of a performance by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, originating from the Salle Pleyel in Paris.  The ensemble will be conducted by its founder, Daniel Barenboim, based only on the premise that young Arab and Israeli musicians should have the opportunity to come together in the interest of making music.

Not only does Barenboim believe in peace, but also he believes that he can further it through the resources he has at his disposal.  On the basis of his success in working with the young, at the beginning of this month he challenged the Israeli ban on traveling to Gaza.  His goal was to have a small string orchestra give a concert of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart there.  He had to jump through any number of bureaucratic hoops, but I felt that his ultimate success deserved a report on my Examiner.com national site.

Barenboim’s successes with both young and professional musicians reinforce my trope on Clemenceau.  “Peace in our time” is a shallow piece of political rhetoric, neither better nor worse than “the audacity of hope.”  The real question is whether we can have “peace without politics.”  When Bob Dylan sang about an “old road” that is “Rapidly agin’,” did he not have the political institutions of his time in mind?  Obama, Netanyahu, and just about everyone trying to manipulate foreign policy decisions through the machinations if AIPAC should think about Dylan’s punch line:

Please get out of the new one

If you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’.

If an “old school” conductor like Barenboim can get it, why can’t the rest of us?

"Bad Faith" among the Faith-Based

The current state of play in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians has now become blatantly pathetic.  The week began with Israel successfully pressuring the United States to give up on pressuring Israel to cease settlement-building;  and, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been trying to be diplomatic about this mess, prevailing Palestinian opinion seems to agree that the United States has now forfeited any credibility that it can serve as an honest broker in mediating talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  Now a group of former leaders of European Union (EU) countries is trying to enter the discourse by establishing more acceptable “honest broker credentials.”

These leaders have distributed a letter that recognizes settlement-building as a violation of international law to which Israel should be held accountable.  In other words they have composed a “frank and open” statement of what needs to be done as a precondition for meaningful peace negotiations.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that it does not look like the current EU Administration is going to buy this message and will probably hold to the United States party line.  Meanwhile, the reaction from the Israeli foreign ministry has been to declare this attempt at straightening out the rules of engagement for peace negotiations as “a giant leap of bad faith.”

No words could better capture the extent to which the peace process has deteriorated to name-calling between black pots and kettles.  It is because the United States has continued to support Israel in the face of Israeli intransigence to show any sign of good faith that our own country has contaminated its honest-broker reputation.  Now it appears that the contamination has spread to EU policy.

It thus seems fair to acknowledge those who have tried so hard to find a better way.  The initiative appears to have come from Javier Solana, former EU Minister for Foreign Affairs.  According to the BBC report on his action, those who have signed on with him include “Romano Prodi and Giuliano Amato of Italy, Richard von Weizsaecker and Helmut Schmidt of Germany, Mary Robinson of Ireland, Felipe Gonzalez of Spain and Norway's Thorvald Stoltenberg.”  This is not a case of partisan politics, as it is in the United States, where it is virtually impossible to hold any significant office without a nod of approval from the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC).  Now we see the extent to which the partisanship of the United States can interfere with clear-headed deliberations at the EU level of governance.

Israel is clearly pursuing a strategy of exhaustion.  They figure that all they have to do is hold their hard line until everyone else gets tired of trying to break it.  They are far from the first to have engaged this strategy.  Nevertheless, someone should be asking just what consequences are likely to ensue if they succeed.

Losing Chalmers Johnson

It was only by reading Tom Englehardt’s obituary on the Web site for The Nation that I learned that Chalmers Johnson died on Saturday.  There is no sense in my repeating any of the praises that Engleghardt heaped on Johnson, which are based on far more extensive experiences than my own.  From a more personal point of view, I was never able to get any closer to him than a Book TV broadcast of one of his talks;  but this was enough to convince me that he was as compelling a speaker as he was a writer.

I see from my records that I have not written about him lately.  As a matter of fact, the last time I cited him was during Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign, when I referred to Obama’s “AIPAC debut” as “his first serious encounter with the blowback effect.”  To this day I have no idea how much Obama has read of Johnson’s “Blowback Trilogy” (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis).  However, I do know that I took a lot of flack from Obama supporters during the campaign for taking Obama to task for his compromising position toward AIPAC, on the grounds that my critical remarks would only benefit the Republicans.  Today it seems as if Obama has become just as much an imperialist as Bush ever was, and we need look no further than his NATO remarks over the weekend.

However, it was not Johnson’s warnings about imperialism that had the greatest appeal to me.  Rather, it was his understanding about the need for quality writing to stave off the dangers of mind rot and, specifically, his application of that understanding to taking on the likes of Ken Burns.  I encountered this side of Johnson in the book review he prepared for Truthdig concerning the posthumously-published book by David Halberstam about the Korean War, The Coldest Winter.  The best way for me to honor Johnson is to cite the passage I quoted when I wrote about his review:

One aspect of Halberstam’s commitment as a historian and the consequent effect on his writing must be dealt with at the outset and then put aside. That is what he conceives of as his duty to present a populist portrayal of the ordinary soldier in day-to-day, sometimes hand-to-hand, combat and endless homilies on courage, fear, leadership, stamina, cowardice and any other emotions and qualities that might be encountered on the battlefield. I call this the Ken Burns-Tom Brokaw school of writing, hero worship, Great Generationism and military narcissism. Even in ordinary doses it is unimaginably tedious and boring. The amount of it in this 700-page book sometimes generated in me a deep regret that I had agreed to write this review.

I quoted that passage almost exactly three years ago;  and, if the quality of writing on Public Television has changed at all since then, it has only become more narcissistic.  I suppose that means that Johnson’s efforts to sound alarms about writing were no more effective than those about our descent into imperialism, but he kept trying to make his points as long as he could put them in writing.  His shoes will be hard to fill.

Flawed Analysis

Since he is based in Jerusalem, it is hard to tell whether Associated Press Writer Matti Friedman is simply naive or just plain ignorant about the American political system and how it works. It is also unclear whether he was part of the press entourage that traveled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington or whether he wrote this morning's analysis piece strictly on the basis of interviews and reading matter. As a summary of how Netanyahu spent his time in Washington, the piece is at least adequate. The bottom line is that Netanyahu stuck to his guns, demonstrating that he was as capable of strong rhetoric as the Obama administration had been prior to his arrival; and, as might imagined, that rhetoric was at its most successful in the setting of his address to AIPAC.

More interesting, however, was that, in the context of tense relations with the White House, Netanyahu "was received warmly:" (Friedman's words) on Capitol Hill. This deserved analytical interpretation, which Friedman provided as follows:

Netanyahu's effusive reception on Capitol Hill was evidence of the power of Israel's arguments about the choices it makes for self-defense and the sway of its politically active supporters in the United States. The threat that Iran might soon possess a nuclear weapon has made Israel's case stronger and limited the pressure tactics available to a peace-minded American president.

You would think that someone actually living in Jerusalem would have a better understanding of the nature of power and how it is exercised, which is why I am inclined to go with the hypothesis that Friedman really does not understand how the American system works. As we are now well aware, regardless of what legislation or proposal is being debated, in our Legislative branch decisions are not made on the basis of sound arguments. They are made on the basis of the power of influence, usually exercised through a combination of financial support and membership endorsement. While it may be an exaggeration to propose that AIPAC "owns" both houses of Congress, it is not an exaggeration (in the face of documented evidence) that any candidate for Congress who lacks AIPAC support faces the most extreme of uphill challenges. Few organizations lobby with more power than AIPAC; and there is some chance that there may be only one of them, which would be the Pentagon.

This also throws a different light on the second sentence of the above quoted paragraph. We are so obsessed with Iranian moves that would threaten Israel and/or the United States that we willfully ignore evidence of the moves that both Israel and the United States make that are perceived as threatening by the Iranian government. As I recently observed, those Iranians with any memory of past good relations with Israel associate those relations with the Shah, which is hardly the basis for a strong argument to resume such relations; and, since the Shah was, for all intents and purposes, an "American agent" (at least in the lower-case terminology of Kenneth Burke's pentad), the promise of improved relations with the United States is no better.

Where Friedman is probably correct is in his conjecture that both the United States and Israel are counting on the strong rhetoric to blow over in the course of a brief period of time. After that, things will go back to business as usual; and any progress towards peace will be stuck in the same mud. Obama's time on Capitol Hill may have been relatively short, but it should have been long enough for him to get a grip on how the American political system works. Even a solid argument from the Pentagon on how our overt biases towards Israel can jeopardize our security (both domestically and internationally) is unlikely to put a dent in the extent of AIPAC influence to maintain a status quo that, in the course of a longer period of time, can only play out into a lose-lose situation.

AIPAC Time

Tomorrow, as Paul Adams observed in his From Our Own Correspondent report for BBC News, is the day when both Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu will make their speeches to the annual AIPAC conference in Washington. How either of these speeches will play to this particular audience is hard to predict. I doubt that there will be any surprises from Netanyahu, since about the only thing he seems to feel deserves apology over his recent activities, particularly regarding plans for Ramat Shlomo, is the bad timing of his announcement of those plans. The real question is what Clinton will say. Will she maintain the message of the strong rhetoric fired in response to Netanyahu's "bad timing," making it clear that, when it comes to foreign policy in the Middle East, the major priority of the United States is the effort to redeem its reputation as an "honest broker;" or will she defuse her rhetoric to the pandering style invoked when she was campaigning for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 Presidential election?

Perhaps equally important is how the AIPAC audience will react. The official reaction to the initial salvo of strong rhetoric was a rather guarded statement about taking "immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State;" but they have subsequently ramped up their criticism of the Administration position. This had the short-term effect of Clinton endorsing relations between the United States and Israel as an "unshakable bond." My guess is that, officially, this is the language that AIPAC wants to hear; and, among those who would like to bet on what happens in AIPAC (rather than, say, the NCAA Tournament), the smart money will probably go for the unshakable bond rhetoric.

This time around, however, there is a new joker in the deck (to shift the metaphor from basketball to poker). His name is David Petraeus, and his card is in Clinton's current hand. We know the card exists because he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, and Adams felt that his testimony was worth including in his BBC report. He is how Adams summarized how the chips are currently falling on the table:

There might be another reason for AIPAC delegates to feel uneasy this year.

That's because America's best known general, David Petraeus, has, in the words of one commentator, "discovered the Holy Land". And it's bothering him.

In a statement to the Senate's Armed Services Committee this week, he said that a perception of American favouritism for Israel was fomenting anti-American sentiment.

Hardly a novel observation but for the most influential general of recent times to say, publicly, that his job, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not being helped, that American lives are being endangered, by the widespread bitterness engendered by an unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict... Now that is highly unusual.

And as Mark Perry of the website Foreign Policy put it, the Pentagon is the most powerful lobby in America.

Given his position, Petraeus is less concerned about being an honest broker in diplomacy and more worried about having a strategic advantage. Since he has been pretty good about straight talk, he had no problem calling attention to the dead moose on the table having to do with how Israel could pose a strategic liability. Also, in terms of taking a more general view of defusing hot spots, it is important to remember that the last Iranian leader to recognize Israel was the Shah; and it is hard to believe that, regardless of who is in power, the Iranian population would look favorably upon any of the overthrown Shah's policies or ideas.

Will this card in Clinton's hand have any effect on AIPAC audience response? My guess is that Netanyahu will take his usual defiant stand and draw the usual cheers from the crowd; and the best that Clinton can hope for, should she continue with the hang-tough rhetoric, will be polite silence. In this setting that is at least a great improvement over loud choruses of boos (and I would hope that this would be the worst that things would get). Hopefully, Clinton will appreciate that she is tough enough to stand up to a hostile crowd, even if she cannot sway that crowd over to her side. If she can do just that much, then the reestablishment of our honest-broker reputation may still be on track; and, given that hostilities appear to be surfacing in Gaza again, that reestablishment could not come too soon.

Neither Sticks nor Stones

As could have been guessed, the rhetorical assault over Israel's latest settlement development move has had no effect. We could have seen it coming. We already knew that the full extent of regret on the part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to do with the bad timing of the announcement, rather than the substance of the Ramat Shlomo plan itself. This was confirmed by the latest report on Al Jazeera English:

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has rejected calls from the US to halt settlement plans in occupied East Jerusalem, saying plans for building new homes would go ahead.

In a speech to Israel's parliament on Monday, Netanyahu said construction "will continue in Jerusalem as this has been the case for the past 42 years" in reference to the 1967 occupation of the mainly Arab territory.

Yesterday I reported that we had heard little from Israel's defenders in this country to respond to the level of indignation expressed by Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Chief of Staff David Axelrod (presumably speaking on behalf of President Barack Obama). Yesterday AIPAC finally released a statement, which at best can be described as muted:

AIPAC calls on the administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State.

Nevertheless, it is clearly a reaction against American indignation, even it is it not a blatant endorsement of Israeli arrogance. If it assumes that defusing the tension is strictly an American responsibility, rather than a joint effort of both the United States and Israel, then the statement is unlikely to improve the reception it is likely to get "in the lobbies of the Congressional buildings," as I put it yesterday. There is no guarantee, of course, that the lobbying power of AIPAC will fall from its currently lofty height. However, if, as is likely, AIPAC is one of the major impediments to our being perceived as an "honest broker" (which would justify why a country like Brazil should now be considering entering as a mediator), then a radical diminishing (if not elimination) of AIPAC influence will be prerequisite to rebuilding our credibility in the Middle East.

Vindicating Carter

I have always felt that the one American who has seriously and persistently pursued the premise that peace can only come to the Middle East by honoring the principles that mean the most to both Israelis and Palestinians has been former President Jimmy Carter. He may keep changing his tactical recommendations. However, he keeps his eye on the prize; and his premise still provides the foundation for his strategic point of view. Thus, for him the greatest threats arise when that premise is violated.

This week we saw the Obama Administration take steps towards embracing the same premise. Israeli settlement development has become a blatant dishonoring of Palestinian principles, and it was beginning to seem as if the Obama Administration would apply the same benign neglect as preceding administrations, probably because Israel puts as much force behind its lobbying guns as it does behind its armaments. Unfortunately, Israel seems to have deteriorated to a condition in which they put as much faith in lobbying as they used to put in the Ark of the Covenant; and, as was the case with the latter, they suffered a major setback for their arrogance (which their own Scripture describes as Divine punishment). Fortunately, this time around the setback may lead to a serious rethinking of the settlement policy, as a result of a move that may have undermined the usual lobbying forces.

That move, of course, was the announcement of settlement plans for Ramat Shlomo, located in East Jerusalem, that coincided with the state visit by Vice President Joseph Biden. Biden refused to take this arrogance in stride in the interest of diplomacy. Instead, he used every opportunity to deliver the message that the United States would not tolerate such counterproductive measures; and that included delivering that message while on the same stage as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ultimately, this squeezed a few apologetic remarks from Netanyahu but no sign that the policy was going to change. Meanwhile, after Biden had concluded his visit, his position was reinforced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and this morning David Axelrod was dispatched to the NBC division of the "Sabbath Day Gasbags" circuit (otherwise known as Meet the Press). To make it clear that neither Biden nor Clinton were having second thoughts about pulling any punches, Axelrod took the same position in his own remarks about the Israeli actions:

This was an affront, it was an insult but most importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region.

We have just started proximity talks, that is shuttle diplomacy, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and for this announcement to come at that time was very destructive.

The strength of this unity of voices can be appreciated by the fact that we have heard little hue and cry from Israel's defenders to the effect that this Administration position is yet another act of latent anti-Semitism. That dog is just not going to hunt this time, just as the Ark of the Covenant could not be counted on the lead the Israelites to military victory.

One incident, of course, does not redeem the reputation of the United States as an "honest broker." However, it is still a step in the right direction. If it has created a situation in which organizations such as AIPAC will be less welcome in the lobbies of the Congressional buildings, that could well further serious moves towards peace in the Middle East. The window of opportunity may be narrow, but it can still be wide enough to reverse a status quo that has impeded that elusive goal thus far. We should watch this coming week to see whether or not this opportunity is taken seriously.

Bringing the Hamas Question into the Spotlight

Once again, we must turn to Al Jazeera English to satisfy our need for a context-based account of our alleged "vigorous engagement" towards peace in the Middle East, particularly as regards whether or not Hamas will be allowed to participate in that engagement. The basis for their latest report began with the morning papers:

Several ex-senior officials in the US government have written to Barack Obama, the president, urging him to seek dialogue with the Palestinian Hamas movement, a newspaper report says.

The Boston Globe on Sunday reported that the group has called on the White House to hold talks with Hamas leaders to persuade the Palestinian group to lay down arms and join the rival Fatah in a unity government.

Specific names cited in the Al Jazeera account include Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Paul Volcker, hardly the sort of names one would associated with the accusations of Chamberlain-like appeasement that the Bush Administration was so quick to flourish. Just as surprising as the signatories, however, was the amount of time it took for this story to surface:

The letter was handed to Obama just days before he took office in January, the newspaper reported.

Where Al Jazeera could go beyond the Boston Globe was in seeking out a source who could address both sides of this Hamas question and its potential for impeding any serious engagement. They found such a source in Marl Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University:

I think that there is a group of people who think that it is necessary. Hamas controls Gaza, you can't get aid into Gaza without working with Hamas and they represent a large portion of the Palestinian people.

On the other side you have a lot of people who say that the international community has a series of conditions. They haven't met those conditions, they have blood on their hands and there are a lot of people who have deep qualms about talking to Hamas.

Al Jazeera also provided a European perspective in the form of Clare Short, a former British Labour Minister, who just led a delegation of six European politicians to Damascus to meet with Hamas officials:

The Europeans seem, at least to my eye, more open to the possibility of working with Hamas towards meeting those conditions rather than having them as preconditions.

I found this a discreet way to address the current American position. Neither the Al Jazeera staff nor their sources would come out and say that there was one factor in the United States with which European politicians would not have to contend, that factor being the significant lobbying power of AIPAC. We need to remember that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were courting AIPAC energetically at the organization's last convention; and we know that all-too-many decisions in Washington are biased by "deals that dare not speak their name." Recall that Obama's AIPAC speech was, to put it politely, conciliatory, while my reaction to the review of Clinton's Secretary of State nomination by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee described AIPAC as "the greatest threat to Clinton's effectiveness" as an "honest broker." It may be that, if Europe is making progress towards being such an "honest broker," then the wisest thing the United States might do is to withdraw from the negotiations, recognizing the suspicion with which our country continues to be viewed by all Middle East countries except for Israel. The Bush Administration would never have considered such a possibility. Would Obama be audacious to entertain it as a means to an end that is as important to us as it is to the European Community?

Reconciling the Irreconcilable

I for one am waiting for the proposed appointment of George Mitchell as US special envoy for the Middle East to escalate from leaks from supposedly reliable sources to official announcement. Mitchell's achievement of the Good Friday agreement over Northern Ireland demonstrated just what an honest broker can do when it comes to reconciling the irreconcilable. Needless to say, the Middle East is not the British Isles; and the honest-broker reputation of his potential boss may well be tainted by her past close associations with AIPAC. Furthermore, as a recent Al Jazeera English story reported, Mitchell's own track record in the Middle East has not been as successful as his work in Northern Ireland:

In 2000, he also presided over a committee investigating the ongoing violence of the Middle East conflict and recommended Palestinians do more to stop attacks on Israel and an end to Israeli settlement building on occupied land.

Almost a decade has elapsed since that investigation. The problem of new Israeli settlements is still with us; and, even if there is currently a cease fire agreement over Gaza, the word from "media reports" is out that the tunnels that have been supplying Hamas with their weapons are back in business again.

According to a recent New York Times report, Mitchell may also have Dennis Ross as an advisor. Like Mitchell, Ross has experienced his own setbacks in Middle East negotiations; and his book, Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World, is, in many respects, an attempt to theorize about those setbacks. However, much of Ross' theory has to do with navigating the discussions that take place between opposing parties; and, in the Middle East, getting those opposing parties to communicate at all, let alone over the sorts of issues that Ross investigates, continues to be an unsolved problem. (If ever there were a counterexample to Jürgen Habermas' "ideal speech situation," the Middle East would be it!) Consider the current "state of play" in the White House as reported by Al Jazeera English:

Obama, who was inaugurated as US president on Tuesday, made phone calls to several key leaders in the Middle East on Wedneday as the region continued to deal with the aftershocks of Israel's offensive in Gaza.

These included Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian president, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, Jordan's King Abdullah and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said.

While that makes for an impressive "roll call," as I observed yesterday, it is hard to imagine that productive communication can begin before Hamas no longer "passes unnoticed" and becomes a full-fledged participant. Hopefully, in trying to bring about such communications, Mitchell will be better informed by his success in Northern Ireland than by his (and Ross') frustrations in the Middle East. At the very least his honest-broker reputation is intact, which is more than can be said about those diplomats who represented the previous Administration.

Choosing Hillary's Choice

There is a good chance that Hillary Clinton's appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in preparation for the Senate vote on her appointment as Secretary of State, will be one of the most closely watched and commented stories of the day (and not just in the United States). In The Wire the bowl of shit became the operative metaphor for the relationships between the Mayor of Baltimore and all the interest groups (both formal and informal) that stood between him and the electorate that put him in office, each bowl being basically a demand of an interest group that must be satisfied (i.e. consumed/consummated). During the current transition period, however, the metaphor seems more applicable to the legacy of the Bush Administration, which our outgoing President keeps trying to place in favorable light without ever realizing that the lighting never affects the contents of the bowl. One of the largest of these bowls would have to be the one cooked up by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, winner of multiple Chutzpah of the Week awards, which means that it is now destined for Clinton's table.

However, if Daniel Dombey's report for the Financial Times is a reliable one, then we can assume that Clinton will not be one to languish in the world of fetid metaphors:

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, which like the full Senate is expected to confirm her appointment, Mrs Clinton sought to strike a much less ideological and confrontational line than that carved out by the exiting Bush administration.

Mrs Clinton said that Middle East peace was a top priority of the incoming team, as was working with Beijing and Moscow on “vital security and economic issues like terrorism, proliferation, climate change and reforming financial markets.”

She said: “Foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology; on facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice,” and called in her statement for “cooperative engagement” and the use of “smart power” rather than just “hard” or “soft” power.

She added: “We must build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries. America cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own and the world cannot solve them without America… America leadership has been wanting but is still wanted… With smart power, diplomacy will be at the vanguard of our foreign policy.”

This is encouraging language in the wake of a President who, even in his final days, continues to drum fear of those who would wreak damage upon the United States, choosing to view such threats as abstract minions of evil, rather than motivated agents, thus closing the door on the premise that understanding the motives might benefit our "homeland security." It is also the language of one for whom Dennis Ross' book, Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World, is likely to serve as more than a paperweight, thus elevating Ross to a status where his own government takes him as seriously as Vladimir Putin appears to do. Indeed, according to a New York Times story by Mark Lander, Ross may be up for another tour of duty:

Mr. Ross, 60, is expected to receive a senior post at the State Department, officials said, directing policy on Iran and advising on the rest of the Middle East.

However, before we haul out that metaphor of "a new day" (also in the narrative of Baltimore politics in The Wire), I have one cautionary remark about Clinton's choice of words. In an ideal world her preference for "facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice" would be laudable; but ours is a "postmodern" world in which every agent constructs his/her own reality (usually based on those motives that the Bush Administration chose to ignore with its black-and-white classifications of everyone as good or evil). What Clinton may have overlooked is that even the most concrete of items of evidence are still subject to interpretation by those who examine them; and, being all-too-human, we cannot banish our emotions and prejudices and perform such interpretations in a purely "objective world." The key lesson of Ross' book is that statecraft is conducted by people, rather than embodied vehicles for principles; and all people act on their motives, which means that they do not always act according to any objective rationality. (In the language of postmodernism, they engage in resistance, rather than logical opposition.) Perhaps the greatest threat to Clinton's effectiveness would be the influence of AIPAC, though which she would try to apply such objective rationality to the "facts and evidence" coming out of Israel without giving due consideration to the complex web of motives in which every Israeli (not to mention every Palestinian) is entangled. What remains to be seen is whether my optimism over Clinton's desire to "build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries" will be sufficient to counter my concerns over that dark glass of objective rationality.

Positive Chutzpah for Peace?

The economic crisis may have been the most influential factor in Barack Obama winning the November election; but, if ever there were a need for a "change we can believe in," it is in the current Administration's approach to diplomacy built upon a dual foundation of denial and myopia. Most important may be what I have called our "Sin-of-Omission Diplomacy," through which we have tried to set ourselves up as the sole arbiter of who should and should not participate in discussions over the current situation in Gaza. Well, if we are to believe the sources cited by Suzanne Goldenberg for a story she filed last night on guardian.co.uk, Barack Obama may have taken his first major step towards such change in our foreign policy; and it may be audacious enough to earn him his first Chutzpah of the Week award with a positive connotation (having already received two on the negative side, one entirely his own and the other shared with his campaigning colleagues). We remember the flack that Obama took for suggesting that holding talks with Iran could be done in an appropriate manner; and, for all of the conciliatory things he said to AIPAC last June, he managed to reinforce that particular position during his speech at their convention.

Right now, however, the question of talking to Iran has been displaced by the question of talking about Gaza. The Bush Administration has been adamant in its refusal to recognize that Hamas has a legitimate voice in any discussion about Gaza. According to Goldenberg's report, however, the Obama Administration seems willing to reject such intransigence:

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

I can understand why these sources are confidential. As Obama has no trouble reminding us, he is not yet President; and any move that might undermine Bush Administration activities could well be folly, rather than chutzpah. Nevertheless, this "confidential leak" is one of the most positive signs we have seen of an approach to the Middle East that could be both serious and substantive. Whether it will be sufficient to enable some form of interim cease fire until the Obama Administration is in a position to act remains to be seen, but it was in the hope of seeing this kind of positive chutzpah that I cast my own vote for change!

"My pop's bigger than your pop!"

The most memorable political cartoon from my youth illustrated two enormous hydrogen bombs, one with an American flag and the other with a USSR flag, facing each other while standing on the surface of a too-small planet earth, each shouting at the other, "My pop's bigger than your pop!" Mad Magazine took this over the top in their own "article" about Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), with a series of hyperbolic images demonstrating that, by the time the fourth such missile was launched, there would be precious left of the surface of the earth to target. It was this wave of nostalgia that overwhelmed me when I saw the first images of Iran's missile test, now accompanied by follow-up reports provided by the BBC. At a time when the G8 still cannot get its act together on the economic necessity of sustaining the planet at all, we now have to put up with a new planet-destroying pissing contest, primarily between Israel and Iran but with the United States apparently only too eager to rush to support Israel. Little is gained from reproducing the rhetoric behind this pissing contest. I suspect that any reader who has been following the news regularly could invent "official statements" for all three parties with little more than a moment's thought. More disconcerting is that portion of the BBC report that spills over into the impact of this event on the Presidential campaign:

Describing Iran as a "great threat", the Democratic challenger, Barack Obama, called for tougher sanctions while his Republican rival, John McCain, said the test demonstrated the need for effective missile defence.

McCain's reaction should not surprise anyone; but, if we needed any evidence for taking Obama's AIPAC speech seriously, this will certainly contribute to it. Perhaps this is what he meant when he talked to his AIPAC audience about "tough and principled diplomacy;" but, now that he no longer needs to be audacious to capture the nomination, I fear that he has also decided that he no longer needs to be principled. As the old joke goes, we are up to our eyeballs in alligators; and it seems that Obama is as interested as McCain in breeding more of those alligators!

Is Barack Obama Flirting with the Banality of Evil?

If I am going to try to examine a candidate for President of the United States through the lens of Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil," then I feel obliged to begin by being clear about my terms. The best way to do this is to return, once again, to Tony Judt's reflection on that concept:

But if we wish to grasp the true significance of evil—what Hannah Arendt intended by calling it "banal"—then we must remember that what is truly awful about the destruction of the Jews [in the Holocaust] is not that it mattered so much but that it mattered so little.

Alongside this text, I wish to consider a comment by Uri Avnery on Barack Obama's "performance" at AIPAC, as reported in the Truthdig comment by Tony Wicher:

AFTER MONTHS of a tough and bitter race, a merciless struggle, Barack Obama has defeated his formidable opponent, Hillary Clinton. He has wrought a miracle: for the first time in history a black person has become a credible candidate for the presidency of the most powerful country in the world.

And what was the first thing he did after his astounding victory? He ran to the conference of the Israel lobby, AIPAC, and made a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning.

That is shocking enough. Even more shocking is the fact that nobody was shocked.

In other words "nobody was shocked" because everyone has become so benumbed by political-business-as-usual that, in the grand scheme of maneuvering for electoral votes, that speech "mattered so little." The United States has become the new model of Arendt’s banality. Claiming that our current President is responsible for our achieving that status is not the whole story. The rest was told by Walt Kelly: "We have met the enemy, and they is us."

Our "Last Best Hope" for National Journalism?

If, as I have just suggested, American newspapers are suffering (perhaps irrecoverably) from "gutted staffs" and "gutted reputations" in the wake of the world the Internet (not to mention Google) has made, then we should probably take comfort in the fact that Al Jazeera is beginning to provide us with national, as well as international coverage. This has become particularly apparent since the beginning of this month, although AIPAC coverage might best be viewed as national news with strong international implications. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see the extent to which they covered the impact on Barack Obama's campaign (which, itself, also has international implications). More interesting, however has been the seriousness they have attached to the efforts of Dennis Kucinich to kick-start impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush. This seriousness has apparently not been lost on Kucinich himself.

So, it is no surprise that Al Jazeera put out a report on yesterday's efforts by the House of Representatives to thwart Kucinich's quest:

A US congressman and former presidential candidate has vowed not to give up his fight to impeach the president over going to war in Iraq, after the House of Representatives sidelined his bill, possibly until after George Bush leaves office.

Dennis Kucinich said if hearings on the issue were not held within 30 days, he would introduce more articles of impeachment against Bush to the US congress.

The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to send Kucinich's impeachment bill to a committee in what has been seen as a delay tactic.

The House Judiciary Committee is not likely to hold hearings before the end of Bush's term in January.

What is surprising is that Kucinich seems to have allowed Al Jazeera to interview him on this matter:

Kucinich, a Democrat, told Al Jazeera that the impeachment attempt was not just about the past, but also about the future.

"If we do not establish that the rule of law must apply to the president of the US now, what we are doing is through our inaction creating a precedent that would let the next president know that he could go ahead and wage war without congressional approval.

"That he could approve of wiretapping, rendition, spying, torture or anything because congress wouldn't act.

"We need to take a stand now not just for justice for what's happened over the last six, seven years but also to restrain any abuse of power in the next administration."

This may well be because Al Jazeera was the only news source interested in interviewing him; but that does not diminish the significance of the encounter (and may even enhance Al Jazeera's standing among its competitors).

Shortly after Al Jazeera English was launched, I remember hearing an interview on the BBC in which their general manager said that he saw the BBC as Al Jazeera's primary competitor. My guess is that the BBC took this as a serious challenge. It may have even had something to do with the "full court press" they applied to covering the American primary elections, basically demonstrating that their desk in Washington was as strong as the one in London. Well, I have yet to hear a peep out of the BBC (on either radio or television) about Kucinich's latest activities; and I am beginning to wonder whether its Washington desk is as loathe to dig into news about progressives, who try to push the envelope of "established liberalism," as the Washington desks of American news sources are. If so, then, as Michael Porter put it in his Competitive Strategy book, they have discovered the "generic strategy" of differentiation and found a way to implement it. On the principle that everyone benefits from such competition, I wish Al Jazeera the best of luck and hope that more of those progressive voices, who have some very constructive things to say, will recognize that this institution provides a new platform from which they can be heard!

On Understanding the Damage before Trying to Control It

Whether or not Barack Obama reads Al Jazeera English (or has an aide that tracks all of their stories that may pertain to his campaign), he seems to have gotten the message that his "AIPAC debut" was not the best first step towards furthering peace in the Middle East. For one thing Al Jazeera English ran a report of his attempt at damage control through an interview on CNN. Unfortunately, the sort of language he used did not serve his goal very well:

Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.

That use of the adverb "obviously" (which was probably the most notorious adverb of my eight years of undergraduate and graduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) hit me as particularly galling. Obvious to whom? To use the sort of convoluted language that ran through the halls of MIT, about the only thing that is obvious is Israel's refusal to recognize that negotiation over Jerusalem is an obvious part of the "Middle East peace process!" Even worse is that, as the Al Jazeera English report reminded us, the United States Government has legislation on the books that reinforces the obviousness of this non-negotiability:

The US Congress passed a law in 1995 describing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel that said it should not be divided.

This report also demonstrates that, in the face of criticism from both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (not known for agreeing on very much, if anything, as I pointed out on Thursday), Obama may have done little with his CNN time other than dig himself deeper into the hole he dug at AIPAC:

Obama told CNN that dividing Jerusalem "would be very difficult to execute".

"And I think that it is smart for us to - to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem, but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."

That adjective "legitimate" is almost as damaging as "obviously." At the risk of sounding too reductive, I would posit that the entire question of peace in the Middle East hinges on establishing criteria for legitimacy that all conflicting parties can live with, if not embrace passionately.

Now I think it is important to observe again that my criticism of Obama is far from a suggestion that John McCain is doing any better. He dug a pretty deep hole in his AIPAC performance; and my guess is that he is still not aware that, from the perspective of relations between the United States and the rest of the countries in this world, damage control may be in order. Rather, my criticism of Obama emphasizes a point I made almost a year ago, when the media were just beginning to take him seriously. What may matter most in his effective performance as President will most likely be a matter of how he "provides himself with skilled advisors and knows how to draw upon the advice they provide." To illustrate my point, I offered, as an example, Dennis Ross, who acquired so much expertise in statecraft during the time in the Clinton Administration that he may well have written the most useful book on the topic. Since much of that book was informed by personal experiences in the Middle East, it may well be time for Obama to first read Ross' book and then have a serious sit-down with the man himself. If he is serious about damage control, this could well be the best way for him to show it.