David K. Shipler's Blog, page 4

Religious Absolutism: Isaac and Ishmael

 

By David K. Shipler 

First published by Moment Magazine

                If youlist the elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you’ll see that whilemost are subject to compromise, one is virtually non-negotiable: religion atits most dogmatic. It has grown more prominent over the decades as devoutmilitants have gained power among both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims.

Measuring its ultimate influence isdifficult, for the dispute is largely secular, and is seen that way by mostIsraelis and Palestinians, polls show. In theory, the two sides’ overlapping territorialclaims, driven by the clash of two nationalisms, could be resolved by drawingreasonable borders between Israel and a Palestinian state. West Bank Jewishsettlements could be dismantled and consolidated. Security concerns could beaddressed by humane, mutual protections. Jerusalem could be shared. Palestinianscould bargain away their “right of return” to former villages inside Israel. Thedueling historical narratives of grievance, so central to the conflict’spsychology, might gradually fade as uneasy neighbors learn to coexist. 

                That isall eventually possible, but less likely when each of the issues is salted withthe absolutism of divine mission, as certain Israeli and Palestinian leadersare doing. They merge the sacred and the temporal, combine faith with tribalidentity, and infuse piety into their peoples’ past grievances and presentlongings.

 The current example is the war in Gaza. At dawnon October 7, a voice on the Hamas military frequency announcedto the fighters: “Rocket barrages are being fired right now at the occupiedcities! May God empower and grace the holy warriors!” The man spoke in a pitchof ecstasy, echoed by another’s exultant answer through the static: “Theresistance is now inside the occupied territories!”

“Allahu Akbar!” (God is mostgreat!) the young Palestinians shouted as they streamed from Gaza throughbreaches blown in Israel’s border fence, their body cameras recording theirfervent chants as they whooped in celebration over Israeli corpses. Eachterrorist who died for his faith would earn the honor of being called shaheed(martyr).

Thus began the worst day for Israelin its 75-year existence, inflamed by religious slogans and symbols. Hamas wantsto replace the Jewish state with an Islamic state. It named its sadistic attack“Al-Aqsa Flood,” after the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest sitein Islam, now in Israel’s capital.

In turn, after the Hamas slaughtersthat day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embraced a biblical analogy by likening the Palestinians toAmalek, the ancient nomads whose complete extermination was ordered by God. Thisseemed to consider the massive assaults on Gaza that followed as divinelyblessed. Other religious terms were tossed around. Israeli officials named the artificialintelligence that picked its targets in Gaza “theGospel.” Netanyahu naming this “the Genesis War.”

                Genesis.There, in the first book of the Torah, zealous Israeli settlers find God’s deedto the West Bank, which they call by its biblical names Judea and Samaria,given through the Prophet Abraham and his son Isaac, the progenitor of theJewish people. For Arabs, however, the descent begins with Abraham’s sonIshmael, born to his concubine Hagar. The putative cousins are now soiling andrending the deed.

Terms of piety sound too grand fora secular conflict, but they have gained resonance in recent decades as thepolitical power of religious fundamentalists on both sides has exceeded theirnumber in the Israeli and Palestinian populations.

Some polling has distinguished betweenearthly antagonism and heavenly dictum. A significant surveythis December found that while 72 percent of a sample of Palestinians in theWest Bank and Gaza endorsed the October 7 attacks by Hamas, only 11 percent listedthe “first most vital Palestinian goal” as “a religious society, one thatapplies all Islamic teachings.” Yet that is the precisely the goal pursued byHamas as it has ruled and armed Gaza, hijacking the Palestinian cause ofnationalism. 

That nationalist cause generatedmuch higher percentages in the poll: 43 percent chose a Palestinian state andan end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the primary goal; 36percent picked a right of return to Arab towns vacated in Israel’s 1948 war ofindependence.

If the religious component finishesa distant third in Palestinians’ priorities, how should it be assessed? Notwith complacency when it seems marginal, according to hard experience. Holyideology can have a stubborn appeal and demands respect.

Long before Netanyahu’s referenceto Amalek, in the early 1980s, I heard as much  from a group of teenage boys in the extremistJewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. They were outliers four decades ago, taught by the most radical settlermovement at the fringes of Israeli thinking. But they were a cautionary taleabout the future as.their biblical absolutism moved to the center of Israeliauthority, right into the prime minister’s office.

The boys told me they were being taught in school that Arabs arethe Amalekites, who attacked the Israelites repeatedly during the exodus fromEgypt. “It says in the Torah that you have to destroy all the remnants ofAmalek,” said Oren, 13. Indeed, the command to Saul is found in I Samuel 15:2-3:“Thus saith the Lord of hosts. I remember that which Amalek did to Israel . . .Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare themnot; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel andass.”

Netanyahu, not a devoutly religiousman, said after the October 7 attack: “You must remember what Amalek has doneto you, says our Holy Bible. We do remember.”

Onecan rationalize away Netanyahu’s Amalek analogy as a spasm of fury, or apolitically opportunistic reference to preserve his standing with the religiousparties essential to his narrow governing coalition. But whatever he intended,his citation strikes a chord that surely resonates--from ancient history into theranks of Israeli forces pummeling Gaza.

The holy imprimatur fits into thereligio-nationalist passion driving the most militant Jewish settlers who, withgovernment support, have turned the West Bank into a patchwork of Israelicontrol, foreclosing the prospect of assembling contiguous land for a Palestinianstate. The Arabs could stay, explained a boy named Aharon at the Jewishsettlement back then, but “we have to be ruling over them and not them rulingover us.”

That classroom lesson stands inironic parallel with the ideology of Hamas. Its Covenant of 1988allows Muslims, Jews, and Christians “to coexist in peace and quiet with eachother,” but only “under the wing of Islam,” according to Article 31. “It is theduty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty ofIslam in this region, because the day these followers should take over therewill be nothing but carnage, displacement, and terror.”

Religious strife is most distilledon the Temple Mount, as Jews call the manmadeplateau in the Old City of Jerusalem. To Muslims, it is the Noble Sanctuary,the site of Al-Aqsa mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock, built around anoutcropping of bedrock that holds sacred meaning in both Judaism and Islam. Itwas the place of the two ancient Jewish Temples and the spot from which Muslimsbelieve Muhammad ascended on his winged horse on his night journey to heaven.Jewish extremists speak of building a third Jewish temple there, which the Israeligovernment opposes, while many Palestinian Muslims harbor angry suspicions thatdisplacing their holy sites is Israel’s nefarious objective. Repeated clasheserupt when radical Jews defy rabbinical orders and pray near Al-Aqsa.   

Islam and Christianity, which thelate scholar Bernard Lewis called the daughters of Judaism, need not be inconflict over religious precepts and practices. The Quran, taken as God’srevelation to Muhammad, reveres all the prophets, including Moses and Jesus. EarlyIslamic ritual included prayer facing Jerusalem, a sabbath, the observance of afast day, and the old Jewish custom of bowing and prostration during prayer.Muhammad initially looked to Jews as his followers, but because they rejectedhim—causing a grievance still kept alive by some Muslims—Jews appear in theQuran in passages of both respect and condemnation.

Some 40 years ago, Rabbi DavidHartman, who founded the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, tried toinitiate a dialogue with Muslim clerics. He did not succeed to the extent hehoped. As ethical and compassionate as religion can be if you find theappropriate texts and teachings, and as much as he wished for a Judaismfaithful to its fervent morality, he had no illusions about the impulses ofreligious culture.

“The Bible doesn’t teach youtolerance; that I want you to know,” he told me then. “Religion is the sourceof utopian dreams, and it is fundamentally reactionary, not pluralistic.” 

 

Lessons From the College Presidents

 

By David K. Shipler 

                During apresidential debate in 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis sank his presidentialcampaign with a clinical,legalistic answer to a question about his wife from reporter Bernard Shaw: “Governor,if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable deathpenalty for the killer?”

                Insteadof reacting from his gut, Dukakis responded from his head. Instead of explodingfirst with a vengeful desire to tear the man limb from limb himself, he jumpedright to the substantive answer on capital punishment:  “No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you knowthat I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see anyevidence that it’s a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effectiveways to deal with violent crime. We’ve done so in my own state. It’s one of thereasons why we have had the biggest drop in crime of any industrial state in America. . .” By that point, if not sooner, millions of voters were incensed by hislack of passion, no matter how legitimate his policy.

                It’snot an exact parallel, but it’s instructive nonetheless in how the threepresidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania made fools ofthemselves in last week’s congressional hearing. Excessively prepared by the prominentlaw firm of WilmerHale, accordingto The New York Times, they slipped catastrophically into proceduralanswers during a sequence of prosecutorial questions on whether calls bystudents for the genocide of Jews would constitute punishable harassment.

                Again,instead of the raw gut reaction of “Yes!” two of them in particular, ElizabethMagill of Penn (who has since been forced to resign) and Claudine Gay ofHarvard, tried to draw a line between speech and conduct. The first is usuallyprotected, the second, often not. They failed to recognize that verbal calls toexterminate Jews, who make up part of their student populations, would at leastblur that line and probably erase it entirely.

They may have been complacent aboutantisemitism on their campuses, as some Jewish students have complained. Or theymay have been more sensitive than last week’s blundering made them seem. In anyevent, cautionary lawyering apparently made them gun-shy about potential free-speechlawsuits from students. The presidents acted as if they were in a courtroominstead of a hearing room. And therein lie some lessons.

1.      Never testify before Congress voluntarily. If you’renot under subpoena, obligated as a government official to appear, or seekingSenate confirmation for a position. Don’t naively imagine that the legislators areinviting you because they are actually seeking information. The Republicansespecially want you as a foil to posture, perform, and promote themselves intopolitical orbit.

2.      If you can’t resist the honor of being awitness, be prepared to push back on uninformed or hypocritical questioners. Therewas no reason to accept brow-beating by failing to note the country’s risingphenomenon of hateful speech in the country, fostered by certain politicalleaders. Why not call out last week’s acerbic interrogator, the Republican CongresswomanElise Stefanik?  A former moderate turnedhard-right, she got on her high horse about antisemitism while supporting thecountry’s chief enabler of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, Donald Trump.

3.      Play the role of decent human being first, andonly second the role of considered academic, bureaucrat, policy wonk, or fund-raiser.Say what you feel, not only what you think. Tucked into the presidents’responses were the appropriate revulsions about antisemitism, but they were wrappedin procedural scaffolding, making them seem bloodless. Remember, again, this isa hearing room, not a classroom or a courtroom.

4.      Address the perplexities of free speech head on.Not all speech is protected, even under the First Amendment. Certain threatsare punishable in and of themselves. Further, the First Amendment restrictswhat government may prevent or punish, not usually what non-state institutions suchas those three private universities may do. Well before coming to Washington, thepresidents must have—should have—thought through this question of how much speechcan legitimately be curbed without snuffing out intellectual freedom. It’s abalancing act, because a college owes its members security from a hostileenvironment. It also owes students an education, including what Stefanik andher fellow Republicans vitriolically oppose: good diversity, equity andinclusion programs to prepare students for the diverse world they will enter.The college presidents surely know that the best protection for healthy freedomof speech is not punishment. It is the internal moral compass of every studentwho can learn to listen as well as speak, to agitate without threatening.

5.      Don’t be afraid of your students. They are thereto learn, and you are there to teach and to model free intellectual inquiry.Too many quivering administrators these days are cowed when students disrupt orcancel speakers they disagree with, thereby narrowing the field of debate andcorrupting the university’s purpose.

6.      Thoroughly familiarize yourself with the subjectat hand, in this case the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the slogans ofprotest. The presidents should have been able to see immediately the logic ofStefanik’s interrogation, which was designed to entrap.

If you read more of the hearing’stranscript than the brief clips on the news, you’ll see what Stefanik was up to:corner the presidents into admitting that they had not acted to curbantisemitism. She was trying to do that by conflating “intifada” (“uprising”) withgenocide. Here is a relevant excerpt from an exchange with Harvard’s PresidentGay, who is Black:

STEFANIK: Dr. Gay, aHarvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is notprotected free speech at Harvard, correct?

GAY: Our commitment to freespeech …

STEFANIK, interrupting: It’sa yes or no question. Is that okay for students to call for the mass murder ofAfrican Americans at Harvard? Is that protected free speech?

GAY: Our commitment to freespeech extends …

STEFANIK interrupting: It’sa yes or no question. Let me ask you this. You are president of Harvard, so Iassume you’re familiar the term intifada, correct?

GAY: I’ve heard that term,yes.

STEFANIK: And you understandthat the use of the term intifada in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflictis indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel,including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware ofthat?

GAY: That type of hatefulspeech is personally abhorrent to me.

STEFANIK: And there have beenmultiple marches at Harvard with students chanting, quote, There is only onesolution intifada, revolution, and, quote, globalize the intifada. Is thatcorrect?

GAY: I’ve heard thatthoughtless, reckless and hateful language on our campus. Yes.

STEFANIK: So based upon yourtestimony, you understand that this call for intifada is to commitgenocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally. Correct?

GAY: I will say again, thattype of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me.

STEFANIK: Do you believe thattype of hateful speech is contrary to Harvard’s code of conduct, or is itallowed at Harvard?

GAY: It is at odds with thevalues of Harvard.

STEFANIK: Can you not say herethat it is against the code of conduct at Harvard?

GAY: We embrace a commitmentto free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies againstbullying, harassment, intimidation--

STEFANIK interrupting: Doesthat speech not cross that barrier? Does that speech not call for the genocideof Jews and the elimination of Israel? When you testify thatyou understand that is the definition of intifada, is that speech according tothe code of conduct or not?

GAY: We embrace a commitmentto free expression and give a wide berth to free expression, even of views thatare objectionable.

The word “context,” so integral toproviding students with due process if they’re charged with violations, provedincendiary in this hearing. To Stefanik’s question on whether calling forgenocide violated Harvard’s rules against bullying or harassment, Gay answered,“It can be, depending on the context.”

“What’s the context?” Stefanikasked.

“Targeted at an individual,” saidGay.

“It’s targeted at Jewish students,Jewish individuals,” Stefanik shot back.

Evidently, Stefanik was not gettingexactly what she expected from the presidents: that calls for genocide violatedthe codes of conduct. If they’d said yes, her next question would surely havebeen: So, what punishments for that code were applied? And if the answers werenone--bingo, gotcha for tolerating antisemitism.

There seems to be no evidence thatstudents have urged “genocide.” Rather, the entire line of interrogation reliedon Stefanik’s assertion that pro-Palestinian protesters were advocatinggenocide against Jews by calling for an intifada. It‘s a questionable argument,as Gay might have said had she been better prepared. The term intifada, as usedby Palestinians to describe two past episodes of violent “uprisings” against Jewsin Israel, has not been generally taken as a synonym for genocide against allJews everywhere, extending to Harvard’s campus. Even the slogan “globalize theintifada” usually means global activism for the Palestinian cause, not massmurder of Jews worldwide. Gay missed the opportunity to draw that distinction.

The clumsy retreat into procedurallanguage was sharply displayed in this exchange with Magill of Penn:

 STEFANIK: At Penn, does calling for thegenocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no.

MAGILL: If the speech turns intoconduct, it can be harassment, yes.

STEFANIK: I am asking specifically,calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?Yes or no?

MAGILL-- if the speech becomesconduct, it can be harassment, yes.

STEFANIK, her voice rising to anincredulous tremor: Conduct meaning, committing the act of genocide?

Ouch. Magill dug herself in deeper bysaying, “It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.” Magill is a lawprofessor.

                With the benefit of the doubt, thepresidents could be seen as trying to be balanced and considered in their attemptsto defend freedom of speech on highly polarized campuses. Ironically, theirineptitude is likely to accomplish the opposite, emboldening the hard-right groundswellof contempt for higher education’s supposed leftist “elites” and “experts.” Underpressure from donors and politicians, the scope of permitted protest anddebate, already eroded by the dogmatic left, is likely to be narrowed further,just when the country desperately needs open, civil discourse.

For Israel: A Blank Check or Tangled Strings?

 

By David K. Shipler 

First published by Moment Magazine 

           This isan awkward time to attach conditions to the generous military aid that theUnited States provides to Israel. But it should be considered, not only to curbcivilian casualties in Gaza, as some Democratic senators wish, but also to curbJewish settlements in the West Bank, which have long poisoned prospects for Israeli-Palestinianreconciliation.

           With the exception of the Trump WhiteHouse, which supported settlements, Republican and Democratic administrationshave declared Israel’s settlement policy an obstacle to peace. Yet the U.S. hasnever used the leverage of the purse to restrain the practice. Since the Osloaccords of 1993, the numberof Israeli residents on the West Bank has soared from 110,000 to more than500,000, the number of settlements from 128 to about 300, now scatteredthroughout Palestinian areas.

American officials have done littlemore than complain and wring their hands as Israelis have populated territory thatmight have formed a Palestinian state, constructing government-subsidizeddevelopments whose town houses, schools, synagogues, orchards, factories, andswimming pools have an aura of permanence that belies the term “settlements.” Theyare satellite cities and sweeping suburbs. They have created such a crazy-quiltof jurisdictions that piecing together territory for Palestinian sovereigntywould now require the departure of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews.

Moreover, a thuggish minority of Israelisettlers have tormented their Palestinian neighbors through home invasions and vandalism,destruction of olive groves, and even murder with impunity. They arereligio-nationalist zealots operating in a free-wheeling environment ofself-righteous extremism. This is not new, just more widespread andunrestrained. It has been going on for at least 40 years, recently escalatingto a level attracting international attention as settlers tryto terrify Palestinians into fleeing—with some success. At least 11 Arab communitieshave been emptied so far this year, according to the West Bank ProtectionConsortium, a monitoring group of non-governmental organizations funded by ten Europeancountries.

The problem may seem purelypolitical and humanitarian, but it has military consequences for Israel. Whathappens on the West Bank resonates in Gaza, where Hamas ruled and armed itselffor the gruesome slaughters and kidnappings of October 7. The Palestinian prisonerswhose release Hamas is obtaining in exchange for hostages are virtually all WestBank residents, arrested by Israeli forces there and often held without chargeor trial. By remote control, Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank seemto have contributed to radicalization in Gaza, at least to some degree.

Furthermore, the more settlers, themore targets of Palestinian violence, and the more military assets are neededin the West Bank to protect them. Army resources are drawn from elsewhere,including the border with Gaza, whose high-tech monitoring proved no match forthe thousands of Hamas fighters who pierced the security fence in some 30places and ran freely for hours killing Israelis before Israeli troops arrived.

So, if strings were tied to U.S.aid, they should lead to West Bank settlements as well as to Palestinians’suffering under Israel’s fierce military tactics. Reining in settlements might meetless political opposition at this moment of struggle.

Israel’s immense retaliatoryassault on the Gaza Strip has been unprecedented, but so was the sadistic,intimate terrorism perpetrated by Hamas. Virtually all Israelis have lost theirsense of sanctuary, even in the private depths of their own houses. Some250,000 Israelis have fled their towns and kibbutzim near the northern andsouthern borders. The callup of reservists is sapping Israel’s economy. Unsurprisingly,the hard-right government is bent on obliterating the military and politicalcapacity of Hamas, whose Islamist-nationalist covenant calls for obliteratingthe Jewish state.

Into this contest of mutualobliteration step 26 senators, led by Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, whoare implicitlytying strings to aid, including the $14.3 billion requested by PresidentBiden, by urging Israel to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza and crack down onvigilante settlers in the West Bank. “We continue to support additionalassistance to Israel in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attacks,” they saidin a statement, “but we are all in agreement that this assistance must beconsistent with our interests and values and used in a manner that adheres tointernational humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, and U.S. law. Weneed to find a better path toward helping Israel achieve legitimate militaryand security objectives. U.S. assistance has never come in the form of a blankcheck – regardless of the recipient.”

This looks like a shot across thebow.

But Israel is good at ducking. Periodically,as American administrations extracted promises to “freeze” settlements whilepeace talks were underway, Israel’s governments evaded the pledge by merelyexpanding existing settlements rather than building new ones. Authorities havewinked as small groups of Israelis have put house trailers illegally on WestBank hilltops as embryonic settlements, unauthorized at first and then oftenlegitimized.

That’s how it all began, in fact.Shortly after the West Bank city of Hebron was captured in the 1967 war,several nationalist Jews led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger checked into the ParkHotel in the city’s center, owned by Fahd Kawasmeh, the future pro-P.L.O.mayor.

Hebron, believed to be the burialplace of the prophet Abraham, had been home to a small community of devout Jewsfor centuries, a presence interrupted by Arab attacks in 1929 and 1936.  Now, in the flush of the 1967 victory, Levinger’sgroup was determined to reconnect those roots. The Labor government, facing inflammatorytensions with the Palestinian population, tried to get the Jews to leave, butthey refused until offered a site on the city’s outskirts.

There, a makeshift encampment grewinto a substantial suburb of apartment buildings with the biblical name KiryatArba. It is a centerpiece of the settlement movement’s dogmatic extremists.Later, Levinger, his American-born wife, and his followers also establishedresidence in central Hebron, which remains a hotbed of Arab-Jewish friction.

Gradually over the decades, theamalgam of religious and nationalist drives have moved closer and closer to thecenter of power. No settlers were in the Cabinet of Prime Minister MenachemBegin, despite his passionate pursuit of Jewish settlement in Judea andSamaria, the biblical names the Israeli right uses for the West Bank. Today,two hard-right settlers have key positions: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrichand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Smotrich urges discriminationagainst Arabs and permanent Israeli control of the West Bank. Ben-Gvir, anadmirer of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s call for stripping citizenship from Arabresidents of Israel, supports their segregation in public spaces.  

The extremes don’t represent thewhole, however. Most Israeli settlers are probably drawn more by subsidies andlifestyle than by religio-nationalist zealotry. Many might leave willingly ifgiven adequate financial incentives, which Washington could provide as a carrotif a peace plan were possible.

On the other hand, there’s thestick.  

  Israelhas been America’s largestaid recipient, at more than $260 billion total, plus additional funds forthe Iron Dome and other weapons systems. Technically, American aid isn’t useddirectly to build the settlements’ roads, wells, electrical grids, or housing.But money is fungible, and it’s worth asking what impact, over the years, theU.S. might have had by deducting, say, two dollars of economic or militaryassistance for every one dollar Israel spent on settlements. An unlikelyscenario, to be sure, given Washington’s intense pro-Israel politics.

Yet it’s due for consideration. Theaim would not be to cut aid, of course, but to influence Israeli behavior. Giventhe hard ideology of most Israeli governments in recent decades, pitted againstthe acute need for assistance, that would have been a tough choice in Jerusalem.Even today, with the country’s booming economy making it less dependent, itwould be a wakeup call. With the Gaza war and West Bank clashes raging, the settlementproblem has grown visible enough to invite the U.S. to squeeze Israel with sometough love.

Israel's Mission Impossible

 

By David K. Shipler 

                InOctober 1953, two days after infiltrators from Jordan threw a grenade into anIsraeli home and killed amother and her two small children, Israeli Unit 101, led by Col. Ariel Sharon,took revenge in a deliberately disproportionate manner.

Crossing into Jordan, the Israelicommandos destroyedsome 50 houses and killed 69 civilians in Qibya, a town 5 kilometers south ofwhere the infiltrators’ tracks had led. Sharon claimed that he didn’t know anypeople were in the houses he blew up, but property damage was hardly the point.“The orders were utterly clear,” Sharon wrote in his autobiography. “Qibya wasto be an example for everyone.”

                Thatwas, and remains, Israel’s basic strategy of deterrence: hold the neighborsresponsible for the misuse of their territory by hitting back exponentially.  

                Thepractice has worked, to an extent, as long as the neighbor has been in control.Jordan eventually patrolled its side of the border closely, and the frontierwas fairly quiet for decades before the two countries signed a peace treaty in1994. The same with Egypt for several years before its formal peace with Israelin 1979. And even without a treaty, Syria has kept its heavily fortified bordermostly closed to attacks on Israelis until exchanges of fire recently, duringthe Gaza war.

                But wherethe state has been weak or virtually non-existent, as in southern Lebanon andthe Gaza Strip, only powerless civilians have a stake in preserving calm orstability. Non-state forces have prevailed—first the Palestine LiberationOrganization, then Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza—and Israel’s strategy offierce retaliation has little effect except to radicalize residents and fuelextremism.

                So itis in Gaza today. Israel’s military withdrawal in 2005 opened a vacuum for Hamasto govern, but its armed passion to obliterate the Jewish state provoked apartial Israeli and Egyptian blockade, deepening poverty and leaving theterritory well short of autonomous statehood. Hamas used outside aid to constructtunnels and build an arsenal of weaponry, not to foster prosperous independencethat it would want to preserve.

Looking back over the 75 years ofIsrael’s existence, it’s remarkable how little both sides understand about eachother and the nature of their confrontation. If the Israeli-Palestinianconflict were a purely military struggle with a military solution, Israel wouldhave won decades ago. In today’s fighting, its intense bombardment to “softenup” military targets for a ground assault would be right out of the handbook onconventional warfare. But this conflict is hardly conventional, and military meanscannot be decisive.

                It canbe argued, as Israeli officials are doing, that they are faced with animmediate necessity: to eliminate the armed capacity of Hamas to repeat the sadisticslaughters of October 7, more terrifying and traumatic than Israel has known inmost of its history. Hence, the Israeli bombing campaign of carnage andpulverization, more catastrophic than Palestinians have known in most of theirhistory. About 1200 Israelis of all ages were killed October 7—some raped,mutilated, burned, and shredded with grenades in their “safe rooms.” Some 240were taken into Gaza to be held hostage. At least 12,000 Palestinians have diedin return, including thousands of children, according to Hamas officials, andswaths of residential neighborhoods have been mangled beyond recognition.

                Thecasualties know no politics, of course. There are plenty of Palestinians whodislike Hamas, and Israelis who died included those respectful of Palestinians’aspirations. Vivian Silver, a leading peace activist killed October 7, was mournedby a mixed gathering of Jews and Arabs, arms around shoulders, who swayed andsang “We Shall Overcome.”

Israel’s approach in Gaza has severetradeoffs. After a reporting trip there, the Washington Post columnistDavid Ignatius detailed Israel’s coming tactics against Hamas’s deep tunnelnetwork, having been told that Israeli forces would use dogs, horizontaldrilling and maybe even flooding from the Mediterranean. But Ignatius concludedthat Israel’s initial “battlefield success was costly in the information war.” Picturesof wounded, weeping Palestinian children, frail premature infants starved oflife-saving oxygen and incubator warmth, will be indelible stains on Israel’sreputation.

That might bolster the deterrenteffect, countereda hawkish Israeli journalist, Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel. “Paradoxically,the very fact that so much world opinion has turned against Israel serves Israel’spurposes right now,” he said on a recent podcast. “One of the great ways thatyou defeat this kind of warfare is to show that you are actually implacable, toshow that you are actually irremovable. In other words, Hamas brings to beareverything it’s got, and once it’s brought to bear everything it’s got andevery ally has said everything they’re gonna say and done everything they’regonna do, Israel is still hunting them down because they stole and massacredchildren.” It’s to Israel’s advantage, Gur continued, to demonstrate “that it’snot gonna bend to world opinion, that it’s not gonna bend to pressure from the Westor from anyone, or from the Arab world, and once Hamas understands that, I thinkthis war changes.”

Perhaps this war, but not thisconflict. This conflict is a clash of nationalisms, overlapping claims to land,a miasma of hateful images, and a tangle of causes and effects. It should gowithout saying that no cause justifies these effects. No assault can legitimizethe intimate atrocities by Hamas. No atrocity can validate the whirlwind ofdevastation unleashed by Israel.

Yet on both sides of theIsraeli-Palestinian divide, the methodology is dictated by themisinterpretation of raw experience and the dehumanizing image of the other: ThatJews understand only violent “resistance.” That Arabs understand only thelanguage of force.

An Israeli taxi driver summed it upin 1988, during the Palestinians’ first intifada: “We should go to the Arabs with sticks in hand,and we should beat them onthe heads; we should beat them and beat them and beat them, until they stophating us.”

The Arsenal of Memory

 

By David K. Shipler 

First published by Moment Magazine  

                Nofabrication or suppression of history is needed in the Israeli-Palestinianconflict. Truths are enough to arm both sides. We are now witnessing additionsto the stockpile of weapons in an arsenal of memory that never gets depleted.

                Victimsdo not forget. Nor do their descendants. When the Palestinian movement Hamas invadedIsrael from Gaza to execute its monstrously planned slaughters and kidnappings,the date, October 7, was marked indelibly. Going forward, probably forgenerations, it will remind Israeli Jews of the grievance and rage that scar theirlong road. And for Palestinian Arabs, Israel’s coming onslaught on Gaza willreload the batteries of hatred--and what they call “resistance.”

                The twopeoples are imprisoned by history. When they argue for themselves and againstthe other, the past looms. The pogroms in eastern Europe. The Holocaust. The scatteredviolence by local Arabs against Jews who fled to Palestine. The Arab states’rejection of a Jewish state, and the 1948 war that Jews had to fight to secureIsrael’s existence. The Arab-led wars that followed. The Palestinian terroristattacks and suicide bombings into the heart of daily life.

                TheJews from Europe settling on Palestinians’ land. The Jewish forces’ expulsionof Palestinian Arabs from what became Israel during the 1948 war. The harsh Israelimilitary occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 war. Thehumiliating Israeli army checkpoints. The imprisonment of Palestinian teenagerswithout trial. The nighttime army raids into Palestinians’ homes, the shootingdeaths. The influx of Jewish settlements onto West Bank land, where Jewishvigilantes harass, assault, and terrorize Palestinian residents.

                And on.It is an arms race of memory. Not every one carries equal weight. The Holocaustcannot be balanced by the Israeli bombing of Gaza, which cannot be balanced bya suicide bomber at a café. Yet it’s important to understand that theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a clash of two nationalisms withoverlapping claims to territory. It is also a clash of histories, whose wounds resisthealing. It is a mismatch of historical narratives, none so acute as the twocompeting stories of the birth of modern Israel.

                This Iencountered soon after arriving in Israel for The New York Times in1979. Yitzhak Rabin, then in the opposition, had written his memoir. HisEnglish-language translator, Peretz Kidron, was outraged that a censorshipcommittee had deleted Rabin’s description of how he and Yigal Allon, on theorders of David Ben-Gurion, had forced Arabs from the towns of Lod and Ramle. Kidrongave me the manuscript, and I went to see Rabin to confirm its accuracy.

He said he couldn’t talk about it,because of the censorship ban. But when I asked why he thought it had beendeleted, he said that he didn’t know, he was surprised. That was theconfirmation. He went on to note wryly that he had given the censors somethingto do by mentioning Israel’s nuclear weapons, which he knew they would delete.

At the time, Israeli textbooks didnot mention the expulsions. Nor did the Israeli media pick up on the story,even after we ran the banned excerpt in The Times. The Israeli version,taught in schools, held that Palestinians were coaxed by their leaders to fleeand would return after an Arab victory. But Palestinians knew of the expulsions,which were later documented from declassified Israeli archives by the Israelihistorian and journalist Benny Morris, in TheBirth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. He named villages andnumbers of Palestinians who were ousted deliberately, and others whoseresidents fled to avoid the fighting, as civilians always do in war.

They ended up in refugee camps inGaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan’s West Bank. Three-quarters of a centurylater, many of their descendants keep alive the impossible dream of returningto long obliterated villages inside Israel proper. Some still keep the keys totheir old houses. Demonstrators display posters of an old-fashioned key. A hugekey is carved into the entrance of a refugee camp near Ramallah. Communitycenter rooms in another camp near Bethlehem are named after vanished villages.

And so, while Israelis celebratetheir independence day each year, Palestinians mark it by mourning the nakba,the “catastrophe.”

To this secular dimension has beenadded history’s ultimate weapon: religion. Once secondary to the basicIsraeli-Palestinian dispute, the religious component was always present, but ithas gained influence in recent decades, giving the most extreme positions onboth sides a kind of divine imprimatur, a rationale both comprehensive and nonnegotiable.

After the 1967 war, a minority ofJewish settlers who called the captured West Bank of the Jordan River by itsbiblical names, Judaea and Samaria, cited Genesis in claiming the land asdeeded to the Jews by God through Abraham. The belief took root in thegovernment under Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

In those early years after 1967,and then while I was reporting there from 1979-1984, I never heard aPalestinian utter a doubt that Jewish temples had stood on what Muslims callthe Noble Sanctuary, and Jews call the Temple Mount. Now the site of al-Aqsamosque, it is a manmade plateau whose retaining wall, the Western Wall, is holyto Jews and a place of Jewish worship.

But in the early 1990s, a highschool student in Ramallah, told me categorically that no Jewish temple hadever existed there. She called the story a fabrication by Israelis to lay titleto Jerusalem. I noticed that she wore a small cross around her neck. So,summoning my background as a fallen Protestant, I asked whether she thoughtthat the New Testament was wrong in describing Jesus throwing money changersfrom the temple. That stopped her; she said that she’d have to think about it.

I don’t know how many Christian andMuslim Palestinians, have embraced that temple denial, but on subsequentreporting trips I heard it more and more widely until it seemed virtuallyubiquitous.

Historical truths are powerfulenough. But perhaps this suppression of history is one that is needed, afterall, to deny Jews their authenticity in the Holy Land, to remove theirbelongingness. The denial supports the Palestinian judgment that Jews arealiens, interlopers, colonists, a temporary presence that will also be erased.

If October 7 was conceived as astep toward that end, it will fail. But it has added to the arsenal of memory.

Predicting the Mideast: Prophets and Fools

 

By David K. Shipler 

                Themost obvious prediction this week, after Hamas fighters rolled easily from Gazainto the stunned villages and kibbutzim of Israel, would be this: Thesputtering hope for a Palestinian state has been finally extinguished.

Having seen their children, women,and elderly bathed in blood and taken to Gaza as hostages, Israelis will nevercountenance Palestinian statehood anywhere nearby, not in Gaza and least of allon the West Bank, which is even closer to the heart of the country--literallyjust down the street from the capital, Jerusalem, and many other towns.

                 Since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from its militaryoccupation of Gaza in 2005, and the subsequent election of Hamas to rule thedensely populated territory, the sporadic rockets and infiltrations have underminedIsrael’s peace movement’s central concept. That’s been “land for peace,” a belief that oncePalestinians had their own territory, they would accept Israel as a neighbor. Well,Gaza residents got their land, but Israel got no peace. That’s been thesimplistic equation.

                Ofcourse it can be argued—and usually is, on the political left around theworld—that Palestinians didn’t really possess their land, that they weresuffocated and radicalized by Israel’s imposition of tight border controls thatrestricted imports and hemmed people into what some call an open-air prison.Wages are low in Gaza, and better-paying jobs in Israel are inaccessiblewithout a permit to cross the border. Even after Israel increased the number ofpermits in recent years, the Gaza unemployment rate stood at nearly 50 percent:a prescription for smoldering desperation and explosive fury.

                But thepartial blockade was itself a reaction--supported by Egypt along its borderwith Gaza—aimed at impeding Hamas from building an arsenal whose disastrousscope was displayed to Israel this week. In turn, that militarization of Gaza wasa reaction to Israel’s “colonial” oppression, as many Palestinians see it. And Israel’stough posture was itself a reaction to radical Palestinians’ ideology ofobliteration, which dreams of a final end to the Jewish state.

                And soon, one reaction to another to another ad infinitum. Untangling the causalrelationship depends on how far back in history you’re willing to go beforestopping and deciding that you have found the original sin.

                It’snot so hard to look backward. It’s harder to look forward. In that part of theworld, only prophets and fools are inclined to use the future tense. Prophetshave been scarce for quite a while. Fools have been in plentiful supply.

                Unexpectedconsequences seem to be the rule. Israel’s lightning victory in the six-day warof 1967, celebrated tearfully by Jews able at last to pray at Jerusalem’sWestern Wall, saddled the country with the unending dangers of containing hostilePalestinian populations in the captured West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s neardefeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur war gave President Anwar Sadat of Egypt thestature, he thought, to make peace with Israel. Some have speculated that Hamas’smonstrous assault will give Palestinians the swagger to make eventualcompromises. I wouldn’t put money on it, but you never know.

You never know, that should be themotto. And you need to be careful what you wish for. In 1981, it came to myattention that the Israeli government, confident in its ability to manipulateArab politics, was funneling money to the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, aprecursor of today’s Hamas. That startling miscalculation was confirmed byBrig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, Israel’s military governor of Gaza, who explainedthat he was under instructions from the authorities to build up the Brotherhoodas a counterpoint to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Communists, whosegoal of Palestinian statehood was seen as more threatening than Muslim fundamentalism.

                TheBrotherhood was doctrinaire religiously but also deep into social welfareservices for the impoverished Gaza population. I suppose the movement seemedbenign to Israeli officials whose hubris led them to think they understood theByzantium of Gaza’s politics. A year later, Israelis made the same mistake inLebanon, where they went to war to succeed in expelling the PLO but fail dramaticallyat realigning Lebanese politics in a pro-Israel direction.

                Significantly,an architect of both the Gaza and Lebanon schemes was former general ArielSharon, then defense minister. Later, as prime minister, he ordered the army’sunconditional withdrawal from Gaza, with no agreement or internationalstructure to keep some modicum of peace. Hamas rockets followed.

Palestinians have a rich history ofmiscalculation as well, and this Hamas attack seems destined to mark history withan indelible turning point. Israelis, it has been said, became complacent intheir material comforts and relative security in recent years. True, masses tookto the streets against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to emasculatethe judiciary, but Jewish-Arab violence precipitated by Palestinians and vigilanteJewish settlers, was mostly confined to the West Bank, with little terrorisminside Israel proper. The “situation,” in the anodyne euphemism, did not occupyeveryday worries.

In Gaza, Hamas lobbed occasionalrockets, which were mostly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missilesystem. As radical as the group’s objectives were—Israel’s annihilation—it seemedcontained, the two sides standing off in a hostile equilibrium. The Arabs’ conventionalorder of battle had been practically dismantled by peace treaties with Egyptand Jordan, internal disarray in Syria, and the aftermath of the US war inIraq.

The remaining threats came from non-stateactors—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza—but they seemed manageable. Thencame the latest day of infamy.

What shift will this bring? “Hamaswas once a tolerable threat,” wroteHaviv Rettig Gur in the Times of Israel. “It just made itself anintolerable one, all while convincing Israelis they are too vulnerable and weakto respond with the old restraint. . . . These heirs of a collective memoryforged in the fires of the 20th century cannot handle the experience ofdefenselessness Hamas has imposed on them. Hamas seemed to do everythingpossible to shift Israeli psychology from a comfortable faith in their own strengthto a sense of dire vulnerability.

“And it will soon learn the scaleof that miscalculation. A strong Israel may tolerate a belligerent Hamas on itsborder; a weaker one cannot. A safe Israel can spend much time and resourcesworrying about the humanitarian fallout from a Gaza ground war; a morevulnerable Israel cannot. A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer Israel.”

It seems a reasonable prediction.The page will be turned from heart-rending pictures of Israelis massacred and kidnappedto heart-rending pictures of Palestinians bombed and mangled in Gaza. Woe tothe fools who see only one page.

Vietnam, Israel, Ukraine, and the Fluidity of Global Politics

 

By David K. Shipler 

                We haveentered a period of flux in international alignments. After decades of relativestability in the so-called “world order,” interests are being recalculated andaffinities revised. It is a risky, promising, uncertain time.

Vietnam and the United States, onceenemies, have just announced a comprehensive strategic partnership, whateverthat might mean. Israel and Saudi Arabia are on the cusp of putting aside theirlongstanding antagonism in favor of diplomatic and commercial ties. The Saudisand Americans areexploring a mutual defense treaty. Russia seems poised to swap technologyfor artillery shells from its problematic neighbor, North Korea, once kept atarm’s length. Russia and China are making inroads in some mineral-rich Africancountries, at the West’s expense. A rising China has adopted a forward militaryposture, threatening Taiwan more acutely than in decades. Ukraine is lobbyinganxiously for its survival against Russian conquest as doubts about continuingaid arise from a wing of Republicans in a party once hawkish on nationalsecurity.

Upheavals such as these willrequire deft statesmanship. Both Beijing and Moscow are bent on denyingWashington what they call the American “hegemony” that has mostly prevailedsince World War Two. The Chinese and Russian leaders, Xi Jinping and VladimirPutin, proselytize for a multipolar world, which appeals to developingcountries resentful of post-colonial hardships. (Don’t they realize that Russiais the more recent colonial power, fighting to reimpose its historic colonialismon Ukraine?)

The global turmoil has tossed up akey choice for Americans: How engaged or how withdrawn shall we be? Howentangled? How aloof? This will be an unwritten question on next year’sballots. Both Putin and Xi will be watching. They surely hope for victory bythe American neo-isolationism represented by hard-right Republicans—includingDonald Trump. No such administration would stand astride the shifting tectonicsof the emerging globe.

Ukraine is a litmus test. No matterthe obscenities committed by Russia against helpless civilians. No matter Russia’smartial expansionism in the heart of Europe. No matter the mantle of democracyand freedom proudly worn by the United States. The extreme Republican right is playingon the ethnocentrism of its base and a weariness of foreign involvements.

It seems that Americans are fairweather fighters in war. As long as things are going well, they’re in it. But moralpurpose takes second place to the likely outcome. Progress on the battlefield isessential to enthusiasm at home. That was true in Vietnam, where most Americansfavored the war until it was not being won. It was true in Iraq and Afghanistan,whose wars garnered initial support until they dragged on inconclusively.

If Ukraine had succeeded in a blitzkriegsummer offensive this year, if Russian troops were being driven back on theirheels, Biden’s additional aid package might draw less opposition. When defeatlooms or a stalemate descends and victory seems elusive, passionate commitmentwanes. It’s like a losing baseball team that can’t fill its stadium.

One pillar of policy that hasremained solid is the NATO alliance, bolstered by the war, with few serious faultlines so far. That would change with an American retreat, however, as Hungary,at least, would probably hedge by tilting toward a resurgent Russia. Andperhaps Turkey, which has been a wild card in the NATO deck, meeting Putin and straddlingsides by serving as a conduit for Russia to trade in sanctioned goods.

Putin likes to talk about history,so he and his Kremlin colleagues have surely not forgotten that isolationistimpulses have long run through American sentiment. While isolationism woulddelight them today, it caused suffering as the Soviet Union fought Hitler duringWorld War Two. The US stood aside for more than two years--even as Nazi Germanypummeled Europe and marched deep into Soviet territory—and entered the war onlyafter Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Before that, Moscow had hoped the Americanswould open a “second front” of combat on the west. Instead, the US sent convoysof supplies across the Atlantic. Among the goods were cans of beef stew, whichRussians sardonically called “the second front,” a sly slur against America thatI heard in Moscow more than three decades after the war.

The threat of postwar isolationismin the Republican Party, led by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, alarmed former GeneralDwight Eisenhower enough to persuade him to accept pleas, which he’d repeatedlyresisted, to run for president in 1952. He did not want his country to retreat.As Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, he had experienced thecritical essence of alliances. It is a concept disdained by Trump but well understoodby Biden, who has spent much of his term shoring up old alliances and cultivatingnew ones.

Biden has also proved hard-headedand more pragmatic than principled—unless you see principle as a chessboard of securityinterests. Rhetorically, he pursues a global campaign for democracy against autocracy.But in the real game, he cooperates with authoritarian or semi-democraticnations when convenient: Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and possibly afuture Israel. Human rights get mentioned, then take second place. The square’slocation on the board is more important than its color.

There are exceptions to this ruleof pragmatic fluidity. One is the barely-shifting adversity with Communist-run Cuba,still under decades-long, futile American sanctions, even as diplomatic tiesand tourism have opened. It is a stubborn, anachronistic position that makes senseonly to Cuban emigres in Florida, a state that Biden is going to lose next yearanyway.

Israel, too, is becoming more of anunfortunate example of democratic values and human rights cast aside for expedientpolitical and security interests. Biden has given lip service to concerns over PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming limits to judicial restraints on the executiveand legislative branches; the plan has drawn vast opposition from Israelis whobelieve it will undermine the checks and balances central to democracy.

But in practice, Israel pays noprice in US relations. Despite the explicit racists in the Israeli government,this week Biden assured Netanyahu of steadfast support. The President appearsunlikely to exact serious concessions as his administration brokers thepotential Israeli relationship with Saudi Arabia; whether the Saudis will do soremains to be seen.

In any case, Israel has beenbrushing off American reprimands for decades. A few words of criticism aboutthe judicial “reforms,” the harsh treatment of Palestinians, and the expandingJewish settlements on land that might otherwise constitute a Palestinian statesomeday, are easily ignored in Jerusalem. Washington’s complaints aboutsettlements have never been reinforced by any consistent policy of pain orpunishment, such as withholding significant aid.

That’s partly, but not only, theproduct of domestic American politics. Even as the destructive judicial changesloom, fawning Congressional delegations have been making pilgrimages there. Butin addition, Israel is useful to US national security as a reliable military partner,technological wizard, and fellow gatherer of intelligence in a dangerousneighborhood. So, the hand-wringing about anti-democratic steps underminingAmerican support appears seems unjustified.

Vietnam, too, has emerged as a convenientpartner for the US, no matter its authoritarianism and miserable record onhuman rights. The Communist leaders in Hanoi are skillful navigators among thepowers—China, an ancient rival and enemy and overwhelming neighbor; Russia, anold friend during the “American War,” and the US, now bidding for an increasingrole in the Pacific.

 Not long after the United States lost its waragainst North Vietnam, Americans who traveled there were stunned to be receivedwith grace, friendliness, and a lack of any obvious grievance—even in Hanoi,which US planes had bombed mercilessly as an estimated two to threemillion Vietnamese had died in the fighting. Whatever resentment persisted wasusually—not always—cloaked by courtesy. After a war, magnanimity comes moreeasily from the victors.

                Earlierthis month, nearly a half century after the American defeat, the Vietnamese againdemonstrated their marksmanship, this time with a compliment. When the80-year-old President Biden, attacked at home as too old for the job, visitedVietnam earlier this month to upgrade the relationship, he heard this flatteryfrom the Communist Party General Secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, who had seenBiden some eight years earlier:

“You have nary aged a day, and Iwould say you look even better than before.” Such is the fluidity of global politics.

How Strong is Putin?

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

                Wedon’t know. That’s the honest answer.

In the bad old days of the SovietUnion, Kremlinologists could estimate the pecking order of the grisly men (almostalways men) who made up the governing Politburo by observing how they lined upatop Red Square’s Lenin mausoleum for the parade on November 7, the anniversaryof the Bolshevik Revolution. Or their positions as they walked into aceremonial hall. Or whose name adorned one or another declaration. Physical proximityto the General Secretary of the Communist Party was a clue to influence and apossible successor—and was watched closely by scholars, diplomats, andjournalists.

                Innerpolitics was encrypted then. Kremlinology was like a puzzle with only a fewvisible pieces. But looking back, the Soviet Kremlin seems less opaque thanVladimir Putin’s Kremlin today. There are no puzzle pieces now, only misfits orblanks filled by deduction, guesswork, and wishful thinking.

                Since Russia’sinvasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin’s political standing at home hasbeen an obsession in the West, where conventional wisdom has ricocheted backand forth. At first, he was a formidable foe, a canny calculator of militaryand diplomatic maneuvers. Then, when his army stalled in the face of Ukrainianresistance, he became a monstrous blunderer whose humiliation would surelybring him down.

                But ashe wielded his dictatorial powers to obliterate the remaining freedoms Russianshad gained since the Soviet collapse in 1991, Putin was the ruthless strongman,unconquerable in the moment. As the war ground into a bloody stalemate, however,and criticisms of the military escalated from the right, his pedestal showedcracks.

Then, he was pronounced weakenedand vulnerable when units of Wagner, the private militia, slipped from underhis thumb and launched an abortive mutiny by marching toward Moscow. “HowRevolt Undermines Putin’s Grip,” said the lead NewYork Times headline on June 25. The appraisal flipped two months later,after the (presumably non-accidental) plane crash that killed Wagner’s leader,Yevgeny Prigozhin. The lead Timesstory declared: “Mutineer Dead, Putin Projects Image of Might.”

So, which is it? A Russianpresident in peril or in command?

It could be both. Dictatorshipsrarely erode gradually. They are brittle, so they break without bending. Theyare invincible until suddenly they are not.

Putin’s case is hard to judge partlybecause of his one-man rule. No formal political structure exists either tosupport him, undermine him, or groom a successor and provide a transition. Atleast the Soviet Communist Party ruled through a Politburo whose head, theGeneral Secretary, operated in the context of political consensus. Even theauthoritarian structure—in the years after Stalin—was governed by broaderinterests than those of a single man.

Kremlin politics played out ofsight, for the most part, bursting into the open only on occasion. NikitaKhruschev was ousted as Soviet leader by the Politburo (then called thePresidium) in 1964. Dmitri Polyansky was kickedoff the Politburo in 1976 after catastrophic failures in agriculture, hisportfolio. There was no announcement, of course; Polyansky’s name was merelyomitted from the list of the new Politburo read to a Communist Party Congress.

Today, though, Putin answers to noofficial body. Who keeps him in power? The military? The FSB secret police? Andwho checks his authority? What restrains him, if anything? Does anyone hold himto account? Who would oust him? Who would choose his successor?

“Putin has created, in effect, his own protective army andpraetorian guard, which are loyal to him,” said Kenneth Yalowitz, former USambassador to Belarus and Georgia. “As long as that does not change, hisposition seems strong.” 

The other uncertainties incalculating Putin’s power are the war and the economy, a military adventuremarred by volatility and an economy hobbled by Western sanctions. Together theymight foster instability on high, but the opposite down below: an iron fistthat suppresses dissent and purges disloyalty. So, Putin acts strong, perhapsbecause he feels weak.

This anxiety at the top and controlat the bottom is a chronic symptom of Russian paranoia, from the communistperiod onward. It’s a paradox that fuels oppression. The pinnacle of powerfeels like an unsteady perch.

It was assumed, when Putin did notimmediately move against Prigozhin after the half-baked mutiny, that theRussian president had lost his aura of invincibility, and that whatever sharksswam in the political class sensed blood in the water.

But it’s possible that instead ofweakening Putin, the Wagner maneuver strengthened his hand for a high-levelcrackdown to match the low-level crackdown he has been executing against ordinarycitizens. With a sweep of his hand, he has turned the clock back to before thelate Soviet period. In the 1970s and 80s, it took more persistent and vociferousrecalcitrance to get arrested that it does today, when mild dissent can landyou in prison. On social media, at workplaces, in classrooms, people are afraidto question the war—or even to say the word “war.”

While the anti-war whispers havebeen stifled, the loud, pro-war dissent on the right has enjoyed immunity from theoppression. Pro-military bloggers have freely condemned the army’s performance,and Prigozhin was vitriolic in his criticisms. His mutinous caper might havegiven Putin the opportunity to put the brakes on the right as well.

Since it’s widely believed thatPutin ordered the efficient disposition of Prigozhin and his top lieutenantswho were on the downed plane, the Russian leader got what any dictator needs: afearsome posture intolerant of any self-enhancing figure who seeks independent influence.It didn’t matter that Prigozhin aimed his mutinous maneuver not at Putin but atthe defense minister and the chief of staff, both blamed for failures inUkraine. Putin called it treason nonetheless.

Then he waited two months whilePrigozhin traveled around freely. We can speculate about the pause inretribution. Perhaps Putin had to get his own military and secret police inline, to continue bringing most Wagner troops into the regular army, todiminish the chance of rebellion. In any event, just before the plane wentdown, he sidelined a general who had cozied up to the Wagner militia, and whosemilitary prowess failed to protect him.

The trouble for Putin is the war,obviously. He is stuck with it. He has rationalized the assault on Ukraine withsuch sweeping appeals to mystical Russian history and national destiny thatretreat or compromise would be taken as unfaithful to his country’s cause—andhis own.

So, the war’s fate is to be Putin’sfate. Therefore, he has every motivation to continue, certainly past the 2024American election in case his admirer Donald Trump wins the White House andmakes good on his campaign pledge to abandon Ukraine. Like it or not, a votenext year will be a vote for or against Putin—look for intensive Russianinterference in the campaign. If Trump wins and cuts aid, NATO will fractureand Ukraine’s formidable resistance will wither over time.

 Another factor in Putin’s strength andlongevity is the level of popular discontent in Russia. That is hard to measurein a semi-closed society. Polls are suspect, because people give safe answers. Correspondentsexperienced in Russia try to take the temperature of the public, but citizensare circumspect, and journalists who get to close to the pulse become targets. WallStreet Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, fluent in Russian and deeply conversantwith Russian society, has been in jail since March on trumped-up charges ofespionage. Most Western correspondents now try to cover the country fromoutside.

During Russia’s fruitless war inAfghanistan, popular resentment bubbled up, driven by relatives whose sons andgrandsons and brothers and husbands were coming back in body bags. The reformistMikhail Gorbachev was propelled to power in part by disaffection over thatfailed foreign adventure.

“Putin is relying on the very strong Russian propensity tosupport the leader in time of war even if they have doubts about him. This isparticularly true in the villages,” said Yalowitz, the former ambassador who knowsRussia well from four years as a diplomat in Moscow. Still, he added, “Theeconomic sanctions are doing serious damage to the Russian economy, and thatplus the brain drain will cost Russia for years to come.” That could be asource of weakness for Putin.

Even if discontent over the currentwar grew enough to overcome the jingoistic propaganda that now saturatesschools and media, the Russian non-democracy has no mechanism to translatecitizens’ attitudes into political policy. The lines of cause-and-effect areblurred and indirect. The change of mind has to happen at the top, inside the enigmaof Kremlin politics, which could very well produce a post-Putin regime evenmore hawkish and reckless.

How strong is Putin, and what will come after? We don't know. That's the honest answer. 

Florida Bans Scary Trump Mug Shot from Schools

 

By David K. Shipler 

                TheFlorida Board of Education, citing a state law’s prohibition against student “discomfort,”has instructed public school teachers to refrain from “showing, displaying,distributing, discussing, mentioning, or making implicit gestures or facialexpressions during class regarding” the mug shot that Donald Trump posed for duringhis booking in Atlanta last week.

A member of the Board, requestinganonymity, explained: “The fierce, angry, vengeful look that Trump carefullyadopted would terrify small children and bring immense discomfort to teenagers.He looks as if he’s about to trash them on social media or sign them up asfalse electors.”

The decree is an expandedapplication of the statute on curriculum, Section 760.10 (3)(f), which Floridaenacted last year to restrict how racial issues are taught. The code states: “An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, orany other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”

Even where race is notexplicitly involved, the Board member said, “Discomfort is not an emotion wewant any of our children ever to experience until they’re old enough to go intoa voting booth.”

Florida’s Governor RonDeSantis, asked for comment by a reporter in Iowa, said nothing. He just gavehis once-a-week smile.

 

This is satire. It’s all made up (except for the text of the law), adisclosure made necessary by the absurdity of current reality, which preventslots of people from telling the difference between truth and fiction.

Democracy: The Political Right's Alarming Lack of Alarm

 

By David K. Shipler 

                Right-wingerswho tamper with democracies should be careful what they wish for. They mighthold positions of power today, but as they undermine the checks and balancesthat stabilize and restrain, they hand formidable tools to their opponents whomight take over tomorrow.

This is poorly understood in bothIsrael and the United States, two democracies now imperiled by extreme agendasthat would weaken longstanding mechanisms designed to protect minority rightsand moderate governmental authority.

The political right ought to takenote: If Israel’s religio-nationalist government dismantles the separation ofpowers by emasculating the judiciary, what’s to prevent some centrist or moreliberal government from driving unencumbered through the same gaping holes? Afterall, the right-wing governing coalition has only a four-seat majority in a120-member parliament.

In the US, similarly, if Republican“conservatives” regain the White House and disempower independent agencies bytransferring power to the president, as Trump’s team plans—and if they continuedismantling the non-partisan machinery of elections in swing states theycontrol—what’s to prevent Democrats from doing the same where they hold or gainmajorities? When you destroy the careful balances in a pluralistic system, thenew structure is available to everyone, not just to you.

A case in point is Donald Trump’s anti-constitutionalargument that Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, could haverejected slates of electors from some states that went for Joe Biden in 2020. Butif Pence had that power, so would every vice president: Vice President Al Gore couldhave thrown out Florida’s Bush electors in 2000, where the popular vote wasrazor close and justifiably contested. And Vice President Kamala Harris could doit in 2024 if she doesn’t like certain states’ results.

Why don’t reporters interviewingavid Trump supporters ever point this out and ask for reactions?

It could be that Trump and his spellboundflock don’t grasp the universality of the powers they seek to acquire. Perhapsthey think that only they will benefit by eroding the professional integrity ofvote-counting, for example, not imagining that their opponents might use thesame tactic. Perhaps they don’t see how a Democratic president could use theimmense authority they seek for Trump should he be re-elected. In a society stilllargely subject to the rule of law, which carries with it a respect for precedent,consistency, and equal protection, systemic changes are just that: systemic. Theyflow through the entire system, no matter which faction is in charge, now or inthe future.

It could also be that Republicans—privately—don’treally think Democrats are nefarious. Maybe right-wing politicians don’tbelieve what they say about liberals and progressives. Perhaps, in their heartof hearts, Republicans recognize that the “radical left” is not so devoid ofcivic and moral virtue that it would threaten democracy with the tools the Republicansare forging for themselves.

Indeed, that’s the flaw in thisdoomsday scenario: The Democrats are not the same, at least not now. Gore didn’tthrow out Florida’s electors, and neither will Harris. Democratic statelegislatures are not rushing to curtail voting rights or politicizevote-counting. There is no moral equivalency between Republicans and Democrats.

But will that be forever? Power isan aphrodisiac. The judicial system is growing more sharply partisan on bothsides. Gerrymandering is a time-honored tradition by both parties. Imperiousmoves to stifle speech come from the left as well as the right. The danger ofconcentrating authority in too few hands, without sufficient checks, remains asacute today as when James Madison warned at the Constitutional Convention: “Allmen having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”

So it also is in Israel, which hasno constitution but a set of Basic Laws that are supposed to set the standardsfor governmental action. Without a constitutional text, the Supreme Court has overturnedsome statutes and practices as “unreasonable,” a squishy concept that PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has just outlawed. (The Court itself willhear a case requesting that it overturn that new ban on its authority, setting upwhat Israelis loosely call a “constitutional crisis.”)

In addition, Netanyahu has proposedgiving government officials a majority on the commission that appoints judges,and granting the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the power to overturn anySupreme Court ruling with a simple majority vote. The specter of emasculatingthe courts—the only check on executive/legislative power—has ignited vast streetdemonstrations, disinvestment, protests by respected former intelligence and militaryofficers, and refusals to serve by numerous military reservists. At least thecenter and left are alarmed, even if the right is not.

Ironically, Israel’s Supreme Courthas moved somewhat to the right as new justices have been appointed duringyears of conservative government. So, if the judiciary is weakened and the rightistcoalition loses its narrow majority in the future, a more centrist orleft-tilting government could presumably overturn conservative Supreme Court decisions.

These might include rulings limitingthe rights of Arab citizens, for example, or allowing more Jewish West Bank settlementson Palestinians’ land, or permitting gender discrimination by Haridim, the ultra-religiousJews who increasingly demand the separation of men and women in publictransportation and elsewhere.

In fact, for many Israelis on bothsides of the conflict over the judiciary, the very nature of the country is atstake—whether it remains a secular and pluralistic state or becomes increasinglytheocratic, run by extensively by religious law. A centrist or slightly liberalgovernment, empowered to overrule the Supreme Court, could conceivably sweepaway judgments that uphold an expanded religious authority in domestic life, openthe door to Israeli annexation of the West Bank, and other policies favored bythe hard right. That is the risk that Netanyahu and his extremist partners runby changing the rules of the game.

Ultimately, citizens in both Israeland the United States will decide the momentous question, which is much largerthan the personalities or slogans or temporal policies of the candidates. Alldemocracies contain the built-in mechanism of their own destruction: thepopular vote, which can elect those who will slice away the protections,usually little by little, until the citizens wake up one morning to find thattheir precious freedoms to choose how they are governed have disappeared. In a well-informedcitizenry, the alarm sounds long before, across the entire political spectrum.