Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.23

This.

Note your own elision: "done in your name." Muslims are no more responsible for that kind of connection than Christians are for Tim McVeigh.

The same does not hold for a collective blog. Tim did not publish his post "in the League's name," he published it on their front page. See the difference?

If that's the standard you choose, so be it. The last time I checked, more than a quarter of Republicans continue to believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in the US. I look forward to the League's posts airing that open and honest debate on a subject about which a considerable minority of Americans disagree.

Of course, I'm sure they would change their minds if they were confronted with evidence and an argument. Probably, right? If only guys like me would get off of our high horses and engage!

I'm happy to extend the exact same benefit of the doubt to guys like Tim, who are oh-so-scrupulously just waiting for those stubborn American Muslims to prove that they aren't secretly violent traitors.

There are a lot of ways to characterize the conspiracy-mongering that is at the heart of the "debate" over American Muslims, but "honest" is not one of them.

You all have clearly laid out your editorial policy, or lack thereof, and while I think it's not a very good one that's the most I can ask for. I'll let braver souls carry on presenting Tim and ilk with evidence that they'll be sure never to read, believe, or care about.

Not counting you as regular, since your blog appears in the separate community section bit. No offense.

And by the way, the number of people making this utterly banal point is flabbergasting. On what planet does smearing billions of people for their religious faith equate demanding that owners/managers of a blog take responsibility for the content that they publish on said blog?

Too much clever, too little thought.

Is there a reason that you're putting editors in scare quotes? This blog very clearly has them - ED and Mark the most obvious as they were around for the founding, but anyone who posts regularly on the front page seems to fit the bill.

I understand blogging is less formal than publishing a paper or magazine (and I did not know but am not altogether surprised to find out that there is no editorial process to speak of.) But surely you all can't have thought that you bear no responsibility for what appears on this site?

If so, I'm sorry to have been short with you, but it really should be eminently clear to any adult writer trying to 'make it' in the blogosphere that this is a black mark on all of this blog's regular contributors, not just whichever specific person approved the post. That's extremely basic journalism.

This is elementary, I'll explain it to you slowly.

This post traffics in outright bigotry. It is not an 'opinion different from [mine]' except insofar as it is the opinion of a bigot. It is neither worth my time to read, nor worth my time to respond - and makes me question, by extension, the value of reading this website as a whole.

I am all for the free exchange of ideas and value the lively comments sections to posts here, including contributions made by resident bigots. But as editors, you are responsible for what is published on your front page, and you made a major error in this case.

Spare me you moralizing over the 'merits' of this argument, there aren't any.

This article is a major embarrassment to this website. I can't imagine which of the editors here thought that wading back into the Park 51 debate - on the obviously bigoted side - was a good idea, but you're in danger of losing readers.

Indeed. And on Tuesdays my day job is also a night job. I actually just got home from work, so let me see what I can do before I go to sleep.

First of all I want to firmly reiterate that I am not paid by J Street and I don't represent them in any official way. I'm a volunteer and a glutton for punishment, so I like to engage with people who don't know about us. But I do it on my free time and I'm not always right when I try to put words in their mouth.

Second, again, J Street doesn't spend much time (any, as far as I know, but I could be wrong) developing its own policy proposals. J Street has positions on everything you're asking about, but not proposals. If you're interested in the latter I can steer you toward allied organizations they work with whose proposals they like. The bottom line (and I know Blaise doesn't like this, but it is the truth) is that J Street is about creating a big tent, and a viable political consensus for a two-state resolution. Sometimes that means you can't get as specific as some would like. That's politics.

Positions, though. J Street is in favor of Palestinian sovereignty (which I take to mean autonomy as you use it above, unless I'm misunderstanding you) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, taking into account agreed-upon land swaps. I don't know that J Street has an official policy on trade for Palestine but I assume they favor it; are there people who support a sovereign Palestine who also oppose trade to it?

Re: the Golan, are you asking about water with respect to the West Bank, or Syria?

And yes, we are still discussing fundamentally pre-'67 borders, again excepting agreed-upon land swaps. I had a good interactive map to show you but I can't find it, let me talk to somebody in the office tomorrow and I'll post the link.

"the U.S. as supposed honest broker has been official policy for many decades and we still have no Palestinian state. In fact, things seem far worse now than they did 10-15 years ago, when it looked like there might be a ray of hope. "

That resonates with me very deeply. One of the reasons for my general optimism is that I feel like part of a strong generational shift among American Jews on Israel (and this is reflected in polling, it's not mere anecdote.) I think a lot of us just coming now into adulthood took a look around at the shambles of a "peace process," and thought "why on Earth would we continue to listen to the same people who have made such a mess of this for the past 20 years?"

J Street is a place for all ages, but it is led by young people, and the prevailing attitude is that we need to throw off our old ways of viewing this conflict. So in that sense I agree with you, and resoundingly.

America still represents a lot of control in the Middle East, though, including Israel. So I guess the distinction I make would not be one of American "engagement" vs. "disengagement", but rather the manner in which America chooses to engage. And I think the consensus at J Street is that America has a real financial/social/political investment in Israel, and that the smart politics is to leverage that investment, not to dismantle it. This is one of the reasons why J Street opposes the BDS movement that I talked about.

I'm not suggesting that your point is illegitimate just because you're not an expert, I very much prefer to engage with people who are willing to admit they're not experts. But I do think the pressing question for those who are interested in an American disengagement has to be, "who takes up the mantle in our absence?" On their own, Israelis and Palestinians will not reach a deal. Some third party is going to have to be involved.

There's also a third option, of course, which is to just say "screw it" and leave them to fight. I don't begrudge Americans the right to feel that way, but I am a Jew so for me it's not an option. I do understand it, though.

I don't know that Israeli politics will really tilt all the way to the left, but I think as we continue to fail to contain Iran, and as Israel grows ever more isolated, reality is going to sink in for the Israeli man-on-the-street that the center needs to take charge again. And as I described above, I think many of the direct action campaigns - certainly more than were expected - are having a real effect on the public conscience of Israelis. If Palestinian nonviolent protest, aided by the Israeli left, can continue to grow at the pace it has since the end of the second intifadah, I think it could be a difference-maker within a few years.

And yes, obviously all of this is written from the perspective of a determined optimist. I put many hours of my week into this work, I can't really live it any other way than through optimism.

That's an interesting question, and I heard it discussed a great deal at the conference. As an organization, J Street does continue to believe that strong US leadership is the way forward, and they are still calling on the Obama Administration to put forth its own version of a final status agreement, rather than waiting on the two parties to come back to the table.

In the past there have been interesting opportunities presented that might have meant that the US could take a backseat - I mentioned the API above, and there were warming relations between Israel and Turkey until last May, etc. Today, though, I don't see any country with the ability to take as good of a swing at this as we have. If you can think of an alternative I'd be interested to hear it.

I question one assumption you've made. I think there are many incentives for Israel to correct its rightward shift despite its American alliance, and I think those are becoming clearer to Israelis every day. Witness Mr. Netanyahu himself scolding his cabinet for trying to initiate more settlement growth. The current coalition is weaker than ever, and as a firm believer in "sow the wind/reap the whirlwind," I expect to see the pendulum in Israel swing back toward the left soon.

One of the better panels I attended at the conference was with leaders of Israel's "new left," including a coordinator of the Sheikh Jarrah protests and an official with "Breaking the Silence," an organization that collects and publishes testimony from soldiers in the Occupied Territories. One of the unforeseen benefits of the national political left going to pieces has been a resurgent interest in direct action and independent journalism, and those efforts are going a long way toward waking Israelis up to the violence of occupation. They're not a replacement for successful politics, but in a small, liberalized country, being forced to confront the reality of state violence can go a long way toward changing someone's mind.

I think at this point it's worth clarifying what J Street does (and does not) do. The organization itself is comprised of three branches - a lobby, an education fund, and a PAC. This is a pretty typical set-up for groups working Capitol Hill these days. One thing to note right away: AIPAC is not structured this way, and J Street and AIPAC go about their work in very different ways. So a comparison between the two, while tempting, isn't really helpful.

That said, organizations like J Street go to varying lengths to write or propose policy on their respective issues. I've worked in the past for groups with exactly this structure that focus most of their manpower on crafting policy. J Street, however, does very, very little of this. The reason is simple: track-two (meaning non-governmental) policy organizations working on Israel/Palestine abound. They've already done most of the policy heavy-lifting. The leaked reports surrounding Olmert's 2008 negotiations with Abbas demonstrated just how much of the final status agreement is known. (It addressed refugees, by the way.)

On thing I tried to get across in this article is the way in which J Street is trying to set itself up as a meeting space for these groups. A quick example: two organizations that I didn't mention but that had leadership at the conference were IPCRI (http://www.ipcri.org) and the team working on the ARC project (http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9119/index1.html). Both of these orgs have done groundbreaking policy work, but they didn't do it through J Street, they did it with their own resources or grants from USAID, the UN, and other interested parties.

Basically, J Street is trying to fill a need - to be a *political* presence in the US that supports efforts to reach a two-state resolution. It's not a policy think-tank, not because it's unserious but because that's not what's needed.

And this is very much just my opinion, but if J Street is vague on its specific policy goals when you drill down to the details, I think that's for the best. J Street can't and doesn't want to be all things to all people - at the same time, I think the challenge it is answering is to be more things to more people than movements from the left generally are. Having watched a fragmented left-wing in Israel continue to tear itself apart, I feel strongly that a countervailing force like J Street - that fully satisfies few, but brings in many - is just the thing.

In this case, your anecdote is even worse than "not data," given the huge societal disparities between 2006 Gaza and 2011 West Bank. I recommend familiarizing yourself more fully with Salam Fayyad's state-building plan, which is to be completed this year. I am not a utopian by any stretch, but I think it's at this point indisputable that Mr. Fayyad has made tremendous gains in implementing civil society, raising GDP, and establishing a reliable, American-trained security service.

I really liked the first thing you said, about meaningful attempts at the creation of the state. I think those attempts are being made and I'd be happy to share more of that information with you, if you're interested. But I would also respond with a question: is your (admittedly impossible) thought experiment meaningful in the context of reaching a realistic, viable Palestinian state? If not, why does it interest you?

I'll leave it to more regular commenters to wade into Heidegger's particular brand of trolling and emerge with something sensible. Needless to say, I don't know anyone - within J Street or without - who shares this "perspective" (maybe dignifying it a bit much with that word, but I'm at a loss.)

If you're actually interested in the organization's positions on the issues, I'm happy to provide answers, but I didn't write this to cast stones at anyone and I'm not going to play that game.

Blaise asserted that Israel is not concerned about the issue of Palestinian sovereignty. I disagreed and provided evidence. The exchange is crystal clear, and for you to quote a single sentence and recast the entire argument as if I could only understand the Israeli point of view is disingenuous. Not to mention ridiculous, since anyone reading this thread can clearly see what you've done.

J Street is not Israeli- or Palestinian-centric, whatever those terms mean to you. They're an American organization, comprised of Americans, lobbying the American government on matters of America's foreign policy. They have Israeli supporters and Palestinian supporters and welcome input from those groups.

By the way, that doesn't mean that making the case for a Palestinian state from the Israeli perspective is wrong. It's not wrong, and what's more, it's effective. Like any people, Israelis want to know "what's in it for them."

Well, I've expressed J Street's lack of position on the issue of Israeli nuclear weapons as best I can.

The Arab Peace Initiative, which offers a regional, comprehensive peace, has nothing to say about nuclear weapons. It is wholly concerned with the issue of Palestinian sovereignty.

I have no idea why the presence of Palestinian leadership in Israeli prisons should mitigate general Palestinian sovereignty as an Israeli concern - but even if this ought to be true, there is no question that is not. Just in the past few days, the current Israeli government has talked of little else (though the message delivered has been decidedly mixed.) Netanyahu claims to want a stepping-stone deal by May; Barak wants one much earlier; and meanwhile Danny Ayalon is in the WSJ relitigating whether or not the West Bank is occupied at all.

One may agree or disagree with, or choose to believe or not believe, any of those three men - but the idea that they are not preoccupied with occupation does not hold water.

J Street doesn't have a position on Israel's nuclear weapons, as the issue is tangential to the question of Palestinian sovereignty.

I'm interested to hear about your experiences in the refugee camps if you'd like to share them.

BDS stands for "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions," a widely-disbursed activist movement that is trying to put economic pressure on Israel using the three tools in their name. You can read about them at their website: http://www.bdsmovement.net/

Fair play on Arafat. No one will deny he was a better communicator.

I'm not sure why we're talking about the "sustainability" of intifada, so I will cede that point to you as well. I still disagree with your media analysis that is driving this point, but that's neither here nor there because there is no intifada at the moment.

Maybe disproportionate is too much of a buzz word - I am not trying to make a political point. I'm using 'disproportion' in as mathematical a sense as I can - there simply is no comparison between the loss of life, land, and rights between Israelis and Palestinians. That doesn't necessarily make Israel wrong, given a certain point of view, but the disproportion itself is not in doubt by anyone credible.

In sum: the only point I was trying to make about intifada - that the lack thereof says a lot about the state of Palestinian nation-building - remains standing. Your arguments that it would not be useful might be sound, but they are certainly not arguments that would hold any sway with the people actually in charge of making an intifada happen.

This is a misunderstanding of the previous intifadas. They may get seals of approval from Palestinian leaders, but they are grassroots phenomena. At most, one could say that some Palestinian leaders can act as sparks to the popular tinder. But the notion that Arafat was solely responsible for either intifada is not grounded in reality.

It's also mistaken to see Intifada as just asymmetrical warfare. That framework only makes sense if a smaller force is occupied by a larger, a la Iraq. You could make this case for the West Bank, but Intifada doesn't happen there, it happens in Israel. The purpose is to inspire terror and weakness in the civilian Israeli public, not indignation in the international community. The latter is only a bonus.

As for disproportionate response: the Palestinians are already undergoing this. Short of wholesale slaughter or expulsion in the West Bank, I don't know what else they have to fear - and while they have had many reasons to be afraid over the last few years up to now, they don't yet need to fear something like that.

And incidentally, the ones most likely to initiate an intifada are the ones least likely to be afraid of or care about any disproportionate response; they are the wannabe martyrs, after all.

I haven't had the leisure time to go through the documents myself yet, but my hunch is that the suppression of a third intifada has happened (maybe more than once) over the last few years, and that it has been top-down and managed in large part by PA security forces.

I don't agree with most of this, but it's a non-sequitur in any case. Palestinian activists and terrorists aren't basing their decision to take up armed rioting and suicide bombing on the amount of press attention they will get in the American media. There are concerns are a little more local than that.

The point is that the reasons were there, the will was there, the personnel - in the form of the many Hamas members and supporters quietly living in the West Bank - was there. And there was no Intifada. That says everything that needs to be said about the strength of the PA security forces (which are American-trained and cooperate closely with Israel.)

I think this part:

"The P.A., entering the talks, was also a peace partner in an unstable position: a government that had abjectly failed in the task of nation-building (the only task, moreover, through which it could have reinforced its governmental authority), with only tenuous control over only a portion of the Palestinian territory and people."

needs some elucidation. Hasn't the PA kept control over the West Bank - and I mean both maintaining its own security and Israel's - through an election loss, a Hamas coup in Gaza, the Gaza war, and (now) the aftermath of the Palestine Papers release? If that's not a benchmark for "better than tenuous control" I'm not sure what is. Arguably that's not the same as nation-building, but it is an important part.

Looking back at that list I just made, ten years ago any one of those things would have been the start of Intifada III. It says a lot about the success of the security aspect of Palestinian state-building that we haven't seen one.

Thanks for this, an amusing thought experiment.

Surprising that you should see this narrative/ethics dichotomy running in the direction it does, given how much more heavily focused the Christian Bible is on ethics vs. the Jewish focus on narrative. They are books that are barely even of the same kind in many ways.

To hazard a guess: the Christian belief in the usurpation of Jewish law by Jesus is a lot more dependent on the overall narrative (creation -> fall -> resurrection/redemption) of the Bible than anything in Judaism. Prior to that ideology it seems one could live within the "story" of the Bible without needing to be overly concerned with its forward progress - hence a focus on ethical law. Post-Jesus, the ethics are suddenly sublimated by a particular narrative, and thereafter the real significance of the Bible is the story of - not guide to - redemption.

Many simplifications there, no offense to any Christians intended.

Yep. McCain is projecting. It should be obvious to everyone.

The guy briefly enjoyed a prominent blog role where he would be regularly quoted as representative of the right...until everyone realized he was completely fucking insane. (As I recall, it was somewhere around the time he suggested the IDF should screw on their bayonets, line up, and not stop marching until they hit the Jordan river. This is not an exaggeration.)

It would be a shame to see this site used for his comeback. Please return to just ignoring him.

The tone of world-weary authority this post takes in dismissing:
- the usefulness of definitions
- the importance of definitions
- the ability of words to have concrete meaning
- oh, and Plato (and, presumably, a great deal of pre-Wittgenstein or at least pre-Nietzsche thought)

is pretty laughable...