Olmert was derailed by the escalating violence out of Gaza. Whether to ascribe this to Hamas (who have a vested interest in prolonging the conflict) or Olmert's government (which does not have such an interest, but may have mistakenly believed it did) is a matter of opinion, I suppose. There's certainly no question that Israel is suffering from a lack of leadership. Whatever you may think of Sharon, he was someone the country could comfortably stand behind. The same cannot be said of anyone who has vied for the premiereship since. So I agree with you in part, but it's a dangerous elision to look at Olmert's mistakes and see the unseriousness of an entire country.
I have not addressed the Iran issue that you have been bringing up because I don't think anyone can know what that would do to the peace process. It is not at all obvious to me that it would move things forward.
Your crazy US scheme is never going to happen under any circumstances outside of a full-scale invasion of Israel -- and the fact that it is not going to happen is precisely the reason that it is not the right solution to the problem, a concept I have been driving at throughout this conversation and which you have not engaged directly.
I've repeatedly asked you to consider the ways in which Gaza and the West Bank are not similar (no economic blockade, a different ruling faction), and you have not addressed those points.
I've also suggested why and with what capacity an Israeli leader might begin a drawdown, and you are also not directly addressing those points.
In short, it seems to me that you've not really responded to much of anything I've said. Instead, you're shrugging your shoulders and ascribing our disagreement to a mere difference of opinion. This is your prerogative, but you should not be surprised to find yourself so pessimistic if the way you investigate alternative points of view is to always be certain to spit them out after you taste them, so to speak.
"My “insane” idea was that the US take control over the West Bank, allowing the Israelis to exit while still protecting their flank"
1. The Israeli military does not need any protection from the PA police. They work closely together and anyway the Israelis outmatch Palestinian military capacity in every respect.
2. The US would never put itself in a position where Israelis might, for whatever strange reason, need to shoot at them. This is the same reason why you will never see a NATO or UN militarized deployment to the West Bank. The political repercussions of an accident or a misunderstanding would catastrophic for everyone concerned.
"get Jordan (like Egypt) to agree to blockading the entire West Bank?"
First of all, as I mentioned before, the West Bank is not under blockade. I am trying to keep a measured tone, but I find it really frustrating that you are conflating the West Bank's trade situation with Gaza's. They are not even remotely similar. That said, if you're merely referring to a blockade on military equipment, the short answer is: yes.
Of course, Israel doesn't need to do this (though it could, since it has a warming peace with Jordan.) Jordan enjoys a good working relationship with the US, which could easily demand this service. And I suspect in the event of the creation of a PA state, some kind of semi-regular inspections would be required anyway, so even assuming breaches in the Jordanian border, it's not as if the PA could (or would) attempt to build a military force.
"How are they realistically going to dismantle all the settlements in the West Bank when there are so many more, including much more established/enmeshed ones than in Gaza?"
Evacuation is the difficult part, not dismantling. And Israel's infrastructure is more than capable of both. The maps making the rounds right now are maps of Israeli-*controlled* territory, not Israeli *built* territory. In short -- Israel jury-rigs the zoning process to give settlers control over territory far beyond where they actually live and have built.
Never mind the idea that Israel could simply leave buildings and farms in place, and subtract their estimated value from the reparations that will need to be repaid to the PA state for Palestinian refugees unable to return to their parents' or grandparents' homes.
Finally, heavily established settlements won't need to be evacuated or dismantled. Land will be swapped to keep things on an even keel. This aspect of the agreement has been in place since Oslo.
"Will Israel have to have a West Bank invasion on the scale of the recent Gazan one in response? "
This is built on a series of enormous suppositions, which I think you probably recognize. Suffice it to say that the West Bank is controlled by Fatah, who will not mount an insurgent campaign against Israel. If that changes, Israel will have a difficult situation. But this is nothing compared to the fallout from your proposed alternatives.
Finally, you need to realize that a ton of research has already been done on everything you're asking, and the overwhelming majority of these questions have already been answered by people who have been studying this conflict for years. You can start at my old digs: http://www.ipcri.org. (Don't let the horrible website fool you - the research is good.) It's perfectly acceptable not to know these answers, but I'm having a hard time believing that you've made very much effort to seek them out. This seems more like an indulgent exercise in crystal-balling, with all respect (and I do generally enjoy your other posts.)
"don’t do [what I think was] a hack job on what I’ve written please. "
This is a bit rich coming from somebody who's applauding Juan Cole's most recent foray against civility and dialogue. But yes, I'm sorry for the harsh tone.
I'm not misunderstanding the genesis of your post: the general sense that two-state is going to be out of reach soon.
To give this a calculus spin (sometimes a discussion just needs a calculus spin), what I'm trying to emphasize is that there is a vanishing point of impossibility, and a single state lies well closer to that point than just about anything else you could propose. It is right up there with claiming the territory for the USA. It just. Won't. Happen. You would see a bloody civil war first, and when that was over -- it still wouldn't happen.
100 years down the line? Maybe, if the recriminations stopped today. 200 years? Sure, and I hope we see that time come, just as I hope (like most liberal-minded Westerners, I assume) that we one day see the dissolution of all political boundaries between nations. I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan. I'd like to see our attentions and intellects turned to the stars. But this is not the time, and Lord knows Israel is not the place.
I am making two salient points:
1. You and other readers have vastly underestimated the impossibility of a single state, and so this discussion is really just wheel-spinning (even more so than regular blogging.)
2. Two-state is a lot less out of reach than you seem to be assuming.
Before the Obama administration took office, when the US was still playing the "see no evil" game with settlements, talk about the diminishing chances for two-state was mostly limited to wonks. What's changed since then? Not the facts on the ground. The West Bank is just as parceled out now (no less, *no more*) as it was a couple of years ago. 1600 units in East Jerusalem is a drop in a large bucket, and its significance is solely as a political gesture.
What's changed is that suddenly the rest of the world is paying attention to this issue, and they're alarmed by the maps they see (and rightfully so.)
But none of what you're seeing is irreversible. Settlements can be evacuated and demolished. Condos in East Jerusalem can be vacated. It would take no more than the Israeli Prime Minister signing a piece of paper to begin this process.
So here is a question: why does this seem out of reach to you? Because the Israelis haven't done it yet? That may make it hard to accomplish, but out of reach? Not exactly.
The Israeli government may be spinning out right now on its right wing bravado, but it's a democracy. It can, and will, correct for these kinds of spin-outs. Will the Netanyahu coalition be the one to dismantle the West Bank project? Not as it stands today. But that tells us nothing about a couple of years down the line (and knowing the Israeli political landscape, "couple of years" is probably optimistic for Netanyahu.)
Settlements have always been tolerated by mainstream Israeli politicians because they're a bargaining chip in final status negotiations. When Palestinians are ready to renounce the right of return, as I also have faith that they one day will, I suspect Israelis will be ready to renounce settlements. If Obama is as smart as I think he is, he understands this, and this is his primary goal.
As for why I have this sort of faith: because on that line of impossibility reaching out to its vanishing point, everything I've just said is in spitting distance compared to one-state, or ethnic cleansing, or apartheid, or whatever other doomsday scenarios observers are cooking up these days.
This is really poor analysis. (And your flip back-patting of Cole's Goldberg smear is doing you no favors, Chris. Whatever you think of either man's politics, that "take-down" is simply absurd, and anchored in almost nothing Goldberg writes.)
Whenever I talk to people who advocate for a single state, what I find most stupefying is their total disregard for the self-determination of the people they're idly theorizing about. Most Palestinians don't want a single state. (Well, they do, but the single state that they want is Palestine, not Israel/Palestine. And I don't mean that they want a Palestinian state with a Jewish minority. They want no Jews, period.) And I can count the number of Israelis I have met who are willing to entertain the idea of a single state on one hand.
Does Cole -- do you -- honestly believe that people are advocating for two states because it is pretty? Easy? Please check back in to reality: it is not a good option, it is the *only* option. Apartheid would be the end of Israel. One state would be the end of Israel. This math is simple (though some in the current Israeli government may not be able to do it, that's no excuse for those of us with a bit of brain power, including you, your readers, and even the wretched Juan Cole.)
There is not a single fact on the ground -- outside of Israel's stupid settlement expansion -- to support anything like a single state. You cast your half-joking "Israel-Palestine as 51st state" as insane. I think you don't realize how close one-state is to that, on the spectrum of insanity. One of your citations in turn cites Belgium and Northern Ireland, and I can no longer tell if he is giving us reasons to support his plan, or laugh at it. While we're at it, let's take a look at how great things are going in Quebec. If a bunch of Western countries with mostly cultural or religious (rather than racial) distinctions can't hack this kind of plan, why on earth would we pick the Middle East as the next place for this sort of experiment?
And by the way, we have a readily available example of what happens when two religious ethnic groups with competing claims attempt to live in a single state, and one much closer to home: Lebanon. Is there anyone out there crazy enough to want a repeat of Beirut circa 1981?
Look, when Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank happens -- and it will happen, that much I believe -- it will not be pretty. But I'm struggling to understand why you, or any of your readers, are insisting that somehow Israeli settlement infrastructure will remain in place. Remember, we already have a model for how this works -- Gaza. When the Israelis withdraw, they won't leave an Israeli civilian minority. (Not because, as Michael bizarrely claims, they would high-tale it out of the territory on their own. Quite the contrary -- they would begin viciously attacking Palestinian civilians, which is the last thing any Israeli government would want.)
Will a West Bank Palestinian state be demilitarized? Definitely. So long as the West Bank happens to be geographically located on top of the capital of Israel, and within easy striking distance of its largest city, that's inevitable for the near-term. But "economically isolated"? It's not economically isolated now, so I struggle to see why anyone would believe it would become so in the event of state formation. If anything, the (dwindling) economic constraints on that territory would be lifted entirely.
In sum: one-state will never happen. And Palestinians have a great deal to gain from a state in the West Bank, as most Palestinians (unlike, it seems, an alarming number of your commenters) thankfully know.
Americans love to drink. The Irish are stereotyped as heavy drinkers. Result: St. Patrick's day is one of our more prominent holidays of ethnic origin.
Classic blogger mistake: reading far too much into a simple equation. (If you don't believe me, take this quiz. How many people will be going to a happy hour today? Of that number, what percentage will get more drunk because of the holiday? Now, compare that to the percentage of happy hour attendees who have any clue that the Irish were ever oppressed. Bonus: the percentage who know who the Irish were oppressed by.)
Columbus day? Seriously? What are we supposed to do? Eat raw corn and get typhus?
So it's then doubly interesting to me that you're an advocate for this kind of radical reformulation of the classroom. You admit that for this to work, teachers would likely need assistants in every classroom, which seems like the very least that would be required. What about emotionally disturbed students who lash out at their peers? Autistic students who frequently bite or soil themselves? How many teachers and assistants would need to be in every classroom in order to handle these challenges?
Who will be put in the front row of desks or tables -- the students with crippling ADHD, the students with hearing or vision impairment, or the students whose violent behavior requires that they be within arms reach of a teacher at all times? When students are assigned class presentations, where will the teacher find the time to work individually with every learning disabled student? Or are we merely talking about placing those students in the same room but continuing to give them wholly separate work? (This would seem like lip service to me, but perhaps you envision a kind of socialization by diffusion.)
There are perhaps classrooms in the US that are capable of dealing with a scene like that. But for public schools in the this city, what you are describing sounds catastrophic.
That seems really, really misguided to me, and I would suggest that while you're absolutely right that schools need to be reconceived as community projects, you have probably tacked too far in the other direction here.
Not to argue from authority but just out of real curiosity: have you worked with special needs students before? Have you spent any time in any kind of classroom? (As a teacher, I mean.)
It is a delightful notion that students could learn how to socialize with peers of radically different cognitive ability while at the same time absorbing the all of the information and learning technique we expect them to internalize in during the school year, but in the vast majority of cases it's simply not possible. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but I'm pretty certain it's also correct.
If anything I'd like to turn your formula on its head, and provide more extracurricular opportunities for students of different abilities to socialize, while maintaining divisions by cognitive ability in the classroom.
For what it's worth, I also think you're misrepresenting the attitude that most parents of charter school kids have (at least in DC). Charters here are very difficult to get into - the waiting lists are miles long, and parents have to show up to every open house, talk to every teacher, do everything in their power to prove that their family *wants* this for the child. And of course, it's quite easy for students to lose their charter spot if they don't share their family's feeling.
Again, not saying it's a cure-all, but families that seek out charters are in my opinion significantly *more* invested in the school than those whose children attend public school.
Broadly agree with this (hence my grounding the above in DC), but this:
"This is exacerbated by, and exacerbates, the fact that conservative and libertarian critiques of American public educational failures are very often criticisms coming entirely from outside of the community which they are describing."
is not right. Never mind the notion that on an issue as complex as public education one could draw ideological lines (except when dealing with demagogues, but we're talking about a community discussion, here, not politicians scoring points) -- since when were proposed solutions to a public problem required to come stamped and sealed by one political movement over another? This seems like a recipe for bad policy.
Well, most of us here can choose. We have the money and connections for private school.
As for testing...that point jumped out at me as well. How does one measure improvement prior to standardized testing? Perhaps it was elaborated on in the radio show.
Although I should also say I'm sympathetic to the fact that standardized testing is not necessarily an accurate, or even particularly good, way to measure learning. And heavy-handed testing can badly damage the sense of exploratory learning that is so important to a healthy classroom.
My fiancee is a school teacher here in DC, and we've been talking about this a lot lately. She has a unique perspective, given that:
*She is part of a teaching fellowship program similar to TfA (though not TfA);
*She previously worked on the programmatic side of her fellowship
*She began her frist year of teaching at a very bad public school
*But was then laid off in that big layoff wave back in October, and is now teaching at a charter school
She is pretty firmly anti-voucher, somewhat despite her personal experience. Having heard her stories I'm not as convinced, although the fact that she holds that position definitely gives me pause.
Like Scott, I also have a difficult time understanding the fear of "brain drain". DC is probably an outlier on this point, but it seems clear to me that when intelligent, motivated students are forced to share a classroom with emotionally/intellectually damaged peers, the net result is not an averaging of those two types, but simply chaos. Purely from the perspective of student achievement, I see very little to be gained from this model. At best, a very good teacher might be able to push some kids on the margin more firmly into the "motivated" category, but at the cost of ultimately ruining the experience for all of the kids who could be described that way.
I do think that the country has a duty to provide quality elementary education to all of its citizens free of charge, but I struggle to see how forcing overqualified students to work well below their capabilities helps us achieve this goal -- except that this is the way we have been doing it for a long time, and it is on the micro level cheaper to maintain that system than to attempt to start over.
Ultimately, charters in DC work less because they are radical research laboratories (although many of them are tinkering with some interesting ideas) than because they tend to draw families who have made the decision to be invested in their children's education. This isn't a problem, but a way of fixing a problem -- namely, our past inability to single out students whose circumstances are lucky enough to give them the tools to succeed; and the resources to fuel that success. If at the fundamental level a vouchers program could turbocharge that process, I think it may be worth it, despite the drawbacks.
(And frankly, at least for DC, putting some of the public schools "out of business" would be more of a blessing than a curse. The union here is terrible, and has forced a number of schools to remain open long past their sell-by date. Its leaders seem to miss the connection between this bad idea and the inevitable budget shortfalls that have come on its heels.)
Rufus: I've been enjoying your writing on the classics, but in this case I think you may be out of your league. (Pun?) Administrators are not, by and large, "wimps", nor are teachers. But in DC, Baltimore, and other cities with failing public infrastructure, school officials' only real recourse is expulsion, which is counterproductive when truancy rates are already through the roof. Following that reasoning will simply bring you back to the arguments above. Is it better to have a smaller group of successful students, or a larger group of unsuccessful ones? That's not a question that can be answered flippantly, and teachers and administrators in the system as it stands today (where it tends toward the latter case) have little choice other than to manage the disruption as best they can.
that surprises me, as our chief of staff is pretty on top of hiring here and as far as I know makes it a priority to get back to everyone. yes, I am here, and would be happy to write a post, although it would probably be best if I spoke to our communications people before I started traipsing around the Internet giving out opinions.
Been waiting for ages for you guys to talk about this. I just started working at MPP and wondered where the Gentlemen were on the issue. Unlike so much else it rarely seems to cross your main page.
Jay: You have a point there (although busts are still very race-based.) But it's at least true that the government has ratcheted up the sheer quantity of people being arrested in the past decade, to something like 800,000 arrests per year (89% for simple possession.) And while most of those people are not incarcerated, the arrest alone is life-changing, especially for young people (who are a very large part of that number) - drug arrests make it nearly impossible to get jobs, go to college, etc. It makes sense from that alone to see a growing middle-class backlash.
You say 2020 - I say 2015. But maybe I'm just optimistic, or maybe things look better from inside the issue. Still, whatever the result I think this is going to be a Big Deal in 2010, and the League ought to get out in front of it.
yeah i'll come to the wire's defense as well. my favorite show of all time by leaps and bounds. if bad language isn't your thing it might grate on you a bit, but it's a very perceptive look at urban life.
your description of Iran is perfectly on point. but i think you may be outsmarting yourself when you talk about "right-wing ideologues" in opposition to experts. in Israel, at least, at this political moment there is not such a clear distinction. netanyahu was for a long time the leader of the center-right in israel, but he was pushed much farther right by the political developments of the last decade. his cabinet -- the people with whom he will ultimately make a decision on how to move forward with iran -- reflects his new political positioning.
like i said, i am in agreement with assessments that emphasize the extreme differences in difficulty between iran and iraq. i'm just not sure whether netanyahu's cabinet is weighing them the same way that we are. what i am sure of is that he has not made up his mind one way or the other, and it would be a mistake to think he could not go in either direction, given the right circumstances.
My understanding was that they admitted it because they had already realized that American/Euro/Israeli intelligence had uncovered it and were sitting on the intel for a good release date. (Which they certainly located.) But the real question is less about what the admission signals, and more about the fact that a "secret site" was ever able to exist in the first place. Discussion questions we should be having right now:
-How long was the lag time between that site getting operational and our awareness of it? If the answer is more than a year, we have a major problem.
-How large and how well defended are secret sites compared to those already uncovered? If the answer is as well defended, and as large, that's another major problem.
Not to beat a dead horse, but ask yourself -- when was the last time Israel operated farther away than next door? Osirak -- extremely high-risk aerial mission to disable nuclear facilities in an enemy state. Done secretly and after the express refusal of the US to give the green light. Sound familiar?
The difficulty in succeeding in hitting the target is definitely real. But a lot of Israelis don't take as seriously the fact that it would only be a "setback." They point to Osirak, and the more recent strike in Syria -- two cases which were thought to produce only setbacks, but in actuality functionally ended the nuclear programs for both countries. (I don't agree with this assessment, and I think Iran is a very different animal -- but that's where the Israeli govt have their heads.)
great choice! i found a volume of his in my high school one year and fell in love. do you know the story of his death? i wrote him a tribute, years ago:
'the long death
Liquor-drip, he stumble out.
The river murmurs warm below.
The night as still as a dead woman
Somewhere inland, wrapt and silent--
So drips the slow thought of Li Po.
At a certain point - tonight - decides
Him: give over the world, the endless
Land of China, sweet with trees and the dead.
Find a river, run it out.
Get drunk and make love to the moon.'
Wow. I actually had never heard of WND, and I consider myself pretty informed...
Anyway, after skimming their site for a moment, I really have only one question: is Joseph Farah's mustache real? It looks like my fake one in my blogger profile. I didn't even realize I was satirizing anyone there!
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “One State to Rule Them All?”
how noble of you
"
Olmert was derailed by the escalating violence out of Gaza. Whether to ascribe this to Hamas (who have a vested interest in prolonging the conflict) or Olmert's government (which does not have such an interest, but may have mistakenly believed it did) is a matter of opinion, I suppose. There's certainly no question that Israel is suffering from a lack of leadership. Whatever you may think of Sharon, he was someone the country could comfortably stand behind. The same cannot be said of anyone who has vied for the premiereship since. So I agree with you in part, but it's a dangerous elision to look at Olmert's mistakes and see the unseriousness of an entire country.
I have not addressed the Iran issue that you have been bringing up because I don't think anyone can know what that would do to the peace process. It is not at all obvious to me that it would move things forward.
Your crazy US scheme is never going to happen under any circumstances outside of a full-scale invasion of Israel -- and the fact that it is not going to happen is precisely the reason that it is not the right solution to the problem, a concept I have been driving at throughout this conversation and which you have not engaged directly.
I've repeatedly asked you to consider the ways in which Gaza and the West Bank are not similar (no economic blockade, a different ruling faction), and you have not addressed those points.
I've also suggested why and with what capacity an Israeli leader might begin a drawdown, and you are also not directly addressing those points.
In short, it seems to me that you've not really responded to much of anything I've said. Instead, you're shrugging your shoulders and ascribing our disagreement to a mere difference of opinion. This is your prerogative, but you should not be surprised to find yourself so pessimistic if the way you investigate alternative points of view is to always be certain to spit them out after you taste them, so to speak.
"
"My “insane” idea was that the US take control over the West Bank, allowing the Israelis to exit while still protecting their flank"
1. The Israeli military does not need any protection from the PA police. They work closely together and anyway the Israelis outmatch Palestinian military capacity in every respect.
2. The US would never put itself in a position where Israelis might, for whatever strange reason, need to shoot at them. This is the same reason why you will never see a NATO or UN militarized deployment to the West Bank. The political repercussions of an accident or a misunderstanding would catastrophic for everyone concerned.
"get Jordan (like Egypt) to agree to blockading the entire West Bank?"
First of all, as I mentioned before, the West Bank is not under blockade. I am trying to keep a measured tone, but I find it really frustrating that you are conflating the West Bank's trade situation with Gaza's. They are not even remotely similar. That said, if you're merely referring to a blockade on military equipment, the short answer is: yes.
Of course, Israel doesn't need to do this (though it could, since it has a warming peace with Jordan.) Jordan enjoys a good working relationship with the US, which could easily demand this service. And I suspect in the event of the creation of a PA state, some kind of semi-regular inspections would be required anyway, so even assuming breaches in the Jordanian border, it's not as if the PA could (or would) attempt to build a military force.
"How are they realistically going to dismantle all the settlements in the West Bank when there are so many more, including much more established/enmeshed ones than in Gaza?"
Evacuation is the difficult part, not dismantling. And Israel's infrastructure is more than capable of both. The maps making the rounds right now are maps of Israeli-*controlled* territory, not Israeli *built* territory. In short -- Israel jury-rigs the zoning process to give settlers control over territory far beyond where they actually live and have built.
Never mind the idea that Israel could simply leave buildings and farms in place, and subtract their estimated value from the reparations that will need to be repaid to the PA state for Palestinian refugees unable to return to their parents' or grandparents' homes.
Finally, heavily established settlements won't need to be evacuated or dismantled. Land will be swapped to keep things on an even keel. This aspect of the agreement has been in place since Oslo.
"Will Israel have to have a West Bank invasion on the scale of the recent Gazan one in response? "
This is built on a series of enormous suppositions, which I think you probably recognize. Suffice it to say that the West Bank is controlled by Fatah, who will not mount an insurgent campaign against Israel. If that changes, Israel will have a difficult situation. But this is nothing compared to the fallout from your proposed alternatives.
Finally, you need to realize that a ton of research has already been done on everything you're asking, and the overwhelming majority of these questions have already been answered by people who have been studying this conflict for years. You can start at my old digs: http://www.ipcri.org. (Don't let the horrible website fool you - the research is good.) It's perfectly acceptable not to know these answers, but I'm having a hard time believing that you've made very much effort to seek them out. This seems more like an indulgent exercise in crystal-balling, with all respect (and I do generally enjoy your other posts.)
"
"don’t do [what I think was] a hack job on what I’ve written please. "
This is a bit rich coming from somebody who's applauding Juan Cole's most recent foray against civility and dialogue. But yes, I'm sorry for the harsh tone.
I'm not misunderstanding the genesis of your post: the general sense that two-state is going to be out of reach soon.
To give this a calculus spin (sometimes a discussion just needs a calculus spin), what I'm trying to emphasize is that there is a vanishing point of impossibility, and a single state lies well closer to that point than just about anything else you could propose. It is right up there with claiming the territory for the USA. It just. Won't. Happen. You would see a bloody civil war first, and when that was over -- it still wouldn't happen.
100 years down the line? Maybe, if the recriminations stopped today. 200 years? Sure, and I hope we see that time come, just as I hope (like most liberal-minded Westerners, I assume) that we one day see the dissolution of all political boundaries between nations. I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan. I'd like to see our attentions and intellects turned to the stars. But this is not the time, and Lord knows Israel is not the place.
I am making two salient points:
1. You and other readers have vastly underestimated the impossibility of a single state, and so this discussion is really just wheel-spinning (even more so than regular blogging.)
2. Two-state is a lot less out of reach than you seem to be assuming.
Before the Obama administration took office, when the US was still playing the "see no evil" game with settlements, talk about the diminishing chances for two-state was mostly limited to wonks. What's changed since then? Not the facts on the ground. The West Bank is just as parceled out now (no less, *no more*) as it was a couple of years ago. 1600 units in East Jerusalem is a drop in a large bucket, and its significance is solely as a political gesture.
What's changed is that suddenly the rest of the world is paying attention to this issue, and they're alarmed by the maps they see (and rightfully so.)
But none of what you're seeing is irreversible. Settlements can be evacuated and demolished. Condos in East Jerusalem can be vacated. It would take no more than the Israeli Prime Minister signing a piece of paper to begin this process.
So here is a question: why does this seem out of reach to you? Because the Israelis haven't done it yet? That may make it hard to accomplish, but out of reach? Not exactly.
The Israeli government may be spinning out right now on its right wing bravado, but it's a democracy. It can, and will, correct for these kinds of spin-outs. Will the Netanyahu coalition be the one to dismantle the West Bank project? Not as it stands today. But that tells us nothing about a couple of years down the line (and knowing the Israeli political landscape, "couple of years" is probably optimistic for Netanyahu.)
Settlements have always been tolerated by mainstream Israeli politicians because they're a bargaining chip in final status negotiations. When Palestinians are ready to renounce the right of return, as I also have faith that they one day will, I suspect Israelis will be ready to renounce settlements. If Obama is as smart as I think he is, he understands this, and this is his primary goal.
As for why I have this sort of faith: because on that line of impossibility reaching out to its vanishing point, everything I've just said is in spitting distance compared to one-state, or ethnic cleansing, or apartheid, or whatever other doomsday scenarios observers are cooking up these days.
"
This is really poor analysis. (And your flip back-patting of Cole's Goldberg smear is doing you no favors, Chris. Whatever you think of either man's politics, that "take-down" is simply absurd, and anchored in almost nothing Goldberg writes.)
Whenever I talk to people who advocate for a single state, what I find most stupefying is their total disregard for the self-determination of the people they're idly theorizing about. Most Palestinians don't want a single state. (Well, they do, but the single state that they want is Palestine, not Israel/Palestine. And I don't mean that they want a Palestinian state with a Jewish minority. They want no Jews, period.) And I can count the number of Israelis I have met who are willing to entertain the idea of a single state on one hand.
Does Cole -- do you -- honestly believe that people are advocating for two states because it is pretty? Easy? Please check back in to reality: it is not a good option, it is the *only* option. Apartheid would be the end of Israel. One state would be the end of Israel. This math is simple (though some in the current Israeli government may not be able to do it, that's no excuse for those of us with a bit of brain power, including you, your readers, and even the wretched Juan Cole.)
There is not a single fact on the ground -- outside of Israel's stupid settlement expansion -- to support anything like a single state. You cast your half-joking "Israel-Palestine as 51st state" as insane. I think you don't realize how close one-state is to that, on the spectrum of insanity. One of your citations in turn cites Belgium and Northern Ireland, and I can no longer tell if he is giving us reasons to support his plan, or laugh at it. While we're at it, let's take a look at how great things are going in Quebec. If a bunch of Western countries with mostly cultural or religious (rather than racial) distinctions can't hack this kind of plan, why on earth would we pick the Middle East as the next place for this sort of experiment?
And by the way, we have a readily available example of what happens when two religious ethnic groups with competing claims attempt to live in a single state, and one much closer to home: Lebanon. Is there anyone out there crazy enough to want a repeat of Beirut circa 1981?
Look, when Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank happens -- and it will happen, that much I believe -- it will not be pretty. But I'm struggling to understand why you, or any of your readers, are insisting that somehow Israeli settlement infrastructure will remain in place. Remember, we already have a model for how this works -- Gaza. When the Israelis withdraw, they won't leave an Israeli civilian minority. (Not because, as Michael bizarrely claims, they would high-tale it out of the territory on their own. Quite the contrary -- they would begin viciously attacking Palestinian civilians, which is the last thing any Israeli government would want.)
Will a West Bank Palestinian state be demilitarized? Definitely. So long as the West Bank happens to be geographically located on top of the capital of Israel, and within easy striking distance of its largest city, that's inevitable for the near-term. But "economically isolated"? It's not economically isolated now, so I struggle to see why anyone would believe it would become so in the event of state formation. If anything, the (dwindling) economic constraints on that territory would be lifted entirely.
In sum: one-state will never happen. And Palestinians have a great deal to gain from a state in the West Bank, as most Palestinians (unlike, it seems, an alarming number of your commenters) thankfully know.
On “My Problem with St. Patrick’s Day”
you must tell me more.
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Americans love to drink. The Irish are stereotyped as heavy drinkers. Result: St. Patrick's day is one of our more prominent holidays of ethnic origin.
Classic blogger mistake: reading far too much into a simple equation. (If you don't believe me, take this quiz. How many people will be going to a happy hour today? Of that number, what percentage will get more drunk because of the holiday? Now, compare that to the percentage of happy hour attendees who have any clue that the Irish were ever oppressed. Bonus: the percentage who know who the Irish were oppressed by.)
Columbus day? Seriously? What are we supposed to do? Eat raw corn and get typhus?
On “Schools and accountability”
This could just as easily be an argument against those who would run schools as businesses, as I think was mentioned in the previous post.
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So it's then doubly interesting to me that you're an advocate for this kind of radical reformulation of the classroom. You admit that for this to work, teachers would likely need assistants in every classroom, which seems like the very least that would be required. What about emotionally disturbed students who lash out at their peers? Autistic students who frequently bite or soil themselves? How many teachers and assistants would need to be in every classroom in order to handle these challenges?
Who will be put in the front row of desks or tables -- the students with crippling ADHD, the students with hearing or vision impairment, or the students whose violent behavior requires that they be within arms reach of a teacher at all times? When students are assigned class presentations, where will the teacher find the time to work individually with every learning disabled student? Or are we merely talking about placing those students in the same room but continuing to give them wholly separate work? (This would seem like lip service to me, but perhaps you envision a kind of socialization by diffusion.)
There are perhaps classrooms in the US that are capable of dealing with a scene like that. But for public schools in the this city, what you are describing sounds catastrophic.
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"What classrooms need is a diversity of ability."
That seems really, really misguided to me, and I would suggest that while you're absolutely right that schools need to be reconceived as community projects, you have probably tacked too far in the other direction here.
Not to argue from authority but just out of real curiosity: have you worked with special needs students before? Have you spent any time in any kind of classroom? (As a teacher, I mean.)
It is a delightful notion that students could learn how to socialize with peers of radically different cognitive ability while at the same time absorbing the all of the information and learning technique we expect them to internalize in during the school year, but in the vast majority of cases it's simply not possible. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but I'm pretty certain it's also correct.
If anything I'd like to turn your formula on its head, and provide more extracurricular opportunities for students of different abilities to socialize, while maintaining divisions by cognitive ability in the classroom.
For what it's worth, I also think you're misrepresenting the attitude that most parents of charter school kids have (at least in DC). Charters here are very difficult to get into - the waiting lists are miles long, and parents have to show up to every open house, talk to every teacher, do everything in their power to prove that their family *wants* this for the child. And of course, it's quite easy for students to lose their charter spot if they don't share their family's feeling.
Again, not saying it's a cure-all, but families that seek out charters are in my opinion significantly *more* invested in the school than those whose children attend public school.
On “Diane Ravitch on the Diane Rehm Show”
Broadly agree with this (hence my grounding the above in DC), but this:
"This is exacerbated by, and exacerbates, the fact that conservative and libertarian critiques of American public educational failures are very often criticisms coming entirely from outside of the community which they are describing."
is not right. Never mind the notion that on an issue as complex as public education one could draw ideological lines (except when dealing with demagogues, but we're talking about a community discussion, here, not politicians scoring points) -- since when were proposed solutions to a public problem required to come stamped and sealed by one political movement over another? This seems like a recipe for bad policy.
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Well, most of us here can choose. We have the money and connections for private school.
As for testing...that point jumped out at me as well. How does one measure improvement prior to standardized testing? Perhaps it was elaborated on in the radio show.
Although I should also say I'm sympathetic to the fact that standardized testing is not necessarily an accurate, or even particularly good, way to measure learning. And heavy-handed testing can badly damage the sense of exploratory learning that is so important to a healthy classroom.
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My fiancee is a school teacher here in DC, and we've been talking about this a lot lately. She has a unique perspective, given that:
*She is part of a teaching fellowship program similar to TfA (though not TfA);
*She previously worked on the programmatic side of her fellowship
*She began her frist year of teaching at a very bad public school
*But was then laid off in that big layoff wave back in October, and is now teaching at a charter school
She is pretty firmly anti-voucher, somewhat despite her personal experience. Having heard her stories I'm not as convinced, although the fact that she holds that position definitely gives me pause.
Like Scott, I also have a difficult time understanding the fear of "brain drain". DC is probably an outlier on this point, but it seems clear to me that when intelligent, motivated students are forced to share a classroom with emotionally/intellectually damaged peers, the net result is not an averaging of those two types, but simply chaos. Purely from the perspective of student achievement, I see very little to be gained from this model. At best, a very good teacher might be able to push some kids on the margin more firmly into the "motivated" category, but at the cost of ultimately ruining the experience for all of the kids who could be described that way.
I do think that the country has a duty to provide quality elementary education to all of its citizens free of charge, but I struggle to see how forcing overqualified students to work well below their capabilities helps us achieve this goal -- except that this is the way we have been doing it for a long time, and it is on the micro level cheaper to maintain that system than to attempt to start over.
Ultimately, charters in DC work less because they are radical research laboratories (although many of them are tinkering with some interesting ideas) than because they tend to draw families who have made the decision to be invested in their children's education. This isn't a problem, but a way of fixing a problem -- namely, our past inability to single out students whose circumstances are lucky enough to give them the tools to succeed; and the resources to fuel that success. If at the fundamental level a vouchers program could turbocharge that process, I think it may be worth it, despite the drawbacks.
(And frankly, at least for DC, putting some of the public schools "out of business" would be more of a blessing than a curse. The union here is terrible, and has forced a number of schools to remain open long past their sell-by date. Its leaders seem to miss the connection between this bad idea and the inevitable budget shortfalls that have come on its heels.)
Rufus: I've been enjoying your writing on the classics, but in this case I think you may be out of your league. (Pun?) Administrators are not, by and large, "wimps", nor are teachers. But in DC, Baltimore, and other cities with failing public infrastructure, school officials' only real recourse is expulsion, which is counterproductive when truancy rates are already through the roof. Following that reasoning will simply bring you back to the arguments above. Is it better to have a smaller group of successful students, or a larger group of unsuccessful ones? That's not a question that can be answered flippantly, and teachers and administrators in the system as it stands today (where it tends toward the latter case) have little choice other than to manage the disruption as best they can.
On “Weekend Open Thread: Heartbreak Edition”
I haven't even been able to stand up straight since the heavy stone of Jake Delhomme was hung from my neck.
On “Momentum for marijuana legalization builds”
that surprises me, as our chief of staff is pretty on top of hiring here and as far as I know makes it a priority to get back to everyone. yes, I am here, and would be happy to write a post, although it would probably be best if I spoke to our communications people before I started traipsing around the Internet giving out opinions.
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Been waiting for ages for you guys to talk about this. I just started working at MPP and wondered where the Gentlemen were on the issue. Unlike so much else it rarely seems to cross your main page.
Jay: You have a point there (although busts are still very race-based.) But it's at least true that the government has ratcheted up the sheer quantity of people being arrested in the past decade, to something like 800,000 arrests per year (89% for simple possession.) And while most of those people are not incarcerated, the arrest alone is life-changing, especially for young people (who are a very large part of that number) - drug arrests make it nearly impossible to get jobs, go to college, etc. It makes sense from that alone to see a growing middle-class backlash.
You say 2020 - I say 2015. But maybe I'm just optimistic, or maybe things look better from inside the issue. Still, whatever the result I think this is going to be a Big Deal in 2010, and the League ought to get out in front of it.
On ““deep thoughts” on television shows I watch or used to watch”
yeah i'll come to the wire's defense as well. my favorite show of all time by leaps and bounds. if bad language isn't your thing it might grate on you a bit, but it's a very perceptive look at urban life.
On “Dan Drezner Owes Me $5 Bucks”
your description of Iran is perfectly on point. but i think you may be outsmarting yourself when you talk about "right-wing ideologues" in opposition to experts. in Israel, at least, at this political moment there is not such a clear distinction. netanyahu was for a long time the leader of the center-right in israel, but he was pushed much farther right by the political developments of the last decade. his cabinet -- the people with whom he will ultimately make a decision on how to move forward with iran -- reflects his new political positioning.
like i said, i am in agreement with assessments that emphasize the extreme differences in difficulty between iran and iraq. i'm just not sure whether netanyahu's cabinet is weighing them the same way that we are. what i am sure of is that he has not made up his mind one way or the other, and it would be a mistake to think he could not go in either direction, given the right circumstances.
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My understanding was that they admitted it because they had already realized that American/Euro/Israeli intelligence had uncovered it and were sitting on the intel for a good release date. (Which they certainly located.) But the real question is less about what the admission signals, and more about the fact that a "secret site" was ever able to exist in the first place. Discussion questions we should be having right now:
-How long was the lag time between that site getting operational and our awareness of it? If the answer is more than a year, we have a major problem.
-How large and how well defended are secret sites compared to those already uncovered? If the answer is as well defended, and as large, that's another major problem.
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Not to beat a dead horse, but ask yourself -- when was the last time Israel operated farther away than next door? Osirak -- extremely high-risk aerial mission to disable nuclear facilities in an enemy state. Done secretly and after the express refusal of the US to give the green light. Sound familiar?
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The difficulty in succeeding in hitting the target is definitely real. But a lot of Israelis don't take as seriously the fact that it would only be a "setback." They point to Osirak, and the more recent strike in Syria -- two cases which were thought to produce only setbacks, but in actuality functionally ended the nuclear programs for both countries. (I don't agree with this assessment, and I think Iran is a very different animal -- but that's where the Israeli govt have their heads.)
On “Inglourious Basterds (spoiler alert)”
"the hyper-aggressive and unruly Jews of my acquaintance"
stupendous
On “Sunday Poem Series”
great choice! i found a volume of his in my high school one year and fell in love. do you know the story of his death? i wrote him a tribute, years ago:
'the long death
Liquor-drip, he stumble out.
The river murmurs warm below.
The night as still as a dead woman
Somewhere inland, wrapt and silent--
So drips the slow thought of Li Po.
At a certain point - tonight - decides
Him: give over the world, the endless
Land of China, sweet with trees and the dead.
Find a river, run it out.
Get drunk and make love to the moon.'
On “Circumcision and religious freedom”
ED said: "The practice will phase out all on its own. It already is on the decline."
I haven't been following the debate so I guess I missed this, but do you have these numbers? I'd be curious.
On “WorldNetDaily round-up”
Wow. I actually had never heard of WND, and I consider myself pretty informed...
Anyway, after skimming their site for a moment, I really have only one question: is Joseph Farah's mustache real? It looks like my fake one in my blogger profile. I didn't even realize I was satirizing anyone there!
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.