how is Gates "inclined to make a scene"? You're assuming what's required to prove, which is itself the problem with this whole situation. The man was harassed in his home by a police officer, and he was justifiably upset by it. This does not in any way make him a rabble-rouser; I suspect most folks reading this would react the same way.
And even if he were "inclined to make a scene", the decent and reasonable thing for the officer to do would still have been to show himself out and leave Gates alone. This is pure power-trip, and those defending it are indulging their own authoritarian tendencies.
the bbc is a little hard to bring into relation, since it is state supported and guided. npr is a better functioning example, but the problem is still in the medium of delivery. npr gives you one story at a time. it's diverting and interesting to listen to, but a person who *needs* to know what's happening in the world would hardly rush to their radio to find out. they want a newspaper, most likely online. as for npr's online content, it faces the same difficulty as the newspapers.
Who is the "other media"? What is it that you consider "similar" to news?
We never had the chance to have this out in the last thread and I probably won't have time in this instance either, but I don't think you're allowing yourself to be reflective about what it is the Times and the Post deliver as a product. It is very shallow to imagine that what these two papers do can be easily replaced by "other media". No other organizations come close to providing the amount of information combined with the amount of trust and confidence in the brand to actually get it right -- not cable news, not the internet, no one.
Case in point: Sullivan's recent Iran blogging. Was it must-see blogging? Absolutely. It was compelling and up-to-the-minute and was for a time beating the papers at their own game. But it was also a ton of unverifiable information, live reports from mostly questionable sources filtered through an absurdly biased medium. In other words, while it made for great reading, it was wholly insufficient as journalism. Everyone who wanted to know what was happening in Iran read Sullivan. But no one with a serious desire to understand could have allowed himself to stop there. We need the fact checking, the neutrality, the skill of an organization like the Times to pin down the facts.
I think you ought to read this blog post from last February: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/02/misreading_news.php. Nick Carr is an interesting writer and, I think, does a good job there getting to the bottom of the problem with the pat "blogs can do what newspapers do" formulation. One (of many) key passages: "Shirky claims we're "in a media environment with low barriers to entry for competition." But that's an illusion born of the current supply-demand imbalance. The capital requirements for an online news operation are certainly lower than for a print one, but the labor costs remain high. Reporters, editors, photographers, and other newspaper production workers are skilled professionals who require good and fair pay and benefits and, often, substantial travel allowances. It's a fantasy to believe that the production of all the kinds of news that people value, particularly hard news, can be shifted over to amateurs or journeymen working for peanuts or some newfangled journo-syndicalist communes. Certainly, amateurs and volunteers can do some of the work that used to be done by professional journalists in professional organizations. Free-floating freelancers can also do some of the work. The journo-syndicalist communes will, I suppose, be able to do some of the work. And that's all well and good. But they can't do all of the work, and they certainly can't do all of the most valuable work. The news business will remain a fundamentally commercial operation. Whatever the Internet dreamers might tell you, it ain't going to a purely social production model."
The only thing I'm not hearing from either this piece or the one posted above is the question of piracy. This seems like a huge pitfall for possible pay models -- newspapers would be easier to pirate than anything else out there, especially if you cut the pictures. How do they keep one guy from copying and pasting the whole front page and dumping it on a forum somewhere, or bittorrent? That's a tough one.
When I was still in Jerusalem, I lived across the square from a terrific artists' coop called Barbur (Swan). I believe they did some recording there once in awhile -- you could contact them at their website: http://www.barbur.org/
Really, all you need to get going is a space. Do you have a basement with an exterior door?
are there organizations delivering the same consistent, breaking coverage as the nyt? even with the "amazing array" they're a daily read for me, as i suspect they are for most here. also unaccounted for in this blurb is what mr. joyner will do once other newspapers begin to follow suit, as they undoubtedly will in the next few years. will he be a true new media pioneer and subsist off blog commentary alone? i doubt it.
lost in all the snark about how "old-fashioned" it is to dare to charge readers for the service they are providing is the understanding that this model is not only workable but inevitable. newspapers have allowed themselves to be taken advantage of for the last 15 years because they did not understand how to interact with the internet. now they are catching up to an understanding that other media industries reached years ago: charge for it.
a better question to be asking ourselves is what we'll do when google starts charging for email.
right, that's what i thought you were talking about, which was why i asked you to contextualize netanyahu's alleged natural inclination for war in his actual term in office, rather than his campaign rhetoric. is it possible to do so? is it fair to judge a politician on his rhetoric alone? that seems to be how netanyahu and the likud judge ahmahdinejad and the iranians -- does that strike you as a reasonable and responsible way to take the measure of a political person or party?
Hi everyone, checking in from summer camp and see Freddie is still at it. Can you illustrate for us what makes Netanyahu "bent on war"? Using his past prime ministerial record, I mean. This seems to be a caricature to me, and one that has to ignore the Wye Accords, probably the most significant foreign policy act of Netanyahu's first term.
"Are you really comparing a medical residency with reading Shakespeare? Obviously one of those things can be done over the internet and one cannot."
This is amazing to me. Have you never had a teacher who taught you something? I feel like I'm reading a monologue from a child raised by wolves.
Learning from Shakespeare, or learning philosophy or theology or the other humanities does not take place simply when you read them. This is a bit like saying that (to borrow a metaphor) a medical student can learn anatomy by slicing open a body and shoving his hands in. The idea that, simply because these old texts are available, they are therefore understandable without any guidance is the only laughable concept floating around this thread.
Raft, you don't understand Poulos (who we can at least agree might very well be insane) because when he says "transmission of authoritative knowledge" you key all in on the authoritative part, and forget about the transmission. Humanities learning takes place in dialogue and conversation, the back-and-forth between people engaging with the author and the subject. The rest is just fodder.
That his commentary makes me long to live in an Orwellian nightmare-state where guys like Breitbart are arrested and executed for thought-crimes pretty much elevates his whole enterprise into inadvertent performance art
All right. I just lost the comment I was writing, and will come back to the substance of what you're saying later. We can have a very long talk about the role of anti-semitism in the Middle East today, which will take us far afield from what's being said in this piece. (By the way: expressing a desire to blow up the Western Wall? Anti-semitic.) For now, while we are still on the front page, I'm content to point out only that in light of what has been said so far of the costs and absurdities of the settlements, theorizing that they could somehow be "bargaining chips" in a negotiation process is insufficient to proving their worth.
You cannot credibly argue that settlements are a security barrier when they are divorced from a military presence. (A reality which you seem to understand, since you are now only guessing at what some settlers might think, not what you yourself think about a civilian withdrawal -- a topic on which you have been curiously silent throughout this thread, despite the subject of the article.) If anything, settlements are a security liability to Israel. They massively increase traffic over the border, and demand constant military supervision. Not to mention instances where the IDF has to separate settlers and Palestinians who have begun fighting.
The idea that potential "bargaining chips" are worth the time, money, danger, and effort that Israel goes through every day to maintain settlements is completely ridiculous. A sustained military presence in the West Bank means Israel continues to hold all of the negotiating cards. Settlements do nothing but enrage Palestinians, and cause them to act without thinking. They develop a sense of urgency and panic that is counterproductive to these negotiations.
Which is why settlers themselves would never make this argument. They don't see themselves as valuable bargaining chips: they see themselves as settlers. Is this so hard to understand? Their intention is to settle the West Bank until there is no room left for Palestinians. The end. They want Palestinians to die or go to Jordan or do something besides be in Israel. They do not want to live with them, and do not care what happens to them otherwise. This is ethnic cleansing, plain and simple, and it is as extreme and amoral in its ideology and practice as the anti-Semitism exists in the Palestinian psyche today.
There is no strategic, diplomatic, or moral reason for Israel to allow the settlement process to continue, unless you believe that permanently displacing the Palestinians is the right thing to do in one or more of those senses. Most Israelis do not believe this. But they are afraid of what will happen when they express that to the country's extreme right-wing, which has long sworn bloody murder if anyone should attempt a massive evacuation. Yet every day that we wait, the prospect of all-out civil war grows more, not less, likely. What will happen to Israel if it agrees to your timetable and waits until Palestinians are not anti-Semitic any more? Care to guess?
Settlements are not bargaining chips because they are not exchangeable for anything. The PA negotiators know as well as the Israeli ones that if Israel wants a Palestinian state, it's going to have to give up the vast bulk of the settlements. They don't need to make any concessions for this to happen; it's just the "fact on the ground," as pundits here like to say. The settlement withdrawal will happen, or Israel will be a binational state. It doesn't matter if the Palestinians start growing the Hitler 'stache tomorrow and goose-stepping around Jerusalem. The "four wars" fantasy you have so naively bought into has distracted you from the issue at hand, perhaps irretrievably. Anti-semitism is a problem that will endure in the Middle East for a long time, just as you pointed out that it continues to endure in America and Europe. Pouting over this and refusing to do what needs to be done on the flimsiest excuse of holding "bargaining chips" (an utterly bankrupt way of thinking about settlements, both morally and politically) is irresponsible and dense.
Hm. I can't help but feel you're willfully talking past me, Roque. I mean, especially the contractor thing...you're really not seeing how, as a metaphor, it is trying to make the point that antisemitism in the West Bank is trivial IN COMPARISON TO keeping Hamas out of power and basic civil services running? I don't know how much more clearly I can say it.
Look, I've already acknowledged the point that a *long-standing* peace between Israel and Palestine cannot be built while the PA engages in or allows anti-Semitic speech to be the norm. But I truly don't understand how you cannot see that it is your insistence on conflating near-term goals with a long-term solution that is making an agreement impossible. You bring up the Pacific war, as if it were even comparable. But ask yourself: can you imagine a cessation in racist speech on either side *while the war still continued?* It's not only wishful thinking, Roque -- it's preposterous, it's the cart before the horse in every meaningful way.
You say that putting "Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism" front and center will force them to "answer" for it. I have no idea what this means. Do you? A broad swath of the Muslim world is anti-Semitic. This is news to absolutely no one, not even Muslims. Yet you treat it as a goal comparable to dismantling settlements or reinforcing Fatah in the West Bank. So what's this about? You appear to me to be vindictive in the extreme. That's not wrong, depending on your outlook. But it certainly is wrong to treat "rubbing their noses in it" as a high-value objective for Israeli negotiations. I don't know any Israeli who has experienced Palestinian violence who has any interest in such a thing. They just want to reach an agreement and a cold peace.
Do these attitudes feed violence? Sure. So do settlements. So does Hamas as an organization, Hizbullah, Iran, Shin Bet brutality, economic hardship, poor educational systems, difficulty leaving the territories, political corruption, familial bonds, popular art and culture...it's a long list. And listen: there will NEVER come a day when everything feeding the violence stops. It's not possible, here or anywhere. So I'll ask you again: in light of the divorce between a civilian and military evacuation, what are we waiting for? Why are you hesitating?
Regarding taqiyya. I haven't any idea why the fact that it is a "religious" kind of lying makes it any different to you, as I assume you are not a Muslim. Your description of what happens when non-Muslims lie is almost too rich for words. Do you honestly believe that non-Muslim countries do not lie in the service of their political goals every day? Have you not followed the news in the US? Are you the one man in the universe who has not so much as caught a James Bond movie on cable? LYING IS PART OF DIPLOMACY AND WAR. It's a part of politics, no matter who you are, and oftentimes important people who do it suffer no consequences -- especially when they are acting on behalf of their countries. In any case, your lesson failed to address my other question to you, which was how on earth "assurances" from the same people supposedly making use of taqiyya were supposed to serve us more effectively than a phased military withdrawal and international monitoring.
I considered including a provision against state-sponsored anti-Semitism when writing that response. (I'm very well versed in MEMRI's archive, no need to refer me.) I ruled it out for a few reasons:
1. No matter what Israel asks, this will not be a high priority issue for the PA, nor should it be. Under even the best of circumstances, they're going to be struggling to keep Hamas under control and maintain basic services to their civilian population. And this is all assuming that they can keep their own corruption under control. Asking them to overhaul their state media and education policies is like asking a contractor not to scuff your hardwood when he singlehandedly removes every item of furniture.
2. A great deal of Palestinian media and education is imported from the rest of the Arab world, especially Turkey and Iran -- a lot of that anti-Semitic stuff included. It's part of the reality of the Arab world today, and a lot of it dates all the way back to Nazism. So, two points here: a) the Palestinians can't be expected to turn into shining stars of tolerance unless they totally shut off the tap to the outside world, which ain't gonna happen; and b) in any case you'll notice that Israel enjoys a cold peace with Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and many other nations very much in spite of media saturated with anti-Semitic garbage.
3. That being said, I do agree with you that a lasting peace is going to require a change in tone from Palestinian leadership, as well as a change in attitude (if not tone) from Israel. I do honestly hope to one day see a pair of leaders from both people come to recognize that they share in a common tragedy, and that they have much more in common than they realized -- leaders who could actually make both peoples believe that it is possible to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine at the same time. However, I recognize two things: that this will never, ever happen without some changes on the ground moving in the right direction, and that to wait for it is tantamount to giving up on peace; and that some arrangements do not depend on this shift in attitude. As I said before, settlement withdrawal has plenty to recommend it that has nothing to do with Palestinians, and when it is divorced from a military withdrawal there is no reason for security concerns. So what's stopping us?
As for taqiyya: first of all, I have no idea what good "assurances" against taqiyya would do, since it is, after all, taqiyya. You might be surprised to learn that in the West (and in Israel) we also have a version of taqiyya. It's called "lying," and we do it all the time. How do you know the other guy isn't lying? Well, you never do, whether he's Muslim or Zoroastrian. You just try to put yourself in a position where it doesn't matter if he is. A phased military withdrawal over the course of many years, alongside international monitoring, is the best (and only) way I know of doing that. (Incidentally, it's in fact *more* effective than "assurances.") Do you have another idea?
Finally: yes, Palestinian anti-Semitism offends me, a great deal, as does all anti-Semitism. And apologies for it that blame Israeli aggression also offend me, so I won't do that. All I will say is that, though I am about as Jewish as they come, I do at times see the wisdom of the Christian doctrine of love, and I prefer to be the person who can be offended without feeling the need to take out my offendedness on other people, rather than the person who will sacrifice another 1 or 5 or 20 years of life in Israel to pent-up racism and aggression and hatred because some Palestinians think he deserves to die.
Will -- as with most things Israel, the answer to your question differs widely depending on which 'who' we're talking about. I don't think Palestinians are ready to lose the settlements as an issue without a military withdrawal; and I don't think Israelis are ready to lose the settlements period. So no, it's not palatable at the moment. I would guess at two possible ways to change this: either to somehow dismantle Hamas and Hizbollah once and for all (not likely), or to come to some kind of acceptable compromise on the Iranian nuclear issue (slightly more likely).
Roque -- I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, if not the details. (The government does not support the settlements? Did you read the tax dollar bit above? And who do you think is sending the military out there to guard each settlement? Moses?) But here's an attempt at a response:
I don't think Israel should need a response to begin a civilian withdrawal the likes of which I've outlined above. There are plenty of reasons to start dismantling settlements that have nothing to do with the Palestinians: they encourage lawlessness and violence, they sap the country's finances, and they have become a cudgel with which to beat Israel over the head. (I don't subscribe to the fantasy that if the settlements disappear the international community will suddenly love Israel. But one less cudgel certainly isn't going to *hurt*.) Withdrawal doesn't need to happen everywhere all at once, but the longer Israel waits, the harder it will be.
I do think you're right that Israel needs a substantive response from the PA before a military withdrawal becomes feasible. You can pretty easily divide it into two categories: negotiating positions, and ground changes.
If I'm Israel, here's what negotiating positions I require in exchange for a phased military withdrawal: complete renunciation of the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees, in exchange for compensation and resettlement in the West Bank paid for by Israel and the international community. (This is the big one.) Little ones: Settlement infrastructure to be counted toward Israeli reparations. Agreement to a Palestinian state to be monitored internationally for x number of years (I'm not sure how long I'd like that to go.) Agreement to Israeli control of the Jordan/Palestine border for x number of years, as well. Guaranteed legal access for Jews to holy sites within the West Bank. Some may want to include Israeli control of Jerusalem in this list; I don't personally see the point in that.
Ground changes I would need: replacement of Mahmoud Abbas with a new head of state. (I personally liked Fayyad, although I understand he's not particularly popular. It would also be possible to go outside of the current party leadership and tap somebody like Sari Nusseibeh, the academic moderate and head of Al Quds University, who is quite popular. Either way, the point is that Abbas is weak and needs to go.) An electoral system that outlaws extremist parties, where extremist is defined as any party calling for the violent destruction of Israel.
These are just off the top of my head. And they are, by the way, only the demands that Israel would be making of Palestine. There is a long list of things it would also need from the US and the UN to make this work, from money to continued military training etc.
Opposition to the idea that separation is racially MOTIVATED is very simple, and it starts by pointing out that Israelis are interested in security, not racial purity. We can have a lengthy discussion over whether the measures they have taken are creating a more secure future. But the idea that Israel has cordoned off certain roads in the West Bank because it believes Palestinians are racially inferior is ridiculous. It requires completely ignoring the give and take of the last six decades of history between the two peoples.
As for your US example. In certain places in Israel (Akko, Nazareth) it stacks up, in others (Haifa, Tel Aviv) it does not. But I'm not suggesting that Israel is a racism-free country. On the contrary. Israelis are at times very troublingly racist, the product of violence that has gone on too long. But under apartheid (and in the US during slavery, for that matter) the racism was government-sponsored. There is no such thing against Israeli Arabs, end of story. They have three parties in parliament, full rights as citizens, and are portrayed positively in Israeli popular culture on a regular basis, from Israeli Sesame Street to sitcoms, etc.
As for Palestinian Arabs, return to step 1 of this argument. There is obviously a huge difference between the lives of these two groups, despite common ethnicity. But again, my point is to say that the difference in their lives tells you something about what the Israelis care about. Right or wrong, they perceive Palestinians as a security threat, not a racial problem.
Clearly that's the case. I was only bringing up the example to point out that calling the Israeli system 'apartheid' attaches a lot of racial baggage to it that doesn't really seem to be there, when you consider the Israeli Arab population.
In a binational state, if that state were the result of too much status quo, I think full-on apartheid would be something that we would see. I just wrote about it the other day here: http://somepolitical.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-numbers-on-two-state.html
Regarding continued Israeli refusal to abandon the settlement project, and the inevitable binational state that would be produced: "At a certain point in the (ever-nearing) future, Israelis are going to have a national decision to make with regard to their indigenous Palestinian population. Extend them the rights of citizenship, ethnically cleanse them, or just go full-Apartheid? This is not an imaginary scenario."
We are on the same page when it comes to the consequences of this behavior. But 'apartheid' as a racial word is also a stick with which many people beat Israel over the head, whether it fits or not.
Out of curiosity, Chris...how large do you think the settler population is? I suspect you have an inflated conception of its size based on the news coverage...
I'm no apartheid expert, but one reason it doesn't seem like an accurate comparison to me is the Israeli Arab population, which enjoys full rights in territorial Israel. Life in the West Bank is far from pleasant, but to argue that it is racially motivated seems to require that you ignore the well-being of the many Arabs who have Israeli citizenship.
ED: Obviously, a nuclear attack would be more likely in Tel Aviv than Jerusalem. But if you're really asking, then yes, I do personally believe that there are many radical Muslims willing to blow up Jerusalem in order to destabilize Israel.
Chris, note that part of the fear of rockets in the W Bank is how easily they can hit Jerusalem (and longer range ones Tel Aviv.) To illustrate, it's the difference between let's say Cuban missiles hitting Tallahassee, and Cuban missiles hitting Washington, DC.
The other fear, which I'm surprised hasn't yet been mention, is the possibility of a nuclear or other large-scale material making its way into the W Bank over the Jordanian border. Simply in terms of size this is a much scarier risk than it is for Gaza, especially considering Palestinians in the W Bank still enjoy some mobility into and out of Israel. Just a little food for thought.
I think you're missing my point, and perhaps inadvertently even making it, as well. I had the chance to hear Akiva Eldar, the author (http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Land-Settlements-Territories-1967-2007/dp/1568584148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241044756&sr=8-1) and Ha'aretz columnist a few weeks back. He subscribes to a popular theory on the Israeli left, which is that Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza not to begin the dismantling of the settlement project, but to reinforce it in the West Bank by providing an object lesson in the Strip. In this telling, Sharon knows very well that unilateral movement in Gaza will ultimately collapse the region into chaos, undercutting any argument toward settlement dismantling in the West Bank.
Whether or not this is true of Sharon, it certainly does accurately describe the conversation over settlements taking place in Israel today. You have simplified my question to "well in Gaza look what happened, that’s going to happen in the West Bank too", and attempt to counter this by pointing out that Gaza "was not given a chance." But this is precisely my point! Unilateral withdrawal in Gaza deprived it of a chance. The Israelis evacuated without giving the Palestinians clear expectations for what they wanted in return; when they (predictably) received nothing, the Israeli right was all too able to play the victim card, bemoaning incorrigible Palestinian violence in the face of amazing Israeli restraint.
So, to restate the question: how is a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank not the beginning of a tumble into the same trap? Settlements, perhaps, are one thing -- but what of the incredibly complex network of internal Israeli checkpoints that currently keep the region stable? Do you have any sense of what the risk of a Hamas takeover is, should these checkpoints disappear? I will hazard a guess and say 'no', because I also have no idea, and because I suspect not even the Shin Bet can say for certain.
I couldn't help myself with this much, though. To the questions about the Egyptian border: Egypt does not open its border because Hamas is a regional branch of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is the minority political party in Egypt and an enemy of Mubarak's government. Treaties with Israel are entirely incidental to this fact, in more ways than one.
That's not a green light for the Israeli blockade, and if it seems a double standard to fault Israel for playing that game without faulting Egypt, well, it IS a double standard. But that's the price you pay for being a card-carrying democracy, and not an authoritarian regime.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Hidden Talents”
dialogue: not a verb
On “I’m thinking of subscribing to a magazine . . .”
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
You'll come for the Goofus and Gallant, you'll stay for the Hidden Pictures.
On “The Darkness That Comes Before”
the finest fantasy author i know of is john crowley. if you've never heard of him, look no further than "little, big". it will take your breath away.
On “Due Deference”
"This whole authority, counter to Will’s belief, is balanced by a huge amount of scrutiny, at least theoretically"
I lol'ed. Way to keep it unreal, friend.
"
how is Gates "inclined to make a scene"? You're assuming what's required to prove, which is itself the problem with this whole situation. The man was harassed in his home by a police officer, and he was justifiably upset by it. This does not in any way make him a rabble-rouser; I suspect most folks reading this would react the same way.
And even if he were "inclined to make a scene", the decent and reasonable thing for the officer to do would still have been to show himself out and leave Gates alone. This is pure power-trip, and those defending it are indulging their own authoritarian tendencies.
On “Wired”
the bbc is a little hard to bring into relation, since it is state supported and guided. npr is a better functioning example, but the problem is still in the medium of delivery. npr gives you one story at a time. it's diverting and interesting to listen to, but a person who *needs* to know what's happening in the world would hardly rush to their radio to find out. they want a newspaper, most likely online. as for npr's online content, it faces the same difficulty as the newspapers.
"
Who is the "other media"? What is it that you consider "similar" to news?
We never had the chance to have this out in the last thread and I probably won't have time in this instance either, but I don't think you're allowing yourself to be reflective about what it is the Times and the Post deliver as a product. It is very shallow to imagine that what these two papers do can be easily replaced by "other media". No other organizations come close to providing the amount of information combined with the amount of trust and confidence in the brand to actually get it right -- not cable news, not the internet, no one.
Case in point: Sullivan's recent Iran blogging. Was it must-see blogging? Absolutely. It was compelling and up-to-the-minute and was for a time beating the papers at their own game. But it was also a ton of unverifiable information, live reports from mostly questionable sources filtered through an absurdly biased medium. In other words, while it made for great reading, it was wholly insufficient as journalism. Everyone who wanted to know what was happening in Iran read Sullivan. But no one with a serious desire to understand could have allowed himself to stop there. We need the fact checking, the neutrality, the skill of an organization like the Times to pin down the facts.
I think you ought to read this blog post from last February: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/02/misreading_news.php. Nick Carr is an interesting writer and, I think, does a good job there getting to the bottom of the problem with the pat "blogs can do what newspapers do" formulation. One (of many) key passages: "Shirky claims we're "in a media environment with low barriers to entry for competition." But that's an illusion born of the current supply-demand imbalance. The capital requirements for an online news operation are certainly lower than for a print one, but the labor costs remain high. Reporters, editors, photographers, and other newspaper production workers are skilled professionals who require good and fair pay and benefits and, often, substantial travel allowances. It's a fantasy to believe that the production of all the kinds of news that people value, particularly hard news, can be shifted over to amateurs or journeymen working for peanuts or some newfangled journo-syndicalist communes. Certainly, amateurs and volunteers can do some of the work that used to be done by professional journalists in professional organizations. Free-floating freelancers can also do some of the work. The journo-syndicalist communes will, I suppose, be able to do some of the work. And that's all well and good. But they can't do all of the work, and they certainly can't do all of the most valuable work. The news business will remain a fundamentally commercial operation. Whatever the Internet dreamers might tell you, it ain't going to a purely social production model."
The only thing I'm not hearing from either this piece or the one posted above is the question of piracy. This seems like a huge pitfall for possible pay models -- newspapers would be easier to pirate than anything else out there, especially if you cut the pictures. How do they keep one guy from copying and pasting the whole front page and dumping it on a forum somewhere, or bittorrent? That's a tough one.
On “musician’s cooperative”
When I was still in Jerusalem, I lived across the square from a terrific artists' coop called Barbur (Swan). I believe they did some recording there once in awhile -- you could contact them at their website: http://www.barbur.org/
Really, all you need to get going is a space. Do you have a basement with an exterior door?
On “quote of the day”
are there organizations delivering the same consistent, breaking coverage as the nyt? even with the "amazing array" they're a daily read for me, as i suspect they are for most here. also unaccounted for in this blurb is what mr. joyner will do once other newspapers begin to follow suit, as they undoubtedly will in the next few years. will he be a true new media pioneer and subsist off blog commentary alone? i doubt it.
lost in all the snark about how "old-fashioned" it is to dare to charge readers for the service they are providing is the understanding that this model is not only workable but inevitable. newspapers have allowed themselves to be taken advantage of for the last 15 years because they did not understand how to interact with the internet. now they are catching up to an understanding that other media industries reached years ago: charge for it.
a better question to be asking ourselves is what we'll do when google starts charging for email.
On “Peace in the Middle East”
are we sharing a brain wave today? http://somepolitical.blogspot.com/2009/06/end-of-settlements.html
On “wedding pics”
congratulations
On “what’s next”
right, that's what i thought you were talking about, which was why i asked you to contextualize netanyahu's alleged natural inclination for war in his actual term in office, rather than his campaign rhetoric. is it possible to do so? is it fair to judge a politician on his rhetoric alone? that seems to be how netanyahu and the likud judge ahmahdinejad and the iranians -- does that strike you as a reasonable and responsible way to take the measure of a political person or party?
"
Hi everyone, checking in from summer camp and see Freddie is still at it. Can you illustrate for us what makes Netanyahu "bent on war"? Using his past prime ministerial record, I mean. This seems to be a caricature to me, and one that has to ignore the Wye Accords, probably the most significant foreign policy act of Netanyahu's first term.
On “Poulos on Taylor on Re-Structured University Education”
"Are you really comparing a medical residency with reading Shakespeare? Obviously one of those things can be done over the internet and one cannot."
This is amazing to me. Have you never had a teacher who taught you something? I feel like I'm reading a monologue from a child raised by wolves.
Learning from Shakespeare, or learning philosophy or theology or the other humanities does not take place simply when you read them. This is a bit like saying that (to borrow a metaphor) a medical student can learn anatomy by slicing open a body and shoving his hands in. The idea that, simply because these old texts are available, they are therefore understandable without any guidance is the only laughable concept floating around this thread.
Raft, you don't understand Poulos (who we can at least agree might very well be insane) because when he says "transmission of authoritative knowledge" you key all in on the authoritative part, and forget about the transmission. Humanities learning takes place in dialogue and conversation, the back-and-forth between people engaging with the author and the subject. The rest is just fodder.
On “Hate Crimes (III)”
That his commentary makes me long to live in an Orwellian nightmare-state where guys like Breitbart are arrested and executed for thought-crimes pretty much elevates his whole enterprise into inadvertent performance art
On “One way forward for the West Bank”
All right. I just lost the comment I was writing, and will come back to the substance of what you're saying later. We can have a very long talk about the role of anti-semitism in the Middle East today, which will take us far afield from what's being said in this piece. (By the way: expressing a desire to blow up the Western Wall? Anti-semitic.) For now, while we are still on the front page, I'm content to point out only that in light of what has been said so far of the costs and absurdities of the settlements, theorizing that they could somehow be "bargaining chips" in a negotiation process is insufficient to proving their worth.
You cannot credibly argue that settlements are a security barrier when they are divorced from a military presence. (A reality which you seem to understand, since you are now only guessing at what some settlers might think, not what you yourself think about a civilian withdrawal -- a topic on which you have been curiously silent throughout this thread, despite the subject of the article.) If anything, settlements are a security liability to Israel. They massively increase traffic over the border, and demand constant military supervision. Not to mention instances where the IDF has to separate settlers and Palestinians who have begun fighting.
The idea that potential "bargaining chips" are worth the time, money, danger, and effort that Israel goes through every day to maintain settlements is completely ridiculous. A sustained military presence in the West Bank means Israel continues to hold all of the negotiating cards. Settlements do nothing but enrage Palestinians, and cause them to act without thinking. They develop a sense of urgency and panic that is counterproductive to these negotiations.
Which is why settlers themselves would never make this argument. They don't see themselves as valuable bargaining chips: they see themselves as settlers. Is this so hard to understand? Their intention is to settle the West Bank until there is no room left for Palestinians. The end. They want Palestinians to die or go to Jordan or do something besides be in Israel. They do not want to live with them, and do not care what happens to them otherwise. This is ethnic cleansing, plain and simple, and it is as extreme and amoral in its ideology and practice as the anti-Semitism exists in the Palestinian psyche today.
There is no strategic, diplomatic, or moral reason for Israel to allow the settlement process to continue, unless you believe that permanently displacing the Palestinians is the right thing to do in one or more of those senses. Most Israelis do not believe this. But they are afraid of what will happen when they express that to the country's extreme right-wing, which has long sworn bloody murder if anyone should attempt a massive evacuation. Yet every day that we wait, the prospect of all-out civil war grows more, not less, likely. What will happen to Israel if it agrees to your timetable and waits until Palestinians are not anti-Semitic any more? Care to guess?
Settlements are not bargaining chips because they are not exchangeable for anything. The PA negotiators know as well as the Israeli ones that if Israel wants a Palestinian state, it's going to have to give up the vast bulk of the settlements. They don't need to make any concessions for this to happen; it's just the "fact on the ground," as pundits here like to say. The settlement withdrawal will happen, or Israel will be a binational state. It doesn't matter if the Palestinians start growing the Hitler 'stache tomorrow and goose-stepping around Jerusalem. The "four wars" fantasy you have so naively bought into has distracted you from the issue at hand, perhaps irretrievably. Anti-semitism is a problem that will endure in the Middle East for a long time, just as you pointed out that it continues to endure in America and Europe. Pouting over this and refusing to do what needs to be done on the flimsiest excuse of holding "bargaining chips" (an utterly bankrupt way of thinking about settlements, both morally and politically) is irresponsible and dense.
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Hm. I can't help but feel you're willfully talking past me, Roque. I mean, especially the contractor thing...you're really not seeing how, as a metaphor, it is trying to make the point that antisemitism in the West Bank is trivial IN COMPARISON TO keeping Hamas out of power and basic civil services running? I don't know how much more clearly I can say it.
Look, I've already acknowledged the point that a *long-standing* peace between Israel and Palestine cannot be built while the PA engages in or allows anti-Semitic speech to be the norm. But I truly don't understand how you cannot see that it is your insistence on conflating near-term goals with a long-term solution that is making an agreement impossible. You bring up the Pacific war, as if it were even comparable. But ask yourself: can you imagine a cessation in racist speech on either side *while the war still continued?* It's not only wishful thinking, Roque -- it's preposterous, it's the cart before the horse in every meaningful way.
You say that putting "Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism" front and center will force them to "answer" for it. I have no idea what this means. Do you? A broad swath of the Muslim world is anti-Semitic. This is news to absolutely no one, not even Muslims. Yet you treat it as a goal comparable to dismantling settlements or reinforcing Fatah in the West Bank. So what's this about? You appear to me to be vindictive in the extreme. That's not wrong, depending on your outlook. But it certainly is wrong to treat "rubbing their noses in it" as a high-value objective for Israeli negotiations. I don't know any Israeli who has experienced Palestinian violence who has any interest in such a thing. They just want to reach an agreement and a cold peace.
Do these attitudes feed violence? Sure. So do settlements. So does Hamas as an organization, Hizbullah, Iran, Shin Bet brutality, economic hardship, poor educational systems, difficulty leaving the territories, political corruption, familial bonds, popular art and culture...it's a long list. And listen: there will NEVER come a day when everything feeding the violence stops. It's not possible, here or anywhere. So I'll ask you again: in light of the divorce between a civilian and military evacuation, what are we waiting for? Why are you hesitating?
Regarding taqiyya. I haven't any idea why the fact that it is a "religious" kind of lying makes it any different to you, as I assume you are not a Muslim. Your description of what happens when non-Muslims lie is almost too rich for words. Do you honestly believe that non-Muslim countries do not lie in the service of their political goals every day? Have you not followed the news in the US? Are you the one man in the universe who has not so much as caught a James Bond movie on cable? LYING IS PART OF DIPLOMACY AND WAR. It's a part of politics, no matter who you are, and oftentimes important people who do it suffer no consequences -- especially when they are acting on behalf of their countries. In any case, your lesson failed to address my other question to you, which was how on earth "assurances" from the same people supposedly making use of taqiyya were supposed to serve us more effectively than a phased military withdrawal and international monitoring.
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I considered including a provision against state-sponsored anti-Semitism when writing that response. (I'm very well versed in MEMRI's archive, no need to refer me.) I ruled it out for a few reasons:
1. No matter what Israel asks, this will not be a high priority issue for the PA, nor should it be. Under even the best of circumstances, they're going to be struggling to keep Hamas under control and maintain basic services to their civilian population. And this is all assuming that they can keep their own corruption under control. Asking them to overhaul their state media and education policies is like asking a contractor not to scuff your hardwood when he singlehandedly removes every item of furniture.
2. A great deal of Palestinian media and education is imported from the rest of the Arab world, especially Turkey and Iran -- a lot of that anti-Semitic stuff included. It's part of the reality of the Arab world today, and a lot of it dates all the way back to Nazism. So, two points here: a) the Palestinians can't be expected to turn into shining stars of tolerance unless they totally shut off the tap to the outside world, which ain't gonna happen; and b) in any case you'll notice that Israel enjoys a cold peace with Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and many other nations very much in spite of media saturated with anti-Semitic garbage.
3. That being said, I do agree with you that a lasting peace is going to require a change in tone from Palestinian leadership, as well as a change in attitude (if not tone) from Israel. I do honestly hope to one day see a pair of leaders from both people come to recognize that they share in a common tragedy, and that they have much more in common than they realized -- leaders who could actually make both peoples believe that it is possible to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine at the same time. However, I recognize two things: that this will never, ever happen without some changes on the ground moving in the right direction, and that to wait for it is tantamount to giving up on peace; and that some arrangements do not depend on this shift in attitude. As I said before, settlement withdrawal has plenty to recommend it that has nothing to do with Palestinians, and when it is divorced from a military withdrawal there is no reason for security concerns. So what's stopping us?
As for taqiyya: first of all, I have no idea what good "assurances" against taqiyya would do, since it is, after all, taqiyya. You might be surprised to learn that in the West (and in Israel) we also have a version of taqiyya. It's called "lying," and we do it all the time. How do you know the other guy isn't lying? Well, you never do, whether he's Muslim or Zoroastrian. You just try to put yourself in a position where it doesn't matter if he is. A phased military withdrawal over the course of many years, alongside international monitoring, is the best (and only) way I know of doing that. (Incidentally, it's in fact *more* effective than "assurances.") Do you have another idea?
Finally: yes, Palestinian anti-Semitism offends me, a great deal, as does all anti-Semitism. And apologies for it that blame Israeli aggression also offend me, so I won't do that. All I will say is that, though I am about as Jewish as they come, I do at times see the wisdom of the Christian doctrine of love, and I prefer to be the person who can be offended without feeling the need to take out my offendedness on other people, rather than the person who will sacrifice another 1 or 5 or 20 years of life in Israel to pent-up racism and aggression and hatred because some Palestinians think he deserves to die.
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Will -- as with most things Israel, the answer to your question differs widely depending on which 'who' we're talking about. I don't think Palestinians are ready to lose the settlements as an issue without a military withdrawal; and I don't think Israelis are ready to lose the settlements period. So no, it's not palatable at the moment. I would guess at two possible ways to change this: either to somehow dismantle Hamas and Hizbollah once and for all (not likely), or to come to some kind of acceptable compromise on the Iranian nuclear issue (slightly more likely).
Roque -- I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, if not the details. (The government does not support the settlements? Did you read the tax dollar bit above? And who do you think is sending the military out there to guard each settlement? Moses?) But here's an attempt at a response:
I don't think Israel should need a response to begin a civilian withdrawal the likes of which I've outlined above. There are plenty of reasons to start dismantling settlements that have nothing to do with the Palestinians: they encourage lawlessness and violence, they sap the country's finances, and they have become a cudgel with which to beat Israel over the head. (I don't subscribe to the fantasy that if the settlements disappear the international community will suddenly love Israel. But one less cudgel certainly isn't going to *hurt*.) Withdrawal doesn't need to happen everywhere all at once, but the longer Israel waits, the harder it will be.
I do think you're right that Israel needs a substantive response from the PA before a military withdrawal becomes feasible. You can pretty easily divide it into two categories: negotiating positions, and ground changes.
If I'm Israel, here's what negotiating positions I require in exchange for a phased military withdrawal: complete renunciation of the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees, in exchange for compensation and resettlement in the West Bank paid for by Israel and the international community. (This is the big one.) Little ones: Settlement infrastructure to be counted toward Israeli reparations. Agreement to a Palestinian state to be monitored internationally for x number of years (I'm not sure how long I'd like that to go.) Agreement to Israeli control of the Jordan/Palestine border for x number of years, as well. Guaranteed legal access for Jews to holy sites within the West Bank. Some may want to include Israeli control of Jerusalem in this list; I don't personally see the point in that.
Ground changes I would need: replacement of Mahmoud Abbas with a new head of state. (I personally liked Fayyad, although I understand he's not particularly popular. It would also be possible to go outside of the current party leadership and tap somebody like Sari Nusseibeh, the academic moderate and head of Al Quds University, who is quite popular. Either way, the point is that Abbas is weak and needs to go.) An electoral system that outlaws extremist parties, where extremist is defined as any party calling for the violent destruction of Israel.
These are just off the top of my head. And they are, by the way, only the demands that Israel would be making of Palestine. There is a long list of things it would also need from the US and the UN to make this work, from money to continued military training etc.
On “The Right to Exist”
Try 2.5%. Maybe 3%, if you want to stretch it.
Opposition to the idea that separation is racially MOTIVATED is very simple, and it starts by pointing out that Israelis are interested in security, not racial purity. We can have a lengthy discussion over whether the measures they have taken are creating a more secure future. But the idea that Israel has cordoned off certain roads in the West Bank because it believes Palestinians are racially inferior is ridiculous. It requires completely ignoring the give and take of the last six decades of history between the two peoples.
As for your US example. In certain places in Israel (Akko, Nazareth) it stacks up, in others (Haifa, Tel Aviv) it does not. But I'm not suggesting that Israel is a racism-free country. On the contrary. Israelis are at times very troublingly racist, the product of violence that has gone on too long. But under apartheid (and in the US during slavery, for that matter) the racism was government-sponsored. There is no such thing against Israeli Arabs, end of story. They have three parties in parliament, full rights as citizens, and are portrayed positively in Israeli popular culture on a regular basis, from Israeli Sesame Street to sitcoms, etc.
As for Palestinian Arabs, return to step 1 of this argument. There is obviously a huge difference between the lives of these two groups, despite common ethnicity. But again, my point is to say that the difference in their lives tells you something about what the Israelis care about. Right or wrong, they perceive Palestinians as a security threat, not a racial problem.
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Clearly that's the case. I was only bringing up the example to point out that calling the Israeli system 'apartheid' attaches a lot of racial baggage to it that doesn't really seem to be there, when you consider the Israeli Arab population.
In a binational state, if that state were the result of too much status quo, I think full-on apartheid would be something that we would see. I just wrote about it the other day here: http://somepolitical.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-numbers-on-two-state.html
Regarding continued Israeli refusal to abandon the settlement project, and the inevitable binational state that would be produced: "At a certain point in the (ever-nearing) future, Israelis are going to have a national decision to make with regard to their indigenous Palestinian population. Extend them the rights of citizenship, ethnically cleanse them, or just go full-Apartheid? This is not an imaginary scenario."
We are on the same page when it comes to the consequences of this behavior. But 'apartheid' as a racial word is also a stick with which many people beat Israel over the head, whether it fits or not.
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Out of curiosity, Chris...how large do you think the settler population is? I suspect you have an inflated conception of its size based on the news coverage...
I'm no apartheid expert, but one reason it doesn't seem like an accurate comparison to me is the Israeli Arab population, which enjoys full rights in territorial Israel. Life in the West Bank is far from pleasant, but to argue that it is racially motivated seems to require that you ignore the well-being of the many Arabs who have Israeli citizenship.
ED: Obviously, a nuclear attack would be more likely in Tel Aviv than Jerusalem. But if you're really asking, then yes, I do personally believe that there are many radical Muslims willing to blow up Jerusalem in order to destabilize Israel.
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Chris, note that part of the fear of rockets in the W Bank is how easily they can hit Jerusalem (and longer range ones Tel Aviv.) To illustrate, it's the difference between let's say Cuban missiles hitting Tallahassee, and Cuban missiles hitting Washington, DC.
The other fear, which I'm surprised hasn't yet been mention, is the possibility of a nuclear or other large-scale material making its way into the W Bank over the Jordanian border. Simply in terms of size this is a much scarier risk than it is for Gaza, especially considering Palestinians in the W Bank still enjoy some mobility into and out of Israel. Just a little food for thought.
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I think you're missing my point, and perhaps inadvertently even making it, as well. I had the chance to hear Akiva Eldar, the author (http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Land-Settlements-Territories-1967-2007/dp/1568584148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241044756&sr=8-1) and Ha'aretz columnist a few weeks back. He subscribes to a popular theory on the Israeli left, which is that Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza not to begin the dismantling of the settlement project, but to reinforce it in the West Bank by providing an object lesson in the Strip. In this telling, Sharon knows very well that unilateral movement in Gaza will ultimately collapse the region into chaos, undercutting any argument toward settlement dismantling in the West Bank.
Whether or not this is true of Sharon, it certainly does accurately describe the conversation over settlements taking place in Israel today. You have simplified my question to "well in Gaza look what happened, that’s going to happen in the West Bank too", and attempt to counter this by pointing out that Gaza "was not given a chance." But this is precisely my point! Unilateral withdrawal in Gaza deprived it of a chance. The Israelis evacuated without giving the Palestinians clear expectations for what they wanted in return; when they (predictably) received nothing, the Israeli right was all too able to play the victim card, bemoaning incorrigible Palestinian violence in the face of amazing Israeli restraint.
So, to restate the question: how is a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank not the beginning of a tumble into the same trap? Settlements, perhaps, are one thing -- but what of the incredibly complex network of internal Israeli checkpoints that currently keep the region stable? Do you have any sense of what the risk of a Hamas takeover is, should these checkpoints disappear? I will hazard a guess and say 'no', because I also have no idea, and because I suspect not even the Shin Bet can say for certain.
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I couldn't help myself with this much, though. To the questions about the Egyptian border: Egypt does not open its border because Hamas is a regional branch of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is the minority political party in Egypt and an enemy of Mubarak's government. Treaties with Israel are entirely incidental to this fact, in more ways than one.
That's not a green light for the Israeli blockade, and if it seems a double standard to fault Israel for playing that game without faulting Egypt, well, it IS a double standard. But that's the price you pay for being a card-carrying democracy, and not an authoritarian regime.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.