Birthday Month Roundup

It's February, which is Black History Month, or as it's better known around some parts, "Why Isn't There a White History Month" Month. It's also my birthday month! To celebrate the august occasion, here's a roundup!

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The Biden administration announces sanctions against named Israelis implicated in radical settler violence. And while it starts with four people, it lays the foundation for much more sweeping action. People say Tom Friedman is the Biden administration's external "whisper", but maybe he's listening to me?

Speaking of Friedman, I'd love it if his proposed "Biden doctrine" became a reality. It might be wishcasting, but then, it might not (see, e.g., the above entry).

A very interesting conversation between Joshua Leifer and some Israeli leftists, including Standing Together's Sally Abed (and credit where it's due on the hat tip). I particularly appreciate Abed completing a circle that often is left unconnected: "Palestinian liberation necessitates Jewish safety, and vice versa. And I say it to both sides. You’re pro-Israel? You need to liberate Palestinians. You’re pro-Palestinian? You need to talk about Jewish safety." As another conversant observed, it's very obvious "that Hamas went for everyone—that they weren’t just trying to kill Jews," and that acknowledgment is part of -- not a distraction from -- their calls for a ceasefire.

And speaking of Standing Together, the BDS movement is currently targeting them for a boycott as a "normalizing" op. For the most part, this smacks of jealousy -- Standing Together has been getting a bunch of good press as the first significant Israeli organization actively calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (while also stressing the importance of returning Israeli hostages), and if there's one thing BDS activists cannot abide, it's the notion that Israelis are valid contributors to the creation of a just future for Israelis and Palestinians. In my endless search for silver linings, however, I will say that probably the fastest way for Standing Together to gain credibility with more centrist-y Israeli and diaspora Jews is to be publicly hated by BDS. Great heroes need great villains, after all.

I'm on the record as supporting the right and utility of judges offering their extra-legal "moral" opinion on issues that come before them, so long as this opinion does not displace the formal legal analysis. Opinions like, say, Justice Stewart's in Griswold, which both characterized Connecticut's anti-contraception law as "uncommonly silly" (a moral judgment) while nonetheless concluding it was constitutionally permitted (a legal judgment) are valuable contributors to public conversation. On that note, Judge Jeffrey White's just-released opinion dismissing on political question grounds a claim that the Biden administration's support for Israel is violating its duties under the Genocide Convention (a ruling which is I think indisputably correct on the law), while also making evident his personal sympathy with the plaintiff's substantive arguments, is -- regardless of whether one agrees with said moral judgment -- exactly how opinions like this should go. Some judges on the Northern District of Texas would do well to take notes. (For what it's worth, Judge White is a George W. Bush appointee and now a senior judge in the Northern District of California).

Oregon Republicans in the state legislature have a tendency of just refusing to show up to work to sabotage our state's legislative agenda. Oregon voters got tired of it and passed a constitutional amendment barring legislators from running for reelection if they miss too many session. Oregon Republicans kept doing it. And now those Oregon Republicans are barred from running for reelection.

Turkey Implements the Stefanik Principle

One of the more common refrains I heard by persons who wanted to defend Elise Stefanik's bad faith grandstanding on campus free speech was the supposedly rhetorical question "how hard is it to simply condemn 'calls to genocide'?" The problem -- well, not the problem because that implies there is only one, but a problem -- is "who decides what count as a 'call to genocide'?" 

We already knew, for instance, plenty of campus actors characterizing Israel's conduct in Gaza as "genocidal"; and it was not long before South Africa brought its own "genocide" charge against Israel before the ICJ. If, as is not improbable, the ICJ rules that at least some of the genocide claims against Israel are "plausible", one can only imagine the turnabout that will occur by the usual on- and off-line subjects who just witnessed pro-Israel activists claim the skins of several high-profile academic actors on the principle of "zero tolerance for permitting speech 'supporting genocide.'" This turnabout was absolutely predictable and while I'm not sure "deserved" is exactly the right word to use here (given that the persons who will be victimized will almost certainly not be named "Chris Rufo" or "Bill Ackman"), it's hard to deny the karmic significance.

But we don't even need to wait that long to see this poisoned tree bear fruit. In Turkey, an Israeli national playing for a Turkish soccer club flashed a signal after scoring a goal meant to represent solidarity with the Israeli hostages who remain in Hamas' captivity. As a result, he's been arrested by the police for "supporting genocide", with threats of further recriminations by the Turkish Justice Minister as well as a promise by his team's president that he'd be kicked off the squad. It's entirely unsurprising that, in the wrong political climate, merely signaling sympathy for Israeli hostages will mark one as a genocidaire (hey, who remembers that essay just days after 10/7 that arguing that even grieving dead Israeli civilians was a means of fueling the Israeli death machine?). Again, all of this was obviously predictable in advance, and while I doubt Turkey is taking its cues from Congress' most craven opportunistic weasel, it still demonstrates the naivete of anyone who thinks that the answer to Stefanik's "genocide" question was "simple".

Words Have Consequences

I'm still traveling for the holidays, and so I don't anticipate writing anything especially substantive about South Africa's charge before the ICJ that Israel had failed to prevent acts of genocide, and incitement to genocide, in the Gaza Strip. But I did want to observe one thing.

I haven't read the document in detail, but word is that it is buttressed by citation to numerous public statements and tweets by various high-level Israeli government functionaries who've indulged in deeply extreme rhetoric vis-a-vis the Palestinian people. Consider the Ministry of Intelligence "concept paper" proposing ethnically cleansing Gaza's Palestinian population to Egypt, or the Israeli minister who floating dropping a nuke on Gaza. Harrowing stuff. And there's more where that came from.

The response to such rhetoric in many pro-Israel circles, from what I've seen, reminds me of how we were "supposed" to treat similar extreme rhetoric from the Trump administration. Persons on the "establishment" side of the GOP -- not MAGA types, but also not NeverTrumpers -- often acted as if it was unfair, a form of cheating, to treat extreme pronouncements by Trump or has lackies as if they actually were evidence of any sort of substantive intent on the part of the Trump administration. Don't we know he's a blowhard, a rabble rouser, that he's just playing to the base, that it's not serious? How outrageous, to act as if Trump's Muslim ban was a Muslim ban just because he said it was a Muslim ban.

There was something deeply pathetic about this mewling, in how it echoed the broader infantilization of the right. No matter how high it ascends and no matter how much power it amasses, one cannot be expected to treat the right seriously. It can never matter. And certainly, they can never be asked to take responsibility for what they say.

The same sort of apologias seem to percolate around the extremism amongst Israeli government officials. It's not so much people condoning the rhetoric, but they think it's just unreasonable, unkosher, a foul that it be viewed as anything other than the usual blowhards being blowhards. It's unfair that Israel might face consequences for what its ministers are saying aloud.

No. I mean yes, these blowhards are blowhards. But at some point, the price of becoming a president or a minister or a high-ranking government official is that your words have consequences. They aren't the equivalent of just shit-posting for LOLs or edgelording to own the libs. People are absolutely entitled to think that when high-level government officials say something, that something they said is evidence about actual government policy.

So I admit some satisfaction that these words are now being used as substantive evidence, that they are carrying consequences. They should. It's a good thing that they're not cost-free actions anymore.

To be sure: a charge of genocide is a grave one, and a finding should never be used as a means of saying "got 'em" towards even the most repugnant political figures. The findings necessary to establish intent are properly high, and to that extent the apologists are right that one has to actually do the work of showing that this rhetoric -- repellant as it is -- is actually manifesting as operational policy; one can't just cite the tweets and call it day. This rhetoric is evidence that makes it reasonable to look into the charge; it does not establish the veracity of the charge itself. And on the whole, while we may dispute what does and does not count as genocide, I don't think Israel's conduct crosses the threshold of what international bodies have themselves treated as genocide in the past, and it would be a little too in character for the ICJ to decide it needs to lower the bar now.

However. Words have consequences, and one consequence of having major government officials speak the way that they have is that an allegation which might otherwise seem completely outrageous or unfounded now have to addressed. When you've killed as many people as Israel has, and your ministers are speaking the way they do -- well, now you've got to defend yourself. You may have an explanation, but now you've got to actually give it. You lose the prerogative that people just accept on faith that these claims are absurd. That loss, and the need to actually defend against charges like this, is entirely a consequence of the Israeli government's own choices, and in particular the choice of Bibi to elevate the most vicious, far-right extremists imaginable into positions of power. Their words are now carrying a cost, and they should. There's nothing unreasonable, unfair, or unkosher about that.

How Many Genocides Are Occurring in the World Right Now?

A few weeks ago, I asked on BlueSky an admittedly morbid question: "approximately how many genocides does a given person think are currently in progress around the world right now?" I didn't get much in the way of responses, so now I'll ask again here and elaborate a bit on why I think it's a question worth asking.

I was inspired to return to this question based in part on an online conversation I had with a Palestinian friend a few days ago, after she characterized Israel's current campaign in the Gaza Strip as "genocide". Knowing she was a fierce opponent of Hamas, I was curious if she also thought that Hamas' 10/7 attacks were acts of "genocide" as well. She responded that in her view, they clearly were -- indeed, given what Hamas did combined with how Hamas leaders characterized their ambitions, she thought the case for calling it genocidal was almost beyond argument.

For my part, my instinct is that Hamas' attacks -- abhorrent as they were -- are not properly called "genocide" (nor is the Israeli response). I couldn't help but observe the resulting incongruity vis-a-vis Hamas, though -- the Palestinian anti-Zionist thought that Hamas had clearly committed acts of genocide; the Jewish Zionist thought that this allegation was a mischaracterization and misapplication of the term. Or, as I put it, "today, you're the Hasbarist shill and I'm the Hamas terrorist apologist." How the world turns.

But what accounts for our incongruous divergence?

Consider what I think is a reasonably popular, though not necessarily universally held, "folk" understanding of genocide where it refers solely to generational calamities. The Holocaust, for instance, saw the extermination of two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The Cambodian genocide witnessed the murder of one-third of Cambodia's entire population. The Rwandan genocide killed off somewhere around three-quarters of the Tutsi population. The Armenian genocide was responsible for the death of between 50 and 80% of the Armenian population. That's a hefty weight class to be in. And while I don't want to say percentage death toll is the absolute be-all-end-all of what qualifies as a "genocide", it seems fair to say that most human rights abuses, even most incidents of mass atrocity, will not come near that threshold. These are, again, once-in-a-generation sorts of events. 

Given that understanding, my sense that neither Israel nor Hamas' recent conduct qualifies as "genocide" is not based on any illusions that either party hasn't committed grave (and violent) injustices against the other. But amongst currently active conflicts, the cumulative death toll of the Israel/Palestine wars doesn't even break into the top 20, and that's including all deaths (military and civilian) by all parties across all incidents from 1948 to present. It is, again, just not in the same weight class as the paradigm cases above. The differences between what's happening in Israel and in Gaza, compared to what happened in, say, Rwanda, is a difference in kind and not just degree.

But the above "folk" understanding isn't the only way to understand genocide. I was at an academic conference this weekend, and at dinner I shared a table with a colleague that worked in the field of peace studies. She mentioned the genocide of native peoples in Canada relating to the "residential schools" program, and then added off-hand that the genocide was "ongoing" to this day. This is, I think it's clear, a broader understanding of genocide than the folk understanding. And based on analogous principles, it seems that the number of analogous state behaviors towards minorities that are "at least as bad" as Canada's current treatment of indigenous persons would be quite substantial. Of course, one sometimes hears similar claims made regarding ongoing genocides of indigenous persons in the United States, or for that matter ongoing genocide of African-Americans in the United States. But there are many other candidates around the world, from the Dominican Republic's treatment of Haitians, to Morocco's treatment of Sahrawi, to Brazil's treatment of its own indigenous population, to India's treatment of Muslims, to Iran's treatment of the Ba'hai (and that is a very non-exhaustive list).

Indeed, based on that threshold -- where "genocide" includes treatment of a national minority either as badly as or worse than Canada currently treats indigenous peoples -- I wondered how many active incidents of genocide currently occurred around the world. Dozens? Hundreds? I don't expect anyone to have a precise figure. But I'm curious as to answers even within an order of magnitude, because I think it can help illuminate what people actually mean by a word that unfortunately is starting to develop blurry and divergent meanings. When people speak of "genocide", are they talking about a concept that they imagine as generally occurring in zero or one place around the world -- maybe two if things are dire? Or are they talking about something occurring in dozens or hundreds of different places simultaneously? If one person says "genocide" and envisions the latter, to a hearer who imagines the former, it's small wonder they'll often feel as if they're talking past one another. More broadly, the person whose position is "there is one genocide currently going on anywhere in the world, and it is in Gaza" can, I think, fairly be accused of making an unreasonable and biased assessment (again, check that top-20 list). But the person who says "there are dozens of genocides currently going on across the world, from Canada to Brazil to India to Iran to Morocco to China to the Dominican Republic -- and Gaza is one of them" can't be criticized in quite the same way (though potentially they can be queried as to why, with so many genocides occurring simultaneously, this one has so decisively grabbed their attention).

And for what it's worth, I want to be clear that the possibility that a given understanding of "genocide" would yield a far higher number of incidents than the folk understanding does not mean that understanding is wrong or implausible. As I tell my students, a sad fact is not the same thing as a false fact, and the world might be a sad or horrible enough place that there are innumerable incidents of "genocide" occurring all at once at any given moment. Nonetheless, I think there are implications of defining genocide in this more expansive fashion that are worth thinking through. Among them:

1. The more expansive definition necessarily changes how the international community can relate to ongoing "genocide". Where genocide is generational, it is at least plausible to demand that a case of "genocide" be a sort of drop-everything, all-eyes-on-this emergency demanding otherwise impermissible forms of intervention (e.g., "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine). This orientation is neither feasible nor tractable in circumstances where there may be hundreds of "genocides" occurring simultaneously.
2. The broader definition significantly raises the likelihood of there being cases of "cross-genocides"; two populations simultaneously enacting (or attempting to enact) genocidal policies upon the other. While in concept it isn't impossible for there to be a "cross-genocide" case under the folk definition, practically speaking it's hard to imagine. By contrast, a "dueling genocides" situation is the consequence of, for example, my friend's conclusion that both Israel and Hamas were engaging in acts of genocide -- both the government of Israel, and the (de facto) Palestinian government in Gaza, are simultaneously "genocidal states". This possibility, in turn, rests quite uneasily with a host of intuitions many of us hold about what genocide is, how to respond to it,  and what ought to be the geopolitical position of the "genocidal" state, nearly all of which imagine clear delineations between perpetrator and victim groups. What does it mean to intervene on behalf of a group to protect it from genocide under circumstances where, by stipulation, that group is also attempting to instantiate its own genocide?

And these reasons don't get into the possibility of linguistic exploitation: relying on popular understandings of genocide predicated on the folk view (of generational rarity) to direct attention and resources to an incident whose viability as a "genocide" is only plausible under a more expansive, revisionist account.

For my part, one reason I tend to prefer the "folk" understanding is that I think it preserves a more fine-grained taxonomy for speaking about human rights abuses and atrocities. We don't lack for language to describe incidents of mass atrocity, war crimes, indiscriminate bombings, occupation, wars of aggression, and so on. Hence, it makes sense to me to reserve "genocide" for the class of cases that are incidents of full-scale, widespread, intentional targeted extermination qua extermination, which are a tiny subset of even incidents of substantial civilian suffering and death. The Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Cambodian genocide -- events such as these strike me as sufficiently different in kind from other incidents of even mass atrocity and widespread death and destruction that it's better to retain a unique term to describe them. This is particularly so given that we don't lack for a rich vocabulary to describe other forms of mass violence and atrocity such that we need to press genocide into more expansive service. 

But that assessment aside, I do think we can learn a lot by demystifying what people mean when they say "genocide", and in particular the degree to which they are intending to signify some sort of singular, once-in-a-generation evil versus something that is (sadly, horrifyingly) a more general feature of political repression and ethnic subjugation that is common around the world.

Patterns of Discourse and Omar's "Present" Vote

As you've probably seen, Rep. Ilhan Omar voted "present" on a House resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. She contended that the resolution, which passed 405-11 (not including the "present" votes of Omar and two of her colleagues), was a "cudgel in a political fight" and that recognition and accountability for human rights atrocities "should be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull of geopolitics." She also suggested that the U.S. had no standing to speak out on the Armenian Genocide without recognizing the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and Native American genocide.

This explanation did not seem to satisfy many people. That includes me -- I think this was a terrible vote paired with a terrible apologia for the vote, and she deserves to be raked over the coals for it.

But since, apparently, a bit of genocide wishy-washiness is less hot and emotionally fraught than a debate over "Benjamins" (seriously: this is The Bad Place), I wonder if we might take this opportunity to reflect -- with cooler heads -- on some patterns that I think are repeating themselves

On the one hand: A great many people otherwise fond of or sympathetic to Ilhan Omar have been very sharply critical of her vote. She does have some defenders, but at the outset they seem to be relatively few and far between. On the other: many of Omar's critics are not people "otherwise fond of or sympathetic to" Ilhan Omar, and are less disappointed than they are elated to have a valid excuse to launch another pile-on.

People in the first category have certainly observed the fact of the second category and are uncomfortable contributing to the "pile-on", which they see as reflecting particular anti-Black and Islamophobic biases. After all, why is there such intense focus on Omar's "present" vote, as compared to the eleven Representatives who actually voted "no" (all Republicans) or even the other two "present" votes (Republican Rep. Paul Gosar and Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson)? For example, Rep. Johnson, who apparently has gone on the record saying she denies the Armenian Genocide outright, would seemingly deserve an even greater degree of scorn. And of course, those who outright voted against the resolution should face even more intense condemnation.

There is, to be sure, an answer to the "why Omar" question that doesn't boil down to "because of her identity". She has a much higher profile than does Eddie Bernice Johnson or Paul Gosar, she styles herself as a human rights advocate, there are many people who are disappointed in her that probably have no particular interest or hope in what Virginia Foxx does. Nonetheless, it is hard to say with a straight face that Omar's identity is playing no role in the dynamic. And the effect remains that the Black Muslim women makes a mistake and gets obliterated for it even as other, predominantly White colleagues effectively get a free pass for the same or worse conduct.

And here's the real kicker: the genuine, non-prejudicial, fairly-motivated critics of Omar who are speaking out based on sincerely held and non-opportunistic commitments to human rights? I don't think there is anything they could have reasonably done (save not speaking out at all) to prevent their condemnation from contributing to the pile-on effect. Even if that's not what they want, even if it makes them queasy. The dynamics in play here go beyond them; in the current moment there is not a way to in any robust sense speak critically about Omar (including justifiably critically) without carrying the risk that it will be harnessed by more primordial political actors eager to hoist up the pinata again. It would be wrong to say that this outcome was desired by the genuine critics; it would I suspect be equally wrong to say it could have been avoided by those critics.

Do you get it? Do you see the pattern? In l'affaire Benjamins, it was often claimed that Omar's critics were wholly and entirely right-wing smear merchants, and that it was their fault -- or more than that, their desire -- that she be subjected to a completely over-the-top orgy of histrionic condemnations that seem far disproportionate to her offense. This allegation, in turn, infuriated those of her critics who were genuinely motivated by non-opportunistic liberal instincts and concerns about antisemitism, and who wanted to both send a clear message that "this is not okay" but had no desire to endorse a witch-hunt.  Yet Omar's defenders, in effect, viewed that entire posture as disingenuous -- crocodile tears by political arsonists. Omar's critics are her critics -- some just put on a better figleaf of respectability than others.

One might hope that this go-around might offer some critical distance illuminating the pattern. Some of Omar's defenders in the last controversy are among her critics this time; perhaps they can learn to empathize with their peers in recognizing the genuinely uncomfortable position they find themselves in, and the difficulty (if not impossibility) of insulating their valid criticisms from enlistment into more unsavory political projects. And I'd also hope that some of Omar's critics, for those whom this issue has a less immediate pull on their psyche, can see how she really is being singled out in a way that seems anomalous given her degree of offense compared to other wrongdoers (a recognition which by necessity acknowledges there is a degree of offense!). In the history of debates over recognizing the Armenian genocide, after all, she is by no means the only actor to have gotten it wrong.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXVII: The Armenian Genocide

There's an antisemitism scandal at Rutgers University, and this one doesn't involve Jasbir Puar (she does have a new book coming out though, criticizing Israel for not killing more Palestinians. You think I'm joking).

No, this one centers around microbiology professor Michael Chikindas, whose social media feed contains a veritable smorgasbord of antisemitism, from calling Judaism the "most racist religion in the world", to putting up images claiming Jews control everything from the Federal Reserve to the sex trafficking industry, to posting a cartoon where a Jew literally steals money from poor children to give it to Israel. Oh, he also wants everyone to know that Israel has a lot of gay people (I guess "pinkwashing" doesn't work on everyone).

But let's cut through the old and hone in on the new.

In one post, Chikindas claimed, “Israel is the terrorist country aimed at genocidal extermination of the land’s native population, Palestinians,” and added: “we must not forget that the Armenian Genocide was orchestrated by the Turkish Jews who pretended to be the Turks.”

Now, I've actually tracked Jewish discourse around the Armenian genocide before. I was sharply critical when Jewish organizations soft-played the issue to appease Turkey, and I was vocal in praise when they moved towards recognition. But this is the first time, I think, that I've heard that Jews actually orchestrated the genocide while "pretend[ing] to be the Turks." Crafty!

Fortunately, Chikindas claims he has Jewish descent and even used to be married to a Jew (hey, just like Alice Walker!). So any concerns about antisemitism are obviously spurious.

But just to remove all doubt, Chikindas says he is absolutely open to having a "civilized" conversation about his claims, e.g., "These jewish motherfuckers do not control me. They can go and fuck each other in their fat asses."

"Genocide", Black Lives Matter, and the Persuasive Definition

Words have meanings. But those meanings are liable to change. One motivator for seeking a change in a word's meaning -- to have it encompass something that currently falls outside of its ambit -- is to harness the emotive punch associated with that word. "Democracy", for example, is a word with many positive associations, and so people very frequently argue that various concepts or norms not currently associated with "democracy" should, in fact, be considered democratic and thereby fall under the beneficent aura of "democracy". So too with negatively-connoted words -- racism, rape, fascism. We push things we don't like into those categories (or, more accurately, stretch those categories to encompass things we don't like) so as to capture their negative power; to tie them together with the harsh vitriolic impact of those terms. This practice is what philosopher Charles L. Stevenson called the "persuasive definition."

The persuasive definition has a somewhat shady reputation. It is seen as blurring previously sharp meanings. It can be viewed as illicitly seizing moral force rather than gaining it organically. Frequently, it is practiced as a sort of sleight-of-hand -- staying deliberately ambiguous about whether one really means to evoke the "original" meaning of the term or not. Yet at some level I think the persuasive definition is responsible for virtually all attempts to push the boundaries of language. The whole reason we bother to argue that a given concept should be identified as "freedom," as opposed to coming up with some new name for it ("beebom"), is because "freedom" carries with it a cluster of emotive meanings holding real political purchase, while "beebom" does not. The connotive impacts of language are sites of power; obviously they will be contested. It's far from clear that such contestation is wrong, or even avoidable.

Much of the Jewish reaction to the Israel section of the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) platform has focused on its contention that Israel is engaging in a "genocide" of Palestinians. I haven't written on this directly yet; by and large I endorse the measured and principled response of organizations like T'ruah, J Street, and the ADL -- each of whom recognizes the critical importance of the issues Black Lives Matter organizes around, each of whom recognizes the essential insights of many elements of the MBL platform, and each of whom leveled sincere and valid objections to the way it conceives of and speaks about the world's sole Jewish-majority state. I also recoil at the efforts by some on the fringes of the Jewish community to demand Jewish silence when the MBL turns it gaze to Jewish issues, and bristle when they act as if objecting to particular language in a particular platform is akin to closing off all critical discussion of Israel whatsoever. When If Not Now activists claim to "recognize the links between black liberation, Palestinian liberation and Jewish liberation", but demand that Jewish organizations simply accept without question what MBL says about the most prominent manifestation of modern Jewish liberation, they render Jews second-class members of our own struggle. That sort of behavior is incompatible with Jewish equality; it is reflective of a situation where Jewish marginalization is not seen as resting on equal turf with that of other groups.

But that issue is, for the most part, best left for another time. I want now to return to the "genocide" language and the matter of the "persuasive definition". Two of the authors of this section, Ben Ndugga-Kabuye and Rachel Gilmer, have talked to Jewish media about how this language came about, and I think it is evident that the persuasive definition element is very much in play here. They and others asserted that "genocide" need not refer to offenses identical to the Nazi Holocaust, or even ones which involve systematic extermination and mass murder. The point of using the term "genocide" was to evoke the gravity associated with that term, to hammer home the severity of the injustice experienced -- even if that injustice is, in the words of Robin Kelley, more of a "cultural genocide -- losing a culture, losing a language, losing your land." From their vantage, the orthodox definition of "genocide" monopolizes emotive and organizing power in the hands of a particular class of wrongs; preventing them from being harnessed to combat other injustices that are pressing in their own right. When they claim genocide, they are acting against framings that view the wrongs in question as "mere" violence (who doesn't experience violence some of the time?) or discrimination (who hasn't been maltreated on occasion?). Genocide helps evoke the injustice as the sort of wrong which threatens, in a real way, to make ordinary practices of living as a cohesive social group impossible.

This, I think, presents the case for the reasonability of "genocide" in a fair light. Yet nonetheless there are, I think, Jewish objections to the deployment of "genocide" language here that I think have very strong force and demand serious consideration. The most obvious is the suspicion that the meaning being evoked here is not being deployed in an impartial manner; it writes a check Jews are not entitled to cash. If "genocide" can include "cultural genocide" (things like "losing a culture, losing a language, losing your land") there would seem to be a very strong case that what happened to North African and Middle Eastern Jews over the course of the mid-20th century was a "genocide" -- and a genocide orchestrated under the banner of anti-Zionism to boot. Those communities were virtually obliterated; communities of thousands of years wiped out within the space of a few decades, albeit mostly by "ordinary" expropriation, discrimination, and violence rather than any generalized politics of extermination. Yet it seems unlikely that MBL would agree to such a labeling. It identifies with anti-Zionist movements in the Middle East; it would object strenuously to being deemed complicit in a genocidal project. Their reticence, in turn, calls  into question whether they seriously believe in the new definition they're forwarding -- will they apply it to friend as well as foe? I was talking the other day to the executive director of a prominent Middle Eastern Jewish organization who spitting mad about the MBL platform and (especially) the demands by groups like JVP that all Jews endorse it without reservation (On JVP: "They completely ignored us for over a decade and now they want to speak on our behalf?"). It's not that her group wants to call what happened to Jews like her a "genocide" (though they have used "ethnic cleansing"); but she is well aware that this discursive reframing is not done on her behalf and is not being made available to her. 

We could push the argument further -- groups like Hamas call for a genocide of Jews in a very "traditional" sense, but even some of the purportedly progressive organizations operating in MBL's circle who would abhor such exterminationist desires nonetheless campaign for a recreation of a Middle Eastern universe where there is no longer a sovereign and independent space of Jewish life capable of self-creation and self-determination. Is that project properly termed "genocidal"? Are they willing to cop to the legitimacy of that label? Discriminatory application of the new persuasive definition is an identifiable wrong, and one that is worth calling out. It suggests that the term is not being used as part of a genuine egalitarian political program, but as a "ticket good for this ride only".

But there is a deeper problem here worth interrogating. The term genocide, as many of the MBL platform defenders do recognize, has a special significance and sensitivity to the Jewish community. Its significance to the Jewish community, in turn, has been the subject of considerable frustration to those who frequently find themselves adverse to the mainstream Jewish community. Often, they treat the Holocaust as a sort of unearned advantage for Jews -- a chip or a card that Jews can use to tilt the discursive game in our favor, as when Naomi Klein accused Jews of thinking "we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card." The contemporary Jew, they seem to think, is downright lucky that his or her relatives perished in the camps -- look at the bounty it's gotten us! How fortunate we are, to have this talisman of the Shoah that we can wave around to ward off all criticism going forward! They treat the Holocaust not as a source of trauma but as a source of privilege, and an unjust privilege at that. Sometimes this occurs in a very explicit manner, as in Holocaust denial or contentions that it was actually part of the Zionist plan all along. More often it is implicit, with the vaguely acknowledged Jewish suffering in the Holocaust placed on equal footing with the illegitimate benefits Jews seized in its wake ("Germany," Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, "is guilty of two wrongs. One was what they did to the Jews. And now the suffering of the Palestinians."). Accordingly, their approach to genocide and the Holocaust is focused on neutering this illicit advantage, of depriving Jews and Jewish groups of their capacity to rely on it for staking claims and demanding hearings. If Jews fall on both sides of the "genocide" ledger, then the Holocaust variable is canceled out and the Jews return to our starting position.

The simplest way of expressing this problem, then, is to return to the issue of the persuasive definition as a sleight-of-hand. Even if in private MBL organizers might agree that the "genocide" they see occurring in Israel and Palestine is meaningfully distinct from the Nazi Holocaust, adopting the label purposefully elides the distinction. The point of using the term is precisely to appropriate the emotive power that largely emerged from the crematorium smokestack, and the point is also to posit an equality between what the Jews had done to them then and what the Jews are doing to others now, all the while denying that they really are saying Gaza is like Auschwitz, or really saying occupation is like gas chambers. That gambit comes off as disingenuous, and reasonably so. From the Jewish vantage point, what is happening is that cultural capital derived in part from the ashes of burnt Jews is stripped from those bodies and turned on their descendants. It is nothing less than the leveraging of Jewish oppression against Jews, and that is always in my view anti-Semitic.

Yet there is something important to be said about this issue of the role "genocide" plays in discourse by and about Jews. I agree that the Holocaust, to some extent, has provided a foundation for Jewish claims staked against non-Jews, in the same way that I think that slavery and Jim Crow have provided a foundation for Black claims against Whites -- though in both cases that foundation is honored less frequently than often assumed. But what underwrites this foundation? Frequently, critics suggest that Jews, as Edward Goldstein put it, think "that the Holocaust confers permanent, unassailable virtue on Israel and Jews." But this is nonsense -- oppression doesn't confer virtue on its victims, and nobody sensible believes otherwise. Rather, the Holocaust's relevance was not showing the perfection of the Jews, but the imperfection of the Gentiles. Used to being the measure of all things, the Holocaust (as I wrote in response to Goldstein):

destabilizes the hegemonic presence of non-Jewish voices and thus creates space for Jewish voices to be heard. To the casual observer that looks like a claim that Jews are "perfect", but that's only because Jews are claiming the right to speak on equal terms with a non-Jewish presence that had previously arrogated to itself a label of universal transcendence.

For thousands of years, for much of the world, part of the cultural patrimony enjoyed by all non-Jews -- spiritual and secular, Church and Mosque, enlightenment and romantic, European and Middle Eastern -- was the unquestionable right to stand superior over Jews. It was that right which the Holocaust took away, or at least called into question; the unthinking faith of knowing you were the more enlightened one, the spiritually purer one, the more rational one, the dispenser of morality rather than the object of it. To be sure, some people were better positioned to enjoy this right than others. And some people arrived onto the scene late in the game, only to discover that part of the bounty they were promised may no longer be on the table. Of course they're aggrieved! The European immigrant who never owned a slave but was at least promised racial superiority is quite resentful when the wages of Whiteness stop being what they once were. Similarly, persons who lived far from the centers of Christian or Muslim power where Jewish subordination was forged are nonetheless well aware of what was supposed to be included in modernity's gift basket. They recognize what they've "lost" as acutely as anyone else.

"The Germans," the old saying goes, "will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz." And not just the Germans. Many people deeply resent the Jews for what Auschwitz took away from them -- the easy knowledge that their vantage point was elevated over and superior to that of the Jews, the entitlement to be able to talk about Jews without having to listen to Jews. The desire to neuter the Holocaust is a desire to return to that old state of affairs. And so it shouldn't surprise anyone that Jews exhibit a special ferocity over the meaning of "genocide". As noted above, the controversy of this MBL language has in large part played out in terms of whether it is even proper for Jews to register an objection. Are we valid contributors to the conversation? Are we equal players in this struggle? This is no coincidence. When people charge the Jewish state with genocide, part of what they are doing -- with varying degrees of explicitness -- is telling Jews "this concept which obliged us to listen to you no longer can underwrite that duty." And in that brave old world, they can return to baseline that had existed for thousands of years -- where it was unthinkable, outrageous, blasphemous, for a Jew to have the temerity to contest a non-Jewish articulation of Jewish experience.

The debate over the meaning of genocide runs hot because for an important sector of progressive discourse, "genocide" is the only concept that grants Jews access to campaigns for equality as among their primary subjects. What else is left? Generic human equality? Even if Jews ever had it, such universalism is passe anyway. Anti-racism? We're not people of color, no matter what the White Supremacists say and even when we're talking about a Jewish state where over half the population is not of European descent. Non-discrimination? Everyone knows Jews are anti-discrimination winners, even when Jews make up over half the victims of religious-based hate crimes in the United States and are targeted for a welter of discriminatory campaigns to drive us out of cultural, political, and academic exchange. Genocide is the last firewall left standing; the last citadel the forces of Gentile Supremacy have not yet been able to overrun. Once that flag is taken, the non-Jew can finally break free, soar beyond the fallen Jew, and reassume her rightful place of looking down on us from up on high.

None of this entails abandoning the struggle for racial justice -- including, it should be said, justice for Jews of color in and out of Israel -- that is embodied in the Black Lives Matter message. We pursue that goal because it is right and because it is just, and that is reason enough. Nor do I necessarily think Jews should disassociate from the broader Black Lives Matter campaign. It is notable that both the hard right and the far-left have united in preaching a message of silence to the Jewish mainstream vis-a-vis Black Lives Matter -- the former the silence of shunning, the latter that of acquiescence. Yet it is only engagement -- open, honest, vulnerable engagement that takes neither endemic racial injustice nor ingrained anti-Semitism off the table -- that offers a way forward. No relationship is free of missteps, wounds, hurts, and wrongs. Relationships are built from what we do after the hurt is identified, in the bravery to return to the fray, announce the wound, and hope for growth. If we think anti-Semitism is a ubiquitous problem, the corollary is that anti-Semitism will be found in organizations that nonetheless demand our engagement, that cannot and should not be written off. Jonathan Zasloff is right to say that one of the morals of the MBL platform story is that the Jewish community as a whole -- not just a non-representative few -- needs to be in the room. We continue to speak, not because it will work, but because it could. And sometimes, that's enough.

A modified version of this post was published in Tablet Magazine.

Early Summer Roundup

May is a quiet month for me. June and July and August? Less quiet. So I'm trying to get work done now before all the travel and teaching and testing comes up down the road.

In the meantime, here are some things to clear off my browser.

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A fun interview with Justice Clarence Thomas, dishing on his interests, his relationship with Justice Scalia, and his confirmation process.

The ADL will recognize the Ottoman Empire's genocide of Armenians at the turn of the 20th century. While recognizing that Turkey has an alarming inability to tell Jews apart when we advocate on this issue, I've long argued that this was a question of moral principle upon which the Jewish community cannot compromise.

An investigation into anti-Semitism at the Oxford University Labour Club has concluded that there were cultural problems and barriers to full Jewish inclusion, but not "institutional anti-Semitism." What does that mean? Nobody knows, since Labour refuses to actually publish the report. The author, Baronness Jen Royall, is not thrilled about her work being suppressed.

Melania Trump: Jewish reporter who received a torrent of anti-Semitic threats from Trump supporters "provoked them."

Turkey Inches Towards Entering the Adult World

Like a spoiled teenager who refuses to admit they can do anything wrong (or a southern bro who insists that the Civil War was a "states' rights" affair), Turkey is rather notorious for throwing a temper tantrum whenever someone tries to acknowledge basic historical facts about its WWI-era Armenian genocide. But perhaps we're seeing a baby step in the right direction, as Ali Haydar Konca, Turkey's minister to the EU, has taken a big step towards actual acknowledgment of the atrocity.

"The fact that massacres happened is explicit and clear and everybody accepts that. Right now, the issue is what it should be called. We will make a decision in our party about that,” Konca told the press, becoming the the Turkish official to admit that, in fact, a Genocide had occurred.

Now before we get too excited, Konca never actually used the term "genocide". That omission is noted later in the piece, although its belied by the last sentence of the block quote (and the title of the article: "Turkey’s New EU Minister Admits to Armenian Genocide"). And the article also has the usual array of charming quotes from other Turkish leaders, including the President's declaration that any EU statement on the subject will "go in one ear and out from the other because it is not possible for Turkey to accept such a sin or crime."

So perhaps not a seismic shift. But maybe a tiny, tiny breakthrough in the long process of becoming a mature democracy that honestly reckons with its past.

Too Serious For Discussion

My stance on recognizing Turkey's genocide of the Armenians at the turn of the 20th century is pretty straight-forward: do it. Turkey is embarrassing itself far more by throwing a temper tantrum anytime anyone acknowledges historical fact than it would be if it actually decided to reckon with its past in an honest and forthright manner. Turkey needs to grow up, and all of us have an obligation to the truth. This isn't a tough call.

So for the most part, Turkey's latest fit over this issue -- stemming from Pope Francis' commemoration of the genocide -- is not particularly interesting. I note it here only to add to a growing collection I've noticed regarding how people use "moral seriousness" as a defensive move against moral critique:

“I don’t support the word genocide being used by a great religious figure who has many followers,” said Mucahit Yucedal, 25. “Genocide is a serious allegation.”

Now genocide is a serious allegation. But that, on its own, is no reason for Pope Francis to keep silent. If anything, it is more imperative that the Pope break through the silence that has emerged around this issue so that the victims can be properly remembered. But it is and remains interesting how people routinely argue that because an allegation is "serious", it should not be made at all.

"!!!!" ... And Let Me Also Say: "!!!!"

Holy schmoly, Todd Kincannon (former executive director of the South Carolina GOP) wants to execute anyone who's ever been in contact with Ebola. This is part of a stream of horror that begins with "People with Ebola in the US need to be humanely put down immediately," continues through "The people of Africa are to blame for why it's so shitty. They could stop eating each other and learn calculus at any time," and concludes by stating "We should put Wendy Davis' vagina in charge of the Ebola outbreak. It will kill all of them without mercy and go to Nordstrom's afterwards."

And you know it's bad when "We need to be napalming villages from the air right now" doesn't even make my top three. My goodness.

Knesset Moves To Recognize Armenian Genocide

The Jerusalem Post reports that a Knesset bill officially recognizing Turkey's genocide of Armenians is moving forward. Historically, bills of this nature have stalled because of the importance of maintaining Israel's friendly relationship with Turkey. But now, with the two countries' ties at a historic nadir, that concern apparently has fallen off.

There was a similar reversal last year in the US Congress, where the House Foreign Relations Committee passed am Armenian genocide resolution, after years of seeing it narrowly fail. Jewish groups had historically been, at best, tepid with respect to the resolution, in part to assuage Turkey (which made it very clear that it would retaliate against Israel if Jewish groups didn't toe the line). As Turkey began to turn more aggressively against Israel that year, though, that leverage went away, and a major barrier to the resolution's passage disappeared with it.

Then and now, one can debate how much of this is "a diplomatic shot at Turkey draped in self-righteous clothing" versus "doing the right thing now that Turkey has already spent its leverage which had hitherto prevented it." Obviously, the latter is more noble than the former. But regardless, the important thing is that the victims be commemorated.

And as for Turkey, my message remains the same as its ever been: Grow up. Lot's of countries have horrible things in their history. It's true of the US, it's true of Israel, it's true of China -- it's probably true of every country -- and it's true of Turkey. Turkey has plenty of contemporary problems to deal with (e.g., it's Prime Minister threatening to expel its remaining Armenian population), but part of maturing as a nation is learning to deal with your past.*

* Which, incidentally, is part of why Israel's recent flurry of "anti-Naqba" legislation is so distressing.

The Sunday Return Roundup

Jill's been out of town this week, which means we missed both Project Runway and Hell's Kitchen. Tonight will be epic.

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Tennessee Mosque opponents plan to argue that Islam is not a religion.

Pam Geller is, as Jeffrey Goldberg correctly adduces, a "vile, racist creature".

A Colorado woman is charged with destroying a controversial piece of art which she says demeaned Jesus.

Dana Milbank argues that Glenn Beck is the conspiracy-theorists go-to source for mainstream validation.

Jon Chait shoots down a ridiculous Christopher Hitchens post attributing the passage of a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide to the nefarious "Isreal Lobby". I'd also refer back to this post.

I find it quite outrageous the fury with which some Orthodox groups react to calling ordained (whoops, apparently that word is taboo too) female religious leaders "Rabbas".

Monday Evening Roundup

Forgive me, I've been busy.

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A host of leftist luminaries, including Noam Chomsky, have lent their imprimatur to a book which, among other things, effectively denies the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Well, let nobody accuse folks of singling out the Jews anymore, at least.

The internal IDF probe of the Gaza flotilla incident (distinct from the independent Terkel commission) has found mistakes in the operation, but fully sanctioned the use of force by the commandos. One of its observations was that there aren't really that many ways to stop a ship from going someplace without boarding it, and there aren't that many ways to board a ship whose crew is violently resisting without yourself using some violence.

Whoever wrote the screenplay for this World War II thing I keep seeing on the History Channel needs to find a new profession. I mean, sheesh.

It's not nice to kick folks while they're down, but Matt Yglesias I think is appropriately harsh to journalists just now discovering that John McCain is 95% hack. He didn't really change, you just weren't paying attention.

Switzerland refuses to extradite Roman Polanski, bowing to an international outcry that punishing a convicted child rapist is a gross injustice when the rapist is friends with important to people.

Adam Serwer has a good post on the Justice Department dropping voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party.

The NAACP is considering a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement.

What If They All Went Away....

KJH is right, this is ironic:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken a harsh position against undocumented Armenian workers in Turkey, threatening to expel thousands amid tensions over allegations that Armenians were victims of “genocide” during the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

Resolutions passed recently in the United States and Sweden to brand the World War I killings as “genocide” undermine peace efforts with Armenia, Erdoğan said during his visit to London, according to excerpts from an interview with the BBC Turkish service published on the BBC Web site late Tuesday.
[...]
Referring to about 100,000 undocumented Armenians working in Turkey that Ankara has so far tolerated, Erdoğan said: “So what will I do tomorrow? If necessary, I will tell them ‘come on, back to your country’… I’m not obliged to keep them in my country. Those actions [on genocide resolutions] unfortunately have a negative impact on our sincere attitudes,” Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying.

The context, as noted, is the recent resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide as a genocide. You can read my latest commentary on the matter here.

Opposing Genocide? Is There Nothing Jews Won't Resort To?

A London-based Arabic newspaper is alleging that -- quelle surprise -- the Jewish lobby is behind the recent vote by a House committee to recognize the Armenian genocide by the Turks. The claim is that pro-Israel groups, which had previously backed Turkey on the issue, switched in retaliation for Turkey's vitriolic condemnation of Israel in the wake of Cast Lead.

As someone who was extremely critical of the ambivalence of Jewish organizations on this issue, I still have to call BS. First, there is virtually no evidence that Jewish organizations are the causal players here. Second, to the extent that there is a link between Turkey's relationship with Israel and America's decisions regarding the Armenian genocide, it's one that Turkey created when it threatened to hold hostage its relationship with Israel unless American Jews backed off on the issue. There's a difference between Jews nefariously embarrassing Turkey for being bold truthsayers regarding Gaza, and Jews taking the clearly correct and moral stance that they were hitherto deterred from due to Turkey's (now expended) threats regarding its diplomatic stances toward Israel.

That being said, my position remains the same as ever. Jewish organizations, same as everyone else, have an obligation to be truth-tellers on this issue. Aside from the necessity of doing justice to the victims, it does not bode well for the Jewish community if the historical fact of genocide is considered to be a legitimate political football.

On Another Armenia Resolution

The House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly passed a resolution declaring the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) a genocide. The Turks are, as is their wont, apoplectic.

My views on this issue are well-known and not particularly subtle. It is exceedingly important to recognize genocide as genocide. This is not simply a case of historical semantics -- the way that mass killings are remembered by history is a critical factor in deterring or enabling future perpetrators for enacting similar atrocities.

But the other thing I've been thinking about is this: while Turkey has threatened various retaliatory measures against the US whenever we inch towards official recognition of the Armenian genocide, there is a limit to how long they can do so. Turkey may withdraw overflight permission temporarily in protest, but do we really expect that in 3, 5, or 10 years, they'll still be denying us aid and pitching diplomatic fits over a House resolution passed years earlier? Yes, the prospect of losing some Turkish support in the region is intimidating. But once the resolution is out the door, the gains are locked in, while the losses are temporary and can be ridden out.

So you know what I say? Pass the damn bill.

The Revisionism Starts Now

The defense arguments made by Radovan Karadžić in his war crimes tribunal for genocide and ethnic cleansing, in which he argues that he was only responding defensively to Muslim aggression, leads Matt Yglesias to

wonder sometimes if Karadzic isn’t a man who was ahead of his time. If the Bosnian civil war had come around 10 years later, couldn’t you imagine him getting a sympathetic hearing from guys like Daniel Pipes and Andy McCarthy and Geert Wilders and Bibi Netanyahu and Frank Gaffney who’d be open to the argument that Karadzic & Milosevic were basically just somewhat unsavory allies in the Balkan front of the war on Islamofascism?

Nothing ahead about it. At least with regard to Slobodan Milosevic, this reassessment has already occurred amongst some right-wing figures, who wondered back in 2006 if "Milosevic ends up being remembered by history as a hero and a kind of prophet".

Quick Eats Roundup

The law school threw a dinner party downtown for us 2Ls, to celebrate us reaching the midway (if you know Hyde Park, you'll laugh at the pun) of our law school career. The dinner felt rushed though: arrive, 10 minutes later seated and eating, courses come out rapid fire, speech by Professor Masur, buses arrive, we go home. It was impressive.

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The bullet-proof tailor of Bogota. This is really, really cool. Involves a reporter getting shot in the gut.

Egyptian journalist union punishes two members for contacts with Israel. One of the writers is "editor in chief of the state-run weekly Democratiya, or Democracy", the title of which I find unbelievably ironic.

Anti-Semitic acts soared in France last year.

Radical rabbi blames gays for natural disasters, warns against eliminating DADT. For the record, Israel has let gays and lesbians serve openly for over 25 years (and it's still kicking!).

Appeals court reverses trial court decision which had thrown out genocide charges against Sudanese President Bashir; Kevin Jon Heller defends the reversal against critics.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) wants it all ways: the joy of controlling the legislative agenda, and the joy of attacking mythical "liberal extremists" for controlling the legislative agenda.

Justice Department issues a recruitment call for mentally retarded lawyers. Sarah Palin is presumably thrilled.

The Other Option

Lawrence Hart, a graduate student at CSU-Northridge, has an editorial in the Jerusalem Post entitled "The option no one wants to think about". Essentially, it says that Israel has lost its edge when it comes to counter-terrorism operation, and should take a page from Sri Lanka's book.

The Sri Lankans had more or less lived with this horror since 1983. Then 9/11 happened and a new dynamic, promoted by president George W. Bush and the United States, gave the Sri Lankans a new outlook. With a new administration elected on the promise of stopping the LTTE permanently, the country embarked on a full-scale military assault. It sent its army, much stronger than the Tamil tigers, into Tamil-occupied territory and began to take back town by town, going street to street in some cases, and killing anyone who resisted.

Jehan Perera of the Sri Lankan Peace Council said, "This government has taken the position that virtually any price is worth paying to rid the country of terrorism."

The price paid was indeed a heavy one. Many innocent people died. The Sri Lankan government deeply regrets the killing of innocent civilians, but most government officials believe they made a conscious choice to pay that price, and that the alternative status quo was simply no longer acceptable.

It was bloody and dirty, and they took a lot of criticism for it. The UN estimates that during the final months of fighting in Sri Lanka, at least 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed and 13,000 were wounded. But they also wiped out the scourge of terror, not stopping until total victory was declared last May. Today, Sri Lankans can once again walk the streets of their cities, visit the marketplaces and conduct business without the fear of being murdered in such gruesome ways that not even their loved ones can identify their bodies. It is a new dawn for Sri Lanka.

Israel can take a real lesson from this experience. The threat facing the Jewish state from the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon is no different than the threat to the north of Sri Lanka, and its coastline into the south that the Tamils occupied before the Sri Lankan army began its war of elimination.

THE TIME has come to admit that there might not be a solution to the Palestinian problem, but there is a way to end it. The next time terror forces Israel to take military action, this option should be considered. Israel must realize that there will be no peace with an intransigent enemy that refuses to act in good faith. Palestinian rejectionism and Iranian-backed Hizbullah threats to our existence will never be placated; they will not stop until Israel is destroyed. Once the population realizes this unfortunate reality, there is only one way to change it. Israel must take the Sri Lankan initiative and move into these areas one by one, cornering, enveloping and killing off all armed resistance.

We've already discussed how Sri Lanka can be a very instructive example. But I want to take a look at Mr. Hart's particular comparison, because I think it reveals something that is both very dark and very important at the same time.

Mr. Hart's proposal represents a possible future -- call it the Sri Lanka option. It is one where Israel simply abandons the idea of a negotiated settlement, recognizes its superior military might, and crushes all who get in its way. Effectively, it is the path that anti-Zionists seem to suspect Israel wants to take. What isn't clear, though, is why Israel hasn't taken it yet. The uninformed, of course, call Cast Lead (or the occupation generally) "genocide", but clearly they have no idea what the term means. If Israel was attempting to launch a genocide in Gaza, then they are the Keystone Kops of the genre (1,200 deaths out of a population of over 400,000? Please.). Trust me: if Israel was interested in genocide, they could do a far more thorough job of it.

There is a segment of Israel's most passionate critics -- a very naive segment, but perhaps not a consciously malicious one* -- whose political action rests on a simple premise: things can't get worse there. And if they do, the world won't tolerate it. And that's the ultimate check against Israel ever adopting the Sri Lanka option. If you tell them that their actions are likely to give succor to the Israeli right and diminish the prospects of the Israeli left, they'll say "as opposed to what? Israel can't make things worse. And if they do," say, by adopting Mr. Hart's eliminationist proposal, "the world won't stand for it. The whole edifice would come down." There is an upside, and no downside, to increased pressure, isolation, demonization, and hatred. Things can't get worse.

The history of the world (not to mention Sri Lanka itself), alas, does not seem to bear this outlook out. It is quite rare to see a state fall. When they do, it generally is either because of intractable domestic violence or a completely collapsed economy. One thing that almost never destroys a state, however, is wrongful conduct. North Korea is still around. China is still around. Burma is still around. Cuba is still around. Iran is still around. Zimbabwe is still around. Uzbekistan is still around. States don't fall because they do wrong.

We have an incredible capacity to allow the most hideous evils to pass by with only shocked gasps. We have an incredible capacity to look past grievous sins with only occasional tuts. I have an Israeli friend from Sderot, the town best known for serving as Hamas' local firing range and for being mostly ignored by the international left. He told me once that Israel's original sin was not the Nakba, it was not finishing the job. Not because such an act would have been justified -- it wouldn't have been, it would have been gravely evil, just as Mr. Hart's proposal is. But he simply observed that had they done so, they'd have come in for far less criticism than they do today for comparatively far milder harms. This observation, first expressed by Machiavelli, has been made before.

And Mr. Hart seems to be operating under the same logic. If Israel took its advice, it would come under virulent criticism. The trade unions would be outraged. The UN would be outraged. I'd be outraged. And all of our outrage would likely be for naught. States don't fall because they do wrong.

Maybe the rules for Jews are different. It's plausible. The normal standards don't apply to us, after all -- it is quite easy for me to imagine that a world which yawned through countless acts of barbarism, massacre, torture, mutilation, and murder would suddenly see its passions aroused when Jews are the perpetrators -- to the degree that they would be willing to intervene and stop it. But I'm doubtful. I think we'll see what we usually see: angry words, little action, and lots of forgetfulness.

There is, in other words, another option. The choices aren't "status quo" or "just peace". There is also "ethnic cleansing". And the more Israel sees that adopting liberal policies or using the tools of reconciliation yield no quarter from its critics (as when its most integrated, reconciliation-minded soccer team is the target of protest), the more likely these options become.

It can get worse. It can always get worse. And if it does, the world will do what it always does: ignore it.

* There is another segment, of which I genuinely think groups like the STUC belong to, that also does not believe things can get worse but also has no interest as to whether they get better. These groups are fundamentally malevolent, and insofar as they exist in a deliberately symbiotic relationship with Israeli extremists to further their own cynical ends, they ought to be held to account with their partners in Israel if the horrors they stoke come to pass.

UPDATE: A repost to this quote of the evening seems appropriate:

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected, and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo this "loss of face" -- no matter how severe the punishment, even if it includes death.... [T]hese men mean it literally when they say they would rather kill or mutilate others, be killed or mutilated themselves, than live without pride, dignity, and self-respect.... The emotion of shame is the primary or ultimate cause of all violence.

JAMES GILLIGAN, VIOLENCE 110-111 (1996).