Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

The House race in Washington’s 8th District (Seattle’s eastern suburbs) has been seesawing back and forth for months. It’s enough to turn you into a confirmed nail-biter if you weren’t one already. But the latest Majority Watch poll (completed October 26th) shows Burner leading Reichert by 2% with a 3% margin of error. That’s enough to qualify the race as a tossup. But this is the first poll showing Burner in the lead since August. Given the stories we’re reading in the media about the election trending toward the Democrats, it’s possible that such prevailing political winds may be having a positive impact on the Burner-Reichert race.

Please consider donating to Burner. The Reichert campaign is getting a massive infusion from national Republicans to blanket the District airwaves in slime in the final days of the election. Help Darcy fight back and take back the “night” from these slimeballs!

Interestingly, the NY Times thought fit to profile this race in an interesting article last week about the “rage” of liberal Bellevue Republicans at the Bush Administration for its many sins. Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons (and probably the only reason) for the Times’ interest is that Microsoft is headquartered in this District. So you have the double lure for the media of a story related to the technology megalith and a potentially historic election. I guess it was too good to pass up.

Majority Watch is reporting that based on its national polling 240 races are firmly Democratic or trending that way and 193 are strongly Republican or trending that way. That would be almost a 40-seat gain. This could be a very big day for Democrats. Of course, whether they’ll take advantage of such a victory to offer a compelling alternative to the Bush political vision is another matter entirely.

tags congressional-election, dave-reichert-against-darcy-burner, majority-watch, new-york-times, washingtons-8th-congressional-district-poll

To the ever-expanding list of ghoulish weaponry Israel used in the Lebanon war, we have to add yet another: a uranium bomb. Robert Fisk reports that in two Lebanese sites bombed by Israel, researchers have discovered traces of a type of uranium used in bunker busting bombs:

…Scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel’s weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed “elevated radiation signatures”. Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.

Busby has several theories of what might’ve happened. The most likely one is:

The weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium.”

One reason enriched uranium might be of concern is because it is the most radioactive of all three forms of uranium.

Though there is no scientifically verifiable proof that uranium weapons of this type cause cancer, there is reason for concern:

American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry - and five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq.

Initial US military assessments warned of grave consequences for public health if such weapons were used against armoured vehicles. But the US administration and the British government later went out of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the cancers continued to spread amid reports that civilians in Bosnia - where DU was also used by Nato aircraft - were suffering new forms of cancer. DU shells were again used in the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq…

Dr. Busby reinforces this concern by noting the ease with which radioactive particles can travel through the air:

“When a uranium penetrator hits a hard target, the particles of the explosion are very long-lived in the environment,” Dr Busby said yesterday. “They spread over long distances. They can be inhaled into the lungs. The military really seem to believe that this stuff is not as dangerous as it is.” Yet why would Israel use such a weapon when its targets - in the case of Khiam, for example - were only two miles from the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions can be blown across international borders…

“The health effects on local civilian populations following the use of large uranium penetrators and the large amounts of respirable uranium oxide particles in the atmosphere,” the Busby report says, “are likely to be significant…

An independent scientist not involved in the Lebanese research comments on the weapons:

Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University, who has reviewed the Busby report, said: “At worst it’s some sort of experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component the purpose of which we don’t yet know. At best - if you can say that - it shows a remarkably cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products.”

The Israeli press has chronicled the Israeli government’s remarkably cavalier and incompetent relief efforts to help northern Israelis during the war. Some have likened it to the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. The claim is that the Israeli government essentially absconded and left the field largely to non-profit relief agencies to provide many essential services. Can there be any more cynical abuse of a nation’s citizenry than when its government uses weapons that may very well kill its own citizens, if not now then down the road.

Fisk reports that uranium weapons have not been banned under international law because governments whose militaries use them (the U.S. foremost among them) argue that the deleterious health effects have not been proven scientifically. But isn’t it convenient that a country which wishes to use a noxious weapon should argue the it is not dangerous to civilians?

Professor Bellamy provides a deeper discussion of the scientific questions involved in this story.

UPDATE: Richard Gold of Engage, a supposedly non-partisan site which speaks out against anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, informs me that the UN Environment Program released a November 7th statement that in its sampling of 32 south Lebanon sites it did NOT find evidence of uranium-enriched munitions. This would appear to raise questions about the reliability of Fisk’s report. But we should keep in mind that the UNEP expeditions sampled 32 sites and the European Committee on Radiation Risk presumably sampled other sites. It is entirely possible that two separate groups sampling entirely separate sites might’ve found different evidence and come to different conclusions.

But before the ultra-rights start wagging fingers and jumping for joy they should know what else the release confirms:

The team also confirmed the use of white phosphorous-containing artillery and mortar ammunition by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)…

UNEP agrees with the findings and conclusions of the mission of the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteurs (published 2 October 2006), which recognized the huge number of cluster bombs with a low detonation rate dropped by the IDF over the last days before the ceasefire as the main remaining problem to return to normal life in the affected regions.

tags bunker-busting-radioactive-bomb, chris-busby, israel-used-uranium-bomb-in-lebanon, robert-fisk, the-independent-newspaper

Today is a day I had hoped wouldn’t arrive. Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party have not only entered the ruling coalition, Lieberman has become deputy prime minister and been charged with coordinating Israel’s response to the Iranian threat. As I’ve written here before, it would be as if Pat Buchanan or David Duke started their own political party, won 40 seats in the House, & were named a cabinet secretary with oversight of U.S. policy toward Iran. Wouldn’t it make you a tad nervous?

What’s so bad about Lieberman? Well, for one, as Akiva Eldar writes today in Haaretz, Lieberman suggested any Arab legislator who was “disloyal” to Israel should be stood up “in front of a firing squad.” He also advocates slicing off territory which includes 90% of the Israeli Arab population of Israel and handing it over to a Palestinian state. This is essentially a slightly more sophisticated version of an Israeli rightist wet dream–population transfer. In return for the generous allotment of the Israeli population being bestowed on Palestine, the West Bank territory on which the majority of current settlers live would be permanently annexed to Israel.

To quote the song: “Nice work if you can get.” But Lieberman couldn’t get it if he tried. In other words, Israel’s Arab citizens want no part of this “out there” plan. They’d be dragged screaming and kicking out of Israel. How do you do a presto-chango, snap your fingers and say that 90% of a nation’s largest minority group will simply disappear without the minority having any say in the matter. Do not Israeli Arabs, citizens of the State, have a right to determine their own future? Or is there a two tier citizenship model at play here?

Gershom Gorenberg has written in The Forward about Lieberman as brutal in his personal relations and corrupt in his business dealings. The man is seriously ethically-challenged though this appears to be true of most of Israel’s most powerful politicians these days.

To my delight and disappointment, one Labor cabinet minister objected so strenuously that he resigned his position, Culture and Sports minister, Ophir Pines-Paz. At least he has a conscience. The rest of the Labor party has mortgaged their morality by swallowing hard and voting Aye for Lieberman. It is a low point in a party whose history has seen more than its share of previous nadirs.

Oh and don’t get the impression that this love affair between Lieberman and Olmert is a marriage for the ages. In addressing a question from a minister regarding how he expects Lieberman to accept Israeli withdrawal from West Bank settlements (since this coalition policy is anathema to Lieberman), Olmert responded: when we get to that point then Lieberman can leave. It’s the height of cynicism to anticipate a divorce even before you’ve consummated the marriage. But this is Israeli politics and this is one of its most cynical purveyors, Ehud Olmert.

I would call upon the EU to weigh its relations with Israel’s governing coalition. Europe essentially severed its ties with Austria over Jorg Haider’s party entering that nation’s governing coalition. If Jean Marie Le Pen were to enter the French cabinet, I expect there would be serious voices demanding the same treatment for France. Akiva Eldar has argued that Lieberman’s policies are far more radical than Haider’s since the latter never advocated the forced removal of Austrian citizens from that country. Why shouldn’t the EU treat a Lieberman government the same way it treated Haider’s?

tags akiva-eldar, avigdor-lieberman-enters-israeli-coalition, haaretz, labor-votes-for-lieberman-to-enter-cabinet, ophir-pines-paz-resigns-from-israeli-government

If it wasn’t so ridiculous, it would be funny. Israel, long known for its ceaseless efforts to inform the world of its good intentions through its propaganda apparatus known as hasbarah, has supposedly abandoned the effort. Or at least, it’s attempting to reframe the message, to use numbing political jargon all the rage here. So hasbara is out and ‘rebranding’ is in:

After decades of battling to win foreign support for its two-fisted policies against Arab foes, Israel is trying a new approach with a campaign aimed at creating a less warlike and more welcoming national image.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has argued that the protracted conflict with the Palestinians is sapping Israel’s international legitimacy, this week convened diplomats and PR executives to come up with ways of “rebranding” the country.

“When the word ‘Israel’ is said outside its borders, we want it to invoke not fighting or soldiers, but a place that is desirable to visit and invest in, a place that preserves democratic ideals while struggling to exist,” Livni said.

The campaign is a departure from the government’s long-held practice of “hasbara,” or “explaining” itself to Western audiences that may have little sympathy for crackdowns on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Now Israel wants to create an alternative image abroad, focused exclusively on assets like tourist attractions and business innovations. In the words of one campaigner and ad executive, the aim would be to create “a narrative of normalcy.”

“Israelis feel the need to explain themselves, to prove that they are in the right, but this doesn’t always create empathy,” said Guy Toledano, who represents British PR firm Saatchi & Saatchi and is helping the Foreign Ministry free of charge.

You’re damn straight it doesn’t create empathy. Why should anyone in the world feel empathy for a government that empties its wrath and warplanes on its neighbors?

I also like ever so much the Orwellian “narrative of normalcy.” Actually, the phrase sounds like it comes out of the Bush PR-propaganda game plan for Iraq. We had a narrative of normalcy there too. But unfortunately reality impinged in the worst way. Of course, it impinges on Israel too. You can’t just play a game of smoke and mirrors and make Israel’s lunatic war against Lebanon and its forced strangulation of Gaza disappear only to be replaced with frolicking maidens playing volleyball on a Tel Aviv beach. That may work with Israel’s fiercest supporters in the Diaspora. But it will not work for the rest of us. And finally, the idea of Israel as “normal” is rich. I suppose if you see the Middle East as a lunatic asylum then Israel is normal, being just another one of the inmates. But the nation cannot be said to be “normal” in the normal sense of the term.

To be clear, I’m not intending to say that the Israeli people are not “normal.” But the situation into which they and their government have led themselves is the absolute antithesis of normal. And no amount of flackery will change that. Only good policy, courageous decisions, and visionary leadership can do that. Negotiations can do that. Compromise can do that. Peace can do that. PR cannot no matter how hard you try.

And the PR consultants hired by the Israeli foreign ministry don’t seem to have a clue what they doing:

“The process of getting a new image to be internalized is a world unto itself. I can’t say right now that we know exactly how we are going to do it,” Toledano said.

Luckily this “advice” Israel is getting is free. Otherwise, I’d say quit while you’re ahead and before you waste another kopek on these guys.

The foreign ministry PR flack too is trying to convince us that the sun is really the moon and that it is night when it is, in fact, broad daylight:

In the wake of 9/11, the objective now is to place Israel among the coalition of the moderates, facing off against Islamic radicalism,” Gissin said.

Israel among the “moderates?” Gissin may’ve gotten the Islamic radicalism part right. But Israel is not moderate compared to them. In reality, Israel is their direct antithesis, a western anti-Islamic force adopting a harsh and radical response to any perceived hostility against it. As such, Israel is a radical among radicals.

All of this comes from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has been at odds with Ehud Olmert’s iron fist almost from the beginning of the Lebanon war. This initiative is her attempt to strike out on her own and show the rest of the hawks in his cabinet that there is an alternative softer version that Israel could and should be projecting to the world. The only problem is that since she does not have the ear of Olmert (who perceived her as disloyal for not flacking hard enough for the disastrous Lebanese misadventure) she cannot change policy. It is the policy that is the problem, not the atmospherics. Change the policy and the need for puffery ends.

tags foreign-ministry, israeli-hasbara-propaganda, public-relations-campaign-to-rebrand-israel

I’ve noticed there is a type of what I call Jewish cultural revisionism (not to be confused with Holocaust revisionism, chas v’halilah–God forbid) gaining popularity. That is, a rebellion by alienated, mostly secular Jews against “their father’s” Judaism–a religion and culture full of certainties and platitudes about Jewish identity. Those certainties almost always focus on Israel as the center of the Jewish universe. These folks are willing to question these sacred cows. They’re looking for their Jewishness perhaps in “all the wrong places,” at least according to their parents or grandparents, but what they’re finding is arresting, sometimes disturbing, but always challenging to our notion of who we are and what it means to be a Jew.

One example of this was the Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest. It was hosted by one of these avant-garde Israeli cartoonists and graphical novelist who wished to challenge the notion that a Jew should not make fun of his fellow Jews. I thought some of the cartoons were repulsive in their anti-Semitic stereotypes. But I thought others were dead on in their critique of Jewish identity and our sometimes too-tight bond with Israel, especially when it violates norms that many of us were brought up to believe that Jews adhered to.

Today’s NY Times features a similar project called Jewface. That is, a recording of turn of the century American Jewish popular music that poked fun at Jewish customs and attitudes of the period:

The album…contains 16 songs salvaged from wax cylinder recordings and scratchy 78s, from a century-old genre that is essentially Jewish minstrelsy. Often known as Jewish dialect music, it was performed in vaudeville houses by singers in hooked putty noses, oversize derbies and tattered overcoats. Highly popular, if controversial, in its day, it has been largely lost to history — perhaps justifiably.

“It’s like Hitler’s playlist, but it’s not, because it was actually Fanny Brice’s playlist,” said Jody Rosen, 37, a music critic for the online magazine Slate, who has spent more than a decade researching the genre…“It’s a more complicated and nuanced vision of Jewish history than what you absorb at Hebrew school.”

…Coarse, yes. Consider the very title “When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band,” from 1906. The four collaborators acknowledge that these playful vaudeville ditties could function as hate speech in the wrong context, and they carry particular power in a politicized climate where newspaper cartoons can cause riots

So some of it ain’t purdy. If we really want to plumb our identity should we only examine the high and noble within us? Or should we examine our identity warts and all? Many Jews would prefer the former articulation. I know I prefer the latter.

Here’s how one of the producers addressed this question for the Times:

…This forgotten genre serves as a window into American Jewish heritage for people just like them [the producers]: young secular Jews weaned on kitschy pop culture, abrasive rock and irony, as much as on the Torah.

“We’re all kind of disaffected American Jews, who aren’t particularly religious, don’t really practice and don’t really lead very Jewish lives at all,” said Mr. Kun, 35. “Digging up these recordings was really about figuring out who we were in this world.”

When I first read the term, Jewface, I naturally thought it was a play on Scarface (though that didn’t make much sense). Rather, it is a play on the term Blackface, since the cultural attitudes and expressions in these recordings exaggerate Jewish stereotypes in order to poke fun, much as Blackface did to African-Americans during roughly the same period (though starting earlier). But one crucial distinction that the Times writer doesn’t mention is that while Blackface featured white performers mocking Blacks, Jewface featured Jewish performers aping and mocking their own.

The genesis of the project is a fascinating story in its own right which I’m proud to say involves our own Seattle Experience Music Project playing a supporting role:

Mr. Rosen discovered the genre in the mid-’90s, while working on a master’s degree in Jewish history at University College London. One day, while doing research at the British Library, he ran across the sheet music for a song called “I Want to Be an Oy, Oy, Oyviator” — a comedy song about a Jewish aviator. Digging deeper, he found sheet music for hundreds of such songs, usually decorated with insulting caricatures of Jews as Shylocks, nebbishy immigrant greenhorns or schlemiels (like Levi, the Jewish wrangler in “I’m a Yiddisher Cowboy,” from 1908, who falls for an Indian maiden, then runs afoul of her father, the Chief).

Fascinated, Mr. Rosen set off on a quest to track down actual recordings of this music. He trolled dusty junk shops, record-collector conventions and, inevitably, eBay, looking for wax cylinders, which cost $10 to more than $100, and 78s. His search, he said, “took roughly 10 years on and off.”

Mr. Kun heard Mr. Rosen speak about the genre at the Experience Music Project conference in Seattle last year. Within weeks, they said, they were planning an album.

The article’s closing paragraph places Jewface in a broader American context that seems apt to me:

But to him [Rosen], Jewish dialect music played a role similar to that which gangsta rap plays among African-Americans today. Vulgar and, to some, culturally debasing, it nevertheless managed to smuggle a subculture’s distinct idiom into mainstream popular culture, while creating jobs for entertainers, managers, theater owners and music publishing houses from the same culture.

In other words, in its day the music and cultural assumptions represented in Jewface were genuine, raw expressions of what it meant to be an American. These were assumptions that shocked many Americans surely. But their sheer vitality and largeness of emotion could not be ignored just as rap music, no matter what we think of it, represents a raw and powerful artistic expression of what it means to young African-Americans to live here now. They cannot be ignored and cannot be denied. As such, Jewface too can be a movement of which American Jews are rightfully proud even if they may not always be comfortable with everything it represented.

For more of the background of the project go to the Jewface site.

tags experience-music-project, israel-anti-semitic-cartoon-contest, jewface, jewish-dialect-music, jewish-minstrelsy, jody-rosen-slate

"Democrats have a new vision for America's foreign policy: it doesn't include support for Israel" "There are lies, damn lies," and the RJC (credit: RJC) pdf for larger image For weeks, I've been reading about the sleazy campaign waged by the Republican Jewish Coalition against Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterm election. I wasn't going to comment about this initially because I saw it as a side issue. But I just saw two full page ads in the local Seattle Jewish paper, JTNews by the group and my sense of outrage was too great to restrain it. The National Jewish Democratic Council circulated an e mail ...

Mr. Cheney was interviewed Tuesday by Scott Hennen, a conservative radio talk show host in Fargo, N.D. “Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” Mr. Hennen asked. “Well, it’s a no-brainer for me,” Mr. Cheney replied. “But for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Cheney was not endorsing water-boarding, a coercive interrogation technique that simulates drowning and that many have said qualifies as torture. Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney was not, in fact, referring to any technique, whether it was torture or not, because administration officials do not discuss ...

(credit: Grady White/NYT) First it was "Mission Accomplished" accompanied by Bush all decked out in a full flight suit looking fat n' sassy on a carrier deck. But then it turns out that only the first part of the mission was accomplished (the invasion), but none of the rest was. So we ditched that slogan. Then when the going got tough and reality in Iraq bit harder than Bush or most Americans expected, it became "Stay the Course." As if this pseudo-patriotic sounding slogan really stood for anything other than feel-good mumbo-jumbo. But with 95 U.S. soliders killed this month alone, "Stay the Course" isn't ...

From the Department of Circular Logic comes this one from Barry Diller: Mr. Diller said his compensation was appropriate, considering “the wealth created for shareholders over the last 11 years, me certainly among them.” So let's get this straight. CEO Barry Diller deserves every penny of that $295-million because he's made lots of money for shareholder Barry Diller. Makes sense to me. Anyone for a little solipsism?

The bizarre story of Jesus spouting Aramaic to warn Missourians about the danger of a pro-stem cell initiative on the state ballot continues. An (unintentionally) wild Washington Times story provides further background on how the actor who played Jesus in The Passion came to intone pigdin Aramaic commanding the voters of the state not to "betray him with a kiss" (by voting for the initiative). Thanks to reader Tony for providing the link: Actor Jim Caviezel opens the political ad [ed., watch video] with a brief statement in Aramaic, the common tongue of biblical-era Palestine and the language of Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie, saying: "Le-bar nash be-neshak." Bill Fulco, the Loyola Marymount professor who translated Mr. Gibson's script ...