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I’ve just returned from the historic first national J Street conference attended by 1,500 Jewish progressives and peace activists.  I found it to be alternately bracing, challenging, illuminating and infuriating.  During a lifetime when I have been used to feeling in the minority for my political views, it was quite amazing to walk through the halls of the hotel and see hordes of Jews (and non-Jewish allies including Arabs) who shared (more or less) my own particular outlook on the Israeli-Arab conflict.  Coming from a community of 40,000 Jews here in Seattle, it had been years since I had seen that many Jews in one place at one time, let alone progressive Jews.  So yes, it was a heady experience.

J Street has done a great deal to break open the discourse around this subject in the American Jewish community.  No longer do we have to feel like we’re whispering in the dark when we’re calling for a two state solution that offers justice to both Israel and the Palestinians.  No longer does Aipac and the rest of the Israel lobby sit astride the colossus that is American Jewry and crack the party line whip.  No longer does the Israeli government “own” the entire American Jewish leadership enabling it to march in lock step around any particular issue.  There has been more diversity in the discourse in the past 18 months since J Street launched than in the past decade before that.

But I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture.  J Street is still very much a work in progress.  Can it take advantage of the breakthrough that happened this past weekend to mount a coherent and persuasive alternative political line to the Israel lobby?  Can it open dialogue on this issue on Capital Hill as well?  And in the White House?  I think it has already done so to a small extent.  But J Street is battling a $60 Million Man with perhaps tens of thousands of volunteers throughout the nation and direct access to hundreds of members of Congress and their staff.  J Street is nowhere near that level of power and influence–yet.

But clearly, at least parts of the lobby are deeply frightened of J Street and have let loose the guns in the run-up to the conference.  There was an orchestrated campaign by Aipac to prevent the Israeli ambassador from attending the conference.   A former Aipac staffer known for his smeary reputation penned an article accusing the group of accepting donations from ARABS!  Other “journalists” and bloggers took up other themes designed to raise doubt about J Streets bona fides as a legitimate Jewish organization.

For this reason, J Street has felt it needed to walk the line between a conventional pro-Israel position as defined by the Israel lobby and a more progressive line.  This is where I have often felt myself diverge from the group’s strategy.  There is clearly a minefield through which J Street is walking.  It does not want to be another Aipac, but it also does not want to turn into yet another small, underfunded, short-lived Jewish progressive group along the lines of Breira, New Jewish Agenda or even the late lamented liberal American Jewish Congress.  For that reason, J Street, when it can, attempts to adopt positions that show an independent, maverick streak.  For example, it has endorsed the current Berman Iran sanctions bill being marked up in Congress this week.  This is definitely not a progressive position.  But it an attempt to triangulate between left and right and walk a line that is neither on one side or the other but somewhere between.

Jeremy Ben Ami, the Jewish lobby’s director, gave an interview to Jeffrey Goldberg in which he took quite center-right positions on issues like Iran sanctions, the Goldstone Report, the Law of Return and other matters.  It was a calculated attempt to show the so-called centrist Goldberg that J Street couldn’t be pigeon-holed as a mere extension of the Jewish left.

On the other hand, J Street clearly arose out of a progressive Jewish impulse and knows that this is what makes it unique and important on the current scene.  As but one example, Jerry Haber and I organized a blogger session at the conference.  It was a delicate relationship which began with a frustrating attempt on my part to understand why J Street refused to incorporate the panel into the official program.  But eventually, I began to see this decision as actually good not just for J Street but for the bloggers themselves since it allowed J Street to disagree with us and vice versa.  And that is precisely what happened.  During our panel at the conference bloggers like Max Blumenthal took Ben Ami strongly to task for the Goldberg interview.  And alternately, a Palestinian-American blogger offered the strongest and most heartfelt endorsement of J Street’s two-state solution.

Such a panel allows J Street legitimately to claim that it is open to voices to its left.  Nothing can ossify an organization quicker than forcing a consensus down the throats of members.  Aipac has done this more or less and its positions are about as ossified as they can be.  One of the beauties of J Street is that it is a work in progress.  It has strong positions as well it should.  But it is also open to an evolution of the political process.  This year J Street debated one set of issues.  Next year, new ideas and concepts will creep into the mix.  J Street may never explicitly endorse BDS or the Goldstone Report or any number of issues propounded by the left.  But next year, those issues may at least be debated officially within the halls of the conference.  Perhaps Neve Gordon and Naomi Klein will even be invited to enter the august halls of J Street next year.  That is all we can legitimately ask of J Street.  That they remain open to the free flow of ideas and adapt their political agenda as those ideas become or accepted and enter the mainstream.

Returning to the blogger panel, Blumenthal had one of the more memorably funny quotes of the day criticizing Elie Wiesel’s address to Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel national event (the joke refers to Wiesel’s investment losses with Bernie Madoff):

The last person Elie Wiesel trusted this much was Bernie Madoff.

The blogger panel was slimed by Michael Goldfarb in his bile-filed post in the Weekly Standard.  Among the more objectionable passages in his report was a description of Gaza Muslim blogger Laila El-Haddad as “hijab covered.”  I wonder why Goldfarb didn’t comment on Jerry Haber, an Orthodox blogger and co-host of the panel, wearing a kipah.  The comment was clearly Islamophobic and shameful.  Goldfarb seems to fancy himself an expert on Arab religious head gear, but hasn’t a clue what a hijab really is. A scarf, which Laila wore, is not a hijab.

Rachel Barenblatt offers a fuller report on the panel discussion at Velveteen Rabbi.

Another denizen of the right-wing Jewish deep slime, Hillel Stavis, crashed the panel, taking pictures of the panelists and attendees without authorization and had to be escorted from the room.  Since he was a registered conference goer, J Street allowed him to remain in the hall even though he wrote a scummy report at his own blog complaining of his “shabby” treatment.

What follows is a combination of an outline of the most interesting ideas I heard from speakers at the conference combined with my critique of the ideas when they really impressed or disgusted me.

There were several discussions about settlements.  At one, Akiva Eldar of Haaretz recounted a great story about a settler leader named Elitzur who told the reporter:

The Land of Israel is my wife.  The State of Israel is my cleaning lady.  If I have to make a choice, I choose my wife.

On a similar theme, Bernard Avishai has come up with what I think is a brilliant new term that distinguishes the settlers from your average Israeli.  He calls the former “Judeans.”  This too frames them as tied to the ancient land of Israel and also ancient, outmoded Biblical notions of Jewish nationhood.  Avishai is interested in a definition of Israel that is modern and like unto the nations and not yoked to hide-bound notions of God-given rights to the land.  That is why he has called his new book, The Hebrew Republic, to separate it from the settlers’ notion that Israel is Judaic religious entity (in the sense that a settler would use the term “Judaic”).

I also had an interesting chat with Avishai about his debate with Jeffrey Goldberg about the Law of Return.  He favors dropping the Law of Return in favor of a standard set of immigration procedures like all other countries have.  Within those procedures there would be provisions for accepting as immigrants any Jews facing life-threatening danger or anti-Semitism.  But once admitted to Israel these immigrants would have to wait a requisite period to become citizens just as in other countries.  This is precisely the type of normalization of Israeli life I too believe in.  As long as Israel is home to Jewish exceptionalism, it will not find its rightful place in the region or the world.

J.J. Goldberg participated in two panels and for me it was two too many.  At The American Jewish Left and Israel he made a series of strange statements that showed he had long since eschewed his mantle as a hero of the radical Jewish student movement of the 60s and 70s and become a cranky old Yid.  Among his more memorable statements (I paraphrase):

* The American Jewish left has a problem with guns.  This is a problem Israel can’t afford.

* 20 years ago J.J.’s lefty Jewish friends were beaten up by Jewish goons from the JDL and the like.  Now, he thinks they were beaten up by the wrong people but for the right reason.

* the younger generation of American and Israeli Jews has been traumatized by 9/11 and the second intifada.

As for the last point above, J.J. has got it precisely wrong.  He himself and those who think like him have been traumatized by 9/11 and the Intifada.  Young Jews, on the contrary have not been affected nearly in the same way.  In fact, polls by American Jewish pollsters show that young Jews in this country are increasingly alienated from Israel not because of the events the Forward editor lists, but because of Israel’s harsh, unyielding REACTION to them.

The conference featured an excellent panel on developments in Iran headlined by Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (and a guest speaker at the Seattle conference I’ll be hosting in December) and Hillary Mann Leverett.  These are two of the clearest thinking, most pragmatic Iran analysts in this country.  Their voices were fresh and a delight.

Both argue against sanctions.  Parsi pointed out that due to existing American sanctions, Microsoft had already closed down its own Instant Messaging service before the disputed Iranian elections in June.  Facebook was about to do so when the violent uproar occurred in the streets of Teheran and people massed in their tens and hundreds of thousands using sites like Twitter and Facebook as their social networking Bibles.  The Iranian activist was pointing out the utter counter-productiveness of using sanctions like a sledge-hammer rather than the scalpel that is needed to make any progress on these issues.

Parsi argues that America tends only to think of punishments for Iran not behaving as it would like.  Instead, we must think of what we can offer the Iranians that would act as motivators for them to change their behavior or compromise on issues of importance to the U.S.  Sticks do not work without carrots.  Iran wants to normalize relations with the U.S.  Then why don’t we hold this out as a possibility if Iran compromises?

To point out the level of delusion and mutual misunderstanding that exists among the various major parties to this conflict, Trita noted that Iranians think of the U.S. 90% of the time and believe that Americans think of Iran 90% of the time.  They don’t.  Israelis think of Iran 90% of the time and believe Iranians think of Israel 90% of the time.  They don’t.

Leverett called for a major U.S. opening to Iran, likening it to Nixon’s breakthrough trip to China in 1972.  Back then, Nixon was willing to reconcile with a Chinese leader who had just killed 3-million during the Cultural Revolution, who had recently tested an atomic weapon, and who was threatening Japan, a major U.S. ally.  Despite all these issues, Nixon did not waver in his commitment to open a relationship with the Communist regime.  As a result, relations now, while not always tension-free, are on a much more stable footing than they ever were since the Communist takeover in 1949.

In this scenario, Israel plays a similar role to Japan.  Leverett contends that a grand opening to Iran could have precisely the same results that Nixon’s opening to China did in vastly improving U.S. relations with Iran and the latter’s relations with Israel.

J Street has adopted a confusing position regarding sanctions.  While it supports the Berman bill, Ben Ami said during a discussion with Rabbi Eric Yoffie that it supports diplomatic engagement, but does not YET support sanctions.  I can’t reconcile those two positions.  In addition, I asked whether J Streeters, when they lobby on Capital Hill tomorrow will be talking about sanctions.  The answer I heard was No.  Imagine the importance of such an issue in the possible lead up to a military attack against Iran and J Street has chosen to sit on its hands.

Sooner rather than later, J Street’s leadership will come to understand that sanctions are not a wedge issue like the ones Republicans exploit for partisan gain.  Rather they are part of a possible scenario that could lead to scores, hundreds or even thousands losing their lives in attacks and counter-attacks involving Iran, Israel and their respective allies.  Thus, sanctions must soon demand a pure moral response rather than a tactical political one, as reflects J Street’s current position.  Otherwise, the worst could happen, and by then it will be too late for progressive Jews to weigh in with a principled position.

One of the important achievements of the conference was a panel composed entirely of Palestinians who shared their vision of what they wanted a peaceful future to look like.  Bassim Khoury, the recently resigned PA economics minister (he resigned in protest of Mahmoud Abbas’ shelving of the Goldstone Report), reported that no one could argue any longer that Jerusalem was a “united” city.  In fact, he claimed, the Holy City was characterized by apartheid in which the Jewish section of the city received a vastly superior percentage of resources and services compared to the impoverished Arab section.  The numbers, when Khoury flashed them on the screen in Powerpoint slides, were chilling.

He had another memorable line:

The Green Line is a red line.

When Hussein Ibish took up what he called the “red herring” argument advanced by Bibi Netanyahu that Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state, I thought how insane it would be for Mahmoud Abbas to insist that Israel recognize Palestine as a Muslim state.  Clearly, what Netanyahu is trying to do is head off the claims of those who advance the Palestinian Right of Return.  If Israel is accepted by Palestinians as a Jewish state then presumably they have just dispensed with their right to demand a return to their ancestral homes and homeland.

Gen. Jim Jones, Obama’s national security advisor, gave the keynote speech and I’ve rarely heard a less illuminating, more canned speech.  It told us absolutely nothing new except that the Obama administration, if Jones’ remarks are a true reflection of current policy, are based on wildly optimistic assumptions about the actions of all the major players.  Just as an example, Jones acted as if he believed it was possible to get Russia and China around a sanctions regime against Iran.  I see no evidence this is yet remotely possible.

But the speech I most objected to followed Jones and was delivered by Rep. Robert Wexler, who was Barack Obama’s court Jew during the election campaign.  Wexler had no clue what audience he was addressing.  He shreyed at us like we were residents of a  Jewish old age home in Boca Raton, his home district.  He kept harping on the issue of Israel’s security repeating three times that U.S. and Israeli forces were at that moment engaging in military exercises.  Did Wexler really think this was a message that would resonate at a J Street conference?  Did no one at J Street brief him on his remarks?  Wexler reminded us that Hamas were nothing but terrorist thugs and that President Abbas and prime minister were the great white hope of the Palestinian people.

The Florida congressman even had the chutzpah to say that Jordan’s King Abdullah simply wasn’t doing enough for peace when he pointed out to the Obama administration that the 2002 Arab League peace initiative was on the table and Israel should accept it before the Arabs can be expected to reciprocate.  What did Wexler demand in return from Israel?  That it accept a settlement freeze.   There is a fundamental disconnect in pro-Israel people like Wexler who don’t stop to understand the differences in their respective expectations of Israel and the Arab states.  Essentially, Wexler expects the Arab states to normalize relations with Israel. In return, Israel has to freeze settlements.  Not, return to ’67 borders.  Not, share Jerusalem. Not, accept the Right of Return.  Just freeze settlements.  There is a fundamental imbalance there.

Obama’s top Jew parroted the Aipac line that Iran must give up all uranium (which when he pronounced the word came out sounding like “Iranium”) enrichment and live up to the requirement of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  The only problem with this line is that according to NPT, Iran is entitled to enrich uranium as long as it doesn’t do so to weapons grade.  Wexler comes across to me as a wind up toy you program and then let loose on whatever audience you want him to tackle.  There is no finesse, no intelligence.  Just canned talking points brayed in an insistently loud voice as if he was imploring you to believe him.

Believe it or not, Wexler has just announced his resignation from Congress in order to take up the presidency of the Middle East Foundation for Peace and Economic Cooperation.  One wonders how someone who knows so little about the issues can successfully take up such a portfolio.

There was some consternation among progressive attendees at Rabbi Eric Yoffie’s address to the conference.  He spent a good deal of time launching rather vicious personal attacks on Judge Richard Goldstone and his report on the Gaza war.  One of Yoffie’s main claim was that it was shameful for Goldstone to allow himself to be used as a Jew by such an anti-Israel body as the UN Human Rights Council.  To my shock, Yoffie’s dyspeptic statements were booed three times by the audience.  The last time, the moderator, Jane Eisner, publisher of The Forward, invited those booing to leave the room.  What I don’t think she understood was that there were probably more people in the audience who were disgusted by Yoffie’s attack than supported it.  One could easily argue that it was Yoffie who was showing chutzpah rather than the audience.

I wondered why the Reform movement’s leader would come to J Street propounding such an antagonistic position.  I realized that Yoffie, who attacked J Street during the Gaza war for insufficient pro-Israel patriotism, had to cover his own right flank.  By attacking Goldstone he could argue on returning to the Reform fold that he went into the lion’s den to tell the “Jewish leftists” how a good pro-Israel Jew sees these issues.  In that way, Yoffie allows himself to say that he’s willing to talk to the Jewish left and he can tell the Jewish right he only went there to tell off the leftists.

One of the most disappointing Israeli speakers at J Street was former Kadima Knesset leader and convicted sex offender, Haim Ramon.  He is clearly a very smart, very rigid Israeli politician who comes with a clearly programmed Diaspora speech praising the two state solution and warning how quickly Israel will face a dreaded one-state solution if it does not act to end the Occupation.  The only problem with this rap is that Ramon served as a senior minister in numerous governments (most recently under Ehud Olmert) who had their chance to end the Occupation and chose to squander it on useless wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

Ramon even had the temerity to boast of being one of the prime movers of the unilateral Gaza withdrawal.  That worked out quite well, didn’t it?  He claimed that Israel should adopt the same policy and, if necessary unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank.  Hearing this left me scratching my head: if it didn’t work the first time why would it work the second??

What hath Caterpillar wrought? (BBC)

As I heard the terrible news of the terror attack in Jerusalem carried out by an East Jerusalem construction worker, I thought what an irony it would be if the bulldozer used was made by Caterpillar.  Yesterday’s NY Times coverage confirmed my thought:

Witnesses said they saw the vehicle, a large Caterpillar front-end loader, set off close to midday from a building site at one of the busiest intersections in the predominantly Jewish, western half of the city…

Caterpillar equipment has a special resonance among Palestinians. Human rights activists have lobbied the company to stop selling its heavy vehicles to the Israeli military out of concern that they have been used to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land.

Though perhaps the terrible irony of this incident will be lost on Israeli Jews, it will not be lost on Palestinians who are made to suffer the brunt of the terrible destructive power of the Caterpillar bulldozer, the “engine” of the Occupation.  We should add to this, that a similar vehicle by the same company killed Rachel Corrie.

Seattle’s Initiative 97, which calls for divestment from companies like Caterpillar which profit from the Israeli Occupation, takes on a whole new meaning in light of this attack.  The bulldozer not only harms Palestinians, but Israelis as well.

Israeli politicians are once again baying for collective blood-vengeance against East Jerusalem residents despite that fact that a single individual was responsible.  They have conveniently forgotten that collective guilt violates not only international law, but Jewish law as well.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz informed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday that rulings made by the High Court of Justice over the years clarify there is no constitutional barrier to demolishing the home of a terrorist, although there are legal obstacles in both the local and international arenas that must be considered.

Mazuz arrived at this ruling after in-depth discussions…over the question of whether Israel is permitted under the law to demolish the home of the East Jerusalem man who plowed a bulldozer into a string of vehicles in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday and killed three people.

Olmert’s political hatchet man, Haim Ramon, concedes the demolition will have absolutely no impact on future terrorism and thereby concedes the utter bankruptcy of the government policy.  But not only does he propose demolishing the home, he also demands (and this is a new and insidious proposal) that ALL residents of neighborhoods where terrorists live should be collectively punished by being cut off from Jerusalem:

Vice Premier Haim Ramon (Kadima) told Army Radio on Thursday morning that Israel should treat the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Jabel Mukaber and Zur Baher as Palestinian villages, and revoke the permanent residency status of their residents.

Wednesday’s attacker came from Zur Baher, and Jabel Mukaber was the home of the Mercaz Harav terrorist. In the aftermath of both attacks, Ramon called for the two neighborhoods to be entirely cut off from Jerusalem.

“One of the main reasons that the attack was carried out yesterday with such ease was because there are Palestinian villages that for some reason are called Jerusalem – Jabel Mukaber and Zur Baher. They need to be treated as we treat Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus,” Ramon told Army Radio.

Such a policy would give Israel the best of all possible worlds.  It can annex East Jerusalem as it did taking control of Palestinian territory, while surgically removing specific residents and neighborhoods from the benefits of being annexed to Israel.  Israel still controls their land, but no longer has any responsibilities toward the residents.  A strange and, as I said, an insidious policy.

The cluelessness of Israeli policy is most evident in this statement:

Ramon also told Army Radio that he felt, as opposed to the prime minister and his fellow ministers, that demolishing the home of the terrorist’s family would not prevent the next terror attack. However, he said that the house should be demolished anyway, if the law allows it.

“I doubt that demolishing the house will achieve what it aims to achieve, though if possible, the house must be razed. The laws must be made to fit the policy and we mustn’t give up,” Ramon said. “What we are permitted to do, we must do as soon as possible.”

Interesting that Ramon seems so concerned about maintaining the semblance of legality to the housing demolition scheme, while being someone convicted of sexual assault.  How can someone who broke the law and paid for it convince anyone that he’s concerned about what the law says in this case.  The only thing more icily and darkly ironic would’ve been if Olmert had named Ramon justice minister after his sentence was completed.

My impression of political policy was that it should be efficacious.  It should achieve some result.  Here there is no result.  There is only an appearance that the government is doing SOMETHING to respond to terror when in reality it is doing nothing.  This reflects a political system that is bankrupt & political leaders who are rudderless.  Days like yesterday and statements like these make me feel utterly hopeless that there can ever be any good that comes out of this Godforsaken conflict.

Apparently, Israel is such a country where the families of Arab terrorists are not allowed to mourn their dead, as Haaretz shows video images of Israeli police tearing down in disgust the mourning tent erected by the family of the bulldozer driver.  Has it come to this that we can’t allow our enemy to engage in the fundamental human act of mourning the dead?  We aren’t talking about making a hero out of the man, but merely allowing his family to mark his passing.

For those of you who want to read a few twisted screeds from the Jewish-Israeli press on this incident (and I don’t recommend this for the faint of heart) read Bradley Burston’s Kahanesque rant in a Haaretz that should’ve been embarrassed to publish it and Jonathan Mark’s equally vile ranting in Jewish Week.  After you’ve done this you must read Bernard Avishai’s moving commentary that puts both of the above pieces of excrement to shame with its profound humanity.

The goniff (alleged) and the sex offender (convicted)–together again (Baubau)

As Yaakov Smirnoff used to say: “What a country!” In how many other democracies in the world could a minister be convicted of French-kissing a subordinate outside the prime minister’s office and then return to the cabinet with a promotion? I tell you–you have to admire Israel’s willingness to forgive and forget–but mostly forget–the peccadillos of their leaders:

The Knesset approved Wednesday evening a cabinet reshuffle that makes former justice minister Haim Ramon, who resigned his post ahead of a conviction for sexual misconduct, vice premier. The move marks his return to political life.

…Ramon was also appointed minister at the Prime Minister’s Office, in charge of state policy and will be a member of the security cabinet.

This picture of Olmert and Ramon with million dollar smiles is so sickening I had to display it here. I wonder what’s the joke they’re laughing about: perhaps the “fast one” they’re both playing on the Israeli public: Olmert with a 2% approval rating and three criminal investigations for corruption in the works; and Ramon, who’s just done a virtual political Houdini act by serving his slap on the wrist sentence and returning to government as if nothing had happened.

I was tickled by the implications of this passage:

Ramon was forced to resign as justice minister after being indicted for forcibly kissing a female soldier. His conviction made it impossible for him to return to his former job…

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky Israeli law at least bars a convicted sex offender from becoming justice minister. Becoming vice-premier thus is a merciful substitute for something much worse. OK, sex offender may be too strong a term since it was just a little kiss among friends, right? How ’bout: sexual harasser?

It seems that after months of a thunderingly inept defense that he didn’t kiss her, then that he did but that she was the one who wanted it, and then that he did and maybe his tongue touched hers but it still wasn’t what you think it was…after all this, a three judge panel has ruled Haim Ramon guilty of sexual harassment.

On his way to a cabinet meeting in the prime minister’s office, Ramon met a young IDF soldier who asked to pose for a picture with him. After pleasantries which he characterizes as “flirtation” he must’ve thought to himself (as many abusers do): “She really wants it.” So he gave it to her. A kiss smack on the lips which she characterized as a French kiss (eeewww!). If you’ve ever seen Ramon’s scowling punim (“face”) you’d wonder how any woman could find him attractive (not that this woman did).

Ramon not a happy camper as his verdict is announced (Reuters)

This is really garden variety sexual harassment. Here in the States it would be adjudicated relatively easily and promptly and guilt would be ascertained. You wouldn’t be breaking any legal ground here as this type of offense is settled law. Not so in Israel. There, relations between the sexes are about 10-20 years behind where they are here. As Daphne Baram writes so convincingly in the Guardian:

Israel is a state without sex scandals. The public demonstrates scornful disinterest in politicians’ personal lives, and the journalistic code states that such affairs are not within the public domain. That is probably why we do not have tabloids in the British tradition.

As media consumers we sway towards the political grim existence. Gossip is seen as the domain of celebrities, and politicians are hardly celebrities. Any attempt to break these rules has failed. Magazines or newspapers that tried to replace the politics on their front pages with soft, or hard, gossip were doomed to sudden death. Here and there journalists would hear a really juicy story, about a minister who is insistent on hiring only very attractive female parliamentary assistants and having his way with them in the Knesset’s toilets, or of an ambassador who was found dead in the compromising presence of prostitutes – but such stories never make it into print.

Why is it that the media close ranks behind politicians in this fashion? It reminds me of those journalists who covered JFK during his presidency, almost all of whom either knew directly or tacitly about his sexual forays. But you just didn’t write such things in those days. You gave men, but especially powerful men a wide sway.

Thankfully, no longer. At least no longer in many places. And perhaps no longer in Israel. But Israel has that lingering notion that boys will be boys and girls were made for it. The Israeli justice system, as Baram notes, is notoriously lenient with sex offenders and domestic abusers. Men who kill their wives or injure their children don’t exactly get off scot free. But they receive laughably light sentences compared to jurisprudence here.

When I first read about this story I didn’t intend to write about it. But then I read in Baram’s piece that Haaretz had actually written an editorial DEPLORING Ramon’s conviction. Say what, you say? That’s right. They deplored it. Here’s some of their dubious reasoning. And if you hear echoes of what the women’s movement faced way back in the 1970s, you’re right:

The verdict in the trial of Haim Ramon marks the beginning of a new age, and not necessarily a better one, regarding the attitude of the justice system to sexual offenses. On the one hand, the Ramon verdict will make it easier for a woman to lodge a complaint in cases that until now were considered borderline. On the other hand, defining Haim Ramon as a sex offender, and a non-consensual kiss as a sexual crime opens too wide a door and may blur the boundaries between real sexual crimes and inappropriate behavior. To a great extent, detached from the sexual permissiveness and freedom in society, the judges ruled that “a kiss on the mouth with the tongue that is non-consensual is clearly a sexual offense…We are not dealing with …a gray area… but rather with an intrusive, damaging and humiliating act… a kiss that is non-consensual arouses repulsion, disgust, revulsion.” These statements appear detached from the times and cultural context, as if they were written in a different society.

Where do we begin? First, you’ll notice that a report from a young woman that a cabinet minister kissed her against her will is a “borderline case.” Since when? And how, pray tell, does labelling this act for what it is–a crime–damage our ability to prosecute “real sexual crimes?” Hasn’t this writer ever heard of progressive levels of sexual predation and anti-social behavior? Just because Ramon didn’t rape her or worse that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a “real” sexual crime.

Then you’ll note the Haaretz editorial writer excusing Ramon’s offense by saying it was caused by society’s ‘sexual permissiveness.’ Rather, I’d say Ramon’s kiss was caused by a prevailing societal notion that a powerful man can get away with a lot and that a subordinate would never be willing to hold him to account. That’s not sexual permissiveness, that’s the corruption of power as exerted by men of estate used to never having their wishes or libidos denied.

It appears that Haaretz IS troubled by Ramon’s behavior, but not troubled enough to wish him seriously punished:

Ramon’s conduct as described in the verdict is the vulgar and unacceptable behavior of a man in authority, who according to the judges did not think he needed the soldier’s consent for the kiss. The fact that he lied in court is itself serious. However, it is a long road from this to criminal conviction.

Excuse me? You lie in court, bud and it’s a very short road to criminal conviction. Tell it to Lewis Libby, who may yet do some jail time for his fibs to a federal grand jury.

It also appears Haaretz believes that Ramon deserved to be sentenced to a social worker instead of the witness chair in a courtroom:

The question is not whether Haim Ramon kissed the soldier against her will and whether this behavior is to be tolerated when it comes to a government minister, but rather whether the court is the appropriate place to discuss behavioral norms.

Again, with the “kisses like this happen all the time and they don’t land a guy in jail” routine. We’re not talking merely about breaking a “societal norm.” We’re talking about abusing your authority and harassing women. That’s not something to be taken lightly. Though perhaps in Israel it is. At least till now.

Here is where the utter cluelessness of the editorial comes into play:

Israeli society seems to have come a long way from the total disparagement of cases of sexual harassment to strictness in this regard, which sometimes, as in this case, itself borders on harassment.

You read that right. What concerns the nincompoop who wrote this editorial is not Ramon’s harassment of the woman, but the legal system’s HARASSMENT of Ramon! Can you believe that?? We are still living in the 70s over there aren’t we?

The offenses of which President Moshe Katsav is suspected are clearly sexual, and have components of long-term coercion, aggression and humiliation, and secretiveness, while the case of Ramon touches more on relationships between men and women, on a misunderstanding, on the boundaries of flirtation, matters that it is difficult for the court to rule on, if at all.

No, Katsav’s rape of women working in his office is clearly sexual predation. Again, just because Ramon didn’t rape the poor victim doesn’t make a kiss less than sexual. A kiss IS sexual. Why should anyone have to point this out? Unless the editorial writer perhaps has never kissed anyone and doesn’t recognize the nature of the act.

Thanks to Eran for turning me on to this terrific Haaretz column by Gideon Levy which excellently refutes the argument raised above:

Israel should take pride in this ruling, even if, as a public figure, Ramon pays a steep personal price for it. Just as the public figures among us enjoy a nearly endless list of extravagant benefits citizens can only dream about – much more so than in many other countries – the price they should pay when they stumble must also be heavy…

The ways of the world that are liable to change, one would hope, as a result of this ruling are those that should have disappeared long ago. Courtship will not end and the kiss will not die. The court acted with noteworthy courage when it ruled contrary to widespread public sentiment and set clear limits that must not be crossed…

There are countries in which a government minister would never dream of kissing a female soldier, but in the wanton atmosphere that prevails here, there is no alternative to mobilizing the justice system…

Even before the verdict, he knew the limits of the permissible and the forbidden in the relations between the sexes. Whether they are government ministers or simple citizens, there are many men to whom it would never occur to stick their tongue in the mouth of a female soldier when they barely know each other. The unruly men, those who thought until a few days ago that almost anything was permissible for them – to grope, kiss, embrace, rub against, pinch and harass – are the only ones who will be a little more cautious now, and that is a good thing.

But the verdict’s main impact will actually be on women. From now on, each Israeli woman will know it is her right to resist and her duty to complain if a man intrudes upon her body, in any way, without her consent.

The Israeli Supreme Court regrettably confirmed last Sunday that in Israel, security concerns justify all manner of anti-democratic, racist policies against its Arab population. Israeli Arabs must endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in their capacity as second class citizens in this erstwhile democracy. This week the nation’s supreme judicial tribunal ratified yet another outrage directed against it’s largest minority group. No longer can families in which one spouse is an Israeli citizen and one is Palestinian remain living in Israel. Henceforth, the latter will be deported without regard to the family hardship this will entail, breaking up families which have lived in the country for decades. Haaretz reports:

The law states that only Palestinian women over the age of 25 and men over 35 are eligible to join their families in Israel and eventually receive citizenship. Critics have slammed it as racist and discriminatory, and Amnesty International has called for its repeal.

Justices on opposite sides of the debate had an interesting colloquy:

Cheshin wrote for the majority that Israel has every right to keep out members of an enemy state.

“Israel is not a utopia,” he wrote. “It is in the midst of a major conflict with the Palestinians, and this armed conflict is like a war. And a state in the midst of a combat situation with another state is allowed to ban the entry of residents of the enemy state into its territory.”

Barak, however, rejected the argument that security trumps all: “The ends do not justify the means, because security does not reign supreme; because the proper means of increasing security do not justify serious damage to the lives of many thousands of Israeli citizens.

Democracy does not impose a sweeping ban, thereby cutting off its citizens from their partners and not allowing them to live a family life … It does not give its citizens the option of living in it without their partners or leaving the country … Democracy cedes a certain amount of security in order to obtain an immeasurably greater amount of family life and equality.”

The law confirmed here by the Court is an outrageous affront not only to Israeli Arabs, but to all Israelis for whom human rights and democratic values are important. Israel cannot survive as a mere security state which allows such interests to run roughshod over liberty and freedom. Besides, in weighing the possibility that perhaps one in a million of these Palestinian residents might participate in a terrorist attack against Israel, the latter has allowed such a remote possibility to trump reason, common sense and any notion of common decency.

Haaretz’s editorial roundly condemns the decision noting that Israel places itself outside of the international consensus regarding minority rights:

…Not one single Western country discriminates against some of its citizens by passing laws that apply only to them, and that impose limits only on their choice of a partner with whom they can live in their homeland.

It is difficult to accept the argument that the amendment to the Citizenship Law, which won the Supreme Court’s approbation yesterday, comes in response to a genuine security need. It is easier to accept the skeptical position of Justice Ayala Procaccia, who wrote that in light of the facts before her, she doubted whether the security explanation is the only one behind the law. The facts presented by the security establishment do not explain the law, since out of the tens of thousands who have become Israeli citizens since 1967 in the framework of family unification, only 26 have been questioned on suspicion of abetting terrorism.

That’s 26 questioned about links to terror. And probably none who ever committed an act of terror or came close to doing so. This law is a remedy without a cause. Though one can say that the true cause is out and out racism. In her remarks above, the justice was alluding to an unspoken motive for the law–to stem the tidal wave of Israeli Arab population growth which stands to endanger the Jewish majority if it remains “unchecked.” Many Israeli Jews, even those with moderate views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict see the Arab minority as a “fifth column” in their midst. This is the reason why a current Israeli poll indicates 62% support the idea of “population transfer” of the Arabs, that is forced removal of Israeli Arabs from land they have lived on for generations.

All I can say is that Israel hasn’t even begun to face up to its race problem. It’s taken our country decades to begin to do so and we’ve perhaps reached the end of the beginning of our journey in addressing these inequities. Israel has barely budged from the beginning of the beginning, if this court decision is any reflection of societal attitudes.

I am delighted to report that subsequent developments in Israel indicate that Chief Justice Barak feels he has the court votes needed to overturn the Citizenship Law should the Knesset, as Justice Minister Haim Ramon proposes, attempt to permanently ratify the racist provisions within it. That’s because one of the justices who voted to ratify the law did so only because it will only last another two months (after which it will have to be extended by the Knesset). This justice signaled that should the law be extended, he would vote against it. Most observers believe the Knesset will have to amend this Law to address the inequities which the recent decision ratified.

In a major break with its previous draconian policy, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, announced that Israel would begin transferring the tax revenues it’s been withholding from the Palestinian Authority. It announced the former policy when Hamas assumed control of the PA after its election:

Minister Livni said that Israel’s decision to move money to the Palestinians is the result of international pressure exerted on Israel, in wake of the developing crisis in the PA stemming from a global financial blockade on the Hamas-led government.

One of the main considerations that influenced the decision, Jerusalem officials admitted, was reports from Israeli missions across the world that the country’s image was deteriorating in light of the worsening humanitarian situation in the PA.

Minister Livni said Wednesday that she informed the Quartet’s ministers of her willingness to release the PA’s tax funds for humanitarian causes only.

In an interview to Channel 10, Livni said: “The images of a hungry child, or of someone rummaging through garbage bins, are ones it is very difficult to deal with.”

“I made it clear to the Quartet’s ministers with whom I spoke ahead of the meeting, that as we were not looking to punish the Palestinian population, the funds can be used to pay for electricity, water supply, hospitals, medical treatment in Israel, etc,” Livni explained.

“We are willing to have these funds used for direct humanitarian purposes, such as medicines and healthcare needs. Israel will not allow for this money to go toward paying salaries,” the minister stressed, adding that it was important for her to get the message through that “Israel has no intention of hurting the Palestinian people.”

You’ll notice in the list of things the funds can be used for according to Livni most are actually payments to Israeli vendors for Palestinians necessities like electricity, fuel and water. So Israel is really doing these Israeli companies a favor in resuming payments. But at any rate, this is still a better outcome than the previous horrendous policy.

And any statement from Livni that Israel does not intend to punish the Palestinian is bogus hogwash. Of course, it intends to punish them. Just as the IDF shelling of civilian population zones is meant to terrorize Gazans. The only reason Israel is relenting is because of the big fat black eye it’s getting in the world press through its punishing policies. Israel will go as far toward brutalizing the Palestinians as it can get away with and then back off once the PR starts looking hinky for them. But thank God they do have some considerations limiting their policies, even if they are not moral ones.

Here’s another specious statement from Livni on Israel’s willingness to talk to Mahmoud Abbas:

Turning her attention to the matter of possible negotiations with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Livni said she has no objection to meeting with the Palestinian leader.

There is no personal boycott on Abbas, Livni said. “I do not rule out the option of meeting Abbas. I will have no problem meeting with him. But the question is not whether or not such a meeting takes place. Abbas does not want to talk about humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian public, he wants us to engage in negotiations over a permanent settlement now,” she stated.

Imagine that, Abbas has the effrontery to want to negotiate with Israel for a peace settlement! How outre of him. Doesn’t he know of the conditions we’ve set by which we refuse to negotiate with him until Hamas salutes the Israeli flag and sings Hatikvah? Seriously, this bit of tortuous logic has to be exposed for what it is.

Haim Ramon, Israeli justice minister, gave Hamas a deadline beyond which he said Israel would take control of its own fate and borders:

The Palestinians’ moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival Fatah party, has tried to persuade Israel to bypass Hamas and resume peace negotiations with him, but Olmert has made it clear that he is not prepared to negotiate with Abbas if Hamas doesn’t change its violent ways.

Hamas thus far has refused to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist, despite intense international pressure and the cutoff of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and Israeli transfer payments.

”Through the end of this year, 2006, there will be honest attempts to talk to the other side,” Ramon told Israel’s Army Radio.

”If it becomes clear by the end of the year that we really have no partner, and the international community is also convinced of this, then we will take our fate into our own hands and not leave our fate in the hands of our enemies,” he added.

Isn’t that convenient. Israel has a partner willing to negotiate. But instead it restricts itself to setting conditions for a different partner before it will negotiate with either one. Since when does Israel get the right to determine which Palestinian representative it will negotiate with? If the Palestinians agree that Abbas is their negotiator then what right does Israel have to impose conditions on Hamas, which has basically ceded the negotiations to him? It’s all a game of outsmarting and outmaneuvering your opponent so that you get your way without having to deal with him at all; all the while making yourself look good in the eyes of the world. It reeks and the world isn’t buying it. The only people Israel is outsmarting is themselves as this bait and switch maneuver only causes a negotiated solution to recede farther into the distance.