Responding to Freddie

Freddie lists a number of what he calls "illegitimate" pro-Israel arguments, with a summary note at the bottom for wrap-up. Once again, he's the victim of a stubborn insistence to contort political reality to a rigid moral dogma that one imagines might even give Kant pause. I'll try to respond to each numbered point, and then the summary. In all cases his descriptions are longer than the quoted passages, so make sure to visit the article and read it in full yourself.

1. Frivolous Accusations of Anti-Semitism
Accusations of anti-Semitism, of course, flow from the extremist hawks like water. Whenever Israel becomes the subject of any criticism, for any reason, in any context or discussion, from any quarter, someone will allege anti-Semitism. The thinking, I guess, is that Israel is the home of the Jews, and so criticizing Israel means you're "really" criticizing Jews, and criticizing Jews must be anti-Semitism. In America accusations of anti-Semitism are a panacea for whatever ails those who consider themselves the pro-Israel hardline; it has become their impenetrable shield.

This is a fair point in many cases. Part of my job slumming it at the Post is to moderate comments left on our online articles. The amount of racist vitriol I read and delete (most of it directed at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians) is probably damaging my soul. But a lot of what I read there is accusations of anti-Semitism, leveled at anyone who questions Israel's actions. I don't begrudge older folks this reaction -- it's born of long years of prejudice. Jews have sustained a collective psychological trauma in the last century that has transformed bigotry from an indignity to a boogeyman.

That's no excuse for the professional pundits out there who rely on the same tactic, nor is it an excuse for Israeli and American politicians, and I'm with Freddie on this one. I would add only one thing: that there is an anti-Semitic movement out there that hides behind criticism of Israel, and I hope that Freddie takes the time to read about it. It's not always a boogeyman.

2. Appeals to Relative Morality
This is a common trope in foreign policy discussions of all types, and is often used to defend the actions of the United States, as well. In this argument, suddenly the relative merits of Israel compared to various bad actors is completely dispositive of Israel's character. So we are regaled with the fact that Israel has superior moral nature to Hamas, the Syrian regime, the Iranian theocracy, Hezbollah.... These assertions are no doubt true. They are also sublimely irrelevant to the central question: are Israel's actions in the world moral?

I'm fine with this one, and would have added it myself if it weren't on the list.

3. Conflation of Criticism of Israel with Support for Israel's Enemies
This kind of pure strawmanning happens with surprising frequency. Simple, lame assertions that moral revulsion at the widespread killing of civilians by Israel-- and, let us be clear, Israel has killed many more civilians in recent years than their enemies-- is equated with support for whatever despicable acts the other side has committed.

Outside of the new anti-Semitism issue I referenced above, I'm fine with this as well. As a moderate I'm often accused of the same nonsense. One minor quibble -- I'm not sure what timeframe Freddie is referencing by 'recent years,' but I assume he must mean that Israel has killed more civilians than its enemies have killed Israely civilians. If he is reaching as far back as the 80s, then Israel's regional enemies have killed many more civilians generally than Israel has.

4. The "Why do you only criticize Israel?" Dodge
In this bit of empty rhetoric, the fact that critics of Israel actually spend time criticizing Israel's actions demonstrates their lack of a moral compass, and is commonly used with implications of anti-Semitism: why do you criticize Israel so often? I'm not saying anything, it just makes me wonder.... This argument is ultimately connected with number 2 above. Why do we criticize Israel when there are other political agents worthy of criticism? There are several reasons.

Freddie is correct in his response insofar as Americans have a vested interest in Israel because of our military and cultural ties. And he's also correct to say that Israel ought to be held to a higher standard than terrorists and dictators on its borders.

But getting down to a micro, event-by-event level, I do take issue with this criticism. Even though it sounds small, it matters very much to the strategies of Israel and Hamas who is perceived to be the instigator in this conflict. Hamas violated the truce (or allowed it to be violated by others, depending on who you ask), not Israel. That's a critical point, because from it the narrative of the current offensive emerges. As I write there are two narratives vying for legitimacy in the press and popular discourse: 1. that Hamas struck first and therefore Israel's actions, reprehensible though they may be, are defensive in nature; or 2. that Israel is the aggressor and, in the truly cruel phrasing of one British journalist, that it is "addicted to violence."

That the true narrative emerge requires a critical viewpoint toward both Israel and Hamas. And too often, this is not happening. The British press, in particular, spends so much more time criticizing Israel, that a false narrative of pure aggression is emerging in the Western press. You may disagree with Israel's reaction, but it is something very different to revise the historical record to change the context of that disagreeable reaction and make it even more disagreeable.

Israel deserves a critical eye. But it needs to be understood that such criticism can have unintended consequences.

5. Guilt by association, or by ethnicity
Hamas is indeed a Palestinian organization; so what? Again, there is no difference between saying that innocent Palestinians deserve to die for the actions of Hamas and saying that Americans deserve to die for the actions of the American military. Palestinians, today, are dying, despite not being members of Hamas, never holding a rocket, never targeting an Israeli citizen, having nothing whatsoever to do with attacks on Israeli civilians.

This is a willful misrepresentation of the problem. It's true that Palestinians cannot and should not be held accountable for the actions of their neighbors. The issue arises from two conditions in Gaza:
1. Palestinians elected Hamas in free and fair elections, knowing their policy toward Israel; and
2. Hamas maintains a guerrilla fighting force that involves the citizenry to varying degrees, purposefully making it unclear to Israel and the international community who is a fighter, and who is a civilian.

In these senses there is guilt by association. I don't believe that they justify the killing of civilians. Palestinians voted for Hamas because Fatah was (and is) hopelessly corrupt and incompetent - the Arafat gift that keeps on giving. And while I'm sure some (or even many) alleged civilians happily cooperate with Hamas, in Gaza there is no option to not cooperate. It is a police state where dissidents are dealt with brutally.

That said, many pro-Israel advocates don't know that. They're still wrong, but they're arguing from ignorance, not (necessarily) racism -- a much different position from Freddie's inelegant allusion to German anti-Semitism.


As to the summary: I can say immediately and with feeling that anyone who declares the "truth" of the Israel/Palestine issue is completely ignorant of the true depth of the conflict to which he refers. I've had the lucky fortune to work over here with some of the best thinkers on the issue, on both sides. They have learned through years and years of attempts and failures to stop thinking they know what's true. Freddie needs to come off the moral highhorse, at least when it comes to this region of the world.

As a moderate/liberal American living in Israel and working in the political/media sector here, I recognize in Freddie's sentiment the same feeling I had when I was still in America. I am not a globetrotting snob who believes that you have to have come here to "understand" the issue, and there are many international thinkers whose opinions about Israel I value. But I do think it helps, especially to snap one out of the liberalism that can come so easily to the citizens of a country that has not been under bombardment for seven years.

Freddie is eager to assert a categorical imperative to protect civilians -- fine. But like so many in the international community, he perceives the current crisis in two dimensions. It's the Negev vs. Gaza; planes vs. rockets; four casualties in Israel vs. 400 in Gaza.

I'll reiterate -- this is the mentality of someone who has not made an effort to imagine what it is like to go to war in one's home country every ten years. Israel talks a lot about "credible deterrence" -- the requirement to remind enemy countries at the border that you have the ability and will to respond with deadly force at provocation. Critics see this as "an addiction to violence." It is, in my view, very much the opposite.

The problem with categorical imperatives (or one problem, anyway) is that they treat each situation as if it were part of a vacuum. So, one mustn't kill civilians. But what if killing some civilians now will save more later? When is the trade justified?

It's easy for Freddie to perform the moral calculus when he sees the relevance of the Gaza rockets only for the Israeli south. But they are part of a much larger balance of power which he has totally ignored. If Israel fails to maintain credible deterrence, it puts the lives of all its citizens in jeopardy. Israel, unlike America, faces existential threats that are real. There are multiple countries and terrorist organizations with the means to attack Israel that will do so if they believe they can be effective.

Israel has two ways of diminishing their effectiveness. The first is to maintain one of the best internal security systems in the world. But that only takes you so far. Israel also has to be willing to respond to provocation. Freddie is right to point out that it is almost impossible for moderate Palestinian leadership to remain credible in the face of Israeli strikes. But the time for dealing with that issue was before this crisis, not the middle. The United States and the UN had a year to solve the Hamas problem in Gaza peacefully, or via other means than the IDF. Instead, they sat on their hands and waited for -- what? No one knows. As far as we can tell, the Bush administration had no plan (surprise, surprise).

But Israel cannot sacrifice credible deterrence in the hope that someone will finally find a way to work with Hamas diplomatically -- or that Palestinians in Gaza will come out against the violence. I can't emphasize this enough: the sacrifice of credible deterrence puts more civilian lives at risk, on both sides of the conflict, than the current operation. That Freddie has failed to consider this is symptomatic of the international community's persistent myopia in all things regionally Middle Eastern, from Israel to Iraq.

Were there better ways to carry out the operation? I'd like to see the air strikes end as soon as possible. I believe they were necessary in the first two days of the operation, to catch as much of the Hamas leadership in the open as possible. But at this point, a ground operation would probably do more to minimize civilian death. (I say that with circumspection, as Gaza is extremely difficult, mostly urban territory, and I don't know how successfully ground troops will be able to discern Palestinian civilians from militants dressed as same.)

But either way, while I appreciate Freddie's ability to deconstruct a fallacious argument, I reject as shortsighted and essentially ignorant his opposition to the Israeli operation based on the categorical imperative he has established.

Happy new year! PR war edition

Well it hadn't been two days before my Gaza fears came true. A lot of what I said earlier is now irrelevant to the current situation, especially with regard to air strikes. I admit that I was not hopeful that Israel would avoid air strikes, but I also definitely didn't realize the extent to which they were going to be used.

Understanding now that it was Israel's intention to take Hamas relatively by surprise, and that the Egypt meeting (and possibly even Barak's reluctance) was merely a ruse, helps explain tactics. A ground campaign without this kind of air support would have been long and grueling, giving Hamas leadership more than enough time to go underground. In the last post I had been assuming that high-priority Hamas targets had already gone into hiding, and that it therefore was not a concern to Israel. I now see that this was not the case. To that extent, I'm happy with Israel's operation. It feels more 'Israeli', less like Lebanon '06 -- fast, thorough, and effective.

But I am very concerned about civilian casualties, and so far there hasn't been any news on just how many there will be. Most reports circulating say that the 'majority' of the 300-odd dead were Hamas militiamen, which is good news. And to my knowledge Israel has yet to slip up and bomb a school or hospital. But at this level of destruction, there is simply no way that civilian casualties are below 10%. And as the death toll climbs, that percentage gets more and more difficult to swallow.

From a moral standpoint, all civilian casualties are unacceptable. But when a confrontation is unavoidable, so is civilian death. The real question becomes what manner of operation will minimize civilian suffering. In this case, there is no guarantee that a ground operation would have done so. As Jewcy points out, Hamas has used human shields in the past during ground fighting. And certainly more Israelis would have been killed in such an operation.

But the potential for civilian death in air strikes is much, much higher. Put another way, in ground fighting, one mistake can kill one or two civilians. In air strikes, one mistake can kill a hundred. There's no way to know yet whether Israel will walk away from Gaza having avoided such a mistake - but they are certainly playing with fire.

That Jewcy article is, I think, not very good, in that it's reactionary and a little bit unrealistic. The author, Edmund Standing, seems to be asserting that because Israel adopts the rhetoric of wanting to spare civilian lives, it is therefore not guilty of civilian lives lost. (I'm reminded of the Bush administration's incredibly doublespeakish operation names, as if they believed that by calling it 'Iraqi Freedom' it would thereby be unimpeachably a pro-freedom operation.)

Not that the Israeli government's stubborn insistence on maintaining anti-racist, pro-equality rhetoric isn't admirable, especially in the face of what Mr. Standing rightly points out is a nasty and brutal creed from Hamas. But ultimately, Israeli culpability for civilian losses will not be mitigated by rhetoric, but by what Israel is actually doing to minimize those losses.

It's not legitimate for Israel, or Mr. Standing, to claim that because Israel would have preferred not to kill civilians, it is therefore absolved of their deaths -- any more than Hamas supporters may claim that, because they did not fly the planes carrying the bombs, they are therefore wholly unaccountable for Gaza losses. The fact is that Israel has made a tactical choice in this conflict -- a difficult choice, but still certainly a choice -- to operate exclusively or primarily through air strikes. Air strikes are very effective at killing their targets, and so there is an argument to be made on the Israeli side that by dealing Hamas a crippling blow now, very quickly, Palestinian lives will ultimately be spared because of the lack of a drawn-out conflict. But air strikes also kill civilians -- and as the side that chose to employ that tactic instead of a ground invasion, the Israeli government bears responsibility for all deaths caused, including those of civilians. It shares that responsibility with Hamas, and Hamas perhaps moreso for initiating the new conflict (depending, I guess, on your perspective).

Mr. Standing is right to be annoyed at the British press's coverage of recent events. Israelis are -- rightfully -- asking themselves where all the calls of war crimes were when Israeli towns were being shelled daily by tens of rockets from Gaza. Israelis want to know why they are being accused of disrupting the ceasefire, when Hamas has been launching Qassams for nearly two weeks.

But the media is attracted to spectacle, and as unfair as it may be, the massive operation now taking place in Gaza has merited more coverage than however many rockets landing in the desert. The problem with British coverage has been a failure to provide context for the operation. American media has been by and large conscientious in this regard, from what I've seen. Reports are always careful to explain that the reason for the Israeli operation was the shelling of southern Israeli towns. British media, on the other hand, seems determined to consider the operation in a vacuum, as if Olmert woke up one morning and decided he hadn't killed enough people during his time in office.

All that to say that, again, while Mr. Standing is reactionary and a bit all over the place, I understand where he's coming from emotionally. But frustration with incompetent or unfair media coverage isn't any more an excuse for civilian casualties than a perverse, reckless enemy.

Merry Christmas! War edition

Tzipi Livni's visit to Egypt today was widely covered, and with good reason. The BBC is correct to interpret the move as the first diplomatic step needed before a Gaza strike becomes an option. Egypt, despite occasional rhetorical flourishes, is a needed ally in the Gaza situation - without its commitment to sealing the border and staying out of the way, an Israeli strike is out of the question.

The BBC article also speculates that Egypt would not be opposed to an Israeli strike, which is some good connect-the-dots, though of course nothing is certain. Hamas's failure to negotiate with Fatah, and now its failure to renew the ceasefire, is a pain in Egypt's ass. The Palestinian issue is forever a burden to Mubarak, because the Egyptian people's collective heart is not in it, as I reported a few weeks ago.

But Hamas's brand of resistance is especially toxic for the Mubarak government because it constantly returns the Palestinians, and Israeli violence against them, to the headlines. Hamas, in the time-honored PLO tradition, knows that violence keeps them in the news. That's great for them -- but for Mubarak, it's nothing less than a daily reminder to his people how out-of-step his government is with their feeling.

In a nutshell, that's why Egypt pushed for the ceasefire in the first place. The country is not exactly a humanitarian paragon - but they know a good political play when they see one. Now that Hamas isn't playing ball on that front, I think the BBC is right in thinking that Egypt would green light a limited Israeli incursion designed to topple the Hamas government once and for all.

With that in mind, I think Hamas has really overplayed its hand here. I had thought that their strategy was to drop just enough rockets to get Israel to extend the ceasefire -- and to meanwhile continue to rearm and hope for a miracle (like an Iranian attack, or a surprise Hizbullah incursion). That strategy seemed so good that it honestly frightened me, as well as, I think, a lot of Israelis. Israel's hands were tied by international disapproval, while Hamas went about the nasty business of girding for a hard and nasty war.

But looking at the situation today, I honestly don't know that they ever had a strategy at all. 50 rockets a day for a week straight is not exactly throwing rocks at tanks. A growing consensus is emerging in Israel that we now have full justification for an offensive -- a consensus with which even my pinko brain struggles to disagree. A few rockets a day into the desert is not pretty, sure. But we're talking barrages. We are truly talking acts of war.

(Which, incidentally, is why Ehud Barak has once again proved himself to be perhaps the most inept politician of his generation. The idea that he could use the current situation purely for positioning - i.e., to separate himself from the pack by being 'the guy who opposed the Gaza incursion' - is truly tone-deaf. Even if the Gaza operation fails, (which it may, where failure is essentially undefined) I doubt that Barak's opposition (especially in his position as minister of defense) is going to be viewed favorably.)

What are the upshots here? Not many. The potential for widespread civilian casualties on the Palestinian side seems very great. It's hard to imagine at any time Livni or Netanyahu pushing for ground operations over air strikes when the ground operations would put Israeli soldiers in danger. But in an election year? Unless they come to some sort of private agreement, I expect we'll see multiple air strikes almost certain to leave large numbers of Palestinian civilians dead.

Couple that with the fact that Hamas leadership has already gone to ground, and I'm not sure that it would even be possible to bring down their government without a costly, longterm operation. Practically speaking, Israel can afford the expenditure. But in terms of international political capital, I would imagine it would be difficult to carry on an offensive longer than a few months. And who knows what would happen if the Obama administration perceived the campaign as a kind of test of its leadership.

That said, if Hamas could be brought down, it might be worth the risk. Certainly it would tremendously ease the burden of Palestinian peace negotiators to once again be able to speak for their whole country, instead of half. But even in the event of a victory, Israel would be between a rock and a hard place. A withdrawal at the end of the campaign, with Fatah left holding the keys to the kingdom, doesn't really sound desirable -- after all, they're the ones who lost grip on the territory in the first place. But on the other hand, can Israel afford to semi-permanently reoccupy Gaza? It may be the only way to keep Hamas out, but the human cost would again be tremendous.

Ultimately, I think Israel has to call Hamas's bluff and go in. If Hamas continues to receive carte blanche for its reckless baiting, it's hard to see a positive future for an independent West Bank.

How to do it cleanly is another issue. First of all, I think that Livni and Netanyahu ought to make the deal I spoke about above. They both must realize that, while air strikes might be a way to gain leverage in the current campaign, they would make governing after the fact tremendously difficult for whichever party took the election. I imagine they would both prefer not to be installed as PM right after a faulty missile blows up a Palestinian school, or something similar.

Having committed itself to ground operations where air strikes are too risky, I think the Israeli government needs to adopt the rhetoric of full-on war. Part of the problem with second Lebanon War was the arrogant way in which Olmert's government approached the issue. They were so sure that they would crush Hizbullah that they forgot to prepare the soldiers for the sacrifices they would inevitably be making. That needs to change. Hamas is real, and dangerous, and if the politicians send soldiers in without being honest with the Israeli people about the risks, then public support for the operation will wane very quickly.

As far as international opinion goes, Israel needs to shut it out. As long as the US remains in favor, it's better for both Israel and Palestinian civilians that there be one longer, thorough operation, rather than a number of short, messy attempts. US advocates for Israel need to approach the Obama administration couching this as his first test of loyalty, so to speak, after he protested against election smears questioning his Middle East credibility. They should strongly suggest that forcing Israel to pull out too soon would damage his capital amongst Americans far more easily than letting the operation play out (which is true). The US should be invited to help craft post-invasion strategy with Israel and Egypt, and I hope that one of the few gains from this mess will be an Obama administration that is hands-on with the peace process here.

Figuring out a post-war Gaza is harder. Assuming that Hamas does fall, I think the best compromise would be for Fatah to take over, with soldiers provided by Egypt. That way, Israel can get out, and Palestinian civilians can feel a little better than they would back under the thumb of the occupier.

But it's unlikely that Egypt would want a committed presence in Gaza. In that case, I guess the next best bet would be for Egypt to provide money and arms to Fatah, and for Israel to go through a phased withdrawal, to give Fatah time to settle in. Perhaps some security agreement could be struck between Israel and Fatah, the former promising to support the latter in the event of another coup, and the Palestinians allowing for a cooperative presence along the Gaza border.

Mead's new paper in Foreign Affairs

All right, all right, I know this was supposed to be more on journalism. But forgive me, I need to take a moment to talk about a thought-provoking new essay from Walter Mead, who is a fellow with the mysterious cabal known as the Council on Foreign Relations.

I don't actually know a lot about Mead personally, or his history with Israel, or anything like that. I'm just here to talk about the paper itself, which, as advertised, is attempting a Copernican-shift in the way the US relates to Palestinians.

Ok, first, here's what Mead is suggesting that is not new. He joins a recent, unusually concerted wave of European politicians (from Austria and England, most notably) in calling for a freeze on settlements. Though, he cleverly leaves that to the end of the paper, so that the impossible Israeli right-wing doesn't shut down until at least the last page. A bit more interestingly, perhaps, he also seems to have gotten behind a divided Jerusalem, albeit euphemistically. The amusingly 'diplomatic' passage:

Support for Israel runs very deep among Americans, and it is likely to increase as Israel moves closer to a settlement with the Palestinians. The Obama administration needs to harness that support to help the Israeli government take steps on the sensitive questions of the status of Jerusalem and the status of the territories, steps that an increasing number of Israeli politicians acknowledge must be taken.

This is a gentle way of saying "we're going to have to divide Jerusalem, and give up settlements."

Mead joins the sensible, realistic wing of the Israel-Palestine issue in these prescriptions, for which I am thankful. It's the other things he has to say, however, that are of particular interest to me.

Mead is talking about, more than anything else, an extreme overhaul of American rhetoric regarding the peace process. He organizes that overhaul around two prongs, which he sees as benefiting both sides.

First prong: America needs to recognize not only the right of Palestinians to exercise self-determination, but the suffering they have endured since Naqba and Israeli independence, and the culpability of the rest of the world in that suffering.

When he reiterates the United States' support for an independent, viable Palestinian state with borders based on the Green Line, that is, the pre-1967 borders (with minor and mutually-agreed-on modifications), Obama must go further than his predecessors. He must overcome the skepticism created by the Bush administration's empty rhetorical support for a Palestinian state. He must declare that the United States is committed not only to an independent Palestine but also to acknowledging the wrongs the Palestinians have suffered, compensating them for those, and otherwise ensuring a dignified future for every Palestinian family.

Second prong: America needs to lead the charge in laying the majority of the blame for the Palestinian situation at the feet of the United Nations, instead of Israel.

The United Nations' failure to provide elementary security for both the Arab and the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine as the British withdrew was the immediate cause of both communities' suffering in the late 1940s -- of the initial clashes between them, of the accelerating spiral of violence, of the Arab armies' entry into the conflict, and then of the prolonged period of hostility. Modern Israel should acknowledge and account for its part in those tragic events, but the international community at large must accept the ultimate responsibility for the nakba, solemnly acknowledging the wrongs done and sincerely trying to compensate Palestinian refugees today.

As some commentators in Israel have already pointed out, changes in rhetoric alone are not going to do anything to put the conflict to bed. Mead himself acknowledges that these changers will stop "well short of a revolution." But he also points to a tough fact that eluded the Bush administration for eight years -- any peace agreement is going to have to command broad support amongst Israelis, and especially Palestinians.

If the paramount Israeli goal is security, then a peace agreement with any hope of lasting needs to do more than just sort out points of contention between the two governments. It needs to lay the foundation for success with the Palestinian people. In a territory with as weak a government as the PA, the only way to truly minimize terrorism while simultaneously restoring autonomy is through widespread cooperation of the Palestinian populace.

As I've talked about here before, Palestinians have more to say about grievances than even Jews -- which is saying something. They have sustained national psychological damage, and as much as they might frustrate us in seeming to revel in the role of victimhood, the truth is that endlessly getting kicked around has crippled the ability of Palestinians, as a nation, to act constructively toward mutual interest. That isn't just going to disappear with even the best peace agreement. I agree with Mead that a change in tone from Washington, followed by similar changes around the West, would go a long way toward healing the damage.

I don't know that Mead is offering much beyond rhetorical advice. The problems on the ground remain as they were -- and with the impending reinvasion of Gaza, they're likely to only get worse in the next weeks (or, God forbid, months). But, assuming the Obama administration decides to take interest in our little corner of the world, I hope they read this paper seriously.

future (or lack thereof) of reporting

I'm now a week and change into a new job (where "job"=task for which I am not paid, but over which I am yelled at) at a local newspaper here in Jerusalem (which will remain nameless as I intend to be fairly critical).

I could go on and on about the weird childhood wish-fulfillment of the whole experience, or the deflating tedium of actual life as a reporter. But instead I'll focus on journalism as an industry, which as everyone knows is in its death-throes. I read Drudge Report just about daily, and nobody more gleefully reports on the death of mainstream media than that crazy guy. Lord knows why, exactly -- his business model is basically "consume and recycle mainstream media. repeat."

Put simply I don't think there is anyone my age today looking to get into print journalism seriously -- at least, no one sane. I'd be curious to see enrollment figures for journalism and mass communications schools in the States. I bet they're down. My first day on the job, I sat in on the editorial meeting with another new intern, and two kids slightly older than me who were trying to get jobs at the paper. They looked very tired. They looked embarrassed to be there.

I wasn't embarrassed. When you acknowledge up front that you're an amateur, a dabbler, you get a little cover. But to step up and say you just graduated journalism school? You've got a roomful of people looking at you like you just told them you graduated from community college with a degree in snake charming.

Where is journalism going? Print journalism is over for now, at least until the real Big One hits and we have to sell the internet to China. It's a given that journalism is going digital, a fact that even mainstream papers are beginning (albeit grudgingly) to accept. But that will not be enough to save the creaking print giants. Even web-exclusive publications like Slate are feeling the pinch. There's something missing to American journalism reform.

People won't pay for internet content. They're not used to it, and while the news is free elsewhere, that's where they'll go. For archives, they might pay. Except that everything published after, say, the turn of the century echoes so loudly across the web that there's almost nothing worth buying. If you absolutely must have an NYT article on the Microsoft hearings, maybe you'll pay. If you just need to know what happened? Wikipedia.

Ads sell. But ads don't pay the cost of producing a quality story. That takes contacts, and travel, and good writing, and editing, and most of all time. It takes time to write a good story! It takes more than a few hours.

Today I've written a total of five stories. Of those, four were compiled from press releases and a few phone calls. Only one of them was written on my own initiative. Guess which one hit the front page.

The commodification of stories results in a corresponding decrease in the quality of the stories. That's the truth. The newspaper competes with other papers, not to get the real story, but just to get the story at all. We wrote a story today on the ADL that had no information outside of their press release. Why? It wasn't interesting, and I bet nobody in town gives a fuck about it. But we had to -- the other guys had it! Of course, their story sucked too, boring and canned and utterly beholden to the interests it discussed.

Does anyone buy paper subscriptions this way? Checking to see what inconsequential bullshit one paper missed, and judging the other the better for it? I don't think so. But this appears to be how news is dictated. I have no trouble imagining the guys at that other paper looking over our shoulder just the same.

I don't know why people don't read the paper any more. I still like it. I like to know what's going on in the world. It's food for thought. I especially like in-depth pieces and profiles. For this reason I love news magazines and their format. I consider them worth my money. I see my money as an investment in perceptive people who are capable of getting close to the rich and famous, to people of consequence, and returning to articulately give me all the goods. I'm happy to spend $5 for this task to be accomplished.

I see art and poetry in good journalism and so it is no stretch for me to say any of that. I still remember reading a wonderful profile of General Petraeus. It was the highlight of my week. But I'm beginning to realize that this is one more case where I am in the minority.

I will follow this up with what I meant to talk about very shortly.

A little more on Bethlehem

As it will appear in the Federation News:

Last month, I took a two-day trip to Bethlehem, the ancient sister city of Jerusalem and the birthplace of Christianity. I had the opportunity to tour the city and its surrounding villages, and to meet with a number of the Palestinians in the area, including one family who graciously let me stay the night at their home.
There is a lot to say about Bethlehem as a cultural phenomenon, from the unusual mix of Christian and Muslim Palestinians, to its enduring reputation as a tourist attraction for Westerners, despite the continued security risks. However, what most struck me about the city was not its cultural heritage, but its changing political landscape.
If there was a dominant political theme to Bethlehem, it was that of the binational state – the rejection of separate states for Israelis and Palestinians, in favor of one state for both nationalities, over the whole of biblical Israel. This notion has been floating around since long before I arrived in Israel three months ago, but the seriousness with which it is being considered by the Israeli left, and by a broad swath of the Palestinian polity, is very new.
Every single Palestinian I met in Bethlehem favored a binational state over an independent Palestinian state. I admit that I was not interacting with an average sample of the Palestinians in the West Bank; the people I spoke to were universally pro-peace, and primarily older. Nonetheless, I was stunned by their level of enthusiasm for a single state, and how rapidly suspicion and rejection of the two-state solution -- until recently the only goal considered realistic on either side – had grown.
A binational state would solve a whole host of problems for both peoples. Land rights, water rights, historic/holy sites visitation rights, and much more would be instantly resolved under a binational state agreement. But there would not be a Jewish majority.
For Jews around the world, and an overwhelming majority in Israel, this is an instant deal-breaker. Israel, after all, is supposed to be a Jewish country, where the Jewish language is spoken by Jewish people, practicing in peace the Jewish religion.
With this colossal problem in the way, there has been no serious discussion from the Israeli side of a binational state, with the exception of groups considerably to the political left of the Israeli public. But the situation in Palestine is different. There, the idea of a binational state has gained serious weight, to the extent that, for the people I met, it was the only option.
Of the many Palestinians I spoke to, not a single one of them understood the significance of the idea of a Jewish state, or how important it is to Jewish people. They do not learn about the historic struggle for Israel in their schools. They know Israel only in its modern incarnation: as a hostile neighbor and occupier on whom they cannot rely.
I asked the host family I stayed with to talk a little bit about their reasons for wanting a binational state. They were wonderfully nice people: a husband and wife, their daughter, and the wife's sister. They could speak for as long as I wanted (and often longer) on any of the subjects we talked about. When it came to the binational state, they continually returned to two issues:
1. The Security Fence -- For Palestinians, the security fence has become their world. It has done more damage to movement and access in the West Bank than any checkpoint. The family I spoke to had, for decades, been in the habit of traveling to Jerusalem once or twice a week, to visit the market, see the Christian holy sites, and sell small wood carvings that the father made, as a hobby. Since the construction of the barrier, they have not been allowed to visit Jerusalem under any circumstances. Religiously, culturally, and financially, this is a tremendous loss, as it is for the majority of the families living in the Bethlehem – Ramallah corridor, the most populous area of the West Bank.
2. Settlements – If you are living on the Palestinian side of the barrier, the math here is simple. Although you have been promised a country in a small corner of the world, in the meantime, you watch as bits and pieces of its land are subtracted every day from your future prospects. A friend of mine, who lives and works in Ramallah, the largest city in the West Bank, recently took me on an educational drive around the city limits. He pointed out two fully-realized settlements that had been built in the past two years, and three sites where new settlements had begun to go up. The situation in Bethlehem is alarmingly similar. My host family, perhaps rightfully, took only one message away from the development they saw around them: by the time a final status agreement is reached, and Palestinians are to receive their own state, there may not be any state left to give.

The security barrier and the ongoing settlement projects have received attention the world over as inhumane, illegal “land grabs” perpetrated on a helpless Palestinian public. These allegations may be true, and, from a moral standpoint, it should matter to the Jewish community in America that they be investigated. But as stakeholders in the future of the Jewish state, we need to be paying attention to these issues for other reasons, as well.
Today, the peace process is once again a shambles. A right-wing government, less willing to make concessions, is on its way to power in Israel. Gaza is completely off the table. And, in the West Bank, Abu Mazen continues to govern without the mandate of his people. These are all liabilities to the two-state solution; each of these situations, in its own way, is shaking the confidence of Israelis and Palestinians that a peaceful Palestinian neighbor will ever come into being.
The security fence and the settlements matter not only because of the humanitarian issues they raise, but also because of the massive damage they are doing in the West Bank to grassroots confidence in the two-state solution. When, one day, the majority of those in the West Bank look out their windows in the morning and see a 15-foot wall, or an Israeli village, they are not going to continue to believe in the possibility of a Palestinian state.
Should that day come, prospects for peace in the Middle East will dim considerably. The Palestinian public will have only two choices: to return to violence, or to turn to a binational state. As Jews, we claim that each is unacceptable. But what, then, are we doing to provide an alternative?