The Twilight Zone. The show that entered us.

As I have long said, The Twilight Zone has formed the basis for modern storytelling.  It is great that the New York Review of Books has decided to discuss its continuing legacy which has truly shaped the way we as modern human beings analyze and perceive many aspects of our own society.

As I have refined my thinking about the importance of The Twilight Zone over the years, I would describe its myriad of individual stories as boiling down to four general themes:

(1) Irony arising from justice:  You get what you want...and it ends up being what you deserve; 

(2) Irony arising from nostalgia: You finally get a chance to go back to when you were young where everything was simple...Except it was only simple to your youthful mind; 

(3) Irony arising from technology...Where we thought technology would free us, but instead it enslaved us; 

(4) Allegories which tend to boil down to...We have met the Enemy...and the Enemy is Us.  And sometimes even the U.S.

There are also space age science fiction and alien invader stories, but they tend to fall into one or more of the above categories as well.

The Daughter used to scoff at me for liking that old black and white show, especially when I said that of the first forty or fifty years of television, before the rise of multi-network programming (i.e. HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Films/Prime, etc.), The Twilight Zone may be the greatest single and most influential show of them all.  But after watching Black Mirror, she decided, on her own, to watch TTZ on Netflix, and came away much more respectful of the show.  As I often said to her, when she was more likely to scoff at something she figured out and saw as a cliché: When you think something is a cliche in terms of narrative arc in a particular episode of The Twilight Zone, think back to what you know of other shows and films of the time, and ask if maybe that cliche was in fact relatively new at the time?  Having said that, it is not like science fiction was invented through the show.  We know it was not, and that its antecedents go back at least to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus, and runs through Jules Verne, and the pioneer science fiction writers in the 1920s, 1930s, and also through The Twilight Zone's entire run, from 1959 through 1964.

I said she should approach The Twilight Zone the way we may approach Jane Austen's work or Ann Radcliffe, which she intuitively already understood, but which I should say here: Read (or watch) it with a critical eye both negatively and positively, recognize its place in its time, and appreciate how readers of the time would have received and perceived it.  For me, such a perspective adds to the enjoyment of the read, and allows one to mentally time travel.

We should also mention the brilliant structuring of the show, with Rod Serling, the main writer, opening and closing the show as our modern muse and speaking with ironic wit and thoughtfulness.  We who know the show can picture him even now, standing often at the side of our television screen, in his dark suit, dark tie, and white or light dress shirt, sometimes with a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Serling's mantra at the start of each episode was that we were entering or have already entered...The Twilight Zone.  

And now, when we think about the show's legacy nearly sixty years on, and we think about its impact in the way our current society recognizes levels of irony, how we view nostalgia, and how we perceive the very idea of the future, we can say, in perhaps an ironic twist, The Twilight Zone has entered us. 

"Traitor Trump": Why Democratic Party candidates need Republican strategists....

I guess Glenn Greenwald is recognizing that his pro-Russian position may no longer be tenable.  Greenwald's co-founded online magazine, The Intercept, has allowed former military intelligence beat writer for the NY Times, James Risen, to pen this essay. And it looks like Risen is going to be writing a multipart series for The Intercept.

This is fun.  We are now seeing a normalizing of thinking of Trump as at least possibly being a traitor.  Time to start those Richard Nixon engines:  Are you now or ever been a supporter of Trump? 

And to Trump-supporting Republicans in public office:  Why are you part of the pro-Russian internationalist conspiracy to undermine America? 

Ah, yes.  This new bag of popcorn.  So fresh.  So tasty.  

For those students of political science who study elections and election campaigns:  This is not about convincing your addled right wing uncle talking about protecting his gun arsenal, even though, if your addled uncle tried firing a shotgun, the recoil would break one of his shoulders.  Nope.  This is not about them--even as you can have some fun accusing them of being anti-American, anti-FBI and anti-CIA.  God, that is fun!  Hmmm...Anyway...

Instead, this is about convincing swing voters in a mid-term election and getting out the vote of your natural constituencies in a mid-term election.  This is how Republican operatives have analyzed and strategized elections for so many decades starting during the Cold War.  They recognize the swing vote consists of people who do not follow "politics" and can get riled up on any number of cultural and emotionally-based political issues.  

Back in the Cold War, Republican campaign strategists perfected the hyped up fears of international atheistic Communism--and Communists hiding under your bed. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, Republican campaign strategists rolled out gay phobias (note: there is a belief the Ohio and other States vote in the 2004 presidential election may have been affected positively for Republicans starting with GW Bush on anti-gay marriage initiatives Republicans pushed in those states, which pulled out more conservative voters in otherwise more liberal parts of those relatively few states, and ensured a razor thin official win in Ohio for President Bush.  Had even only Ohio gone for Kerry, there would have been a different electoral college outcome).  As we have seen, however, gay bashing no longer works...as too many Republican families had gay children or siblings and it became more and more uncomfortable to deny their existence.

But don't worry, Republican stalwarts:  Republican strategists still have those perennial fodders for fear:  guns and illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration remains the main perennial favorite with white, aging Baby Boomers, male and female, and is something to watch as this year's elections unfold.

As for guns, perhaps this last school shooting in Florida will be a turning point away from the inflammatory rhetoric about fears of gun confiscation, and the NRA being exposed as a money-laundering foil for Putin's Russia.  However, my take is old, deep habits die hard.  If Democratic Party strategists are smart, they will tell their candidates or activists not to bother trying to convince the relatively few gun lovers.  It is better to concentrate on swing voters who recognize sensible gun related legislation, and stay with that.  It seems to have worked for Doug Jones in Alabama, though again one must caution against over-interpreting those results against a demented Republican candidate like Roy Moore.

Ahem.  Enough of that.  Let's just focus on the simple fact that using culturally based and politically based issues to attract a sufficient number of swing voters has been how Republican operatives, for nearly eighty years, since the beginning of the Cold War, have helped the Republican Party to remain not only competitive, but often dominant when the Party's economic and political platform has rarely had the majority of the public on its side.

But, now, and here in 2018, progressive ideas, cultural, economic, and even political (the latter in terms of same day registration, run off voting, etc.) have the support of a majority of adult age Americans.  It is now time for Democratic Party strategists to stop their Bernie-bashing ways and realize enough Americans are excited about any number of issues from economics to the environment to cultural issues, etc. from what may be called a progressive perspective.  

And related to this is the story of "Traitor Trump" and his enablers of "treason."  The so-called Russia-gate story should be included in the strategic mix as we may reach a point where the difference between electoral victory and loss could include those swing voters who vote for Democrats against perceived treason-enablers in the Republican Party.

Sanders v. Mulvaney, LIHEAP edition

This Bernie Sanders exchange with US Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, is interesting because Mulvaney shows some of his cruel priorities which favor giving more billions to billionaires while putting poor people at risk of freezing in cold weather.   

Mulvaney is referring to the GAO study in 2010 (nearly eight years ago) which looked into fraud and waste in the home heating subsidy program known as LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program).  He talks about the finding that 11,000 people who were deceased applied for the assistance as if that is a reason for the nearly 2 million people who were alive and needed the assistance to no longer get the assistance.  Sanders rightly takes down for that Dickensian cruelty.

But let's look at the GAO study and see how solid that 11,000 figure is and whether Mulvaney is over-interpreting data.  Here is a quote form pages 5-6 of the study regarding the bad things the GAO found:

* Deceased individuals. The identities of over 11,000 deceased individuals were used as applicants or household members for LIHEAP benefits. Our analysis matching LIHEAP data to the SSA’s death master file found these individuals were deceased before the LIHEAP application date. Benefits involved with these applications totaled about $3.9 million for the year we reviewed.

* Incarcerated individuals. For the four states that provided reliable incarceration data, we found 725 instances where the identities of individuals incarcerated in state prisons were used as applicants or household members. These identities were associated with about $370,000 of LIHEAP benefits even though these individuals were in prison at the time of the application and thus ineligible for benefits.

* Federal employees exceeding income thresholds. Matching LIHEAP data with federal civilian payroll records, we identified about 1,100 federal employees whose federal salary exceeded the maximum income threshold at the time of their application. The benefit payments associated with those applications totaled $671,000.

Because LIHEAP is a block grant program, the potential fraudulent and improper activities associated with these thousands of cases have an adverse effect on the program. Specifically, these fraudulent and improper activities will either reduce the amount of energy assistance provided to recipients or prevent legitimate recipients from receiving the energy assistance because the funds have been used. 

The report, at the start, noted in part as well:

About 9 percent of households receiving benefits—totaling $116 million—in the selected states contained invalid identity information, such as Social Security numbers, names, or dates of birth. Although some of these cases are likely due to simple errors such as typos or incomplete data, thousands of other cases show strong indications of fraud and improper benefits. 

Let us understand something. When we look carefully at the report language, we see that 11,000 deceased individuals were used as applicant names for the subsidy. So when the poor person applicant died, did that mean someone not poor was using the subsidy? Do we know how many of those applicants were living with a person who was also poor, so that the subsidy was still being used for people who needed the subsidy? The study did not go that far in its analysis. Neither did the study ever ask, So if the applicant was in prison at the time of the application, or re-application, were there no poor people in the home the prisoner left behind? 

So the GAO's statement that there are "strong indications" of fraud in those areas is a guess on the part of the GAO. My own knowledge of sociology tells me poor people in poor areas live most often with other poor people. And poor people suffer from as much of a lack of sophistication in filling out forms as their other problems. So it may well be that a majority of these cases are not cases of people living in mansions or driving Mercedes using the subsidies, though that was definitely found in some cases.

Another statement from the study, about the program being a "block grant" program, speaks to something that has long been a peeve of mine. Conservatives, right wingers and neo-liberals in our nation love "block grant" programs more often than not. But that means the federal government gives the money to the States and protectorates (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.) and then the States and protectorates have to separately administer the program and the US government has to oversee each of the States and protectorates. This creates a terrible lack of uniformity and waters down the effectiveness of what people understand to be a federal program.  Also, let's face it: some States or protectorates will do better than others in tracking people, and checking Social Security and other verification information, just as we saw the GAO audit. It is why I do not like block grants for the most part, as too many States and protectorates do too poor a job compared to having a federal program the federal government administers. There is less bureaucracy involved when something is a straight up federal program where it is one government responsible for administration compared to one plus 50 governments and then other governmental entities in places such as the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc. 

For Mulvaney to promote the elimination of the LIHEAP on the basis of the 2010 GAO study shows the shallowness in which he approaches his position as Budget Director, and the cruelty of his public policy prescriptions. If one audited the Koch Bros. own corporate or business organization budgets, one could easily find the same percentage of fraud, waste, etc. To speak of eliminating the home heating fuel subsidy program because of the 2010 GAO study without even asking what has been done to improve its efficiency since then, again, shows how much Mulvaney would rather govern from a bumper sticker or cable news, than true governance.

Tragedy and Farce of Americans accused of supporting Russia over America

Karl Marx's great quote, taken from his long time friend, collaborator, and economic patron, Friedrich Engels, is "...all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice...(T)he first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

In the run up this week to the release of the "memo" (really an advocate's legal brief) from right wing Congressman, David Nunes, I kept thinking of the eccentric Democratic Party Senator from Maryland from the early to mid 20th Century, Millard Tydings, and the Tydings Committee report that was supposed to put an end to the supposedly reckless charges of the then junior-right wing Republican US Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy. 

Tydings, and several members of his Senate Committee, were trying to defend New Deal internationalists, several of whom turned out to be Communists, and some who were, in the parlance of the time, "fellow travelers" of Communists (one thinks of Owen Lattimore and John Stewart Service, for example). What made the Committee's report so pathetic was that the report was focused on whether these people were Communists, when the report should have focused on whether such people were traitors. The report assumed the "conventional wisdom" of the time, including the belief that if one was a Communist Party member, then such a person was in an actual, continuing conspiracy to overthrow by violent means the US government and let the Soviet Union take over. So some Democratic Party Senators and Congressmen, who knew, respected, and even admired the knowledge and experience of people like Service and Lattimore, rushed to these advisers' and career government employees' defense as not being Communist Party members.

The Republicans of the time knew what to do with such a report, as the Wiki entry for the Committee report tells us:

Tydings labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax," and said that the result of McCarthy's actions was to "confuse and divide the American people[...] to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves." Republicans responded in kind, with William Jenner* stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history." The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.

*Republican US Senator from Indiana.  Jenner was so much an anti-Red, he backed McCarthy right through the hearings investigating General and later Secretary of State George Marshall, and the entire Army.  Just read the Wiki entry on Senator Jenner.

We now see Trump allies, starting with Nunes, suddenly concerned with civil liberties, for the Nunes memo is essentially about a FISA surveillance warrant against one person tied to the Trump campaign.  We see Trump allies and partisans, like Cold War liberals of yore, saying the investigation is dividing the American people and calling the investigation into Trump and his campaign/administration ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin a "fraud" and a "hoax."  

But this is history repeating itself in farce.  The Nunes memo was, at the very least, a "nothingburger" as Esquire's Charles Pierce and Bret Stephens (a right wing anti-Trumpist for what can only be said is reasons of style) each said.  The Nunes memo did not challenge the authenticity of the Steele memo, including the salacious parts.  In fact, the memo refers to Steele as a "longtime FBI source..."  The memo did not prove Trump and his campaign/administration did not collude with the Russians.  One may even say, by what it does not talk about, that it is giving more weight to the government investigation into Trump and his campaign/administration because it is clear there are in fact other sources besides the Steele dossier.  Also, as stated in the last linked article from The Intercept, whose top guy, Glenn Greenwald, is the left apologist for Trump on the entire Russian issue, the FBI routinely relies on sources who are motivated by revenge, money, etc.  Finally, the memo is wrong about who "funded" the Steele dossier: First, it was initially funded by a Republican opponent of Trump, as one finds within this  detailed article in Vanity Fair about Steele, Fusion GPS (the investigative organization), and the Trump-Russia story.  Second, the FBI never paid Steele after he went public with his investigative work about Trump and the Russians.  And isn't it amusing to hear Trump allies treating as nefarious that the main opponent to Trump, Hillary Clinton, would have wanted to find out if her opponent, Trump, is somehow engaged in something that, if true, would be highly nefarious?  

The Nunes memo was, again, more about poor Carter Page, who the FBI was targeting for, ahem, overzealous activities with Russian oligarchs in 2013--three years before the Steele dossier was created.  Poor Mr. Page may even be seen as the Nathan Silvermaster of our times...

So here we are:  David Nunes is the farcical version of Millard Tydings, and Nunes' memo is the farcical version of the Tydings report.  Carter Page is the farcical version of Nathan Silvermaster.  And Trump?  He is at least a farcical Russian stooge or dupe--or maybe he is a corrupt, money-laundering traitor to his nation, again, using Cold War parlance so favored by conservatives and Cold War liberals in the US, and not just right-wingers. 

I must also, say, however, that the Red Scare remains a tragedy.  People like John Stewart Service and Owen Lattimore were simply analysts who understood Chaing Kai Shek (I am still not comfortable with the new spellings for Chinese leaders of the early to mid 20th Century) was going to fall to the Communists, and no amount of fairy dust in the form of deadly US bombs was going to stop that.  People like Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss were not spies, and whatever information they gave to the Soviet Union was more about gossip and trying to keep lines of communication open as they, as New Deal internationalists, were trying to stop the creation of a bi-polar world full of tension and mistrust in a world with nuclear weapons.  

If anyone wants to say that Trump and his allies are merely trying to side with Putin against international Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and that the Russia investigation is a criminalization of politics, then I say to such a person, Welcome to the Club I like to call "Let's all apologize to Alger Hiss and Jane Fonda."  For if such a person, wanting to defend Trump, is not ready to admit the Red Scare and the Cold War apparatus against "Comm'n'izm" was a criminalization of politics, that the nomenclature about "fellow traveler," "dupe," "stooge," "traitor," etc. was a demonization of people who had legitimate domestic policy differences (you know the drill: Someone says there should be Medicare for All, and right away, we say:  "That's Socialism!  And Socialism equals Communism equals Treason!"), then I say to such persons:

Trump is at least a dupe or stooge of the Russians, led by a former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin.   Trump needs to open his tax records--all of them since the early 1990s--because there is reason to suspect he is being blackmailed by Russians.  Trump may also, based upon his policy pronouncements, whether the statements denouncing the FBI, various chiefs of the CIA, and even questioning US involvement in NATO, and, in disclosing secrets, be deemed an agent of influence of the Russians, and, therefore, anti-American.

And we can also do what Republicans, conservatives and assorted right wingers (remember Ann Coulter's "Treason" book, which Bill Buckley, himself a defender of Joe McCarthy, called "fun"?) over the years like to say:  Trump's Republican allies are enabling treason!  

God, that feels so good to say, and so much fun to say!  I think the Democrats should do what Republicans did during the Red Scare from 1946 to well....now:  "Congressman _______," who supports Trump, "why are you enabling treason in the White House? Are you anti-American!?"  Yes, Republicans knew what to do with the Red Scare. Time for a new one against the right wingers who want to so badly destroy our nation and its institutions, amirite? Bwwwaaaaaha-ha-ha!

Sherriff--I mean, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) is maybe like Richard Nixon, who made his fame as a Commie-pinko chaser, but I don't see the haze of corruption around Schiff that enveloped Nixon from his earliest days, and Schiff is legitimately wondering about the money influence with the Russian oligarchs, Trump's own sons who have admitted Russian money has funded the Trump clan, and Trump's relationship with the only major bank to fund Trump--Deutsche Bank--being a known Russian money-laundering institution, etc.  

For let's face it.  I challenge pro-Red Scare historians Harvey Klehr and John Haynes to tell us what Hiss or Harry Dexter White actually gave to the Russian Communist government that was so important.  We know Hiss was likely a Communist Party member at some point, but so what?  As Conrad Black pointed out in his majestic biography of FDR, Hiss was at Yalta and argued against the Soviet Union position on the number of votes in the upcoming United Nations organization that the Soviets were seeking (page 1080).  Some "spy." And White was told to cajole the Russians into joining the upcoming World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and, yes, did believe that the Russians would, if they did so, morph into a more capitalist nation, while we embraced what can only properly be called social democracy a la Scandinavia.  Again, some "spy."  

But one wonders, just what is driving Trump to dump on American institutions, praise Putin, and have business relationships with Russian oligarchs tight with Putin?  As the idiot pundit Peggy Noonan once said about a silly issue over trying to keep a Cuban boy from being returned to his father at the turn of our century:  "Is it irresponsible to speculate?  It is irresponsible not to."   

And let us recall the words of William F. Buckley and his even more lunatic brother in law, L. Brent Bozell, in their infamous work, "McCarthy and His Enemies" (1954), at page 333, and let's substitute the word "Conservative" for "Liberal," as Buckley/Bozell spoke about the real goal of the Red Scare--as they denounced only some of McCarthy's bellicose rhetoric, but defended its intent and import.  The two then rising stars were talking about a speech Joe McCarthy had made where he made a remark about then Democratic Party Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, saying "Alger...I mean, Adlai..."  The two authors then wrote:

"...But it may well be we have not heard the last of this idea.  Some day, the patience of America may at last be exhausted, and we will strike out against (Conservatives).  Not because they are treacherous...but because...we will conclude 'that they are mistaken in their predictions, false in their analyses, wrong in their advice, and through the results of their actions injurious to the interests of the nation.  That is a reason enough to strive to free the conduct of the country's affairs from the influence of them and their works.'"

Buckley and Bozell went on to tell "the MacLeishs, De Votos and Schlesingers" (liberal anti-Communist intellectuals of the time) they had "no grounds for arguing that any sustained effort is being made to read them out of the community."  Sure, Bill and Brent, sure.  For how does one explain why "Liberal" became part of the trio of dreaded words to those who came of age from the post-World War II period up through the near end of the 20th Century in thinking "liberalism equals socialism equals communism equals treason?"  Foreign policy disputes are almost always about domestic politics and domestic political maneuvering.  For if you convince swing voters the other guy or gal is a traitor or suspected traitor, you win elections.  

And this Red-baiting continued a quarter century after the Soviet Union fell.  For how many liberals and even some lefties were fretting in 2016 about Bernie Sanders being opened up like a sardine can for his left liberal policy proposals?  That is how ingrained this rhetoric became in people over 40 in our nation, and why it is so goddamned important to use this nomenclature back against those who perfected it decades ago.

I know it is not pretty, and it is not nice.  But I am not saying you or I need to do this.  But, as Buckley and Bozell did with McCarthy, let's not be so quick to denounce Rachel Maddow and others like Craig Unger for harping on the Russia-Trump story.  Let's recognize that each plays his or her role in domestic electoral politics.  Demonizing opponents is what Jefferson and Hamilton did to each other in the 1790s, if we know our history.   It is as American as apple pie, unfortunately, and it is about time some otherwise erstwhile leftists (I am calling you out personally, Glenn Greenwald and Stephen Cohen) grew a spine on this. 

On Facebook for over a year, I have been saying I am munching on my popcorn about this whole scandal of Trump and Russia.  It has been cathartic for me.  I feel powerless anyway, and a mere bystander in American politics.  But really, this is a moment that should not be lost, as there really is something there about Trump and Russia, and what it is about, as Steve Bannon admitted he is thinking, too, is money laundering.  Sorry historians Klehr and Haynes.  That ain't about ideas and policies, which you support criminalizing.  This is about financial corruption, emoluments, and then, if you guys want, the ideas of white nationalism expressed in a guy like Putin.  

So I munch away.  I say, in 2018 mid-terms, if you want to focus on the tax cuts being a danger to the Social Security and Medicare programs, I say, Go for it!  If you want to focus on Republican policies against women's reproductive rights, I say, Go for it!  If you want to focus on the environment and how our weather is already showing that the climate is changing, I say, Go for it!  If you want to revitalize unions and support Medicare for All, I say, Go for it!  It is a melodic cacophany of political strategy and choice.  But don't stop the music about Trump and Russia. That political music has a place in the overall discourse, and the Nunes memo just showed how scared and desperate the right wing, Republicans, and Trump and his administration are about this whole investigation.  I wonder what is in those Trump tax records going back to 1992 or so...?  Bwwaaaha-haaaaa....

Roger Cohen, at the NYT, largely exposes why Israeli governments refuse to make peace with Palestinians

Roger Cohen, toward the end of this outstanding op-ed, tries to find some solace if Netanyahu falls from power over corruption charges, but he is fairly clear that Mohammad Abbas has become a "kapo" to the Israeli government occupation and eventual annexation of the West Bank.

Some kind hearted souls may ask themselves, Why allow the computer specialist and apparently nice guy to leave the West Bank?  Don't the Israelis want people like that to talk with?

Um, no.  Most Jews in the U.S., nay, most Americans of any religious philosophy or none at all--and I am talking to you, Bill Maher--do not know the following:  

In the fall of 1967, Moshe Dayan, reacting perhaps to the Khartoum pronouncement from Arab leaders--the infamous "NO" to negotiations, to recognizing Israel's existence, and no peace with Israel--stated during a meeting of other leaders in his political party:

We don't have a solution, and you will continue living like dogs, and whoever wants will go, and will see how this procedure will work out. For now, it works out. Let's say the truth. We want peace. If there is no peace, we will maintain military rule and we will have four to five military compounds on the mountains, and they will sit ten years under the Israeli military regime.

This quote is from a Hebrew-only book, Mehiro shel Ihud (Revivim, 1985), by former Labor Party official, Yossi Beilin, p. 42, but the quote was based upon transcripts that are available to scholars and those who can translate or read Hebrew.  The quote is stated at the Wikiquotes entry for Moshe Dayan, here. 

It is important to remember that Dayan was, in internal Israeli circles, a relative dove, though he continued to show public hawkish tendencies in the period up through the early 1970s before he lost most of his power, as a player, in the wake of the October 1973 War, sometimes called the "Yom Kippur War."*  It is also important to remember that, generally, when Israeli leaders became doves, they lost or were losing the power they had, or, when uttering public statements supporting specific peace proposals, had already lost power.  This was true for David Ben-Gurion, Abba Eban, Nahum Goldmann, Ezer Weizman, Yehosaphat Harkabi, Ehud Ohlmert, Tzipi Livni, and a host of others.  Worse, when people like Shimon Peres, who was largely a dove, had power, they tended to exercise it in a hawkish manner, even when it was obviously counterproductive. Worst, Yitzhak Rabin, who presided over the policy of breaking Palestinians' arms and legs during the first Intifada in 1987, did try to reach peace and move toward a two-state solution in 1993, and ended up the victim of a far-right rabbinic student assassin's bullets two years later. 

The Allon plan regarding settlements was formulated in the late fall of 1967, and it is the plan that has largely been followed in terms of building settlements as "facts on the ground."  The plan was largely formulated by a relative Israeli leader dove, Yigal Allon, but the plan outlasted Allon and became part of a consistent hardening policy toward Palestinians.  It is an error for Americans to look for differences in policies from Labor to Likud and back again when it comes to this issue of the Palestinians and settlement building, as the policies are consistent and harden over each succeeding decade.  We know, too, that the number of settlers in the West Bank increased by over fifty percent and the Israeli government strategically built roads and took over water sources (see this portion of a book by Mark Levine on the subject), which is part of why Arafat did not accept the last ditch "offer" from two lame duck leaders, Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak, in January 2001.**  Then, of course, there were the walls, and the further acceleration of settlement building in this still new century.  And now there is this pronouncement from the Netanyahu government's own attorney general about seizing Palestinian lands in the West Bank.

This is why I continue to compare what the Israelis are doing to "Manifest Destiny" in U.S. history.  It does not matter how John Quincy Adams wrestled with his conscience during his ill-fated presidency, and in Congress, on issues concerning Native Americans.  He was, in that sense, like, for example, Abba Eban, who, when he became a confirmed dove, became a disdained figure in a majority of Israeli Jewish households right up until Eban's death.  Most historians of 19th Century American policy toward Native Americans recognize that President James Polk was not an aberration in the decades and maybe century long policy of taking land from Native Americans, and either moving Native Americans, pushing Native Americans, or killing Native Americans along the way.  That systemic policy speaks analogously to the policies successive Israeli government continue to pursue in the West Bank. 

I know, I know.  Had the power relations favored the Palestinian leaders, they would have simply ordered all the Jews to be killed, and many of the "peaceful" Palestinians would have gleefully joined in.  For as we know in Europe in the Second World War, there were plenty of Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, etc. who gleefully killed Jews to a point where at least one German S.S. diarist found it chilling.  Ben Hecht's great book, A Guide for the Bedeviled, speaks wonderfully and ironically about the joys some people have over the millennia for Jew-killing.  But, let's not lose ourselves: What has happened over the past fifty years in Israel and the occupied territories is what is happening in our timeline, and, in our timeline, we can see there have been plenty of instances when peace talks could have been started--not, for example, in 2008, when Ehud Ohlmert was on the way out the door from scandal, and he tried to jump start negotiations with offers that the Knesset would never have accepted--and yet, nothing but building more and more settlements.  Abba Eban's famous quip that "Palestinians" never failed to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity applies at least, if not more, to "Israelis."

As I have said on FB, I am not ready to join the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).  I am, however, saying I am ready to say, as an American, I now have no more interest in supporting U.S. government aid to Israel (which is mostly transfers from one side of the U.S. Defense (War) Department to the other), and Israel does not need any economic aid from the U.S. at this point in its own history.  I am disengaging from Israel as the majority of its nominally Jewish citizens do not speak for me, do not speak to my personal values, and are simply people living in a foreign country.  If people were to ask me what the solution there is, I still say it is a two state solution.  But it is clear that the majority of Israeli Jews do not agree with me, and I have deep sadness for Amos Oz, David Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua, Bradley Burston, Gideon Levy, Uri Avnery, Avi Shavit, and the various Jewish activists and lawyers who fight for fair treatment of Palestinians, among others.    

*Dayan, for example, had tried, unsuccessfully, to push Golda Meir to accept the U.N. peace proposal from U.N. (Swedish) diplomat Gunnar Jarring in 1971, after Egyptian President (after Nasser) Anwar Sadat accepted it. The Jarring proposal was actually more favorable to Israel than the peace agreement which Jimmy Carter brokered in 1978 at Camp David (the so-called "Camp David Accords") with Sadat and Israel's then new prime minister, Menachem Begin. 

** See Robert Malley's perceptive insider's discussion of those failed negotiations from April 2001 in the New York Review of Books.  Arafat, the target of many Israeli assassination attempts, also likely had the fear that he would be murdered by "one of his own," as was Rabin.  I find it frustrating how American Zionists, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, use the failed January 2001 peace talks as if that was the only possible way out, and then use that to avoid pushing Israel to the bargaining table at most points thereafter.

Israeli war crimes, what one still finds lovable about Israel and why that is no longer enough

I write this in the context of my finding it almost impossible to maintain any hope for a two state solution for Israel and Palestine.  

This outstanding article in the New York Times Magazine is about Israeli efforts and actions with respect to targeted assassinations, and how mid and sometimes high level military personnel refused to carry out orders from then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to blow up civilian planes or kill civilians while targeting Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasir Arafat.  Nonetheless, in the margins, it shows that Israel was carrying out other targeted assassinations along the way, and doing their otherwise best to disrupt any Palestinian leadership.

What is missing from the article is how the Israeli governments, over twenty years or more, not only tried to kill Arafat, but were also building up the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood that eventually became Hamas.  This was another way to undermine Arafat and the PLO, by creating a powerful internal to Palestinians opposition group.  One of the men in charge of military intelligence for Israel in the early days of that strategy, Yehoshafat Harkabi, wrote a book, after his retirement, in the late 1980s about his own change of heart and apology for building up religious fundamentalism among Palestinians, as it was already getting hard to remember that Arafat was an engineer who was a secular person (Christian by birth), and was not enamored with Islamic orthodoxies (Just watch, to take an analogous example, Egyptian president Nasser, in 1966, making fun of right wing Islamic fundamentalists).  Otherwise, one had to read Chomsky's citations from news articles inside Israel and elsewhere for this information.

The article also glosses over a couple of truths that were so virulently denied by most Zionists in the US at the time: (1) Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was not only NOT a defensive war, but an outright, imperialist offensive war.  It was also a disaster as Israel ended up helping destroy Lebanon as a nation (Syria had been doing a good job before, and Israeli fighter pilot bombings since the late 1970s were "helping," too), and from the ashes of that war crime of a war, Hezbollah arose; and (2) Sharon and other military officials knew that allowing the Phalange fighters into the two Lebanese villages, Sabra and Shatila, would lead to a massacre of men, women, and children there.

In the U.S. in 1982,  it was almost impossible find this information unless one was reading the Village Voice columns of Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway (here is an example reprinted from the Institute for Palestine Studies).  They were regularly quoting Israeli newspapers, particularly Ha'aretz and The Jerusalem Post (back when the latter was not a right wing rag), and the reporting of Israel's leading military correspondent, the now late Ze'ev Schiff.  I was stunned by this reporting, and while I was already exposed to Abba Eban and other Israeli doves, had read Mohamed Heikal's (a top Egyptian reporter who was close to Sadat from the beginning of the 1970s) Road to Ramadan (1975), and was also going to the local university library to read, from time to time, the journal of the Institute for Palestine Studies and Edward Said, it was unbelievable to me that the lead story of the war, that Israel went to war in Lebanon because the PLO, stationed in part in Lebanon, had tried to kill the Israeli ambassador to the U.K. (it was in fact the work of an offshoot of the PLO, against Arafat's wishes), was itself a lie in the sense of being a pretext.  Another justification had been that the PLO had been regularly shelling northern Israel in violation of a peace agreement with the PLO, when in fact, it had been almost completely quiet on both sides for the previous year, and it was more often Israel that was doing the shelling.  

Then when the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, there were reports almost immediately that the Israeli generals had approved the Phalange forces to go in and clean up.  It was reminiscent of the way the Germans sometimes let local Lithuanian and other such national forces go in and kill Jews.  Yes, I said it, and it fits.  Sharon knew what would happen.

Ze'ev Schiff eventually co-wrote a book called "The Lebanon War" (1984) that was based upon his intimate knowledge inside the Israeli military machines (fighting machine and intelligence machine) and his access to the commission the Israeli government convened to study what happened, and why the two official reasons for the war were lies. The Kahan Commission's report was partially blocked from release, and Schiff knew its contents.  The weird thing was that the US media did not clearly tell this story, and so many of my fellow Jews in temples and synagogues across the land continued to believe the War against Lebanon was totally defensive, totally necessary, and that the US government and US corporate media were against poor little Israel. And I would say, whoa, read the Jerusalem Post.  Read Ze'ev Schiff.  I started realizing Israeli citizens were, at least back then, getting better news on the subject that was far more critical and open than American citizens on the subject.

I was also optimistic things would be better because, hardly covered in US newspapers and television, there were major demonstrations by Israeli citizens, many of them soldiers, and some freshly back from service in the Lebanon War, during the war itself in 1982 and continuing thereafter.  It was that outcry against the war, against what Sharon was doing to provoke further and wider war, and the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, that led to Begin resigning in personal disgrace (he knew he had been misled by Sharon) and the Commission continuing its investigation.

Time Magazine did publish a story on the hidden part of the Kahan Commission report, but Sharon sued for libel, and amazingly won at least a pyrrhic victory, where the jury saw what the ignorant district court judge refused to see, which was that Time was reporting on what was hidden from the public, and was essentially true.  And then some dumb New York socialite-reporter, Renata Adler, yes, she was Jewish, too, wrote articles in the New Yorker covering the case, with the New Yorker embarrassing itself with her pro-Sharon side reportage.*  As a lawyer who was already handling libel cases from time to time, I saw through her shallow and misleading (not maybe intentional, just dumb) reporting, and that Ze'ev Schiff's book had already exposed why Sharon's lawsuit was a lie.  Nobody ever stopped to ask, why didn't Sharon sue Schiff?  Why didn't Sharon sue Schiff in Israel?  Why did the judge in the libel suit accept the Israeli government's refusal to produce the hidden portion of the commission report Time reported on, and accept a misleading summary?  It was a horror show of the American legal system with Americans, including unfortunately American Jews, who instinctively believed the Israeli government when they had no basis to do so.

At that time, and until recently, I always thought the type of individuals the NY Times Magazine article talks about would prevail.  People who stood up to illegal, murderous orders in ways that are outstanding and admirable.  But Israeli society has continued to harden, and those voices are now old, and no longer in power.  Israeli politics is a settlers' politics. The majority of Israeli citizens no longer have any pretense to following better rabbinic values. The type of actions the various immediate subordinates to Sharon took are now less likely to occur at all.  For too many Israelis today see those types of values as "Ashkanazi" weakness, and they exult Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto values.

* She wound up writing an equally dumb book about the Sharon v. Time Magazine and Westmoreland v. CBS libel cases, where she essentially missed the story that the information about Westmoreland playing games with military information for political reasons was true.  What I had objected to, in real time, in the original documentary on CBS was making Westmoreland's actions too much of a personal centerpiece.  Westy was merely a large cog in a larger machine, and his duplicity for the American National Security State is what got him to where he was leading US forces in Vietnam in the first place. George Crile, the producer and "author" of the documentary, loved to emphasize personalities and not structures or systems.  He did the same later with his book about crazy Congressperson Charlie Wilson and the Russian Afghan War.  The best book on the Westmoreland lawsuit was by a former Vietnam War vet, who was a writer for the Village Voice, Bob Brewin, and it captures the great legal examination and other work of NY super lawyer, David Boies, who beat the crap out of Westmoreland and Westy's lawyers.

UPDATE 1/28/2018: I hesitated to add it, but now will:  One thing I found "amusing" in the New York Times Magazine article is that it further confirmed what I had written about near the end of my novel, A Disturbance of Fate, about the Israeli generals like Sharon and Eitan, who dreamed of a Palestinian state on the Jordan side of the Jordan River, essentially replacing then-King Hussein in Jordan. Of course, in September 1970, King Hussein showed how Arab leaders would have likely reacted if they had defeated Israel in any of the wars up through that time, with the killing of thousands of uprising Palestinians in what is now called "Black September."  In my novel, the Israeli military, in the face of a more pro-revolutionary world, help the Palestinians overthrow Hussein...Well, you gotta read the book to see how and why that becomes feasible and even "logical."

The tangled, twisted party lines of political evangelicals has reached American Communist levels

It was said, quite properly in my view, that the Popular Front coalition of liberals and Communists, during the mid-to late 1930s New Deal era foundered on the increasingly twisted party line changes that the American Communist Party leaders demanded of its members. The Nazi-Soviet Pact (sometimes called the Hitler-Stalin Pact) of August 1939 was truly the biggest breaking point, and many people who were Communists dropped out of at least active party membership, and liberals left organizations which contained significant Communist Party members in droves.* 

I wonder whether the Stormy Daniels revelations, and the ridiculously hypocritical response from evangelical leaders, are moving us ever closer to that sort of break point.  It may not because rich donors to the Republican Party continue to find these faith oriented people useful fodder.  Hence, the new, invigorating anti-immigrant push in these political circles.  And when one considers that one of the evangelicals' leaders biggest political allies are the National Rifle Assn.--Jesus with a gun!--and the N.R.A. may have been useful Russian propaganda tools, well..."Gimme that old time religion" is now being played in a minor key on a balalaika as the hypocrisy in the evangelical and ammosexual ranks build to a polyphonic crescendo.

*This, of course, did not stop Congressional investigators and corporate media pundits from attacking people 20 years later for such membership and coalescing, even though one may rightfully argue that the greatest successes of the New Deal (NLRA, FSLA, Social Security, WPA, CCC) occurred or were given great strength to succeed through that coalition.  It is a point Chris Hedges made in his book, The Death of the Liberal Class, where he posits that liberals needed the Reds to show the public the liberals were the true moderates.  It is why, in our current topsy-turvy political environment where right wing ideologues are so ascendant and racist language now out in the open in our political discourse, that so many of us now see 1950s President Eisenhower through the eyes of the John Birch Society leaders, like Robert Welch, who saw Ike as essentially a Communist, when we consider Ike's refusal to dismantle, and in fact, Ike's willingness to extend New Deal policies in nationwide road building and development, and his support for 90% marginal income tax rates.