Are Millennials Turning Their Backs on the American Dream? By Joel Kotkin.

Are Millennials Turning Their Backs on the American Dream? By Joel Kotkin. The Daily Beast, November 10, 2013. Also at JoelKotkin.com.

Letters to an American Jewish Friend. By Hillel Halkin.

Letters to an American Jewish Friend: The Case for Life in Israel. By Hillel Halkin. Mosaic, November 2013.

Devaluing the Diaspora: Hillel Halkin’s Scorn for American Jewry. By Allan Arkush. Mosaic, Novmeber 2013.

Counter Tourism: Responding to Pro-Palestinian Protest and Solidarity Tours. By Ardie Geldman.

Counter Tourism: Responding to Pro-Palestinian Protest and Solidarity Tours. By Ardie Geldman. New English Review, November 2013.

Resist the Arab Merchants of Darkness. By Rami G. Khouri.

Resist the Arab merchants of darkness. By Rami G. Khouri. The Daily Star (Lebanon), November 9, 2013.

Former Jordanian MP Yaq’ub Qarash Glorifies Jihad and Martyrdom on PA TV.

Former Jordanian MP Yaq’ub Qarash Glorifies Jihad and Martyrdom on PA TV, States: The Israelis “Can Only Survive as Nazis.” MEMRI TV. Video Clip No. 4034, November 7, 2013. Transcript.

Loreena McKennitt: The Old Ways.

Loreena McKennitt: The Old Ways. Video. tomHD88, March 5, 2012. YouTube.




Loreena McKennitt: Nights from the Alhambra [Live Concert]. Video. Hades Go, September 28, 2013. YouTube. Also here.




Loreena McKennitt. The Lady of Shalott. Video. HavingAGreenDay, November 16, 2012. YouTube.

Caroline Lavelle: Moorlough Shore.

Caroline Lavelle: Moorlough Shore. Video. hygge78, December 9, 2006. YouTube.

Annie Moses Band: Girl of Constant Sorrow.

Annie Moses Band: Girl of Constant Sorrow. Video. JRAFApresents, November 6, 2012. YouTube.

George W. Bush, Messianics, and the Left. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

George W. Bush, Messianics, and the Left. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, November 8, 2013.

A New Jewish Exodus? By Walter Russell Mead.

A New Jewish Exodus? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 8, 2013.

Mead:

Anti-semitism is reaching terrifyingly high levels in Europe. According to a new survey by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, almost half of the Jews in some European countries have considered emigration due to anti-semitism. The BBC has more:

The survey of 5,847 Jewish people said 66% of those who responded considered anti-Semitism to be a problem.

 

Three out of four respondents, 76%, believed anti-Semitism had increased over the past five years….

 

The survey found 29% of those surveyed had considered emigrating because of concerns about safety, with particularly high figures recorded in Hungary (48%), France (46%) and Belgium (40%).

Interestingly, the piece reports that European Jews tend to believe that anti-semitism is coming mostly from Muslim populations and from the European left-wing, not from the European right-wing. It appears that left-wing hostility to orthodox religion and to religious practices like circumcision is combining with Muslim anger about Israel, making the EU an increasingly unfriendly place for Jews. If these trends continue to gather momentum, we may soon see a significant minority of Jews leaving their home countries for more tolerant shores.

 

 

Marriage Culture or Government Culture. By Mollie Hemingway.

Pick One: Marriage Culture or Government Culture. By Mollie Hemingway. The Federalist, November 6, 2013.

Voting patterns reflect how women’s incentives change with their marital status.

When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America. Edited by W. Bradford Wilcox. The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2010. National Marriage Project. University of Virginia. PDF.

Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America. By Kay Hymowitz et al. TwentySomethingMarriage.org, 2013.

Who the Hell is “Julia,” and Why am I Paying for Her Whole Life. By David Harsanyi. Human Events, May 3, 2012.

Chinese Women Defend “The Vagina Monologues.” By Rachel Lu.

Chinese Women Defend “The Vagina Monologues.” By Rachel Lu. Foreign Policy, November 8, 2013.

Is Israel Doomed? By Aaron David Miller.

Is Israel Doomed? By Aaron David Miller. Foreign Policy, November 7, 2013.

Why even dangerous demographics and the receding horizon of peace won’t dim the lights in Jerusalem.

Miller:

Israel’s future is grim. Internal and external challenges abound. And like Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Israel has been forewarned by both its friends and enemies of a dire fate if it doesn’t do more to change its ways.

 

The latest prophet of doom and gloom is the inestimable Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet and a man who surely knows what he’s talking about. In a widely circulated article last July in the Jerusalem Post and another on Ynet last week, Diskin argued that unless Israel reached an agreement with the Palestinians, he wrote, “we will certainly cross the point of no return, after which we will be left with one state from the river to the sea for two peoples. The consequences of such a state for our national identity, our security, our ability to maintain a worthy, democratic state, our moral fiber as a society, and our place in the family of nations will be far-reaching.”

 

Others have made similar points. In the mid-1980s, author and activist Meron Benvenisti opined that it was almost already too late – five minutes to midnight to use his notion, largely because of Israeli settlement activity. And Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly talks about “last chances” for a two-state solution, a fate seemingly validated by scant progress made on his latest Middle East trip.

 

And yet the beaches of Tel Aviv are packed; the cafes and hotels full; and 2012 was the first year in 40 that not a single Israeli was killed in a terrorist attack emanating from the West Bank.

 

But don’t be fooled, the doomsayers warn. Israel is living an illusion or existing on borrowed time, or both. It sits atop a volcano of internal contradictions and conflicts between religious and secular, rich and poor. It is a society that has become increasingly less democratic. It's lost its mission, mandate, and soul. An angry and aggrieved Arab world, a putative nuclear Iran, and a Palestinian challenge completes the Dorian Gray-like picture. If left unresolved, say the Chicken Littles, that latter issue will undermine what's left of Israel’s internal cohesion, Jewish majority, and democratic character.

 

After all, remember the Crusader kingdoms – powerful but short lived. Time is the ultimate arbiter of what endures. And time will indeed have the last word unless Israel sees the error of its ways and acts before it’s too late.

 

This narrative – like the Dickens tale itself – assumes that if Israel, like Scrooge, makes the right choices, then a conflict-ending solution to the Palestinian issue and Israel's acceptance in the region can be assured. And then everyone will live – more or less – happily ever after.

 

But there’s another narrative too. That Israel, despite all the challenges it has confronted and the odds arrayed against it, has managed to cope, survive, and prosper. Political Zionism, this story goes, was always a defiance of history, and will continue to be. This narrative suggests that it’s a cruel and unforgiving world when it comes to Israelis and Jews – and a complex one, too. It posits the notion that there are no truly happy endings, only imperfect ones: That ending the conflict with the Palestinians will be hard if not impossible to do; that at best only a temporary solution to the Iranian nuclear issue can be found (and even that could lead to military confrontation); and that the Arab world – far from turning into a land of functioning democracies – will be filled with dysfunction and uncertainty for many years to come. So, while Israel’s actions make a difference, solutions to all these problems may well prove elusive and imperfect, regardless of what Israel does or doesn’t do.

 

So far from prophesying happy endings, this line of thinking holds out the possibility that what’s in store for Israel is a difficult path of maneuver in a harsh world. But by no means is it a course that will lead to its ruin. Indeed, so far, even with all its failings and imperfections, the modern Israeli state has exceeded the expectations of its founders and managed to become one of the most dynamic nations in the international system.

 

So which narrative will prevail? Will Israel endure? That, I suppose, depends on your time horizon. Will the State of Israel be here in 2113 or in 2213? And what kind of state will it be?

 

Well, as John Maynard Keynes maintained, in the long run we’ll all be dead. So here’s a more realistic metric for you. Will the State of Israel celebrate its 100th Independence Day in 2048 – a prosperous and secure state recognizable to those who live there today?

 

Three powerful factors offset the doomsayers’ warnings. And they aren’t reflective of a momentary snapshot. The trend lines have been deepening for some time now. They do not eliminate the bad news nor the challenges – particularly the demographic ones – ahead. But they do provide a powerful advantage in coping with them. I’d bet that Israel will live to see its 100th anniversary. And here’s why.

 

Israeli Capacity

 

Whether you see Israel as a friend, enemy, or frenemy, it’s hard not to accept the reality that what the country has done in 65 years, particularly given their internal and external challenges, is nothing short of extraordinary. Put aside for a nanosecond if you can Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians – and I know it’s impossible for some to get beyond the occupation – and just focus on Israel proper. For a tiny state, in a tough neighborhood, the accomplishments in the fields of science, technology, agriculture, economic development, art, literature, and music have been remarkable.

 

Consider these impressive accomplishments:

 

1. Israeli GDP per capita is $32,800, 44th in the world, and 29th overall if you exclude countries with populations below 100,000 (and count the European Union as separate states). Israel ranks just ahead of Saudi Arabia and New Zealand and behind South Korea and France.

 

2. Israel is the world leader in startups per capita (1 per 1,800 Israelis).

3. It’s No. 3 in companies traded on NASDAQ after the United States and Canada (65 companies).

 

4. It’s 17th in total number of Nobel laureates (with the 96th largest population).

 

5. Israel holds more patents per capita than any other country in the world.

 

6. Israel has the third-highest rate of entrepreneurship and highest rate among women and people over 55 in the world.

 

7. It is the only country that entered the 21st century with a net gain in the number of trees. (my personal favorite).

 

8. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000 as opposed to 85 in the United States.

 

The point is not to trumpet Israel’s accomplishments or to suggest they will cancel out the challenges Israel faces in the future. It’s to drive home the obvious: this is a serious country both in relative and absolute terms. It’s not going away. Indeed, as the Arab Spring threatens to redefine or at least decentralize the Sykes-Picot territorial map, an Arab state or two may well go the way of the dodo well before the Israelis do.

 

Arab Incapacity

 

An Arab friend once argued that Israel was a mirror for their region. And every time the Arabs looked into that mirror, they saw their own incapacity and weakness reflected in Israel’s strength in military, economic, and technological power.

 

As Israel has chalked up accomplishments, the nations that surround it seem to grow weaker and more dysfunctional. And that’s the case now more than ever in the wake of the Arab Spring. The so-called confrontation states that share contiguous borders with Israel have either made their peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan) or grown fundamentally weaker (Syria). It’s stunningly ironic that the threats to Israel today come from national movements lodged within the non-states – Hamas and Hezbollah, or from a non-Arab state: Iran. Simply put, the Arab world has diminished in consequence as a serious military or technological threat to the Israeli state.

 

At the same time, the gap between Israel and Arabs on issues of trade, economy, innovation, and technology continues to grow. Read any U.N. Human Development Report on the Arab region to get a sense of the staggering asymmetries. Just consider these unhappy realities:

 

1. Middle Eastern companies are globally uncompetitive. The region as a whole makes up less than 1 percent of global non-fuel exports, versus 4 percent from Latin America, which has a similar population.

 

2. Red tape, poor infrastructure, and other non-tarriff barriers, add 10 percent to the value of shipped goods in the region. Shipping goods from the Middle East to America is cheaper and quicker than shipping between two Middle Eastern ports.

 

3. Foreign direct investment into 20 of the Arab League states (excluding Comoros and Syria) in 2012 totaled $47.1 billion. Israel alone attracted around $10 billion in 2012.

 

 4. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – which measures how much citizens perceive their leaders to be abusing power – gave Israel a score of 60 (the best score was 90) in 2012. By comparison, the average score of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran was 30.3.

 

5. A UNDP statistic that assesses the amount and duration of education citizens of given countries are expected to receive gave Arab states a .5 versus .7 for Latin American and Caribbean states. That’s roughly the difference between expected education in Cambodia and Russia.

 

6. Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index gives the Middle East and North Africa the worst rating of any region in the world. The regional average is equivalent to Pakistan, where 7 journalists have been killed for their reporting in 2013 alone.

 

7. The Middle East/North Africa region has a greater gap in employment by gender than any other region in the world. Employment is also unequal between age groups – with youth unemployment above 25 percent.

 

8. The adult literacy rate in Arab states in 2009 was 73.4 percent, compared to 93.3 percent in developing Latin American and Caribbean states.

 

None of this is to say the Arab Middle East cannot become more competitive or more integrated into the world economy. Or that its citizens cannot become more productive too. It’s just that the trend lines, particularly in the wake of the turbulence sweeping the region, don’t look good. And the gap with Israel in just about every field is widening. If the hope and dream of Arab nationalists 50 years ago was to close that gap, to bring the formidable power of the Arab world to bear in the struggle with Israel with the goal of enhancing Arab state capacity and weakening Israel’s, that project lies in ruins.

 

U.S. Support

 

That brings us to the third reason why the gloom-and-doom story or the “settle with the Palestinians or else” narrative loses some of its punch. With the possible exception of the 1973 war, at no point could you make the argument that American support was vital to Israel’s immediate survival.

 

But it is critical to the long-term health, well-being, security, and prosperity of the Israeli state. From America’s efforts to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge; to the billions in military and economic aid; to the latitude and support the United States gives Israel on protecting its security; to Washington’s willingness to shield and defend Israel from political isolation, sanctions, and criticism; America’s support is indeed vital.

 

And despite the tensions in that relationship it’s only gotten stronger on an institutional level and in terms of public support. I’ve explored those reasons elsewhere but essentially they come down to a perception of common values and identity – endorsed or acquiesced to by millions of non- Jewish Americans and a pro-active, affluent, and highly influential Jewish community that lobbies effectively on Israel’s behalf.

 

And Israel’s neighborhood validates that bond. From Hamas to Hezbollah, from al Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood, from Assad’s regime using Scuds and chemical weapons against his own people to the U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s a perception that the entire region is inherently undemocratic and violent. This not only diminishes Israel’s own bad behavior, it validates a pro-Israeli narrative. Indeed, there’s a case to be made that the U.S.-Israeli bond will weaken when – and only when – the image of Israel fundamentally changes in the minds of Americans. The violent and extreme behavior of states and groups in the Middle East have delayed or even prevented that from happening. Still, even without Arabs behaving badly as perhaps Israel’s best talking points in Washington, it’s hard to imagine any U.S. administration trying to force Jerusalem to accept a peace deal and or imposing severe consequences if it did not.

 

But what about the demographic argument? Surely that spells disaster for Israel, a fate that cannot be avoided. Under the pressure of having to manage or control – with or without the Palestinian Authority – millions of unhappy, angry, and potentially violent Palestinians, Israel’s image in the United States will only deteriorate as the democratic Jewish state is undermined. Demographics might mean that, absent some sort of Israeli-Palestinian agreement, Israel could reach such a state sometime in the next 20-30 years, right around its 100 birthday. It’s a powerful argument that cannot be ignored.

 

Still even the demographics aren’t necessarily determinative. Nobody can rule out an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to defuse the problem. And even if one fails to materialize, life is not necessarily that stark or binary in terms of the choices and decisions offered up. Nor is it easy to determine when the point of no return is crossed or the moment of truth and reckoning appears.

 

More to the point, a smart Israeli leadership could try to defuse the demographic challenge by breaking it into pieces. With regard to the 1.7 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, the government could make a concerted effort to eliminate discrimination and ensure that they are treated equally as citizens with their fair share of jobs, access to housing, and educational benefits. As for Gaza’s 1.6 million Palestinians, as long as Hamas rules there, Israel will likely treat the problem as a security issue; and there will be little pressure from many other quarters to take Hamas's side and do otherwise. Jerusalem’s 300,000 Palestinians seem to be in no great hurry to join up with the Palestinian Authority, and the vast majority have no interest in claiming Israeli citizenship or fighting. With greater attention to improving services and eliminating the barrier, Israeli could go quite a way in defusing tensions there too.

 

That leaves the 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank either living under some form of Palestinian Authority jurisdiction or under Israel’s control. And that is a huge problem, particularly should the PA collapse or a third intifada erupt. Indeed, it would create a situation in which more than two million Palestinians would exist without hope, increasingly angry and radicalized. If the past is any guide, the most likely outcome of this unhappy situation wouldn’t be a Martin Luther King-like non-violent movement to demand citizenship in an Israeli state; but an uprising marked by violence and terror. And we know where the last Intifada lead. Let’s be clear. Israel has bad options on the demographic front. But Palestinian options(and their future) look much worse.

 

All these factors have afforded Israelis and their leaders the time and space to survive tough years, to strengthen their state, and to prosper. Some believe these assets have also permitted Israel not to make choices, to abdicate responsibility, particularly when it comes to settling up the Palestinians. But the asset triad also provides flexibility for Israeli leaders to make wise and intelligent choices. Some have; others have not.

 

The choices at hand, however, aren’t only Israel's to make – a if only Israel would do A, B, and C everything would simply fall into place. Israel has missed many opportunities and so have its neighbors. Neat and definitive solutions are hardly the norm. In the end, what is more likely to emerge isn’t rebirth and renaissance of the dreamers nor the catastrophe foretold by the pessimists, but the muddle-through envisioned by realists. At least in the years ahead, the Israelis will keep their state and even prosper. But their neighbors will most assuredly never let them completely enjoy it.

How America Blew It in the Middle East. By Robert Dreyfuss.

How America Blew It in the Middle East. By Robert Dreyfuss. Real Clear World, November 6, 2013. Also at TomDispatch.

Kerry Tips the Scales Against Israel. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Kerry Tips the Scales Against Israel. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, November 7, 2013.

The Crucial Question for John Kerry. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, November 7, 2013.

Kerry slams Israel’s West Bank policies, warns of 3rd Intifada. The Times of Israel, November 7, 2013.

John Kerry pretty much threatens Israel to concede key issues to Palestinians. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, November 7, 2013.

John Kerry Interview on Israel’s Channel 2 News. By Udi Segal and Maher Shalabi. Israel Policy Forum, November 7, 2013. Also at State.gov. Video at Mako.




Tobin:

The slow-motion failure that is the revived Middle East peace process sponsored by Secretary of State John Kerry is stumbling along with no sign of anything that might be considered progress by anyone’s definition. That this is so was eminently predictable, given the fact that the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas and unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, while under these circumstances the Israelis are loath to allow the West Bank become another Gaza. Indeed, just about everyone other than Kerry knew this was the case and pushing the parties back to the table at this point was bound to cause more trouble than any good that might come from it.

 

But the fact that his critics are being proven right seems to be angering Kerry, and he vented his spleen about this today in an interview on Israel’s Channel 2. But rather than seeking to jolt the Palestinians into a realistic view of their options or even giving a “plague on both your houses” approach in which he sought to preserve his status as an honest broker, Kerry threw caution to the winds and launched into a full-bore attack on the Israeli government and even the Israeli people for refusing to obey him by making concessions to the Palestinians.

 

Kerry’s main concern remains Israeli settlements, a term by which he clearly means not only Jewish towns in the West Bank but Jewish neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem. He rejected the idea that by agreeing to come back to the negotiating table without an Israeli building freeze in these areas the Palestinians agreed to accept any incremental increase in the number of homes or Jews located there. More than that, as the Times of Israel reported, he seems to be placing all of the blame for the lack of peace on the settlements:

We do not believe the settlements are legitimate. We think they’re illegitimate. And we believe that the entire peace process would in fact be easier if these settlements were not taking place. …

 

“Let me ask you something. How, if you say you’re working for peace and you want peace, and a Palestine that is a whole Palestine that belongs to the people who live there, how can you say we’re planning to build in a place that will eventually be Palestine? So it sends a message that perhaps you’re not really serious.

This is significant not just because it places all the emphasis on the existence of settlements and none on the need of the Palestinians to renounce a “right of return” for the descendants of the 1948 refugees or their non-recognition of Israel as the Jewish state—moves that would signal an end to the conflict rather than merely a pause in it. It is also important because although later in the interview he said the formula for peace would involve land swaps, here he is speaking as if all of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem is, in principle, part of the putative state of Palestine. This illustrates the danger of using the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations since both the U.S. and the Palestinians are clearly taking any deviation from the dangerous borders that led to the Six-Day War as the given rather than a point to be negotiated. Moreover, in doing so he’s claiming that all of the areas that every peace processor has always assumed would stay within Israel will be Palestine.

 

In fact almost all of the building plans that he is complaining about are in Jerusalem neighborhoods and settlement blocs close to the old border where hundreds of thousands of Jews live and that no Israeli government will ever surrender. By speaking in this manner, Kerry seems to be undermining the entire idea of land swaps that peace advocates have counted on.

 

But Kerry is not only tilting heavily toward the Palestinian talking points; he’s also not shy about threatening Israel with Palestinian violence if they don’t do as he says.

 

Asking Israelis “if they wanted another intifada,” Kerry went on to claim they had no choice but to surrender:

“If we do not resolve the question of settlements,” he added, “and the question of who lives where and how and what rights they have; if we don’t end the presence of Israeli soldiers perpetually within the West Bank, then there will be an increasing feeling that if we cannot get peace with a leadership that is committed to non-violence, you may wind up with leadership that is committed to violence.”

Kerry also chided the majority of Israelis who have rightly concluded after the Palestinians rejected peace offers and responded to concessions with terror that their only option is to defend themselves and to wait for their neighbors’ culture of violence and hate to change:

“Well, I’ve got news for you,” he said, referring to the Israeli public. “Today’s status quo will not be tomorrow’s or next year’s. Because if we don’t resolve this issue, the Arab world, the Palestinians, neighbors, others, are going to begin again to push in a different way.”

Even worse than that, when Israeli reporter Udi Sagal asked him to speak to the pain and horror that Israelis feel when they see the man that he calls a non-violent peace partner embracing and honoring murderers of children, such as the terrorists that he pressured Netanyahu to release, he had no criticisms to make of Mahmoud Abbas or the Palestinians who cheer such criminals. Nor did he utter a single word of comfort for the families of Israeli victims of terror who must now see their killers honored as heroes:

“It’s very difficult. Look, I have no illusions. I know that the vast majority of people in Israel are opposed [to these releases]. I understand that. Prime Minister Netanyahu understands that. And it is a sign of his seriousness that he was willing to make this decision.

In other words, if Israelis don’t like killers of their children being acclaimed by the people who supposedly want peace, they can lump it.

 

Even before his latest intervention, there was a good chance the Palestinians would use the eventual collapse of these talks as an excuse for more violence. But now they more or less have Kerry’s seal of approval for such behavior. While American diplomats have made some terrible mistakes in the last 20 years in pursuit of Middle East peace, it’s hard to recall a precedent for this sort of incompetence.

 

Kerry’s obsessive pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace is based on his assumption that squaring this circle will magically solve all of America’s other problems in the region. But as we have learned in recent years, the crisis in Syria and Egypt as well as the nuclear danger from Iran—which he hopes to deal with via appeasement—have nothing to do with the complaints of the Palestinians.

 

Perhaps President Obama seems generally not terribly involved in these negotiations, a strategy that is probably rooted in a desire to avoid any blame for the fool’s errand that Kerry has embarked upon. But he needs to wake up and understand that what his errant secretary of state is doing is setting in place a template that is almost certain now to lead to a blowup that will not easily be contained.

Meet the de Blasios, the New Face of America. By Peggy Drexler.

Meet the de Blasios, the new face of America. By Peggy Drexler. CNN, November 7, 2013.

Why Are So Many Young People Leaving Ireland?

Why Are So Many Young People Leaving Ireland? By David Fleming. Vice, November 5, 2013.

Irish Emigration in an Age of Austerity. By Irial Glynn, Tomás Kelly and Piaras MacÉinrí. University College Cork, 2013.

The Crumbling Relationship Between the U.S., Israel, and the Jews. By Adam Garfinkle.

The Triangle Connecting the U.S., Israel, and American Jewry May Be Coming Apart. By Adam Garfinkle. Tablet, November 5, 2013.

Hagel Falls Into the Israel-Palestinian Trap. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

Hagel Falls Into the Israel-Palestinian Trap. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 6, 2013.

Goldberg:

The second observation is larger: Hagel, like much of Washington’s foreign policy elite, still seems enamored of the idea that reaching a final agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians would help solve many of the Middle East’s other problems. I wasn’t that surprised, in fact, that he listed this item first in his description of America’s strategic challenges. Hagel is partial to a theory, known in shorthand as “linkage,” that is no longer operative in reality. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is irrelevant to the great earthquakes of recent Middle East history: the revolutions of the Arab Spring, and the nascent civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. But it is still an article of faith among very smart people that a peace treaty would lead to broad tranquility.

 

Hagel is more nuanced when making the linkage argument than, say, General Jim Jones, the former national security adviser, who once said that if God had “appeared in front of President Obama in 2009 and said if he could do one thing on the face of the planet . . . to make the world a better place and give people more hope and opportunity for the future, I would venture that it would have something to do with finding the two-state solution.”

 

It is not just that Obama, if ever given the chance, should probably ask God to eradicate infectious disease or end poverty (if I had to bet, I would guess Obama would ask him to stop the rise of the oceans). Even if Obama’s choices were limited to a basket of Middle East issues, he would be smarter to ask God to end the division between Sunni and Shiite, or to establish democratic governments in Arab states that would be responsive to the needs of their people, or – and we’re just blue-skying here obviously – he would ask God to liberate women from the yoke of fundamentalist Islam. An Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty would not address the main root causes of Middle Eastern dysfunction.

 

As Dennis Ross, the former Middle East peace negotiator, argues, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is an important issue to solve, but it’s important to solve for its own sake. I spoke to Ross after my talk with Hagel, and he said: “I do accept that some of our friends would be less on the defensive” if there were peace between Israelis and Palestinians. “And I would say that it could take away one of the recruit tools for terrorists. But just one, and there are many.”

 

An Israeli-Palestinian peace accord will not fix problems of illiteracy, water shortage, misogyny, ethnic violence. It won’t make Egypt governable or stop Iraq from dissolving. And it certainly won’t stop the Syrian civil war. The U.S. should, of course, try to bring about peace between the two sides (not that this is a great time to do so), but it shouldn’t be diverted from more important tasks, and it shouldn’t believe that a peace treaty is a panacea.

Palestinians: We Do Not Trust the Americans. By Khaled Abu Toameh.

Palestinians: We Do Not Trust the Americans. By Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute, November 6, 2013.

Meet Your New Instructor: Matt Damon. By Walter Russell Mead.

Meet Your New Instructor: Matt Damon. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 6, 2013.

The New Rock-Star Professor. By Jeffrey R. Young. Slate, November 6, 2013.


Mead:

Watching academic lectures is rarely much fun. But what if the lectures were delivered by Matt Damon? As odd as it may seem, a number of MOOC providers are asking this question, given that the format allows anyone to deliver the lectures professors prepare. Slate reports:

One for-profit MOOC producer, Udacity, already brings in camera-friendly staff members to appear with professors in lecture videos. One example is an introduction to psychology course developed earlier this year in partnership with San Jose State University. It had three instructors: Gregory J. Feist, an associate professor of psychology at San Jose State University, who has been teaching for more than 25 years and who wrote a popular textbook on the subject; Susan Snycerski, a lecturer at the university who has taught for 15 years; and Lauren Castellano, a Udacity employee who recently finished a master’s in psychology from the university, advised by Feist. 

 

In the course’s opening lecture, the three stand together and go over the ground rules, but after that, Castellano takes the lead on camera. Feist and Snycerski make regular appearances throughout the 16 lessons, but often only briefly, to explain a concept or two, or to be part of a demonstration or skit with Castellano….

 

“All our instructors are knowledgeable in the subject area,” Thrun added. “However, we often rely on teams of people to produce a MOOC, and often the individuals who show up on tape are not the primary instructor who composes the materials. This really depends on how camera-shy an instructor is, and how well we believe an instructor is able to do a great job in front of a camera.”

As one researcher notes, once the classroom aspects of teaching have been separated from the lecture itself, the person who writes the lecture content doesn’t necessarily need to be the one delivering it. Many professors may be brilliant minds but middling or unconvincing speakers, and many charismatic speakers lack the background in particle physics to prepare a college-level lecture on the subject.

 

This suggests that one of the main impacts of MOOCs will be increased specialization in the higher-ed world. Rather than one professor and a couple TAs overseeing a class, various specialists can perform individual tasks: one person does the research and plans the lecture, another delivers the lecture, another grades homework and tests, and yet another provides in-person training to supplement the lectures at various learning centers throughout the country. It’s easy to see why professors wouldn’t be happy about this shift, but greater specialization could create a better product for most students, which, ultimately, is more important.

Egypt’s Others. By Jasmin Fritzsche.

Egypt’s Others. By Jasmin Fritzsche. Sada, November 5, 2013.

Fritzsche:

Egypt’s armed forces appear to be leading a revival of Egyptian nationalism since the ousting of Mohamed Morsi. The civic state with equal rights for all citizens, the respect for Egypt's security institutions, and the prominence of national security are central themes for the interim government. As with every such sentiment, this re-emerging nationalism only functions in opposition to an “other.” Due to recent political developments, the Muslim Brotherhood takes on the role of this other in the eyes of the current government and other pro-military institutions. This perception is also based on the alleged links between Morsi and the Syrian opposition as well as the Palestinian organization Hamas. Amplifying those links—and the alleged support of Syrian and Palestinian nationals for the Muslim Brotherhood—not only led to the de-nationalization of the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, but also created a strong anti-Syrian and anti-Palestinian sentiment in Egypt. This has resulted in a major change to the asylum policy regarding Syrian refugees, among other measures. Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Egypt have become a pawn in the government's fight against the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

While Syrians arriving in Egypt were not subject to visa restrictions and were allowed privileged rights, such as access to the public school and health system, they now need to apply for a visa prior to their arrival. Palestinians fleeing the Syrian conflict, however, never had the possibility of being registered as refugees; they face a protection gap in Egypt resulting from the exclusion from the 1951 Refugee Convention and the lack of a UNRWA mandate, and are therefore vulnerable to the arbitrariness of Egyptian state policies. Within the last four months, hundreds fleeing the conflict in Syria have been rejected at Cairo Airport, while others already residing in Egypt, face ongoing threat of deportation and detention in poor conditions.

 

Such targeting of Syrian and Palestinian refugees points to political motivation by the Egyptian authorities—itself a product of the polarized political climate between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. In September 2012, Morsi issued a presidential decree extending the protection and public services for Syrian refugees and, with that, gave them a privileged position within the Egyptian asylum system. The decree granted Syrian refugees, in contrast to other refugees in Egypt, the right to access the public education and healthcare systems. On June 15, 2013, Morsi suspended all diplomatic relations with the Syrian state under the regime of Bashar al-Assad, thus positioning himself as an ally of the Syrian opposition groups, such as the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The ties the Muslim Brotherhood shared with parts of the Syrian opposition, as well as its alleged links with Hamas, were subsequently employed to create a large-scale media campaign seeking to disconnect the Muslim Brotherhood from the Egyptian people.

 

The new immigration restrictions for Syrians, issued on July 8, came only a few days after Morsi’s ouster and the arrest of one Syrian citizen at the so-called “Anti-Coup” demonstrations in Nasr City in Cairo. What followed was a campaign fueled by the local media against Syrian and Palestinian refugees. On July 10, different local media channels publicly accused Syrians of supporting Morsi and joining the “Anti-Coup” demonstrations. Tawfik Okasha, a local media presenter, even called on the Egyptians to destroy the houses and shops of Syrians if they would not withdraw their support for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood within 48 hours.

 

Since the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt, rumors have also been growing that Hamas played a crucial role in Morsi’s and other Muslim Brotherhood figures’ 2011 prison break. Shortly before the ouster of Morsi, a court in Ismailia referred a case investigating the circumstances of the prison break to state prosecutors and accused him of collusion with Palestinian militants to attack Egyptian police and orchestrate the prison break. The current nationalist media discourse heavily builds on those allegations, portraying Morsi as a Hamas figure and not “the president of all Egyptians.”

 

The interim government has relied heavily on a militarized society and on the national pride and loyalty of the Egyptians. In the past four months, the government and other loyal institutions created the image of Syrians and Palestinians as being crucially involved in—and interfering with—Egypt’s political situation by supporting Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Portraying Morsi as a Hamas-led puppet, in order to de-nationalize the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, comes at the cost of Syrian and Palestinian refugees’ need for protection.

 

The politicization of the presence of Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Egypt adds a further layer to the political polarization in the country. As the Muslim Brotherhood is portrayed as a foreign-led, “non-Egyptian” entity, Palestinian and Syrian refugees are, in turn, demonized and viewed as a national security threat. This national security discourse targeting the Muslim Brotherhood and their “foreign supporters” only deepens the divisions in Egypt.

Peaceful Protest Is Much More Effective Than Violence for Toppling Dictators. By Max Fisher.

Peaceful protest is much more effective than violence for toppling dictators. By Max Fisher. Washington Post, November 5, 2013.

The Dissident’s Toolkit. By Erica Chenoweth. Foreign Policy, October 25, 2013.

My Talk at TEDxBoulder: Civil Resistance and the “3.5% Rule.” By Erica Chenoweth. Rational Insurgent, November 4, 2013. YouTube.

12 Years a Slave: What Art Says About the Past. By Richard Cohen.

What Art Says About the Past. By Richard Cohen. Real Clear Politics, November 5, 2013.

Richard Cohen’s Racial “Groundhog Day.” By Jack White. The Root, November 14, 2013.

America’s Original Sin: The Legacy of White Racism. By Jim Wallis. NJBR, October 24, 2013. With related articles on 12 Years a Slave.

Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children. By Dennis Prager.

Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children. By Dennis Prager. Real Clear Politics, November 5, 2013. Also at National Review Online.

If You Want a Conservative Child. By Dennis Prager. Real Clear Politics, November 12, 2013. Also at National Review Online.