Israeli-Palestinian Peace Is Dead and Both Sides Killed It. By Carlo Strenger.

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Is Dead and Both Sides Killed It. By Carlo Strenger. The Huffington Post, August 14, 2015. Also at Haaretz.

In Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a two-state solution is dead. By Padraig O’Malley. Boston Globe, August 11, 2015.

With His Head In the Sand. By Matti Friedman. Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2015.

The Left’s Cognitive Dissonance on the Palestinian Authority. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, August 14, 2015.

Review of  Padraig O’Malley, The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine. By Peter Beinart. New York Times, August 18, 2015.

Peace Between Israel And Palestine: Is It a Delusion? Padraig O’Malley Explores. By Annie Shreffler. WGBH News, August 18, 2015.

Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine. By Padraig O’Malley. Video. WGBH Forum Network, August 5, 2015. YouTube.

The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine – A Tale of Two Narratives (w/ Padraig O’Malley). Interview by Michael Brooks. Video. Majority Report. Sam Seder, August 25, 2015. YouTube.

Strenger:

Irish conflict researcher Padraig O’Malley says that neither side has the will to reach the two-state solution, and he is probably right.

The world has grown tired of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Twenty-two years after the historic signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, the very term “peace” is fraught with despair, ridicule and anger both among Israelis and Palestinians, and with tiredness of those who have spent much time and energy to reach this elusive goal.

Many accounts have been written about the failure of the peace process, often by those who have played a role in it like Shlomo Ben-Ami, the foreign minister under Ehud Barak, Dennis Ross, who was senior negotiator for the United States, as was David Aaron Miller. These books appeared between 2006 and 2008, and none of them exuded optimism.

As time went by, the accounts and analyses became more bitter and desperate. Benny Morris, the left-wing doyen of the so-called New Historians, who unearthed Israel’s role in the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, has made a radical right-turn and no longer believes that Palestinians want peace. And Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University and long-time peace activist wrote his depressing What Is a Palestinian State Worth? in which he calls on fellow Palestinians to cease fighting for two states: Israeli Jews, he believes, are too traumatized to give up control over the West Bank, and Palestinians should just insist on civil rights and a life with dignity.

Both Morris and Nusseibeh buried the two-state solution, each thinking the other side was responsible for its demise.

It is therefore of great interest, even though depressing, to read an account written by someone who is not part of the conflict, and who comes to the same conclusion – but without blaming either side exclusively. Padraig O’Malley’s life has been about peace. Born in Dublin, educated there, then at Tufts, Yale and Harvard, he has spent decades involved in the Northern Irish peace process that ultimately led to the Good Friday Agreement. In parallel he spent thousands of hours documenting South Africa’s transition to democracy, and serves as Professor of International Peace and Reconciliation at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

He has been an observer of and involved in intractable conflicts for more than 40 years, and has been trying to bring his vast experience to the Middle East as well; first to Iraq, and from 2010 to 2014 he travelled Israel, the West Bank and Gaza to get an in-depth understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, interviewing more than 100 people on both sides.

The result is his book The Two-State Delusion, a detailed analysis of the conflict, and particularly of the demise of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The book is extensively documented, including a huge bibliography and the detailed and very impressive list of Israeli and Palestinian interviewees on both sides; he has spoken to many of the central players in the various stages of peace negotiations, but also to many of the peace process’s implacable enemies, like the leadership of Hamas.

O'Malley’s conclusion is obvious from the book’s title: He thinks that neither side has the will to reach the two-state solution, and that the Israel-Palestine conflict is there to stay indefinitely. Toward the end of the book he relates that friends who had read the manuscript told him that he couldn’t simply publish the book without any indication of hope and advice. In response he writes:

“But why should I be so presumptuous as to dare to provide a vision for people who refuse to provide one for themselves, not just in the here and now, but in the future, too? For people who have no faith in the possible? Who themselves believe the conflict will take generations to resolve? Who are content to live their hatreds? Who are so resolutely opposed to the slightest gesture of accommodation? Who revel in their mutual pettiness? Why delude you into thinking that there is a magical bullet?”

Of course, such a conclusion will lead readers from both sides to seek bias, but they are bound to come up empty-handed: O’Malley is remarkably balanced in his analysis of the reasons that make him so pessimistic, and his diagnosis is as interesting as it is depressing. He believes that both Israelis and Palestinians are so addicted to their respective narratives that they are both incapable and unwilling to do what it would take to reach the two-state solution.

The Jewish-Israeli narrative is dominated by the fear of annihilation. Israeli Jews’ collective memory is shaped by the history of persecution and suffering culminating in the genocide that largely destroyed European Jewry in the Holocaust; the memory of three wars from 1948 to 1973 in which Israel’s existence was indeed at stake; the memory of terror attacks from the early Fedayeen to the second intifada; and most lately the various wars with Hamas in Gaza. Israelis, O’Malley concludes, are deeply convinced that the Palestinians’ ultimate goal is to erase the State of Israel.

The Palestinian narrative is one of humiliation and dispossession, and O’Malley’s Palestinian interviewees return to the same refrain of “humiliation, indignity, dispossession and disrespect, leaving little room for other issues to become part of the dialogue. So while the Palestinian national narrative is invariably cast in terms of the Nakba and the occupation, a subnarrative is daily life in occupied territory.” O’Malley comes to the conclusion that Palestinians cannot really accept Israel’s existence, because the Nakba and the question of refugees is central to their narrative and their identity.

O’Malley’s book is a refreshing departure from the blame game in which Israelis and Palestinians and their respective international champions try to make the other side responsible for the peace process’s failure. And it diverges from the tendency to find the trick that will do the job, and comes to a conclusion as intellectually compelling as it is dismaying: “. . .on a deeper level it seems that the impasse relates to human nature and the nature of social structures that have been the source of the two people’s habits/addictions, not the least of which is an impenetrable adherence to national narrative.”

Reading O’Malley, I am divided between two of my identities and roles. As an Israeli who believes that anything but the two-state solution is bound to have a catastrophic outcome for Israel, and who has written this endlessly and ad nauseam, I cannot but recoil from his conclusion.

When I try to take analytical distance and look at the facts and at O’Malley’s arguments from an academic point of view, I am afraid that he is right. In the past I have argued that the human need for meaning can be so strong, that it often overrides reason and pragmatism, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

The idea of the two-state solution is based on the model of sovereign nation-states and based on the value of self-determination of national groups. It is not a religion, but the only pragmatically workable model that has so far been offered – and it has the advantage that the 1967 borders are recognized by international law, which means that they can serve as a reasonable basis for a final-status agreement.

But the Middle East is not governed by the logic of modern international law, nor by political pragmatism, but is disintegrating into a war of cultures, religions and meaning-systems rather than moving toward pragmatism. One state after another disintegrates into warfare between religious and ethnic groups. Organizations like Al-Qaida and Islamic State dream of the reestablishment of the caliphate, Saudi Arabia and Iran are theocracies, and most other Middle Eastern states that have not disintegrated are autocracies of some form – and the Israel-Palestine conflict reflects this wider reality.

Palestinians are deeply divided: While Fatah seems to aim for a liberal democracy, Hamas is committed to Sharia as the law of the future Palestine (which for them includes Israel, whose legitimacy they deny). Israel is, despite all criticisms, a functioning liberal democracy within the 1967 borders – but we must not forget that even here there are substantial groups seriously calling for Israel to become a Jewish theocracy.

O’Malley’s The Two-State Delusion provides an impartial, empathic but relentlessly objective look at our reality. His idea that both Israelis and Palestinians are so addicted to their meaning-systems (“narratives”) that they are willing to slide into a chaotic abyss is chilling, but seems strongly supported by recent history and current facts.

Like O’Malley, I wonder whether I should not end on a rousing battle cry for political will, prudence and the need for a vision for the future. But then again, such calls are coming to sound more and more hollow. There may be moments where only chilling clarity can liberate us from the cacophony of political rhetoric and allow us to fully face our situation.

O’Malley:

One year has passed since the Gaza war between Hamas and Israel came to an end. An uneasy peace prevails. The 2014 war, however, changed the calculus of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In retrospect, it was the final nail in the coffin of a two-state solution.

During the war, the Israeli public called for the demilitarization of Hamas — for the IDF to destroy Hamas’s military brigades and force it to decommission its arms. That didn’t happen. If the IDF had tried, it would have been met with pitiless person-to-person combat and house-to-house searches, making the actual 2014 conflict look like children playing a toy war.

But even if the IDF had, as a result of some remarkable phenomenon, demilitarized Hamas, at best Israel would have bought itself a respite before it would face a rearmed Hamas, which has undergone a rapprochement with Iran in the face of the threat ISIS presents to both.

Given the unfathomable levels of distrust that exist on both sides, Israel will never sign off on a two-state solution, because in a Palestinian state there would be free movement between Gaza and the West Bank, giving Hamas unrestricted access to the latter.

Retired General Michael Herzog, a veteran Israeli negotiator, told me that “no government would ever contemplate leaving the West Bank until that threat of Hamas or any other militant group to launch rocket attacks was removed.” Otherwise, all of Israel would be exposed to attack.

Confinement to Gaza limits Hamas’s offensive capacity to wage war; the strategic question it faces is how to “break out” of Gaza. The only obvious way is to acquiesce to a two-state solution that would give it freedom to move between a united Gaza and West Bank. The contiguity of such a Palestinian state would require a corridor, under Palestinian sovereignty, connecting the two parts of its sovereign territory.

Hamas would then be free to solidify its presence in the West Bank and find routes for smuggling sophisticated mobile missiles, fitted with launchers and timers, into the territory. Given the West Bank’s topography, such missiles could be fired from numerous sites toward Israel’s population centers and infrastructure, including Ben Gurion Airport. This would leave Israel vulnerable to missile attacks from any number of places. Thus Hamas running loose in the West Bank would be a much more elusive and lethal enemy for Israel.

A crushing response against rocket attacks from tiny Gaza is not all that difficult, but a crushing response against both Gaza and the much larger West Bank would be another challenge entirely. Israel would face a highly mobile Hamas, more difficult to pin down and more adept at asymmetric warfare.

Further, a “demilitarized” Palestinian state — i.e., a state without a standing army — could not guarantee that Hamas would not remilitarize. Given the prospect of Hamas rearming, a two-state solution acceptable to Hamas would never assuage Israel’s fears. Israel is more comfortable with the status quo: recurring bouts of violence between itself and Hamas.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say Hamas and other militant groups pledge to demilitarize. Who would believe them? How would Hamas get unanimity among its own factions, let alone bring other militant groups on board? Surely Israel would insist on having an international body monitor the process. Would Hamas agree to that? Would Islamic Jihad, or the ISIS-affiliated Salafi groups that are an increasing presence in Gaza?

And since nobody beyond Hamas has an exact account of its arms inventory, how would the monitoring body know whether it was being given accurate numbers? How would it actually verify demilitarization? Or preclude Hamas from rearming in due time?

Those realities frame Israel’s choice. One option is a militarized Hamas confined to Gaza, a threat Israel can deal with. The other is a two-state solution with no ironclad guarantee of a demilitarized Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other jihadist groups — and with those groups having access to the West Bank. The former is unsustainable in the long run, but the latter is out of the question.

Given these realities, what’s next? Last week, in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most influential newspaper, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin proposed a “borderless” Palestinian-Israeli “confederation” as a solution. The fact that any president of Israel, particularly one who is a former member of Likud, would make such a breathtaking statement is an indication that fresh thinking is catching wind. Unfortunately, however, even a confederation would not negate the concerns I have outlined. Perhaps nothing short of a catastrophic war will be necessary to bring about the attitudinal changes a confederation would require.

Another sad, but unforgiving reality.

Camille Paglia: The Salon Interview with David Daley.

Camille Paglia: How Bill Clinton is like Bill Cosby. Interview with David Daley. Part 1. Salon, July 28, 2015.

Camille Paglia takes on Jon Stewart, Trump, Sanders: “Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!” Interview with David Daley. Part 2. Salon, July 29, 2015.

“Ted Cruz gives me the willies”: Camille Paglia analyzes the GOP field — and takes on Hillary Clinton. Interview with David Daley. Part 3. Salon, July 30, 2015.

Camille Paglia Nails It on Clinton and Cosby. By Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh.com, July 28, 2015.

Paglia, Part 3:

I think that liberals are dangerously complacent about Scott Walker. They’ve tried to portray him as a madman, an uneducated rube, a tool of the Koch brothers. Right now, Walker seems to be the true GOP frontrunner, but I also feel he lacks gravitas.  He’s not ready for his close-up. What is this oddity about so many of the GOP candidates–their excessive boyishness, as if their maturation stalled? But Walker is a very talented and combative politician, with far more substance than liberals are allowing for.

The union issue is huge–because as governor of Wisconsin, Walker went to war with unions and won. Liberals are caught in the past right now in their rosy view of unions, which were heroically established during the progressive era that reformed the abuses of the industrial revolution. But the union battle in Wisconsin had nothing to do with exploited working-class miners or factory workers. In his push to balance the state budget, Walker took action against the middle-class public sector unions, whose negotiations with municipal and state governments outside the arena of private competition have become an enormous drain on local budgets as the economy has worsened. There has been a history of rampant corruption in the public sector unions, coming from their cozy quid pro quo relationships with politicians. Liberals need to wake up about this! All they have to do is read the obituaries of the smaller newspapers in metropolitan New York to see how the early retirement and lavish pensions of the public sector unions have grotesquely drained taxpayer dollars. Obituary after obituary–so-and-so, aged 75, worked for fifteen or twenty years as a policeman or city sanitation worker, retired in his late 40s, and spent the rest of his life on the taxpayer’s dime, pursuing his hobbies of fishing, boating, and golfing. Great work if you can get it!

And then the teachers’ unions! What a colossal tactical error American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten (a longtime Clinton friend and donor) made several weeks ago in unilaterally declaring her union’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton right in the middle of the Bernie Sanders surge. Probably for the first time ever, American liberals woke up to the corrupt practices that have become way too common in the political maneuverings of the big unions. The point here is that Scott Walker, in his defeat of the public sector unions, drew the roadmap for struggling municipal and state governments everywhere to balance their budgets, as he did in Wisconsin. Because who ends up suffering the most? It’s the kids. All that money outrageously pouring into inflated pension plans has been gutting public education and community arts programs.

Exactly how have the teachers unions improved the quality of education in our big cities? Look at the dilapidated public schools in Philadelphia or in many other cities run by Democrats. The rigid and antiquated seniority system imposed by the teachers unions has been a disaster–“last hired, first fired.” So many young and vital teachers have been terminated during budget cuts–the entire future of the profession. The unions value seniority over quality, and it’s inner-city children who have paid the price.

In my opinion, Scott Walker still lacks seasoning, presidential temper, and a working knowledge of international affairs. But if Democrats try to use the union issue to take him down, they’re simply empowering him–and we’re going to end up with President Walker.

Would Economic Populism Turn the White Working Class Democratic? By Jason Willick.

Would Economic Populism Turn the White Working Class Democratic? By Jason Willick. The American Interest, July 29, 2015.

What is the matter with America? By Hisham Melhem. Al Arabiya News, July 26, 2015.

Revenge of the Radical Middle. By Matthew Continetti. Washington Free Beacon, July 24, 2015. Also at National Review.

Yes I said it: Donald Trump supporters are living a childlike fantasy land. By Joan Walsh. Salon, July 31, 2015.

This is how the clowns took over: The sad history of the spectacle of a Fox News debate starring front-runner Donald Trump. By Heather Cox Richardson. Salon, August 2, 2015.


Willick:

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered a sharp critique of the state of the Democratic Party in an extensive interview, released yesterday, with Vox’s Ezra Klein:

I think it would be hard to imagine if you walked out of here or walked down the street or went a few miles away from here and you stopped somebody on the street and you said, “Do you think that the Democratic Party is the party of the American working class?” People would look at you and say, “What are you talking about?”

There was a time — I think under Roosevelt, maybe even under Truman — where it was perceived that working people were part of the Democratic Party. I think for a variety of reasons, a lot having to do with money and politics, that is no longer the case. In my view that is exactly what shouldn’t be happening. Instead of spending all of our time raising money, I think we should go out organizing people and getting them to unite around a progressive agenda which expands the middle class which tells the billionaire class that they cannot have it all, which says to corporate America, “You’re going to have to start paying your fair share of taxes,” which says we’re going to raise the minimum wage, we’re going to make college available to all regardless of their income, that we are going to have pay equity for women workers, that we are going to create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. You need a progressive agenda, then you need the ability to go out and organize people.

Sanders’ central insight—that the New Deal Democrats were a working class party, but the modern Democrats are not—is clearly correct, even if the party doesn’t like to acknowledge it. Blue collar workers were at the center of the New Deal coalition, while today’s white working class voters cast their ballots overwhelmingly for the GOP.

Why the shift? Sanders suggests that it has to do with “money and politics.” He doesn’t spell out what that means, exactly, but it seems to points to his belief that the Democrats have abandoned robust social welfare programs in favor of a more centrist, pro-corporate economic program. This contrasts with the rather more self-satisfied explanation that some on the elite left have offered—namely, that whites without a college education are a lost cause because conservatives trick them into voting Republican by exploiting their latent prejudices and resentments.

Sanders’ proposed solution to the Democrats’ poor showing among the white working class is well known: a hard-left economic populist agenda, complete with dramatic minimum wage increases, high-end tax hikes, massive government spending on and infrastructure and education, and invective against the superrich—in other words, a restoration of the blue model and then some. He’s not alone; the rest of the party is signing on to some of these economic proposals as well.

But would an economic populist program actually wrest the white working class from the GOP? Perhaps it will move the needle temporarily, but the genuinely working class party of Truman and Roosevelt simply cannot be resurrected in the foreseeable future. The economic model that existed in the New Deal era, and that the New Deal political coalition relied upon, is deteriorating—not only because of policy choices, as Sanders suggests, but also because of irreversible trends in technology, globalization, and demography. Private sector unions will never reattain the level economic and political might they wielded in the 1950s no matter how the Supreme Court rules on right-to-work statutes. And shoring up the public benefits system devised in the New Deal would require large tax increases—not only upper-end tax hikes, but middle-class tax hikes as well—that would risk splintering the Democratic coalition.

Then, of course, there is culture. As the white working class began to slip away from the Democrats in the 1960s, the party drifted leftward culturally—a process that is once again picking up steam today. In important (though qualified) ways, upper class liberals are further to the left culturally than working class voters. So in addition to economic populism, winning back blue collar whites would probably require adopting a softer tone on cultural questions—something that would not please culturally liberal constituencies (like Silicon Valley tycoons) that provide the Democratic party with critical support.

Matthew Continetti has perceptively written that “there are two Republican parties, an elite party of the corporate upper crust and meritocratic winners that sits atop a mass party of whites without college degrees whose worldviews and experiences and ambitions could not be more different from their social and economic betters.” In the same way, there are two Democratic parties; an elite party of affluent white urban cultural liberals that sits atop a coalition of identity groups—blacks, hispanics, LGBT people, single women, and young people. Bernie Sanders wants to win back some of the disaffected whites who currently find themselves in the Republican camp, and re-constitute the singular New Deal Democratic Party of yore. But given existing economic and social trends, we may be stuck with two Democratic parties—and two Republican parties—for the foreseeable future.

Mayor “Know-It-All” Could Use a Lesson in Humility. By Michael Goodwin.

Mayor “know-it-all” could use a lesson in humility. By Michael Goodwin. New York Post, July 22, 2015.

Goodwin:

The lefty mayor traveled to the Vatican to meet the lefty pope yesterday, but failed to learn anything new. Count that as another missed opportunity to be a better mayor.

Had Bill de Blasio done his homework, he would have copied Pope Francis’ recent confession that he, the pontiff, was wrong to ignore the middle class.

Asked during his down-with-capitalism trip to Latin America why he rarely speaks about the “working, tax-paying” middle class, the pope reflected a humility that would be shocking if it came from Mayor Know-It-All.

“You’re right,” Francis admitted. “It’s an error of mine not to think about this.”

Bill de Blasio, pay attention!

Instead, the mayor is so hellbent on beating to death the income-inequality, climate-change spiel that he forgets the middle class is in the middle for a reason — it’s the largest segment of the population. The pope noticed the middle is shrinking, and perhaps one day, he’ll also come to realize that the progressive policies he and de Blasio push are a big reason why.

Soak-the-rich nostrums, coupled with invitations for the poor to sign up for permanent government dependency, hurt everyone except the ruling class. As Willie Sutton might have said, the middle class is where the money is, so it always gets stuck with the bill.

Now, the middle class is as much a state of mind as it is an income group. The term defines the broad mass of people who live an ordered, responsible life in the expectation they are creating a better future by sacrificing now.

They are aspirational investors who believe life’s compounded benefits are produced by hard work and delayed gratification. Whatever their race or ethnicity, they practice the Protestant work ethic, which formed the backbone of American capitalism.

The middle class works for a living, pays its own way and raises children to be good students and law-abiding citizens. They make good neighbors and stable communities, and struggle up life’s hills without undue complaints or demands for the fruit of others’ labor.

Naturally, de Blasio ignores them when he isn’t undermining them. They are irrelevant to his vision of New York, where government commands the heights and presides over redistribution schemes that, despite good intentions, never lift the poor.

As historian Fred Siegel says, liberals want to deregulate morals and regulate everything else. True to form, de Blasio demonizes cops and orders them to cut down on aggressive policing and forces schools to stop suspending disruptive students.

In both instances, bad behavior is endorsed as normal, while those who behave properly wonder why they bother playing by the rules. The lack of clear incentives and disincentives corrodes the quality of life for everyone.

The de Blasio ilk also undermine social norms by accusing the nation of being unfair, unjust and in need of sweeping change. They treat as shnooks those who believe America is still the land of opportunity, while rewarding those who burn, riot and loot. Illegal immigrants are welcomed with open arms and handouts, while taxpayers struggling to make ends meet are deemed bigots if they object.

Their policies help create the problems progressives rail against. By grabbing ever more power, socialist-style planners sap private initiative and curb the liberty necessary for the pursuit of individual happiness. Government then promises to solve resulting unhappiness with even more government.

Their failure is proven repeatedly throughout history, but arrogant progressives can’t resist the temptation to spend other people’s money, so history repeats itself.

Any excuse for more power will do, though few are as flimsy as the Vatican meeting on “Modern Slavery and Climate Change.”

It sounds like an old Flip Wilson joke — “the devil made me do it.” Yet there they were, the pope and about 60 mayors, promising to shackle entrepreneurs and save the middle class from freedom.

“Is it not the definition of insanity to propagate corporate policies and consumer habits that hasten the destruction of the Earth?” Rev. de Blasio asked.

There’s no chance our moralizing mayor will lead by example, so walking to work and giving up air conditioning are out. The most we can hope for is that, upon his return, his day job leaves him no time for preaching about the evils of progress.

Tomi Lahren: A 22-Year Old Jacksonian News Anchor Blasts Obama’s Failure to Confront Radical Islam.

Tomi’s Red, White, Blue & Unfiltered Final Thoughts the Slaughter of 4 Marines by Another “Mohammad.” Video. On Point with Tomi Lahren, July 18, 2015. YouTube.

On Point with Tomi Lahren YouTube channel.

Conservative anchor Tomi Lahren, 22, becomes viral star with passionate rant against Obama. By Kelly McLaughlin. Daily Mail, July 20, 2015.

The one-time intern dating a SEAL who is the Right’s new poster girl: How gun-loving, straight-talking Tomi Lahren became the newest thorn in Obama’s side – but don’t dare call her a bimbo! By Kelly McLaughlin. Daily Mail, July 21, 2015.

This is the hunky Navy SEAL boyfriend of conservative TV news anchor Tomi Lahren – who inspired her tirade against President Obama and his “half-baked” ISIS policy. By Ryan Parry. Daily Mail, July 22, 2015.

Watch This TV Host SCHOOL Obama… Says What We’re ALL Thinking. By Michelle Jesse. Allen West.com, July 19, 2015.

Fox News interviews Tomi Lahren about viral rant demanding Obama call Tenn. shooting radical Islam. Video. The Right Scoop, July 21, 2015. Also at Daily Mail.

News anchor slams Obama, his “half-baked, tip-toe” Middle East policies in on-air rant: “Put the fear of God in their desert!” By Meg Wagner. New York Daily News, July 21, 2015.

News Host Tomi Lahren’s Obama Takedown Is a Hit in Certain Circles. By Ron Dicker. The Huffington Post, July 21, 2015.

How One America News Is Positioning Itself to be the Next Fox News. By Emma Roller. National Journal, March 17, 2015.

CPAC 2015: Tomi Lahren OANN. Video. The ACU, February 28, 2015. YouTube. Also here, here.




CPAC Speaker Tomi Lahren Zings Hillary’s Mannish Pantsuit. By Pam Key. Breitbart, February 28, 2015.

CPAC speaker calls Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren “old, rich, white, males.” By Tony Ortega. Raw Story, February 28, 2015.

Israel and the Palestinians: An Existential War of Blood and Faith (incomplete draft 1)

I and my brother against my cousin. Middle Eastern tribalism: A Bedouin camp in the Transjordan in the 1890s. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

By Michael Kaplan

The conflicts of the twenty-first century are shaping up, as strategic analyst Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters predicted, to be “wars of blood and faith.” This is true of the civil war in Syria and similar conflicts across the developing world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even America’s post-9/11 war with radical Islam. Jacksonian America is after all a folk community that embodies the blood and faith element of American life (just listen to Toby Keith). These wars are driven by the existential issues of tribal and religious identity: Who am I and who is God? Is God a kind, loving, and merciful father, or is he a harsh, hate-filled, and punitive tyrant? “Will the god of love and mercy triumph over the god of battles?” Colonel Peters asks. Millions will die in the coming years trying to answer these questions.

These conflicts are made even more savage by the pressures of globalization. A recent study by Hebrew University political scientist Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom asserts that while globalization “has increased interpersonal contact between individuals from culturally diverse backgrounds,” it has not promoted greater tolerance or acceptance of difference. Nor has it promoted religious liberty and protection of minority groups. Just look at the Muslim Brotherhood’s bloody jihad against Coptic Christians in Egypt. Instead globalization’s freewheeling cultural diversity and upheaval “induces perceived threat to a hegemonic religion, which leads to more restrictions on religious freedom.” People really don’t like having cultural and religious differences shoved in their faces. This is just as true of subgroups – smaller tribal, family, and cult identities – within an ethno-religious society, as for example the intensifying conflict between ultra-Orthodox Haredim and the Israeli mainstream over issues of female sexuality and military service. Ben-Nun Bloom and her co-authors conclude:

that increasing awareness of diverse cultures, ideas and traditions as a result of globalization increases the perception of threat to religious, cultural and national integrity and results in a backlash that manifests itself in distrust of and even aggressive attitudes towards alien cultures and lifestyles. Globalization thus creates a threat to the sense of group integrity, which in turn leads to fears of loss of identity and the sense of a disintegrating community and generates strong resistance towards other value systems, such as other religions.

In fact globalization is provoking its opposite: a re-tribalization of much of the world. Faced with moral chaos through the overthrow of age-old customs and values by globalization, people are falling back on their primal tribal identities. Or to borrow Tom Friedman’s metaphor, people are rejecting the Lexus for the Olive Tree. Ethnic street gangs, usually linked to the drug trade, are the new tribes of urban America’s economic and spiritual wastelands. God Himself, Ralph Peters writes, is being re-tribalized. “Far from monolithic, both the Muslim and Christian faiths are splintering, with radical strains emerging that reject the globalization of God and insist that His love is narrow, specific, and highly conditional.” This is not a recipe for peaceful coexistence.

Political scientist Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom, Hebrew University

Ethno-religious conflicts are prime examples of a central paradox of human nature: the connection between violence and sociality. Human nature is tribal and people divide the world into “us” and “them”; and while the boundaries of what constitutes “us” and “them” changes over time, “them” are by definition the enemy who must be defeated and annihilated. Sociability, kindness, and empathy are reserved exclusively for those who are within the group. Those outside the group are treated as less than human. These traits have deep roots in our evolutionary past; we share them with our closest relatives, the chimps. Conflict and violence between groups (such as rival bands of chimps, Jacksonian America and the Indians, or Israel and the Palestinians) actually fosters social cooperation, altruism, and even self-sacrifice within the group or tribe. Those groups that are more cohesive and organized are in a better position to defend their existence and triumph over less cohesive enemies. Along these lines, the late Judge Robert Bork observed, “Real human beings do not have any unfulfilled capacity for love, or at least not a large one; they simply do not regard men as infinitely precious, whatever the homilist may say on Sunday; and they lack the boundless energy and selflessness required to will themselves to brotherhood.” This is especially true for those outside one’s tribe. These tribal imperatives continue to drive much of human behavior in the globalizing world of the twenty-first century, making it more difficult for communities divided by blood and faith to coexist in peace.

We should also note the sexual and demographic dimension in ethno-religious violence. It’s no coincidence that Islamist terrorists from Al Qaeda to Hamas are drawn to martyrdom by the promise of 72 virgins awaiting them in Allah’s paradise. The Arab Muslim world has a serious demographic problem: a surplus of young men with little prospect of productive employment or marriage.

Abstract principles of justice and morality, the fruit, as Amos Oz says, of the union between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Western liberal humanism, are the hallmark of a civilized society. They are the building blocks for the rule of law, democracy, and the culture of liberty, and should always be fostered in the life of a nation, which for 65 years Israel has strived to do. In the fullness of time the Palestinians and the Arab Muslim world may come to share these values with Israel. But despite a century of Wilsonian idealism, these principles have little or no place in the Hobbesian world of international relations. For a nation surrounded by immemorial tribal enemies waiting to devour it, the only morality is survival. In the existential war of blood and faith in which Israel is engaged, there is no substitute for victory.

See also: The Middle East’s Tribal DNA. By Philip Carl Salzman. NJBR, November 5, 2013.

The Breakup of the Kingdom of David: Biblical Geopolitics and the Limits of Statism (incomplete draft 1)

By Michael Kaplan

Limestone relief of Pharaoh Shoshenq I (biblical Shishak), Temple of Amun at Karnak, Egypt, listing cities conquered in his invasion of Israel.  Digital Karnak, UCLA.

In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, King Shishak of Egypt came up against Jerusalem; he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house; he took everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made; so King Rehoboam made shields of bronze instead, and committed them to the hands of the officers of the guard, who kept the door of the king’s house. As often as the king went into the house of the Lord, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guardroom.

—1 Kings 14: 25-28. New Revised Standard Version


Israel’s King Solomon, whose wealth and wisdom have become the stuff of legend (and in the judgment of some scholars greatly exaggerated), died in 922 BC after a reign according to the Bible of nearly forty years. The king’s death was a moment of grave crisis for the Israelite monarchy created by Solomon’s father King David some 80 years earlier. Through war, diplomacy, treachery, and occasional cruelty, David had succeeded in forging a disparate group of loosely confederated highland tribes, clans, independent villages and Canaanite city-states, under constant threat from their richer and more powerful Philistine neighbors, into a new bureaucratic dynastic state: Israel. David’s Israel, with its new royal capital Jerusalem, was the first independent territorial state under local leadership ever to emerge in the land then called Canaan, later to be called Eretz Yisrael or Palestine.

David, in the judgment of his most recent biographer, “was a successful monarch, but he was a vile human being.” He is the pivotal figure of the Bible and the central political figure in Jewish history: the founding father of the Israelite nation who established Jerusalem as the focus of Jewish, and later Christian, religious faith, achievements which reverberate to the present day. The historical David was a masterful political leader and military strategist. He was also a cunning Near Eastern warlord and despot in the mold of Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad, who was transformed over the course of several centuries into the ideal king of the Judeo-Christian tradition, “a man after God’s own heart,” and the prototype of the Messiah. This process began during Solomon’s reign with the writing of an apology for David’s life and actions, a masterpiece of literature and propaganda later incorporated into the biblical books of Samuel. The Israel reborn in 1948 was the deliberate re-creation of David’s Israel in modern guise. As Joel Baden writes, the founders of the Zionist state “chose the name of David’s unified nation, linking the emergence of Israel in the twentieth century CE with the emergence of Israel in the tenth century BCE. . . . Geographically, politically, and ideologically, the Israel we know today is the embodiment of David’s legacy.”

The idealized David by Michelangelo. Wikipedia.

In 961 BC as David lay dying, his favorite wife Bathsheba, in league with her one time adversary the Prophet Nathan, engineered a palace coup that brought her son Solomon to the throne. Solomon built on David’s achievements, using diplomacy and dynastic marriages with princesses from neighboring states, to create a network of trade and commerce that enriched his kingdom. Yet Solomon’s autocratic rule, his imposition of high taxes and forced labor to support his public works program and opulent royal lifestyle, his favoritism toward his own southern tribe of Judah at the expense of the northern Israelite tribes, led to growing popular resentment. When Solomon’s son and successor Rehoboam went to the northern Israelite cultic center at Shechem (modern Nablus) to be anointed king by an assembly of northern elders, he arrogantly refused their demands that he lighten the state’s burden of taxation and conscription. Rejecting the counsel of his father’s advisors who urged him to compromise with the elders, and goaded on by his hotheaded young retainers, the king told the assembly, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” (1 Kings 12:14). This was not what the elders hoped to hear. Seeing that they could expect no redress from the king the northern Israelites raised the banner of rebellion:

What share do we have in David?

   We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.

To your tents, O Israel!

   Look now to your own house, O David.

When King Rehoboam, in a further display of royal arrogance and stupidity, sent Adoniram ben Abda, his minister of forced labor, to whip the rebels into submission, they stoned the hapless official to death. The king barely escaped with his own life by jumping into his chariot and fleeing back to Jerusalem. The northern assembly then chose Jeroboam ben Nebat, a former Solomonic administrator who had launched an unsuccessful rebellion against the old king, as king of a separate northern kingdom which took the name Israel. Rehoboam was left to rule the rump southern kingdom of Judah. The unified Israelite monarchy was never restored.



Khirbet Qeiyafa, a Judahite fortress in the Elah Valley, where the Bible says David slew Goliath. Excavations by Yosef Garfinkel unearthed a multichambered gate and artifacts dating to David’s time in the early 10th Century BC.  Greg Girard/National Geographic.

The breakup of the Israelite kingdom is an object lesson on the excesses of statism (while keeping in mind that 10th-century BC statism was quite different from and far less advanced than its 21st-century AD counterpart). American patriots in 1776 saw in Rehoboam’s abuse of the northern Israelites a paradigm of their own mistreatment at the hands of King George III, while the Israelite rebellion against the Davidic monarchy provided sacred legitimation for the American Revolution. The northern Israelite tribes valued their traditional autonomy and freedom from the burdens of intrusive and overbearing royal government. The richer and more culturally sophisticated northerners also resented having to bend the knee to a dynasty of jumped-up southern hillbillies. David and Solomon may have forcibly unified the tribes and subjected them to the royal establishment in Jerusalem, but they were never able to heal the social and political fissures in the kingdom. Indeed David’s, and especially Solomon’s, policies only widened those fissures by making the northern tribes bear the financial and human burdens of a monarchy that ignored their interests while devoting itself to the power and prosperity of Judah and Jerusalem. Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel concludes from recent excavations that the development of a centralized state was a century more advanced in Judah than among the northern Israelites (a conclusion disputed by other archaeologists). So when pushed to the brink by Rehoboam, the northern Israelites pushed back.

Solomon’s glory through Victorian eyes. The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, by Sir Edward John Poynter, 1890. Wikimedia.

Israel first emerged as a people over three thousand years ago in the land then known as Canaan, later to be called Israel, Judah, and Palestine. It is the central article of the Jewish faith that God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, promising the land to their descendants, the Children of Israel (benei-yisra’el), who would be as numerous as the stars, with the Bible as the record of Israel’s birthright.

The first reference to Israel outside the Bible – the first anywhere in fact, as it pre-dates the oldest written portions of the Bible by at least 200 years – was in a hieroglyphic inscription on the stele of Egypt’s Pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 BC. Israel is depicted in the stele as a socioethnic entity (a “people” rather than a city-state or territory) living in the central hill country of Canaan, the region now called Samaria. Ironically, the pharaoh claimed to have been the agent of Israel’s destruction: “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” Like many later would-be destroyers of Israel, Merneptah, whose father Rameses II was the most likely pharaoh of the Exodus, spoke too soon. (Percy Bysshe Shelly had some choice things to say about Rameses II and the hubris of kings in his poem “Ozymandias.”)

The Merneptah Stele

Civil strife and discord at home often leaves a nation vulnerable to threats from abroad. So it was with the now rival kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Pharaoh Shoshenq I (935-914 BC, the biblical Shishak) the Libyan warlord and usurper who established Egypt’s XXII Dynasty, tried to weaken Solomon’s grip on power by giving refuge to Jeroboam after his failed rebellion.

The Kingdom of Judah, ruled by the descendants of King David, along with the First Temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed by the Babylonians (modern Iraq) in 586 BC, and much of the population sent into exile. Fifty years later a restored Judahite commonwealth was established as a province of the Persian Empire and a Second Temple was built in Jerusalem. From this time forward a diaspora of Jewish communities were established throughout first the Persian, and later the Hellenistic and Roman empires. An independent Judaea under the Hasmonean Dynasty (which is celebrated at Hanukkah) would have a stormy existence for 80 years until falling under Roman rule in 63 BC. In the wake of violent and unsuccessful revolts against Rome in the first and second centuries AD, the Second Temple was destroyed (70 AD), and in 135 AD the Roman Emperor Hadrian changed Judaea’s name to Palestine in honor of Israel’s ancient enemies the Philistines. Palestine remained a province of Rome, which became a Christian empire in the fourth century, until its conquest by the armies of the Caliph Omar in 638 transformed it into an Arab Muslim land.

Meanwhile, the center of Jewish life would shift to the diaspora.