Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators. By Megan McArdle.

Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators. By Megan McArdle. The Atlantic, February 12, 2014.

Of Zionism and Camels. By Tom Wilson.

Of Zionism and Camels. By Tom Wilson. Commentary, February 14, 2014.

The Old Testament’s made-up camels are a problem for Zionism. By Andrew Brown. The Guardian, February 13, 2014.

Domesticated Camels Came to Israel in 930 BC, Centuries Later Than Bible Says. By Mairav Zonszein. National Geographic, February 10, 2014.

Camels Had No Business in Genesis. By John Noble Wilford. New York Times, February 10, 2014.

The Introduction of Domestic Camels to the Southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley. By Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef. Tel Aviv, Vol. 40, No. 2 (November 2013).


Wilson:

The idea that anyone might use research about camels to attempt to invalidate Zionism may seem rather far-fetched. But at the avowedly anti-Israel Guardian newspaper, anything is worth a try. The author of the piece in question, Andrew Brown, has set upon a recent story featured by the New York Times and National Geographic who themselves have seized upon research from two scholars at Tel Aviv University which has suggested that domesticated camels may not have existed in the Levant in the time of Genesis.

 

Brown parades this as proof positive that the camels mentioned in genesis must be a fiction. From there Brown’s impeccable line of reasoning just runs and runs. The camels in Genesis are made up, and if they are made up then the Bible is made up, and if the Bible is made up then everything else in the Bible is made up, which means promises to Abraham and his descendants about the inheritance of the land were made up, which means the foundations of Zionism are made up, and so, whatever one might say about the modern State of Israel, its foundations, which Brown dismisses as emotional, are made up and invalid. You follow?

 

While it may not be wise to engage such people on such matters as to whether the history of domesticated camels does or does not invalidate the Bible, there are a couple of brief points to be made here. For one thing, the research cited in all of this only appears to concern specific copper smelting sites in the Negev’s Aravah Valley. What the study seems to show is the date at which domesticated camels were probably introduced to work at that specific site, which by all accounts is some several centuries after the time at which the Patriarchs and their camels are believed to have been moving through the surrounding region.

 

Now, perhaps the Methodist Sunday school I attended was deficient, but I don’t seem to recall anything about the Patriarchs participating in the copper smelting industry. Indeed, it seems like somewhat of a stretch altogether to say that because there were no camels working at a specific copper producing site prior to a specific date, therefore no one kept domesticated camels in the entire region before that date either.

 

Yet, if that extrapolation is too much, what to make of Andrew Brown’s still more far-fetched contention that the probable absence of camels at an ancient copper smelting site in the Aravah Valley somehow invalidates the modern day movement to secure a Jewish national home? Brown writes with relish about how the story in the Times will no doubt upset “Christian fundamentalists,” a hint about what is most likely really at work here. For, with the Guardian serving as Britain’s preeminent left-wing daily, Brown is sure to stress in his piece that there is far “less evidence for the historical truth of the Old Testament” than there is for the Koran.

 

Europeans in general, and the left there in particular, have become fiercely hostile to Judeo-Christianity and its values. Over recent decades many of them have come to perceive Zionism as an active effort to validate and reaffirm the very same Bible that so many of them have spent so long arguing against and attempting to drive out of their societies. They believe that by establishing a state in the land of Israel, Jews are seeking first and foremost to fulfill a biblical commandment. I recall once attending a tumultuous public lecture by Benny Morris at the London School of Economics. Morris was trying to explain to his audience that Zionism had begun as a secular movement. The audience was having none of it and during the Q&A the arguing went back and forth on this point that they had become so stuck on. They would not be dissuaded from their conviction that Zionism and Israel is a religious and theocratic project, one essentially comparable with jihadism.

 

The way in which this aggressive dislike of biblical religion can so easily translate into a seemingly untamable hatred of Jews more generally, including Jews today, was evidenced by an outburst by the liberal television personality and would-be intellectual Stephen Fry, when during an interview he exclaimed, “The ten commandments are the hysterical believings of a group of desert tribes. Those desert tribes have stored up more misery for mankind than any other group of people in the history of the planet, and they’re doing it to this day.” Whether or not these desert tribes had camels by this point, disappointingly Fry doesn’t say.

 

If camels have the slightest chance of helping to invalidate the twin evils of Zionism and the Bible then the Guardian and its readers are only too pleased hear all about it. Brown asserts stridently, “The history recounted in the Bible is a huge part of the mythology of modern Zionism. The idea of a promised land is based on narratives that assert with complete confidence stories that never actually happened.” Of course, the Jewish religion and collective memory has played no small part in the development of Zionist thought, but as one reader wrote in the comments section of a blog monitoring the Guardian, “Modern Zionism has nothing to do with the camels of Abraham but everything to do with European anti-Semitism so perfectly represented by Andrew Brown and the Guardian.”

The End of American Exceptionalism. By Roger Berkowitz.

The End of American Exceptionalism. By Roger Berkowitz. The American Interest, February 15, 2014.

The End of American Exceptionalism. By Peter Beinart. NJBR, February 3, 2014. With related article.

My Valentine to American Jewish Men. By Suzanne Levy.

My valentine to American Jewish men. By Suzanne Levy. The Times of Israel, February 13, 2014.

Levy:

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Valentine’s Day, I’d like to sing the praises of American Jewish men. I’m aware it’s a rather large group, but that’s the point: The United States is a sea of plenty for Jewish men. Whereas in Britain, where I grew up, there are only about 300,000 Jews. If you remove married men, women and children, you’re left with enough eligible Jewish bachelors to inhabit a synagogue or two.

 

There are, however, millions of men in the U.K. who look like Benedict Cumberbatch or Hugh Grant. Lovely chaps, all of them, but none embodied the stocky, dark, curly-haired Jewish types I longed for when I was growing up in the 1970s. Think Paul Michael Glaser, the guy who played Starsky. Or Tony Curtis. There were some in my Hebrew school class in London, but few had that sass, that chutzpah I was after. They were aiming to be languid and vaguely ironic, like Jeremy Irons.

 

My first encounter with a real-life Jewish American boy came when I was 16. I was on a summer Israel tour, that rite of passage, and one night, on the shores of the Kinneret, I met Lance from Michigan. I’d never met a Lance before. Only Jeremys, Howards and Simons. It was thrilling. He was stocky, with a “Jewish nose” and thick hair. We flirted, I fell in love, he left on an Egged bus.

 

I was left with the confirmation that yes, such beings do exist in real life, and a deep knowledge that one day we would meet again and marry. (That knowledge proved to be illusory, but if anyone knows a Lance from Michigan who went to Israel in 1979, please pass on this story. Maybe our children could marry.)

 

I’m sure my attraction to American Jewish men was a factor 10 years later when, at 26, I decided to move to New York. I’d like to say it was because I had taken a job at the BBC’s New York bureau. But in fact it was just that I knew I’d be living in a world inhabited by Jewish guys. And so I was. I would walk down the street on the Upper West Side (with a particular viewing point outside Zabar’s) and clutch myself in excitement at the Jewish Adonises around me with their deep, soulful eyes on their expressive faces. Could you be my prince? How about you?

 

My dating pool suddenly expanded. Jewish men were everywhere: waiters, dentists, squash instructors. It constantly amazed me. I would meet a guy at a bar or a party and their last name would be Rosenbaum or Cohen. Definitely not Clemington-Smythe. My bubbe would have been proud. I was ecstatic.

 

It’s not like I hadn’t dated — or even been in love with — non-Jewish men in England. But I just found there was a level of comfort and warmth — heimischeness, if you will — with my Jewish tribesmen. And the American Jews also had an exotic assertiveness that thrilled me. They have a confidence in their manliness, in their heritage. They’re descended from the Jews who made it through harsh winters and pogroms in the shtetls. They’re risk takers and life embracers.

 

While it’s true that British Jewish men are descended from the same stock, more than a century of keeping your head down, fitting in and hoping no one will notice you’re avoiding the ham sandwiches at work doesn’t exactly make you want to stand out in a crowd. British society is wonderfully tolerant of multiculturalism — as long as you don’t make a fuss.

 

Jewish American men don’t try to assimilate. They don’t seem to rein in their mannerisms. They’re out and proud (at least in New York or Los Angeles). And they have broad shoulders and are, as my mother would say, “shtarkers” — they’re strong.

 

Of course, there’s the stereotype that Jewish men are nebbishy Woody Allen types — and some are! But what these men may lack in brawn, they make up for with their scintillating smarts. The few Jewish intellectuals in the U.K. stand out because of their rarity (Alain de Botton, Harold Pinter), while here you can find bespectacled Jewish men passionately expressing their views or fluently spinning bewitching tales everywhere in the media. Talk wonkery to me, Ezra Klein! Give me a driveway moment, Ira Glass! Paul Krugman, fill me with your finance talk! (Paul doesn’t wear glasses, but you get my point.)

 

One day seven years ago, after many years of happily wading through New York’s large Jewish dating pool, I was out for drinks with coworkers when one of the company’s vice presidents admitted to the crowd that he’d once considered becoming a rabbi.

 

I almost fell off my chair. This would have never happened in London. His name was Steve Holtzman. It was love at last name. The next day I rushed to talk to him. We compared notes on teenage years involved with Orthodox youth groups, and we’ve been together ever since.

 

Today, Steve shrugs off his Jewishness, but for me it continues to be part of the appeal. His maternal grandfather escaped the czar’s army by walking across Europe when he was 12. His father’s family comes from Pinsk. (I just like saying the word Pinsk). He’s smart, funny and cute. He has a big embrace. And a big heart.

 

So on this day of pagan/Christian celebration of love, I’d like to take this moment to make a toast to him — and to all American Jewish men. May you all continue to thrill this nice Jewish girl from London. And all Jewish girls, from wherever they are, throughout the decades to come.


What Levy loves about Jewish American men is their Jacksonianism. Whether as intellectuals or entrepreneurs, they are bold, proud, passionate, and assertive, both as Jews and as Americans.

A Little Valentine’s Day Straight Talk. By Susan Patton.

A Little Valentine’s Day Straight Talk. By Susan Patton. Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2014.

Advice for the Young Women of Princeton: Find a Husband. By Susan A. Patton. NJBR, April 1, 2013. With related articles, video, and audio.

Susan Patton, “Princeton Mom,” Is Back: An Academic Takedown of Her Many Misguided Arguments. By Nina Bahadur. The Huffington Post, February 14, 2014.

Dear Susan Patton, Single Women Don’t Need Your “Straight Talk.” By Emma Gray. The Huffington Post, February 14, 2014.

The End of “Marriageability?” By Robert VerBruggen. Real Clear Policy, February 14, 2014.

The 11 best quotes from Susan Patton’s new book. By Urvija Banerji and Anna Mazarakis. The Prox, March 3, 2014.

The 10 Worst Pieces of Advice From Susan Patton’s “Marry Smart.” By Claire Fallon. The Huffington Post, March 6, 2014.

14 Questions for Princeton Mom Susan Patton. By Emily Levy. Vocativ, March 7, 2014.

Susan Patton interview. By Rabbi Joseph Potasnik (her cousin) and Deacon Kevin McCormack. Audio. Religion on the Line. 77 WABC Radio, March 9, 2014. Interview starts at 77:40 in the podcast.

Elites Close Ranks Around Ivy League Intermarriage. By Walter Russell Mead. NJBR, April 7, 2013. With related articles.

Katty Kay: Marriage Is “Old Fashioned” If You Want to Have Kids. NJBR, April 18, 2013. With video.

Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too. By Kate Taylor. NJBR, July 17, 2013. With related articles.


Patton:

Another Valentine's Day. Another night spent ordering in sushi for one and mooning over “Downton Abbey” reruns. Smarten up, ladies.

 

Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry. But chances are that you haven’t been investing nearly as much energy in planning for your personal happiness as you are planning for your next promotion at work. What are you waiting for? You’re not getting any younger, but the competition for the men you’d be interested in marrying most definitely is.

 

Think about it: If you spend the first 10 years out of college focused entirely on building your career, when you finally get around to looking for a husband you’ll be in your 30s, competing with women in their 20s. That's not a competition in which you’re likely to fare well. If you want to have children, your biological clock will be ticking loud enough to ward off any potential suitors. Don't let it get to that point.

 

You should be spending far more time planning for your husband than for your career—and you should start doing so much sooner than you think. This is especially the case if you are a woman with exceptionally good academic credentials, aiming for corporate stardom.

 

An extraordinary education is the greatest gift you can give yourself. But if you are a young woman who has had that blessing, the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult. Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women.

 

Could you marry a man who isn’t your intellectual or professional equal? Sure. But the likelihood is that it will be frustrating to be with someone who just can’t keep up with you or your friends. When the conversation turns to Jean Cocteau or Henrik Ibsen, the Bayeux Tapestry or Noam Chomsky, you won’t find that glazed look that comes over his face at all appealing. And if you start to earn more than he does? Forget about it. Very few men have egos that can endure what they will see as a form of emasculation.

 

So what’s a smart girl to do? Start looking early and stop wasting time dating men who aren’t good for you: bad boys, crazy guys and married men.

 

College is the best place to look for your mate. It is an environment teeming with like-minded, age-appropriate single men with whom you already share many things. You will never again have this concentration of exceptional men to choose from.

 

When you find a good man, take it slow. Casual sex is irresistible to men, but the smart move is not to give it away. If you offer intimacy without commitment, the incentive to commit is eliminated. The grandmotherly message of yesterday is still true today: Men won’t buy the cow if the milk is free.

 

Can you meet brilliant, marriageable men after college? Yes, but just not that many of them. Once you’re living off campus and in the real world, you’ll be stunned by how smart the men are not. You’ll no doubt meet some eligible guys in your workplace, but it’s hazardous to get romantically involved with co-workers.

 

You may not be ready for marriage in your early 20s (or maybe you are), but keep in touch with the men that you meet in college, especially the super smart ones. They’ll probably do very well for themselves, and their desirability will only increase after graduation.

 

Not all women want marriage or motherhood, but if you do, you have to start listening to your gut and avoid falling for the P.C. feminist line that has misled so many young women for years. There is nothing incongruous about educated, ambitious women wanting to be wives and mothers. Don’t let anyone tell you that these traditional roles are retrograde; they are perfectly natural and even wonderful. And if you fail to identify “the one” while you’re in college, don’t worry—there’s always graduate school.


Gray:

It’s Valentine's Day. I’m single, I’m a college graduate, I’m 26 and I’ve spent the last four years tirelessly working to advance my career as an editor. According to “Princeton Mom,” Susan Patton, tonight I’ll probably be crying into my Seamless-ordered sushi and tomorrow I need to buck up and find a damn husband.

 

On behalf of the vast majority of single women that I know – who are, as Patton so quaintly put it, “not getting any younger” – I’d like to tell her: “Thanks, but no thanks.” Your so-called “straight talk” isn’t doing those in your target demographic any favors.

 

Of course, this is not the first time the 1977 Princeton grad has argued that “career women” are wasting their youth on caring about their jobs, that the only good men out there can exclusively be found in your undergraduate university classes, and that being deeply passionate about (and loving) your work is mutually exclusive with being deeply passionate about finding love and a life partner. She's already made this argument twice, but I suppose that a holiday dedicated to Hallmark cards, ostentatious shows of affection and overpriced prix-fixe dinners is as good a time as any for her to push out her drivel of a message once again – and shill for her upcoming book.

 

To the Susan Pattons of the world, I want to make the following very clear about single women in their 20s and 30s:

 

1. Most of us are looking for love.

 

As many single women can attest, there is a vast gulf between being open to love and going on dates, and actually finding a person who you mesh with, who you care about and who cares about you. The women I know put aside time out of their busy weeks to date and to push themselves into new situations where they might meet potential love interests. We sign up for Tinder and Hinge and OKCupid and JDate, half out of boredom, but, ultimately, with an air of hopefulness. With each swipe or like or match we wonder whether this will be the one that works – and often, it’s not. (The same can be said for all of the wonderful and not-so-wonderful potential partners we met during our college years. I don’t believe that the men I met when I was 20 are any more “marriage material” than the men I meet now.)

 

We enter relationships and end said relationships when they are not right, we endure heartbreaks and bad dates, and also have great sex and great stories. Some of us find someone we think we'd like to be with for a very long time during these years – and some of us don’t. Both are fine outcomes, and most people do not end up in one camp or the other because they did or did not try hard enough to “plan for a husband.”

 

2. We also are dedicating considerable time and energy to our careers – but it’s not a waste of time.

 

Not only do most of the single women I know love their jobs, find fulfillment in said jobs and cannot imagine leading lives that did not include a career, but also, for most of us, work is and will always be a necessity for survival. Even recognizing women who would prefer not to work after marriage, most of us will not marry a partner who can afford to take on the full financial burden of his family. As of May 2013, 4 in 10 American households with young children had female breadwinners. And single, childless women in urban centers are on their way to out-earning their male counterparts. But none of this means that these women will be forced to opt out of marriage because they’ve spent time advancing their careers and are making decent salaries. In fact, highly-educated, successful women are just as likely to get married (if not more so) than other women, they just tend to do it a few years later.

 

3. Having – and enjoying -- sex does not prevent us from finding true connection.

“Men won’t buy the cow if the milk is free,” Patton writes, sounding more out of touch than I thought was humanly possible. I know women who have slept with men right away thinking it would be completely casual, and ended up marrying those men years down the road. I know women who did everything “right” and by “the rules” with a potential partner and ended up dumped. I have heard (and experienced) nearly every iteration in between. Sex is complicated and means something different to every person. It absolutely can make or break a relationship, but not because you messed up and “gave it away”too early. And honestly, any man who would lose interest in me right after we slept together, is probably not a man I’d want to commit myself to legally for the rest of my life, anyway. Plus, 95 percent of American couples who make the trip down the aisle have slept together far before their wedding night.

 

4. We don’t devalue marriage or motherhood. And a lot of us still want those things.

 

Let’s be clear: being a feminist does not, as Patton implies, mean believing that there is something “incongruous about educated, ambitious women wanting to be wives and mothers.” Most of the single – and married – women I am close with identify as feminists and consider themselves to be thoroughly modern and empowered. None of them think that being a wife or a mother is a bad thing, some don’t want to be either wives or mothers, and many are single and still want both. Not spending every waking moment wishing for an MRS. degree or looking at every new man who enters our lives as a potential sperm donor, doesn’t preclude a desire to find a life partner or have a baby.

 

But the most important thing you need to understand, Susan Patton, is that we single women choose not to define our ultimate worth by our relationship status. Yes, we are single. Yes, we are spending Valentine’s Day without a romantic partner (probably not crying into our takeout sushi). We may or may not feel satisfied with those things. But we are also so, so much more.

Roving Sea Peoples May Have Settled in Transjordan. By Ilan Ben Zion.

Left: captive Philistine warriors from a wall relief at Medinet Habu, Egypt, 1185-1152 BC. Right: an artist’s conception of a Philistine warrior. Image credit: John Shumate.

Roving Sea Peoples may have settled in Transjordan, archaeologist says. By Ilan Ben Zion. The Times of Israel, February 13, 2014.

Cultural connections with Europe found in ancient Jordanian settlement. By Thomas Mellin. University of Gothenburg, January 16, 2014.

Tell Abu al-Kharaz: New Finds from “Sea People” Settlement. Sci-News.com, January 28, 2014.

Medinet Habu: Oxcarts, Ships, and Migration Theories. By Robert Drews. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 59, No. 3 (July 2000).


Ben Zion:

New evidence unearthed at an ancient site in the Jordan Valley suggests that the Sea Peoples — a group which includes the ancient Israelites’ nemeses, the Philistines — settled as far inland as the Transjordan, a Swedish archaeologist argues. Not everyone in the archaeological community, however, is convinced by the finds.

 

The find, made by a team digging at Tell Abu al-Kharaz, also strengthens the ties connecting the Sea Peoples and the Aegean — reinforcing the theory that the Philistines were among a number of tribes of non-Semitic peoples who migrated across the Mediterranean and settled in Canaan in the early Iron Age alongside the emergent Israelites.

 

Evidence of Sea Peoples inhabiting areas east of the Jordan River would lend credence to a seeming anomaly in the Bible — the location of Philistines far from their historic homeland along the shores of southern Israel in I Samuel 31. According to the book of Samuel, the Philistines raided northern Israel and settled in the abandoned Israelite cities “that were on the other side of the valley, and they that were beyond the Jordan.”

 

Sea Peoples is the name given by the ancient Egyptians to the populations of a massive maritime migration to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean in the late 13th and early 12th centuries BCE. During the reign of Ramesses III, hordes of seaborne people bore down on the kingdom, were thwarted by the Egyptian armies and settled along the Levantine coast.

 

Among the names of the groups mentioned in the reliefs of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu are the “Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh.” Scholars link the name Peleset with the Bible’s Philistines, who established the cities of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron in the coastal plain of modern Israel and Palestine. Other Sea Peoples settled as far north as Ugarit and Alalakh in modern Syria.

 

Dr. Peter Fischer of Gothenberg University said his team has discovered pottery and cylindrical loom weights from around 1100 BCE whose design matches that of contemporary material culture from Philistia, Cyprus and southern Europe. His team also unearthed a massive multi-story building 60 meters long, suggestive of strong centralized authority and planning. The cooking pots and everyday items found at Tell Abu al-Kharaz were not imported, Fischer explained in an email, but may be indicative of a migration of Sea Peoples as far inland as the Transjordan.

 

Tell Abu al-Kharaz, located just opposite Beit Shean on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, is associated by some archaeologists with the biblical city of Jabesh Gilead, the place where the Bible says King Saul fell on his sword in a battle against the Philistines. The site is over 100 miles inland from the Philistine heartland along the Mediterranean coast.

 

He pointed to one item in particular, a large ceramic jug painted white and decorated with red lines. Such a style, known as bichrome ware, is commonly found at Philistine archaeological sites, and numerous examples of it are on display at the Israel Museum. Fischer argues that the presence of the jug indicates the presence of Sea Peoples — not necessarily Philistines — at Tell Abu al-Kharaz.

 

The clay pots and loomweights “appear very suddenly around 1100 BCE (or a little before that date) at Kharaz and existed there for some generations until they were replaced by the wide-spread local type again,” Fischer wrote. “Cooking pot types represent a certain tradition of preparing meals which may have arrived at the site with newcomers.”

 

Another pot, “a type which is known from the Aegean and Philistine sphere of culture,” also leads Fischer to believe that during the early Iron Age there was an “arrival of a new ethnic group which was strongly connected to the Sea Peoples” at Tell Abu al-Kharaz.

 

“I am not saying that they founded a colony there but they became integrated with the local population,” Fischer explained.

A late Bronze Age cooking pot from Tell Abu al-Kharaz. (photo courtesy

 of Dr. Peter M. Fischer).

 

Not all scholars are convinced of Fischer’s hypothesis, however.

 

“If I didn’t know better I’d say it’s a forgery, because it combines kind of a Canaanite jug form with a rim that’s not Philistine” and decorative motifs that are “reminiscent of Philistine material,” Dr. Seymour Gitin said after viewing a photo of the Philistine-style jug Fischer published online. Gitin, director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, headed the excavation of Tel Miqne, the ancient Philistine city of Ekron.

 

The cooking jug has Cypriot cognates, he said, but “it’s not something that we find in any of the Philistine cities, like Ashkelon, Ashdod or Ekron.”

 

“If you only have a few pieces, you can’t talk about a Sea Peoples population,” he said.

 

Dr. Amihai Mazar of Hebrew University said that it was possible that there were small groups of Sea Peoples — not necessarily Philistines — who inhabited northern Israel. He said that during his excavations at Tel Rehov, only a few kilometers west of Tell Abu al-Kharaz, he also found ceramics and loom weights indicative of Sea People migration to the Jordan Valley.

 

Dr. Eran Arie, curator of Iron Age and Persian Period Archaeology at the Israel Museum, concurred, saying that one or two pieces of pottery do not a Sea People settlement make. Arie, who took part in the extensive excavations of Megiddo, said pottery similar to that found by Fischer at Tell Abu al-Kharaz was found in Iron Age levels at Megiddo as well.

 

“I see nothing Philistine here, aside from that one loom weight,” he said in a phone interview. “Philistine cooking jugs may have influenced the [style of] this jug [from Tell Abu al-Kharaz],” but Philistine pots have flat, not rounded, bottoms, and the soot marks from cooking are found along the side, not the base.

 

“You can’t find one or two vessels and say it’s really Philistine,” he added.

Reconstruction of the 3,100-year-old building unearthed at Tell Abu al-Kharaz. Image credit: University of Gothenburg.

Tracing Ancestry, Researchers Produce a Genetic Atlas of Human Mixing Events. By Nicholas Wade.

Tracing Ancestry, Researchers Produce a Genetic Atlas of Human Mixing Events. By Nicholas Wade. New York Times, February 13, 2014.

A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History. By Garrett Hellenthal et al. Science, Vol. 343, February 14, 2014.

Abstract:

Modern genetic data combined with appropriate statistical methods have the potential to contribute substantially to our understanding of human history. We have developed an approach that exploits the genomic structure of admixed populations to date and characterize historical mixture events at fine scales. We used this to produce an atlas of worldwide human admixture history, constructed by using genetic data alone and encompassing over 100 events occurring over the past 4000 years. We identified events whose dates and participants suggest they describe genetic impacts of the Mongol empire, Arab slave trade, Bantu expansion, first millennium CE migrations in Eastern Europe, and European colonialism, as well as unrecorded events, revealing admixture to be an almost universal force shaping human populations.

The Origin of “Liberalism.” By Daniel B. Klein.

The Origin of “Liberalism.” By Daniel B. Klein. The Atlantic, February 13, 2014.

Dan Klein: The emergence of “liberal” as a political term. Lecture in Stockholm, January 8, 2014. Video. Ratioforskning, January 16, 2014. YouTube.

Is Hillary Clinton Too Old to Run? By Charlie Cook.

Is Hillary Clinton Too Old to Run? By Charlie Cook. National Journal, February 14, 2014.

Four Reasons Why Israel Must Be Recognized As a Jewish State. By Ari Shavit.

Four reasons why Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state. By Ari Shavit. Haaretz, February 13, 2014.

Shavit:

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan thinks the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is nonsense. But it is not nonsense – it is the most natural and justified demand imaginable. For four different reasons we must support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who are placing the demand at the top of the diplomatic agenda.

 

The first reason: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not start in 1967 and does not revolve around the occupation and the settlements. It is a deep national-religious-cultural-social conflict, whose foundation is blindness. For decades Zionism refused to see the Palestinian people and in doing so refused to recognize its right to establish a Palestinian state. To this day the Palestinian national movement refuses to see the Jewish people and recognize in this way its right to a Jewish state. This double and continuing blindness is what ignited the 100-year war between us and them. That is why, in order to end this war, we must recognize their nationalism and their state, and they must recognize our nationalism and our state. Just as peace is impossible without a Palestinian state, peace is impossible without a Jewish state.

 

The second reason: The great achievement of the Oslo Accords was in their bringing the Israelis to recognize the fact that there is a Palestinian people in the land of Israel with legitimate rights. The great achievement of the Camp David peace summit was in Israel recognizing the need to establish a Palestinian state. The cumulative result of Oslo and Camp David was a revolution in Israel. The people living in Zion finally saw that there is another people in this land and admitted that it is entitled to a different state, which will express its right to self-determination. Thus, there is no reason that the people residing in Palestine cannot open its eyes finally and see that there is another people in the land, and that it is entitled to a different country that will express its right to self-determination. Reciprocity is not a sin. Symmetry is not a war crime. Those who believe the Israelis and Palestinians are equal have a moral obligation to demand from the Palestinians exactly what they demand from the Israelis.

 

The third reason: The Palestinians will not give up on the demand for the right of return. The trauma of the Nakba is their foundational trauma, and the experience of the refugees is the experience that molded them, and there is no Palestinian leader who will declare that the Palestinians will never return to the cities and villages they lost in 1948. If there is any solution at all to the refugee problem, it will be a superficial and insignificant one. But because it is actually impossible to demand from the Palestinians that they change their spots and convert their identity, it is required to demand they recognize this: that the Jewish people is a people of this land, and it did not arrive here from Mars. It is necessary to demand of them to admit that the Jewish people has a history of its own and a tragedy of its own and its own justification. The Palestinians must concede that the Jews are not colonialists but legal neighbors. There will not be peace if the children growing up in the Deheisheh refugee camp will not know that the country across the border is a legitimate Jewish state of a true Jewish people, whom they are decreed to live with. It is those who give up on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state who are actually giving up on peace.

 

The fourth reason: An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is to a great extent a one-sided agreement in which Israel gives and the Palestinians receive. Only the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would turn the longed-for agreement into a two-sided one. While Israel will transfer concrete assets to its neighbor, territory and rights, the Palestinians will give the only gift they are capable of giving: legitimacy.

 

Meir Dagan is an Israeli due a great amount of respect. His biography is a heroic one of “by the rights of power.” But peace is not made by the right of power but by the power of right. Without the Palestinians’ explicit recognition of our name, identity and rights, there will not be peace.

Judah Magnes to Chaim Weizmann on His Rejection of Political Zionism.

Judah Magnes to Chaim Weizmann, September 7, 1929. Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes. Edited by Arthur Goren. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 276-278. Also here.

Toward Peace in Palestine. By Judah L. Magnes. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 2 (January 1943).

J. L. Magnes and the Promotion of Bi-Nationalism in Palestine. By Rory Miller. The Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, Nos. 1-2 (2006). Also here.

The Binationalist. By Daniel P. Kotzin. Journal of Transnational American Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2012). Also here.

Judah L. Magnes: A Pacifist Leader Who Was More Prophet Than Politician. By Laurence Zuckerman. The Jewish Daily Forward, January 5, 2011.

Binationalism and the sad story of Judah Magnes. By Jim Denham. Shiraz Socialist, May 7, 2012. Includes Benny Morris’s discussion of Magnes from One State, Two States, pp. 50-56.


Magnes:

To Chaim Weizmann

 

London

 

Zurich, September 7, 1929

 

Dear Dr. Weizmann,

 

You asked me over the telephone last night to write you my views on the present situation. I wanted to have a long talk with you, and for that reason had been trying to get in touch with you for several days. Writing is a poor substitute for an oral exchange of opinions, and I shall try to be brief.

 

I think that the time has come when the Jewish policy as to Palestine must be very clear, and that now only one of two policies is possible. Either the logical policy outlined by Jabotinsky in a letter in the Times which came today, basing our Jewish life in Palestine on militarism and imperialism; or a pacific policy that treats as entirely secondary such things as a “Jewish State” or a Jewish majority, or even “The Jewish National Home,” and as primary the development of a Jewish spiritual, educational, moral and religious center in Palestine. The first policy has to deal primarily with politics, governments, declarations, propaganda and bayonets, and only secondarily with the Jews, and last of all with the Arabs; whereas the pacific policy has to deal first of all with the Jews, and then with the Arabs, and only incidentally with governments and all the rest.

 

The imperialist, military and political policy is based upon mass immigration of Jews and the creation (forcible if necessary) of a Jewish majority, no matter how much this oppresses the Arabs meanwhile, or deprives them of their rights. In this kind of policy the end always justifies the means. The policy, on the other hand, of developing a Jewish spiritual Center does not depend upon mass immigration, a Jewish majority, a Jewish State, or upon depriving the Arabs (or the Jews) of their political rights for a generation or a day; but on the contrary, is desirous of having Palestine become a country of two nations and three religions, all of them having equal rights and none of them having special privileges; a country where nationalism is but the basis of internationalism, where the population is pacifistic and disarmed—in short, the Holy Land.

 

The one policy may be termed that of militarist, imperialist, political Zionism; the other that of pacific, international, spiritual Zionism; and if some authorities will not choose to call the latter idea Zionism, then let it be called the Love of Zion, or the Return to Zion, or any other name that you will.

 

We have been toying with the words “Jewish State,” “majority,” “Jewish Palestine,” “politics,” “Balfour Declaration,” etc., long enough. It is time that we came down to realities. We have passed resolutions concerning cooperation with the Arabs, but we have done very little seriously to carry them out.

 

I do not say that this is easy of achievement nor do I absolutely know that it is possible. The Palestine Arabs are unhappily still half savage, and their leaders are almost all small men. But this policy of cooperation is certainly more possible and more hopeful of achievement than building up a Jewish Home (National or otherwise) on bayonets and oppression. Moreover, a Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression is not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, is worth a great deal, even though the attempt should fail.

 

The question is, do we want to conquer Palestine now as Joshua did in his day—with fire and sword? Or do we want to take cognizance of Jewish religious development since Joshua—our Prophets, Psalmists and Rabbis, and repeat the words: “Not by might, and not by violence, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.” The question is, can any country be entered, colonized, and built up pacifistically, and can we Jews do that in the Holy Land? If we can not (and I do not say that we can rise to these heights), I for my part have lost half my interest in the enterprise. If we can not even attempt this, I should much rather see this eternal people without such a “National Home,” with the wanderer’s staff in hand and forming new ghettos among the peoples of the world.

 

As you know, these are not new views on my part. I was read out of the Zionist Organization of America in 1915 because among other things, I contended that the Jews should ask for no special privileges in Palestine, but should be content with equal rights. When the Balfour Declaration was issued and the Mandate signed, I did not rejoice. I wrote two modest newspaper articles and delivered a speech (which is printed) in the sense of the views as given above. When you and Felix Warburg and I were discussing matters in Palestine, you with your usual keenness referred to me as believing Zionist policy was altogether too political. I have, as you also know, done what little I could to help bring about a united front for Palestine ever since the beginning, and I must confess that I had hoped that the non-Zionist members of the Agency might give the whole movement a non-political, non-imperialist turn. But your great persuasiveness has carried them with you on the political issues also, and it was mainly on this account that I could not accept the invitation to participate in the Agency. It is also for this reason that I have resolutely tried to keep the University entirely distinct from the political organization.

 

All these years I have kept silent, not wishing to obtrude what appeared to me my minority views, and I had thought that by devoting myself wholly and without deflection to the University, I could make a contribution to my kind of Zionism. But I cannot keep silent for Zion’s sake in these tragic days, and I want to do what little I can to give voice to the views to which I have been trying hitherto to give expression through work alone.

 

You said you would want to convey my views to the meeting of the Actions Committee, and you are at liberty to read them this letter if you think it worthwhile.

 

I am sending a copy of this letter to Felix Warburg.

 

I sympathize with you in the fearful burden you now have to bear, and I can only pray that you may be led to walk in the right path.

 

Yours truly, JLM

Philip Seymour Hoffman: A Talented Leading Man Exits. By Ben Shapiro.

A Talented Leading Man Exits. By Ben Shapiro. National Review Online, February 2, 2014.

Ben Shapiro Actually Blames Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death on “Broken Leftist Culture.” By Matt Wilstein. Mediaite, February 3, 2014.

SodaStream and Scarlett Johansson: Three Comments. By Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch.

SodaStream and Scarlett Johansson: Three Comments. By Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch. The Huffington Post, February 10, 2014.

Hirsch:

Three comments on SodaStream and Scarlett Johansson:

 

One:

Scarlett Johansson has given a clinic on how to stand up to bullies.

 

The world is filled with people who preach love but are full of hate. They project humility but are full of arrogance. They are consumed with passionate intensity – but for the wrong things. They prostitute words and pervert values. They say they are for peace, but their actions promote war.

 

Roger Waters, the legendary Pink Floyd rocker, criticized Johansson for giving him the wrong impression that she believed in truth, human rights and the law of love. They are Comfortably Numb to truth, human rights and the law of love. Under the guise of tolerance and humaneness many of them are really the most intolerant of people. Under the guise of liberalism many of them are really the most illiberal preachers of a fundamentalist philosophy.

 

And Scarlett Johansson showed the proper response to these folks. When Oxfam wagged its big moral finger at their global good-will ambassador, warning Johansson that Oxfam opposes trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and that she should reconsider her relationship with SodaStream if she knows what’s good for her, it was Johansson who reconsidered her relationship with Oxfam. In a rather stunning turn of events, it was she who terminated the relationship, citing “a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

 

In effect, this Scarlett said to Oxfam: “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.” What a relief; what an inspiration.

 

Two:

Boycotts of Israel are absurd.

 

BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) activist, Omar Barghouti, makes no attempt to hide the true objective. As he asserts: “The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which they were displaced and dispossessed in 1948.”

 

Leave aside that the Palestinians are the only group in the world whose refugee status is transmitted automatically to subsequent generations – that the grandchild of a Palestinian refugee who might be a native-born accomplished and wealthy citizen in any country in the world – can, nonetheless, be considered a refugee by the United Nations: under that definition millions of Americans whose grandparents escaped Europe could still be considered refugees;

 

Leave aside that the reason many Palestinians became refugees in the first place was that the Palestinian Arabs joined surrounding Arab states in a war of extermination against the infant State of Israel in 1948, a war that they lost; leave aside that Israel came into possession of the West Bank in the first place because of a war of extermination that three Arab states launched against Israel in 1967 and lost;

 

Leave aside that the PLO launched a vicious war against Israeli civilians in the heart of Israel that killed a thousand and maimed ten thousand – and lost – and as a result of that – the security barrier and other security measures were implemented; leave aside that they launched this war after rejecting President Clinton's Camp David proposals, accepted by Israel – and that they rejected two additional peace proposals primarily because they refuse to sign an end-of-conflict provision that would settle all outstanding claims against Israel once and for all; leave aside that every day Palestinians try to inflict terror on Israel and that the reason they don't succeed is Israeli security measures;

 

Leave aside that Omar Barghouti, himself, is a graduate of Tel Aviv University and the university resisted a world wide petition to expel him, upholding the values of free thought and speech, awarding him a Masters degree in philosophy;

 

Leave all that aside: the return of millions of Palestinians to Israel is code for ending the State of Israel. It is anti-Israel venom wrapped in the honey of human rights rhetoric.

 

Those who support boycotting Israel are often blinded by hatred. They single out Israel as the world's worst oppressor. They do it to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world. As a small country surrounded by enemies and dependent on international trade, Israel is vulnerable to this pressure and Israel haters know this.

 

A hundred miles from the SodaStream factory there are millions of Syrian Arab Muslim refugees; over a hundred thousand have already been killed. If you are a humanitarian worker where would you advise Palestinians that they are better off – Aleppo, Homs, Damascus, Cairo, Beirut, Riyadh, Tehran – or Ramallah?

 

None of this implies that Israel cannot do more to bring about a two-state solution; it does not excuse Israeli wrongdoings. But frankly, the Palestinians, too, have done many wrongs.

 

And where is the context? Where is the proportionality? The Middle East is burning with the fires of anti-Western, anti-democratic anti-humanitarian savagery, torture and anarchy and SodaStream is the cause of all evil in the world and the primary preoccupation of those who supposedly advocate for truth, human rights and the law of love?

 

How wonderful it is to sit in London and to boycott Israel, the only reliable Western ally left in the Middle East. Oh what feelings of self-satisfaction and high principle. There is no need to think about Palestinian excesses and Palestinian incitement.

 

Things might look a bit different from Sdereot, but never mind. There are no good Israelis and there are no legitimate Israeli concerns, so what do I care if Israeli children cannot go to school because they are fired upon indiscriminately by Palestinian terrorists? It is their own fault. Israel was born in original sin and therefore, by definition, is the problem of every problem.

 

Three:

Partial boycotts are boycotts.

 

Oxfam’s official position is that it is not in favor of boycotting Israel (despite troubling reports that it is funding BDS organizations), only Israeli products that have even the smallest connection to the West Bank. Scarlett Johansson pointed out the hypocrisy of this position. She did not distinguish between partial boycotts and BDS. She called it for what it is: A partial boycott is a boycott.

 

To advocate for a policy of partial boycott is to speak the language of boycott. It is to place yourself with those who call for boycotting all of Israel. It is to give aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies. It is to legitimate the delegitimizers. It also takes the Palestinians off the hook, as if they are merely potted plants and not independent actors who could end this struggle quickly if they really wanted to.

 

Partial boycotts are also unworkable in practice. It is impossible to limit such a boycott to products beyond the Green Line. More importantly, it often undermines those who are in favor of compromise and coexistence – the very thing that the partial boycotters say they want.

 

SodaStream is a perfect example. Its main manufacturing plant is in Maaleh Adumim, which under any conceivable arrangement will remain within the permanent borders of Israel. SodaStream employs there approximately a thousand people. Five hundred of them are Palestinians who receive equal benefits and equal pay. There is a mosque on the premise.

 

The Palestinian workers, themselves, do not want SodaStream boycotted. What is Oxfam’s solution: To close down the factory and send five hundred well-paid Palestinians into unemployment and poverty? If SodaStream were to pick up and relocate would this would further the interests of the Palestinian workers, and better promote coexistence and peace?

 

What should we who believe in truth, human rights and love be doing? We should continue to support and advocate for a two state solution. We should continue to promote coexistence. We should continue to support those in Israeli society who believe in territorial compromise and continue to urge them to make the necessary compromises for peace. We should continue to support those in the Palestinian community who believe in territorial compromise and continue to urge them to make the necessary compromises for peace.

 

If you own an I-Phone made in China; if you wear high fashion made in Asian sweat shops; if your home is heated with oil from Russia or the Persian Gulf, you may want to reconsider these purchases first. They affect millions more people than SodaStream.

 

And you may also want to reconsider the next contribution to Oxfam.