2/1/24

 Thursday, February 1, 2024

In bed at 10, awake at 2:30 unable to sleep, moved to LZB, up at 3:00 and let Lilly out.  37°, high of 43°, sunny morning changing to partly cloudy/cloudy day ahead with wind WSW at 10, 6-16/24.  Sunrise at 7:07 at 113°, sunset at 5:03 at 247°, 9+55.  Solar noon at 12:05, alt. 30°   

I'm grateful on mornings like this, when I am dealing with the aftereffects of insomnia, that I am retired with no fixed commitments today.  On the other hand, I am also grateful that Steve is driving up from Chicago today to visit and I treasure his visits.  He's an immensely good-hearted, brilliant guy and I'm always pleased by his visits.  (And not just because he always helps us out with something that needs doing around the house that we can't do but he can, bless him.)     

Alan Jacobs:  "[W]hen Israel is involved in any conversation, the simplistic heuristics kick in with a vengeance, leading to a classic availability cascade. The logic works like this: 

X is wrong and bad; 

Israel is X; 

Therefore, Israel is wrong and bad. 

Making the relevant adjustments for inflection, all you have to do is replace X with “colonialism” or “settler colonialism” or “apartheid” or “racism” or “ethno-nationalism” and hey presto: done and dusted. 

But there are some problems here. If Israel is an example of settler colonialism then it’s not like any other example of settler colonialism in the history of the world. I mean: What nation is Israel a colony of? And in what other place do the “settlers” have a 3000-year history of waxing and waning residence?¹

If Israel is “an apartheid state,” then how is it that there are Israeli Arabs in the Knesset, and in the judiciary, and indeed in every other sphere of Israeli society?²

How does racism come in if (a) Jews and Palestinian Arabs are closely genetically related and (b) the majority of Israeli Jews are not European Ashkenazi but rather Sephardim from places like Yemen and Ethiopia? What “race” is being preferred to another?³

And If Israel is an example of ethno-nationalism then it’s not like any other example of ethno-nationalism in the history of the world. Whatever Israel is doing, and however wrong it might be, it’s not remotely like the Nazi quest for an Aryan empire from which lesser races are excluded, or the systematic persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar or the Uighurs in China.⁴  Again, around a quarter of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, though if that percentage were to rise above 50% then it would soon thereafter go to 100%, since all the Jews would be expelled from Israel, as they have been expelled from so many other places over the centuries. Israel was created as a desperate, last-ditch attempt at survival by a people who had been for two thousand years subjected to either (a) the legitimate fear of imminent persecution or (b) actual persecution, pogroms and exclusions and assaults amounting at times to attempted genocide — the latter within the living memory of many. Around 150,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel today. Some of them were just murdered by Hamas. That’s not a history any other ethno-nationalism shares. ⁵

I’m not trying to suggest any solutions, or to advocate for any existing proposal. I’m not even arguing that Israel should exist, though in fact I think it should. I’m doing what I usually do, which is to ask people to back up a few steps. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that our familiar heuristics, with their familiar dichotomies, are utterly inadequate to this situation. The facts on the ground are too distinctive and too complex. The rhetorical and political earthquakes that we’re currently experiencing won’t ease until we abandon our reliance on bad simplifications. Fat chance of that, for two reasons, both of which I have already pointed to. One: Almost everyone is so committed to the comforting simplifications of their heuristics that they prefer ignorance to knowledge that complicates. And two: millions of people are possessed — and I use that word advisedly — by a profound and wholly irrational hatred of Jews.⁶   

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Some thoughts of mine:

¹ Isn't this rather simplistic?  Do all colonies have a "home country"?  What of a colony of ants, or an artists' colony?  Isn't it rather the coming together in one place of persons in some sort of community sharing a common interest or purpose that makes a 'colony'?  In terms of Israel, wasn't it Zionism, i.e., the settlement in historic Israel by Jews from anywhere but mainly Europe that was the common purpose?  And the Jews who 'settled' in Palestine came from elsewhere, mainly Europe,  which is to say they did not have a 3,000-year history of living in Palestine.

²  Isn't this just a little disingenuous?  The term "apartheid" is not usually applied to the conditions within the state of Israel, but rather to the conditions in the Occupied Territories where Jewish settlers are recognized as Israeli citizens sustained and supported by the Israeli government and Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, are segregated and oppressed by Jewish settlers who are protected by the Israeli Defense Forces.

³  Granted: 'racism' isn't a terribly apt term.  The whole concept of "race" is at best dubious, but surely the notion of virulent or invidious tribalism applies to what we see in Israel's disparate treatment of the Palestinians and the settlers in the Occupied Territories.

⁴ Forms of 'ethno-nationalism' vary from ethnic group to ethnic group, from nation or state to nation or state.  The core ideas seem to be the advancing of the interests of the preferred nation over the interests of others not sharing the preferred nation's identity, e.g., America First or Deutschland uber Alles.  Isn't Israel's raison d'être ethno-nationalist, i.e., a' homeland' precisely 'for the Jews', ethnically not religiously circumscribed?

⁵  No one can deny the long history of cruel and unjust persecution of Jews, especially by Christians (read the revelatory Constantine's Sword by James Carroll).  But is Alan Jacobs' point that the history of persecution, capped by the Holocaust, explains and justifies Israel as an 'ethno-nationalistic' state, or is he denying that Israel is such a state?  Last Sunday thousands of Israeli supporters of the Settlement Movement gathered in Jerusalem for a "Settlement Brings Security" conference urging the resettlement of Gaza and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and, by implication, the emigration of the Palestinians.  Nearly 1/3 of Netanyahu's governing cabinet attended the rally along with various members of the Knesset.  

⁶  I have to agree that both sides to the century-long dispute between Zionists and the Palestinians 'are committed to the comforting heuristics of their simplifications."  I also agree, sadly, the millions of people are "possessed" (I wouldn't attribute it to Satanic control) by hatred of Jews.  I also regret, however, that there are millions of people, i.e., certain Evangelicals, who are committed to supporting Israel regardless of its government's and certain of its people's depredations. 

Jacobs writes that he isn't trying to suggest any solutions.  Is this because there is none?

NFL Owners' Avarice.  From an opinion piece in this morning's WaPo by sports columnist Sally Jenkins:

"It’s difficult to say just how much embarrassment and exposure it will take to force those rotters in NFL ownership to accept responsibility for the hazards of the game they reap billions from and stop treating players like disposable napkins at their profit banquet. . . . But maybe what’s really at the heart of the matter is that the league has a black lung problem, and it knows it. That problem, if the NFL ever fully admitted it, could mean nearly unlimited financial exposure. That is perhaps why the owners have such a history of trying to limit injury compensation all along the line. Studies have shown that NFL players are four times as likely to suffer neurodegenerative disease than their peers. But most of these symptoms won’t manifest for 10 or 15 years, long after their five-year NFL health insurance has expired, at which point it’s difficult to get coverage. When players’ claims are denied and family members aren’t able to provide, where does the cost of their care fall? On you, the taxpayers. Medicare and Medicaid become the backstops. . . . .  The price of owning a coal mine is a lifetime of compensation for those who are permanently disabled by your coal dust. It should be the same with the NFL. If you want to own an NFL team — one that accepts all kinds of municipal aid and services free — you should cover the cost of ruin to players’ bodies and brains. After all, they aren’t just your workers. They’re the league’s chief commodities and treasures to their communities.?

Thursday Mindfulness Meditation chat.  I was going to skip this week's chat but changed my mind.  Lou, Bill, Mike, Chris, and me.  At some point, I hit the "mute" button on my iPhone and wasn't able to offer any thoughts during the discussion.  It took me about 15 minutes to figure out the problem and get back in.  My inability to deal with modern technology, like muting myself on the iPhone or losing my cursor on my laptop this morning, is discouraging.  Cognitive decline, executive function.