Fighting for the Right to be a Religious Progressive

Something very disturbing happened yesterday.   It should have been a big news item.  Yet since it didn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump, it was ignored on these shores.  The print version of the New York Times didn’t mention it once.  Nor did the Washington Post.  I only know about it because it was the topic of my rabbi’s sermon last evening at synagogue.  The rabbi had announced prior to the service that we would be celebrating International Women’s Day by saluting the Women of the Wall, a group that for the past three decades has struggled for the right of women to pray aloud at the Western Wall in Jerusalem holding Torah scrolls and adorned in traditional prayer attire.   True to form, hundreds of these women showed up at the Wall yesterday expecting to do their thing, when they were met by mobs of literally thousands of Ultra-Orthodox teenagers and young adults who had come from all over the country to stop the outrage.  Violence ensued, a couple people were injured, and the police watched with disturbing passivity. Ultimately, after the Women of the Wall left the scene in order to protect themselves, the police blamed them for the confrontation.  It was the praying women’s use of loudspeakers, rather than the ultra-Orthodox’s use of violence, that was deemed especially offensive by the authorities. 

Like so many things that happen in the world these days, yesterday’s skirmish in Judaism’s holiest site was shocking but not surprising.  Any Israeli observer has long ago realized that Orthodox Judaism has been given a virtual monopoly over religious life, and the ultra-Orthodox in particular enjoy special privileges.   To be sure, most Israelis aren’t especially religious.  A 2015 Gallop Poll found that nearly two-thirds of Israelis claimed either to be “not religious” or “convinced atheists.”  But to the extent Israeli Jews do partake in religion, what they’re imbibing comes almost exclusively from Orthodox rabbis.   Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal Judaism are moribund in the Holy Land.  So it only stood to reason that when it came time for the Women of the Wall to stake their claim to gender equality, they were met by a far greater number of Ultra-Orthodox zealots.  Yeshiva rabbis could simply tell their teenage students to get on the bus, go to the Kotel (the Wall), and make sure that feminists aren’t able to violate the faith’s traditional prohibitions.  These include women wearing prayer shawls, praying loudly enough to be heard by men, reading collectively from a Torah scroll and praying together with men without a physical barrier to separate them.  Apparently, it isn’t enough for the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel to keep their own synagogues pure.  They feel the need to ensure that nobody else practices Judaism unless they, too, follow the “rules.”

Why do fundamentalist Jews have such power in Israel?  One reason is because secular leaders need support from multiple political parties to form a leading coalition in Parliament, so they make a deal with the ultra-Orthodox parties: “you join our political coalition and we’ll give you control over religious life.”   But there is another, even more important reason: we live in a world where, increasingly, people are dividing into two attitudes when it comes to religion:  (a) fundamentalist and (b) thoroughly apathetic.  Since the apathetic people could care less what happens inside a church or a holy site, when it comes to religion these days, the energy is increasingly on the side of the fundamentalists.

Don’t believe me?  Just look at another recent, underreported story.  I’m referring to the decision on February 26^th of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church to pass the so-called “Traditional Plan,” which reaffirmed the prohibition of gay marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and asserted that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  Methodism is America’s second largest Protestant denomination, with over seven million Americans, most of whom I suspect opposed the Traditional Plan.  But the fateful vote of February 26^th involved representatives from all over the world.  And while the American delegations may have been pretty evenly split, that wouldn’t appear to be the case for the delegations from places like Africa and the Philippines.  Moreover, the victory of the Traditional Plan was made possible by the fact that the membership of the United Methodist Church in America has been shrinking substantially over time.  So even if I’m right that most American Methodists voted with the minority, the overall size of the delegation was too small to defeat the more fundamentalist elements of the church in a worldwide vote of the movement. 

It’s not hard to figure out what is going on.  Fundamentalism offers a simple, comforting answer to all our deepest questions. Trust in the Great Supernatural Law-Maker in the Sky and the handbook of right and wrong that He graciously has bestowed upon us.   Follow that handbook and you will enjoy eternal bliss.  Otherwise, you will undergo a painful second-guessing process throughout your life on earth and perhaps an even worse experience in the hereafter.  As for Non-Religious Secularism, it offers an alternative that is nearly as comforting.  Play hard.  Work hard.  Do both. Or simply relax.  But whatever you choose to do, you can do so guilt-free and armed with the knowledge that the entire domain of religion is just a bunch of ca-ca.  So enjoy your absolute freedom! 

Superficially, those paths are polar opposites.  But truly, they’re quite similar.  Both rest on an appeal to simplicity and a life without cognitive dissonance.  Both profess to be the path to maximizing one’s own happiness and minimizing one’s own pain.  And finally, both offer a path with literally billions of fellow-travelers along the way. 

By contrast, the path of liberal religion -- the one preferred by those Women of the Wall or the LGBTQ rights advocates in the Methodist Church – offers none of those blessings.   Liberal religious leaders can’t pretend that their path is the easy one here on earth.  Nor can they pretend to be offering eternal bliss in the afterlife.  For that matter, many of them refuse to preach about a God who is created in the image of the human ideal.   What they can offer is a life of struggle, of meaning, and of service -- a life modelled by such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel, neither of whom spent his days in the lap of luxury or lived to see his 70^th birthday.

I have no crystal ball.  I can’t tell you whether recent trends will change and liberal religion will catch a second wind in the popularity department.  What I can tell you, however, is that there will always remain a number of us who are devoted to it -- whether in the trappings of Judaism, Christianity or any other faith.  It is not for me to proselytize my devotion to liberal religion and “convert” others to that frame of mind.  But it is for me to assert the right of people to live a progressively religious life if they so choose.  So here’s to those Women of the Wall who keep on fighting for gender equality in Judaism.  And here’s to those gay Methodists who keep on fighting to get married and join the clergy, notwithstanding the existence of some pretty homophobic verses in Scripture.   May you realize that you will never be alone.  For liberal religious people may not currently number in the billions, but we still number in the millions.  And I for one have no intention to get off of this path, no matter how lonely or frustrating it can be at times.    

Reflections on Democracy

For many people throughout the world, the idea of “Israeli Democracy” is an oxymoron.  But this past week, Israel did something suggestive of a very healthy democracy – its Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, who is ideologically compatible with its Prime Minister, publicly recommended only weeks before the upcoming elections that Prime Minister Netanyahu be indicted.  No indictment will be filed until after Netanyahu is given an opportunity to state his case before Mandelblit.  But ultimately, Mandelblit will be the one to make the decision, and we know where he stands at present.

This is not the first time a sitting Israeli Prime Minister has been the subject of a legal scandal.  It was just such a scandal that brought down the Administration of Ehud Olmert, who served as Prime Minister in 2008.  Notably, Olmert ended up serving 16 months in prison for his criminal activity.  Clearly, Israel is a country that takes very seriously the principle that every individual, even the heads of state, are accountable to the public and to the rule of law.

Mandelblit’s announcement this week made me think about the essence of democracy and how it can be evaluated in so many different ways.   In some respects, Israel looms large as a democracy; in others, it falls far short.  This past July, for example, Israel enacted its “Nation-State” law, which cemented some very profound ways in which Israel extends preferences to Jews over gentiles.  The United States, my own country, has a very proud and comparatively ancient tradition of democracy, and yet this tradition is not without gaping holes.  On the very same day that Mandelblit was recommending the indictment of his nation’s leader, I was touring the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture.  Needless to say, I got more than a whiff of the way the leaders of my own country, while waxing eloquent about their devotion to democracy, hypocritically treated one race of people as truly sub-human – an affront that makes the worst of Israel’s abuses look benign by comparison.

As an American, when I think about the moments in which I was proudest of our own democracy, my attention inevitably turns back to the summer of 1974.  I was a rising 10^th grader and deeply riveted by the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee and its consideration of whether to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon.  When I look back on Elizabeth Holtzman, Peter Rodino, Father Robert Drinan, Paul Sarbanes, John Conyers and Charlie Rangel – they were truly heroes to me.  That’s because they were all Democrats, that was my party, and they were leading the prosecution of a corrupt President.  But now that I’ve aged a bit, I realize that the true heroes weren’t so much the Committee’s 21 Democrats but its 17 Republicans, who opened their hearts and minds to the facts of the case and ultimately voted – unanimously – to submit three articles of impeachment to the full house against their party’s leader and the nation’s President.  Those Republicans put country before party -- just like Mandelblit did this past Thursday in his own country. 

At some point in my life, I came to conclude that you can largely judge the health of a democracy by how willing its citizens are to buck their party’s leaders when the circumstances so warrant.   To me, that is just another way of asking whether we view ourselves as Democrats and Republicans first and foremost, or whether we see ourselves as Americans.  Sometimes it is critically important to be loyal to your party; I get that.  If one party is playing rough, then perhaps the other needs to do the same just to maintain some semblance of equity.  But that principle is hardly relevant to the situation that the House Judiciary Committee faced in 1974, or to the situation Mandelblit faced this past week.  They saw abuses being perpetrated by their party’s leaders, and they could either bury their heads in the sand or honor their oaths of office.  Thankfully, they chose the latter path.

Near the end of the Clinton Administration, I remember another scandal consuming my country, and this time it was associated with the leader of my own party, President Clinton.  Looking back at the so-called “Monica Lewinsky Scandal,” the facts about the President’s behavior were hardly in dispute.  The only question was what to make of them.  On the Democratic side, everyone acknowledged that the President’s conduct was inappropriate.  Yet with few exceptions, they seemed willing to condone it – or at least they appeared that way to me.  For the first (and last) time in my life, I found myself watching Fox News more often than the other Cable News networks because I agreed more with what the Republicans were saying about the scandal than the Democrats.  No, I didn’t support impeachment, but I had hoped the President would resign and was rather appalled by the way Democrats trivialized the significance of his misconduct.   I felt, in short, like the Democrats had failed the test passed in 1974 by the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee or last week by Attorney General Mandelblit. 

In early-March 1999, I gave a speech to a few dozen people that discussed precisely why I felt that the President’s behavior was so profoundly disturbing under the circumstances.  You can find a transcript of the relevant comments at the following link, beginning on page 9:  http://www.danielspiro.com/uploads/3/1/0/2/31022605/purim99.pdf

Was I right in being so tough on President Clinton?  Should I have taken a more laissez-faire attitude about his sex life?  In hindsight, I would agree that reasonable people can be found on both sides of this issue.  But what’s important is not so much that Mandelblit interpreted the law correctly in recommending indictment, or that the Republicans who favored the impeachment of Nixon were right in their legal analysis, or that I was right in hoping Clinton would resign in 1999 -- what’s important is that when it comes to evaluating the conduct of our own leaders, we put party aside and country first, or at least we try to do so.

A lot had changed from 1974 to 1999 in America.  This country became far more polarized during that quarter century.  In the twenty years since, its polarization has become even worse.   So, I ask you: how strong is our democracy?  Are we an exemplar of a mature republic, with a sufficiently free and healthy public sphere as to give rise to human passions and the political factions that inevitably result from them?  Or are have we instead morphed into two ideologically incompatible peoples sharing the same land and fighting our wars in the ballot box every two years, with the spoils going to whoever happens to win the most recent election?  Maybe that is the situation at present, but it doesn’t have to describe our future.  I look forward to the day where both parties will have plenty of free-thinking mavericks who follow the truth wherever it leads and aren’t afraid of taking on the leaders of their party, whether they are in the White House, the People’s House, or on the God-damned radio. 

Taking Stock in the 2020 Presidential Campaign -- An Early Look

Forty-seven percent.  That’s the proportion of polled Americans, according to Nate Silver, who do not disapprove of President Donald Trump’s performance.  Yes, I just committed a cardinal sin of emphasizing a double negative.  But just think about what that first sentence signifies.  If after 25 months of Donald Trump’s presidency, you don’t disapprove of it, the high likelihood is that you’d consider supporting him in 2020.  President Trump has had one humiliating defeat after another – including most recently a 35 day Government Shutdown with nothing to show for it – yet he’s still at 47% in the “I don’t disapprove” category.   And that doesn’t even account for the “guilty secret pleasure” theory that many people may be afraid to admit to pollsters that they like Trump but will nevertheless check his name in the privacy of their own voting booth.   If Democrats aren’t scared, they should be. 

As was demonstrated in 2016, you don’t have to approve of a candidate in order to vote for them.  You can simply disapprove of the opponent more.  That is why a Presidential campaign is often a war of attrition, and no institution is better at destroying the good name of its opponents than the Republicans.   They couldn’t destroy the candidacies of the Democrats’ two political superstars of the past forty years – Obama and Bill Clinton – but damned if they haven’t succeeded against literally every other Democratic nominee.  Just consider the facts.

The GOP turned rock-solid Walter Mondale into a dour “Eat Your Peas’ Democrat,” and he lost every state but his own.  Next, they took on the architect of the so-called “Massachusetts Miracle,” Michael Dukakis, and they Willie Hortoned him into oblivion.  (I especially appreciate seeing a photo of the man in a tank, which the Republicans quickly used to make Governor Dukakis look like an even more absurd version of the Great Gazoo from the Flintstones.)  Then, after Bill Clinton’s two terms, the Democrats served up future Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore.  He could have dramatically changed world history by doing battle with climate change.  Instead, the Republicans ridiculed him as “AlGore” the fraudulent robot who took credit for other people’s work.  When the laughter was over, Gore couldn’t even carry his own state.  In 2004, the Dems ran a real war hero, John Kerry, against a chicken hawk who got us into an endless debacle in Iraq based on false intelligence. So what did the GOP do?  They “Swift Boated” the war hero, successfully lampooned him as an effete, blue-blooded wind-surfer, and gave their own candidate the popular vote victory he lacked the first time.  Finally, after two terms of Obama, we witnessed the circus known as the Presidential Campaign of 2016.  That’s when everyone was treated with an endless dose of references to “Crooked Hillary” and chants of “Lock Her Up.”   No, President Trump didn’t win the popular vote; he lost it by millions.  But damned if he didn’t take the Electoral College by 74 votes.    In baseball, the only thing that really matters are runs scored, not base runners; in Presidential Politics, the game is all about Electoral College votes, and Donald Trump won over 300 of them.  He is not to be taken lightly as a candidate in 2020. 

Democrats, in short, need to ensure that they don’t repeat the big mistake of 2016 and get cocky about their chances.  The nominee can hardly expect a walk in the park in the fall of 2020.  And we, as voters, must be aware that some nominees lose their electability because they’re viewed either as overly leftist (and hence unable to compete for the “Reagan Democrats” who showed up for Clinton and Obama) or overly centrist or corporatist (and hence, like Hillary, unappealing to those progressives who consider voting for the Green Party or simply sitting out elections). 

So what we do?  My current thinking is that we aim for the sweet spot.  Find a person who will appeal to the progressive wing of the party, which is where the enthusiasm is centered, but won’t easily be dismissed as a socialist.  Find a person who is a preacher of profound transformational  reforms (not a Senator pothole) but doesn’t come across as a pie-in-the-sky idealist or a pander-to-the-progressives phony.  And most importantly, find someone who is charismatic enough that s/he can survive the inevitable attacks when they do come.  (Contrast Reagan and Obama, who were made of Teflon when it comes to attacks, to Dukakis and Kerry, who were made of Velcro.)

Truly, it’s impossible for a Democrat to appeal to everyone.  It’s also impossible to avoid political gaffes or to have the requisite experience for this job without having taken regrettable positions in the past.  So, in talking about the “sweet spot,” let’s not worry about finding perfection, because we won’t even come close to that.  Let’s just look at the matter viscerally.   Who does your gut tell you would make the most effective leader for our time?  Who seems to have the charisma to appeal to a wide audience within the party, and won’t be as much of a laughing stock outside of it?   Who is hardest to demonize?  Who is easiest to like?  Who is most likely to get stuff done – big stuff.

For me, I find myself asking the following: who has the potential to inspire a movement to: (a)  elect the kind of Democratic majority Obama had in 2009 (which makes everything else I’m going to talk about more possible), (b) fight climate change in a huge way and not just tinker around with it, (c) bring back the level of economic equity we had before Reagan upset the apple cart, and (d) get some common sense gun laws so that we all can feel like we’re living in a sane country.

When I think about these issues at this point in time, I see Kirsten Gillibrand and Corey Booker and I don’t notice anyone talking about them; it’s as if they’re not even running.  I see Amy Klobuchar doing a nice job of being inoffensive to swing voters, but I don’t see her thinking big enough to inspire the base.  I look at a pair of candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and feel confident that they will take on the above causes in a sweeping away.  But when I think about Kamala Harris, I think that not only will she fight hard for those same causes, but she might be more effective in doing so – and she’ll wear far more Teflon in the process.  So far, at least, I think her ability to communicate stands alone.  She is charismatic and figures to be likeable to pretty much everyone other than the most sexist and racist among us.  She comes across on the campaign trail as intense yet joyous.  She’s smart and thinks well on her feet.  And, if elected, she would be both the first woman and first woman of color ever to win the Presidency.  Just from a sheer ethnicity standpoint, she would appeal to African Americans, East Indian Americans and, through her husband, Jewish Americans.   Oh sure, there’s plenty of time for her to put her foot in her mouth.  In fact, she’s already done that up to a point with her non-nuanced comments on universal health care.   Yet you can fix that problem with a bit of coaching.  You can’t coach charisma and widespread appeal – or at least not successfully.  Harris, from all appearances, is a natural. 

During the upcoming months, Donald Trump will surely have his good weeks and his awful weeks.  He’ll be counted out many times, just like everyone counted him out in 2016.  Some folks simply assume he’ll be impeached and convicted; others figure he won’t bother to run again.  Me?  I’m assuming he’ll be a willing and “electable” candidate no matter who he faces.  But right now, relative to previous election cycles, I’m liking the list of contenders on the Democratic side, and I’m especially liking the rollout of Kamala Harris.   So, while I don’t plan on being cocky, I look forward to next fall’s battle royale without any fear.  The stable of talented Democrats is large enough and the lessons of 2016 vivid enough that I expect my party to be ready to fight a smart campaign led by an excellent candidate.  Maybe in 10 years we’ll be talking about a third political genius that the party has given us in recent decades – and this time, maybe the “genius” won’t simply be great at campaigning or triangulating but will actually implement profound progressive changes in our society and our world.  Think big.  I am.

Some Very Fine People on Both Sides

I’m sure you recognize the title of this post.  It is the infamous phrase used by President Trump in the aftermath of the August 2017 White Nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia – the one where the marchers chanted such monstrosities as “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil.”  Today, the phrase is commonly used to mock the President for suggesting that not only the group that protested the march but also the marchers themselves included some “very fine people.”  Many saw the President as using a dog whistle, indicating that even though he may not personally approve of all the beliefs of the White Nationalists, he sure as hell wants their votes.

In this post, I’d like to talk about two other groups.  As with the folks in Charlottesville, their members flat out dislike each other.  Personally, I tend to oppose the positions of both groups, but my goal in this post isn’t to mock either one, but instead to preach compassion for both.  Quite literally, I’d like to suggest that these two groups, despite having plenty of closed minded bigots and hate mongers in their midst, also have some “very fine people.”   Faint praise?  Low bar?  Perhaps.  Yet for all I’ve done in the past to criticize their positions, allow me to dedicate this one post to explaining why good people can legitimately align themselves with either group.  I am referring to the American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC) and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The impetus for this endeavor began with the statements by a freshman Congresswoman, Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar.  First, Omar tweeted that American support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins.”  Then, asked to clarify what she meant, she responded with one word:  “AIPAC!” 

My reaction to these tweets was visceral and negative.  Reflexively, I went on Facebook and offered the following response:  “To Congresswoman Ilhan Omar -- there are plenty of reasons to love Israel and Zionism that don't involve being paid by AIPAC. Many of us who are proud Zionists don't even support AIPAC, and many who do support AIPAC have legitimate concerns about Israeli security in the event it made the kind of concessions that some of us would like it to make. Sadly, constant Israel bashing from the left (see, e.g., BDS) is one of the things that fuels fears throughout Israel, thereby undermining the progressives in that country and contributing to the building of more and more settlements. Do you want a two-state solution or are you seriously expecting that the Jews will voluntarily give up their state without casualties of Biblical proportions? Why don't you talk about that issue and the basis for your opinion, instead of offering lazy, one-sided rhetoric?”

Fortunately, this freshman Congresswoman swiftly and unequivocally apologized after representatives of both parties schooled her for her comments.  Whatever was in her heart and mind at the time she made the statements, it makes sense for America to accept her apology and assume (until proven otherwise) that she was sincere in learning more about the history of anti-Semitism and why she struck a chord with those comments.  But what I’d like to do is to build on my own statement about AIPAC, because it is not often that I publicly seek sympathy for that organization.  Omar’s tweets reminded me of how vital it is that Israel has at least some trusted allies outside of her borders.  Lord knows that J-Street, for its many virtues, has spent much more time over the years criticizing Israel than praising it.  AIPAC, by contrast, represents Israel’s cheerleading squad in the United States.  Sometimes, that’s exactly what Israel needs ... and deserves.

Consider that outside of Israel and the United States, this world is 0.03% Jewish.  That amounts to roughly one out of every 3000 people.  Israel was created by the United Nations at a unique time, when all but the vilest anti-Semites felt horrified about the Nazi Holocaust and wanted to do something kind for those Jews in Europe and elsewhere who survived it.  Unfortunately, U.N. backing was hardly enough to ensure its survival; the fledgling nation of Israel needed to defeat many larger nations simply in order to survive. Less than 30 years later, the Jewish State having valiantly survived one existential military crisis after another, the U.N. General Assembly voted by more than two to one that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”  These facts are not lost on the members of AIPAC.  Nor are AIPAC supporters unaware of the Covenant of Hamas (the organization that now controls the Gaza Strip), which calls for Islam to “obliterate” Israel, or the various hateful statements of the leadership of Iran, whose former President not only denied the Holocaust but suggested that “Israel must be wiped off the map.”  That is precisely what the world had done to the Jewish State for the 1900 years prior to the creation of modern Israel.  You can better believe that the members of AIPAC are far from ignorant about the centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe, where Jews were blamed for being economically rapacious, power-grubbing, murderous, and concerned only about the letter of the Biblical law rather than its spirit.    

As AIPAC’s devotees can also tell you, it took fully 3 ½ decades for the Palestinian Liberation Organization to recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace and to reject the strategy of “violence and terrorism.”  As recently as this decade, the Palestinian Authority operated a Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund, which paid cash to the families of Palestinians who were involved in terrorist attacks against Israel.  Not surprisingly, Hamas operates a separate “pay for slay” fund of its own.  Even now, I am unaware of any Palestinian organization that recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a “Jewish State.”  In fact, while many Palestinians express their willingness to accept a two-state solution, I have found little enthusiasm among Palestinians for such an outcome.  What’s more, I suspect that many Palestinians who would willingly accept “two states for two peoples” see that result as a temporary measure that ultimately will give way to a single, primarily-Arab state occupying all of present-day Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. 

When you consider all of the above, is it any wonder that so many AIPAC supporters think that the two-state solution is a pie-in-the-sky idea?  They have lost faith that Israel has a partner for peace that would ensure a permanent and secure Jewish State on Israel’s side of the border.   As for me, I refuse to give up the two-state dream.  I think the Jewish world should be advocating far more concessions and extending many more olive branches to the Palestinians than AIPAC supporters have been willing to offer on behalf of that dream – the one known as true peace.    But I’m not going to demonize all AIPAC supporters just because they’re less patient or more cynical than I am.  I refuse to attribute their positions simply to anti-Arab bigotry or Jewish greed.  They make legitimate points that every friend of peace needs to take seriously.

Comparatively speaking, it is more difficult for me to defend BDS.  The focus of BDS is to boycott Israel (and only Israel) as well as the products of her companies, divest from any holdings in Israel, and work to persuade other countries to stop trading with Israel and expel the Jewish State from international organizations.  In short, the BDS movement seeks to turn Israel into an international pariah.  Clearly, the idea of singling out the Jewish State for such treatment infuriates me for the same reasons that Omar’s tweets got under my skin.  For centuries, anti-Semites have unjustly singled out the Jews in discriminatory ways.  But that was then, and this is now.  For all my opposition to BDS, the spirit of fairness requires me to acknowledge that one doesn’t have to be an anti-Semite to support that movement.

BDS, at its worst, comes from a place of bigotry and bullying.  How easy must it feel in so many countries to wage a campaign of hatred against the Jewish State and on behalf of a group of oppressed Muslims and Christians in a world where Muslims alone outnumber Jews by well over 100 to 1?  Still, BDS, at its best, comes from a place of understandable desperation and an unwillingness to accept perpetual war and Palestinian statelessness.  Increasingly, Israel is losing its progressive base when it comes to the Palestinian Question, and the ruling coalition there seems to have abandoned any pretense of concern for the goal of two-states-for-two-peoples.  In West Jerusalem and throughout much of the nation, complacency rules the day.  Just as most Americans shrug at the crisis of climate change en route to buying another gas guzzling vehicle, most Israelis shrug at the notion that anything can be done to create a viable Palestinian state without risking Israel’s security in the process.  So when right-wing Israelis clamor for more territory and seek to build communities in the West Bank, Israeli leaders take the path of least resistance – they offer some amount of concessions to the settler movement and ignore the fact that each settlement makes a two-state solution more and more difficult to achieve.

Stated simply, the dominant perspective in Israel regarding the Palestinians appears to be that the status quo might not be perfect, but it’s as good as it’s going to get.  That is why politicians like Netanyahu would rather turn their attention to other topics (like the Iranian threat) and treat the Palestinians more like pests than like partners. 

But Palestinians are not termites or mosquitos.  They are people.  They have a right to a state like anyone else.  And you will forgive the advocates of BDS for reacting to Israeli complacency with a sense of urgency and desperation.  BDS is not a violent movement.  Quite the contrary, it abhors violence.   Nor does it necessarily entail Jew-bashing.  In fact, in theory, BDS could even be advocated by a Zionist who has decided that the only kind of love that will shake off the complacency is tough love.  The most supportable principle of BDS is that something outside-the-box needs to be done to get Israel to stop building settlements and start talking about concessions for a Palestinian State – because nothing inside-the-box seems to be working.    Anti-BDS liberals can whine all they want about the settlements, but such whining hasn’t had any effects, the argument continues, so why not try BDS as a last resort?   In other words, BDS advocates contend, we’ll never have Palestinian autonomy (i.e., justice) unless their Israeli overlords are forced by external pressures to get off their high horses and start negotiating like peers and not masters.  These pressures can take one of two forms: violence or BDS.  Of the two, BDS is infinitely preferable.  Or so goes the argument.

I have already devoted an entire blogpost to all the reasons why I oppose BDS.  Similarly, many of my other posts over the years signal my profound disagreements with AIPAC.   But today, I’ll spare you those points.  Instead, I come to you with a request.  Whether you disagree with one of these groups or both, try to have a little tolerance for what the best people in these organizations are trying to say, for we are talking about a predicament that is as intellectually vexing as it is emotionally gut-wrenching.  In this case, there really are very fine people on both sides of the divide.  I’m not suggesting that we treat the Palestinian and Israeli narratives equivalently, let alone that we can possibly side with both AIPAC and BDS.  But it behooves us to dialogue respectfully, warmly and compassionately whenever you encounter a representative of either   “side” that is willing to extend the same courtesies in your direction.  Who knows, maybe both of you will learn something.

Where's the Green New Deal (or Old Deal) for Civil Servants?

Normally, I don’t like blogging about issues on which I have a pecuniary interest, so I should begin by saying “consider the source” when you read what follows.  Still, I represent a constituency that apparently has no champions in positions of power.  So if people like me don’t call out the facts, who will?

 Here are the federal civilian pay increases and the corresponding CPI increases for the previous year.

               Federal pay increases      CPI increases for the previous year

2019             0.0                                 2.2%

2018             1.4%                              2.1

2017             1.0                                 1.3

2016             1.0                                 0.1

2015             1.0                                 1.6

2014             1.0                                 1.5

2013             0.0                                 2.1

2012             0.0                                 3.2

2011             0.0                                 1.6

9-yr Avg      0.6%                              1.75%

In essence, federal civil service compensation has effectively dropped well over 10% during this decade alone, and that doesn’t even count the ways in which benefits have been cut in recent years or the way inflation-adjusted salaries have been decreased in past decades.   Moreover, these recent decisions to reduce Civil Servant compensation are obviously bi-partisan; just consider who was President during most of these years and the lack of outrage among the Democratic legislators who passed his budgets .   We all heard no shortage of crocodile tears shed by Democratic legislators during the 2018-19 Shutdown about the plight of the federal workers.  But you can thank numbers like the ones above for why so many civil servants were hurting so much in January. 

The rumor is that, as we speak, the Democrats and GOP are close to a deal to avert another Shutdown.  Do you think demanding a pay increase commemorate with increases in the CPI is something that the Dems are demanding as a pre-condition to do the deal?   Hopefully, that’s what is happening.  Yet I have seen no such reports in the media.  In fact, I hear crickets on this entire topic.

The fact is that neither party has shown much concern for the drop in compensation for civil servants over the past few decades, let alone the effect of that drop on morale and recruitment.  I’m not saying the two parties are equally unconcerned, but this time I’m not even going to bother to point out which one is worse.  Just look at those years from 2011 to 2013, when Barack Obama was President.  Where was the Democratic Party uproar then?  Where is it now that there are no more political points to be scored by raising the issue?

There is no disputing that, on an aggregate basis, the average civil servant is paid more than the average non-civil servant.  To some, that would make us overpaid – and indeed, many lawmakers cite the aggregate pay gap between the public and private sector as a justification for continuing to dock civil service pay relative to the rate of inflation.  But you don’t have to be an astrophysicist or a brain scientist to realize that it makes zero sense to compare the salaries of, on the one hand, a NASA astro-physicist or NIH brain researcher to, on the other hand, a burger flipper at Wendy’s or a telemarketer with “your local carpet cleaning service.”  The better comparison would be to compare the salaries of government astro-physicists with their analogues in the private sector, and do the same with brain scientists, economists, attorneys, or whatever.  But Congress knows better than to commission that kind of comparison.  It wouldn’t be “fiscally prudent.”

Clearly, there are more pressing issues in the world to think about than this one.  Then again, unless the topic is climate change, that could be said about any topic.  I simply felt compelled this week, now that we may be on the verge of another budget deal, to raise a concern that sticks in the craw of those “800,000 people” -- of which I am one -- that our nation’s demagogues kept talking about since Christmas.  Truly, this is just a microcosm of the way the members of our media and our politicians play games with us – selecting some issues to obsess about, ignoring other important issues altogether, and constantly tossing rhetoric around as if they really care.  Sadly, the American people know better.  That’s one reason neither of those groups is terribly popular with either side of the political spectrum.