Commentary – What’s Up

Sometimes I sit down with several pieces planned or nearly ready and say but … but that’s not what people are talking about right now. So what are the issues?

• I’ve already had a lot to say about The War in the Middle East – I dislike all the rulers over there – Hamas beheaded innocent civilians to stop Israel, the US and other Middle Eastern nations from reaching a regional peace deal that would have solved many conflicting issues. Hamas disliked it because it would mean peace. Now lots of people have died so they could keep their war alive. Netanyahu, never brilliant about peace making predictably over-reacted. Whom do you blame more? Spare me.
• How about the War in Ukraine – some of us were attacked at a meeting because a woman thought that repeated Vietnam. Wow, was she confused – we fought against the people of Vietnam; we’d be fighting for the people of Ukraine and stopping Russian expansion in its tracks. I want the US to stand with the people of Ukraine and the nations of the EU to keep Russia from threatening other countries in Europe.
• I could talk about the 2024 election – almost everything I have to say bears on the 2024 election and there will be plenty more – what’s new?
• I could talk about the economy – I’ve got lots of stuff planned on that but it’s complicated and this doesn’t seem like the moment to start a four-part series of commentaries.
• I could talk about Trump and his legal trials – Poor little rich kid trying to avoid justice:

Trump legal OMG #1 – the US Attorney General Merrick Garland tried to be thorough but the Supremes want to take time to decide if a former president, now out of office, has immunity for illegal behavior – the only limit in the Constitution is on how to remove him from office but his appointees want to extend the protection – that has nothing to do with their claim to read the Constitution according to its explicit text but textualism isn’t enough when they don’t want it to be.

Trump legal OMG #2 – the prosecutor, Fani Willis, loved her assistant so the Trump lawyers claimed a conflict of interest. That must mean that lawyers in the same law firm can’t work together because they’d have a conflict of interest. Heaven forbid representation by a husband-and-wife law firm. Conflict of interest has meant lawyers serving conflicting interests or masters. But the Georgia prosecutor and her appointee are on the same side. Trump’s lawyers are certainly creative. So delay until whenever.

Trump legal OMG #3 – he appointed the Florida judge Aileen Cannon. She’s on his side but obviously knows he has no case. What’s a judge going to do? So she can’t decide anything. An indefinite delay will spare her the embarrassment of saying anything sensible.

Trump legal OMG #4 – Then there’s NY – the candidate of what was once called the Moral Majority is showing off his sexual immorality – whoopee – sleezeballs for president.

• So never mind – I’m going to finish this recording and go have my cataracts removed.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on May 14, 2024.

Free Speech is Not a Get Out of Jail Free Card

I own and use a watch that goes tiktok – a present from my dad when I graduated from college. But no one has my watch in mind when discussing whether to ban or regulate TikTok. There is confusion, however, about what the First Amendment does or doesn’t, should or shouldn’t, be taken to mean. That’s partly because the issue is being posed very narrowly. Narrowing discussion to a particular media outlet raises all kinds of questions and fears. Can government ban Fox News or the New York Times?

Issues often look different when one takes a broader view. The FCC has resisted licensing foreign owned radio and television stations. And the FCC had a “fairness doctrine” which required that radio and television stations broadcast competing points of view about controversial issues of public importance. There was controversy about whether that was consistent with the First Amendment but what really killed it was a broadcaster who said that the only thing controversial about its award-winning program were the unstated inferences that the complaining party wanted to object to. By the time the doctrine was repealed, it seemed relatively useless, though I’d like to have it back now that the issue has become counter-factual nonsense.

More recently, the European Union developed a privacy directive that prohibited the transfer of personal information out of Europe unless consistent with European rules, and later replaced it with a still stronger law. American companies had a choice between staying out of the European market or entering an agreement with the European authorities about how they would protect the privacy of European customers – where privacy is much broader than it is here. That wasn’t discrimination against American companies; it was requiring that American companies respect European law.

National security may be enough of a justification, but the TikTok issue looks different if the question is how foreign companies can guarantee that they will not transfer information about Americans out of the US, or whether other countries, like China, must abide by the same rules for American companies that they want from us.

The biggest problem is that Congress has been unwilling to strengthen American privacy law. American courts long ago struggled with the legality of tracking what we do online. With few exceptions, courts accepted tracking and treated data about us as the property of the media companies.Those decisions had little to do with the First Amendment but left companies with an enormous body of information about us, and left us with little privacy. That lack of generic restrictions on what companies can gather or share, put us in the position of wanting to impose restrictions on TikTok that are not applied to other companies.

Congress could impose many restrictions on TikTok and similar companies that would pose no constitutional problems. But narrowing the issue to TikTok makes the issue constitutionally harder to justify. So it would be better if Congress could deal with the underlying problems, rather than narrowing the issue to TikTok.

I want to end with another First Amendment issue. Trump to the contrary notwithstanding, it does not and has never meant you can say anything about anything. Libel, fraud, threats and intimidation have never been legal. The fact that they depend on words is not a get out of jail free card to libel, defraud, misrepresent, threaten or intimidate others, ignore required notices and disclosures, or to ignore rules designed to protect jurors.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on May 7, 2024.

Biden After the Reidy Lunch

A friend of ours has been working for Dustin Reidy who is a candidate to represent us in the Assembly, so the four of us sat down for coffee and a lovely chat which turned into lunch after Dustin had to leave for another appointment. Our conversation stimulated some thoughts about the job Biden is doing. I don’t want to put words in Dustin’s mouth so, though this was stimulated by our conversation, I speak only for myself.

Lots of people are way to Biden’s left on some issues. So am I. But I don’t want Biden to be Gottlieb. There’s no way I could get Congress or the courts to do what I want them to do. I don’t want Biden to declare all he’d really like to do. That would just make him a target. I want him to pull our national politics as far to the left as he can, preferably with as little destructive backlash as possible. But politics is a negotiation and sometimes you have to keep your policies close to your chest. So I think Biden has done a masterful job dealing with the economy. He hasn’t done everything I’d like our government to do. It won’t and he can’t but he’s done a lot. But he’s got my appreciation and respect for what he’s done.

The same is true about the Middle East and international politics. I’ve had a lot to say about Palestine both before and after Hamas’ October 7 attack. Again, Joe Biden has not done everything I asked for. But Biden is the first president since Israel declared its independence to put significant conditions on our support. I kept wanting Obama to do that. The notion that Trump would do better is laughable – he reversed long-standing American policy when he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, leading the Netanyahu government to believe it could do anything it wanted. Similarly, Republicans in Congress ignored President Obama’s foreign policy authority when they invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress over Obama’s objections, similarly encouraging the Israeli government to believe it didn’t have to worry about Democratic presidents. President Biden has turned against that tide. I don’t know everything President Biden is doing or saying behind the scenes but there are limits to how far he should expose his hand when negotiating both with Congress and Netanyahu. I could wish that Putin, Netanyahu and whoever leads Hamas would simply evaporate. But finally, we have an American President who is pushing in the direction I want.

And for American Jews, Biden is not the president who encouraged armed antisemites in Charlottesville and elsewhere and he is not confusing American policy toward Israel with treatment of Jews in America.

Politics is complicated. We all want different things. There’s nothing illegitimate about our seeing the world differently. Certainly, some of us are just plain wrong. But to get anything done, a president has to deal with all of us, the people who’ll support what he wants to do, and the people who’ll do their best to block him or her from doing what needs to be done. There are no switches to flip, no fingers to snap. So I say thank heavens for Joe Biden.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 30, 2024.

America has a Hothead Problem

While returning from a trip to see family, my wife commented that we were driving through an almost never-ending stream of Civil War battlefields that reinforce the military losses of the Civil War without reinforcing the moral meaning of what happened.

New York and Virginia bore a large part of America’s war history. The Revolution’s crucial battles were fought in New York before England reconcentrated on the South, at which point Virginia bore the brunt of the fighting.

The Civil War was even more concentrated on Virginia battlefields. After Gettysburg, Lincoln had enough of his Northern generals, some skilled but unwilling to fight, and called for Grant and Sherman who had been fighting and winning in the west, to take over the battle in the East. Sherman had a brief nervous breakdown, realizing he was going to be responsible for innumerable deaths, but though Southerners don’t give him credit for it, Sherman used tactics that forced his opponents back with minimal loss of life, though at the cost of food supplies for the Confederate army. By the time Sherman’s army had marched to the sea, what he was really threatening was to march north, join Grant’s army and crush Lee. Lee of course understood and surrendered first.

Until then, Lee kept a lot of pressure on Grant, but Grant didn’t back off, and kept moving his army to flank Lee, so the battle continued in a never-ending series of battles and battlegrounds with tremendous losses and sites for future monuments all over Virginia.

Apologists for the Confederacy see the cleverness of Confederate generals and the overwhelming power of northern armies. But they miss the larger moral meaning of the Civil War. Denying the significance of slavery hides the huge moral failure at its heart. Civil War history was blanketed under a century of apologetics until better historians poked through the nonsense.

• The War would not have happened but for slavery.
• Slavery wasn’t “good” for the slaves – lack of freedom is a disaster, not an advantage. I don’t suggest you try it.
• What America did after the Civil War wasn’t about vengeance, as some have been taught; it was about freedom. It’s time we take pride in that accomplishment.

Democracy is imperfect, but it allows us to correct mistakes, great moral wrongs and mistreatment of others. The Civil War was a very expensive example of righting a great wrong.

Ironically, at the time the Constitution was written, prominent Virginians – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason and others – knew slavery was morally wrong but expected it to go away, perhaps gradually as Pennsylvania, on Virginia’s northern border, did it. But hotheads pushed for war to protect slavery.

Some southern governors are trying to keep the Civil War alive in America by trying to erase the injustice of slavery, erase the accomplishments of the descendants of slaves, and allow schoolchildren to grow up thinking that southern mistreatment of African-Americans was perfectly OK, somehow manly.

America has a hothead problem and we have to learn to stand up to our hotheads and continue making progress for decency, and the great American ideals embodied in the 14^th Amendment – life, liberty and equality for everyone.

Trump and his MAGA friends better accept those ideals before they face the modern equivalents of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and the bloodbath they are arguing for, with their guns, gun rights claims, threats and intimidation of witnesses and public officials, and their private unregulated militias. The sooner we quash those armed hotheads the better.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 23, 2024.

The Russian Composer Song

Because of scheduling issues, I recorded this a few days in advance. So instead of trying to incorporate the latest developments, I’m giving my spirits a break with a more light-hearted classically trained musician’s take on immigration.

My wife caught me faux conducting Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto the other night. I tried not to meet her gaze because I was so deeply caught up in the music and I did not want to stop. But Rachmaninoff! An immigrant, from Russia, when Communists ruled it!Oh my God, can we forgive him for coming?

Have you ever heard a recording of Danny Kaye singing the Russian composer song from the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark? How many do we have to forgive for coming over? Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin listed fifty. Sorry, but I won’t give up Rachmaninoff for being an immigrant.

Have you heard about Tchaikovsky? My heavens, we take our children to see – or even dance in – the Nutcracker every winter. Gay! Tchaikovsky was gay, and I don’t mean happy. In fact, he was so distraught, he tried to satisfy wrong-wing extremists by going straight and getting married – his wife ran away screaming when she discovered. I’m from a musical family – my dad and daughter would have loved to meet Tchaikovsky – unless he tried to go straight and fool my admiring daughter. It would have been Platonic but special nevertheless.

I not only grew up hearing my dad play a Rachmaninoff prelude – a real finger cracker, but some Prokofiev too. Prokofiev was another Russian immigrant. OMG, have your children listened to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf? Was our culture “poisoned” by immigrants? Or enriched?

Kurt Weill wrote the music for the Threepenny Opera and Mack the Knife, but he was German. Dvorak wrote the New World Symphony while living here but he was – oh what would the [H]enry [H]iggins of My Fair Lady have said – [H]ungarian – butit’s OK, Dvorak didn’t stay.

Have you seen Oppenheimer, about the Manhattan Project that created the A-bomb? Filled with refugees. I studied with refugees and my college chemistry professor was part of the Manhattan Project. Yet somehow, instead of being totally corrupted, he was a generous, caring, patriotic man. And heavens, my late cousin was a physicist who studied and worked with famous immigrant physicists. Was she corrupted by the experience? Would lasers work better if she hadn’t worked with them? Everyone remembers her as a sweet, lovely person as well as a respected physicist – should I imagine a dagger in her heart because she knew, even studied with, foreigners.

Cancer took mama away from us when I was still in college. But her first experience of America was at Ellis Island – she was an eight-year-old immigrant. Thank heavens she came.

It happens that a road we often use has been blocked because of an explosion and fire that took out a pair of restaurants, possibly because of a gas leak, though we don’t yet know for sure. One of those restaurants served Thai food and we’ve both ordered from and eaten there. They too exemplified the ways immigrants enliven the area and the economy. I wish them well. My heart also goes out to the people, workers from other countries, who were lost in the collision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the Baltimore harbor, and the families that depended on them. And may I add that the reason many of us are so torn by the war between Israel and Hamas is precisely the loss of life, foreign though they may be.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 16, 2024.

Palestine and the Dream of Peace

Neither Israel, Hamas nor the Palestinians are working for peace. If Israel wanted peace it would have throttled the so-called “settlers” years ago and protected the Palestinian population. Hamas made it’s aversion to peace obvious in the brutality of their Oct. 6 attack – they got what they wanted in Israel’s brutal response. The Palestinians are caught in the middle but constantly irritated by incursions on their lives and homes. The surrounding countries made peace almost impossible by excluding refugees and keeping the Palestinians as an uprooted and largely homeless people whose needs are focused on their devotion to their lost land. Peace? It’s been no more than a cruel joke. What Israel and Hamas are looking for is ethnic cleansing, to push each other out dead or alive – yes it’s different from genocide but it stinks nevertheless.

I served this country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a Muslim country, and on my way home, so I could visit Israel, flew directly from Tehran, in Iran, to Tel Aviv in Israel – yes it was possible in those days. I have friends on both sides. Only peace, shalom or salaam, could stanch my tears. There is in fact a local group of wonderful people who include both terms for peace in their title. And I have been working with a group of Jews in the Capital Region also seeking peace. Oh may that goal prevail. Or am I and many like me doomed to bathe in our own tears.

So what?

No American president until Biden has willingly twisted Israel’s arm. It’s time. I think Biden should condition all forms of continued American support on ending the settler program, returning lands taken by settlers from settled Palestinians, and a total cease fire, provided Hamas observes the cease fire and returns the hostages. If Hamas doesn’t observe those terms, blame for whatever happens to Gaza’s people is on Hamas, and let the press keep asking when Hamas will stop. Israel doesn’t understand the blame dynamics but America could turn the PR on its head. If the Israeli government doesn’t listen, the Israeli people will pay a horrible price, but we’ll have done our best to prevent it. I want to see Israel survive. But it can’t be at any price. This conflict hurts America, innocent Muslims and American and worldwide Jewry. I’m not interested in arguments about who was in Palestine first – that’s irrelevant to people trying to live there. The conflict has to stop regardless of who is “right.”

Frankly, I don’t think there are any honest brokers in the Middle East. But America does have a stake because it has been deeply involved and because most of us care for a variety of reasons about what happens to Israel and what happens to Palestine and Gaza. And because of our historic support of Israel, America does have the ability to affect developments there. We should use it.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 9, 2024.

Guns, the Supreme Court and the Dissolution of America

Most think guns should be banned because various psychopaths shot children in schools, fired into concert crowds or attacked religious services. Horrible enough to justify banning guns. The NRA’s solution, of course, is more guns. They claim that putting more guns in more hands will stop or dissuade vicious killers.

But more guns in more hands means the gangs, death squads, terrorists and private armies of Haiti, Central American, Africa and Eastern European states. It means everyone can take the law into their own hands – and will – indeed they will feel like they have to. It is an argument only an insurrectionist could like because it supports plans to start a revolution.

Plenty of evidence establishes that proliferation of weapons is the surest predictor of insurrection and the breakdown of law and order.[1] I want to stress the connection between the availability of guns and the likelihood of insurrection and violence because I don’t think the public gets it. Gun violence across the world isn’t confined to individual events. Guns become tools of revolution and systemic chaos. Kids become targets for gangs, women for rape, and their world is dominated by threats and extortion. One girl we know was sent here because her parents feared she would be forced into a terrorist organization in their country. In her case we knew and communicated with her parents when they were making that decision. In fact, many people arriving at our southern border struggled to get there because they’ve been threatened, and fear their children will be abused by or forced into the gangs. More, those groups seek to dominate their countries. We’re negotiating with gangs in Haiti because there is no choice – they have the weapons and weapons put them in control. Across the globe, guns rule and make life hell. We have to throttle the prevalence of guns or turn our country over to force, intimidation and revolution.

This Supreme Court won’t reconsider the nonsense perversely called “gun rights,” in opposition to the rights of people, citizens, men, women and children. That’s why I’d pack the Court with decent Justices and change its rulings before it tears the country apart as surely as Dred Scott contributed to the Civil War.

For our country to survive, we have to stop shooting our way out of every disagreement, stop producing guns for the private market so that more and more can shoot their way out of more disagreements even against heavily armed police, militia and military forces, and stop sending guns to resellers in more and more lawless countries. This has got to stop for the sake of our country. And it has nothing to do with immigration – immigrants are actually less likely to kill or commit other crimes than native born Americans – hostility to immigrants has been about blaming others for our own sins.

People who care about our country need to get themselves to the polls, vote and skip the third parties who will tip elections to the supporters of gun-toting insurrectionists. Today, I should add, is primary day in New York.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on April 2, 2024.

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[1] Stephen E. Gottlieb, Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown Of American Politics 11, 175 (NYU Press 2016).

Supreme Court – Ditch It

I used to teach a course on the US Supreme Court, starting around 1990 and until I retired almost three decades later. I’ve lost my patience with it.

The Court betrayed any sense that it should be impartial or nonpartisan, consistently favoring Republicans, from its choice of Bush over Gore in 2000, against all the rules about how to run a recount,[1] to its refusal to honor the constitutional text of the insurrection clause in 2024, and its refusal in the interim to curb the state legislative gerrymandering that gave Republicans control of state legislatures, regardless of the wishes of the voting public.

The Court betrayed any respect for precedent and any concern for women when it overturned Roe v. Wade and left women scrambling for reproductive care.

It has consistently favored big business over Americans of ordinary income.[2]

And it threatened the core of our democratic system with a series of decisions authorizing people to carry guns in public, guns that threaten nonpartisan election workers, elected representatives that conservatives dislike, and people at demonstrations advocating causes they despise. The ultimate implication of their decisions was the insurrection at the Capitol which the Court then blessed by refusing to allow states to keep the inciter-in-chief off the presidential ballot.

I no longer have any confidence in the Court to get anything right, including to protect our democratic system of government.

So what is to be done?

Here is the text of the Constitution’s provision for the Court:

“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.”

Notice what is protected – their tenure “during good behaviour,” and their salaries “which shall not be diminished.” The Constitution says we can’t touch those.

Notice that nothing else is protected – not their courthouse, their staff, their equipment, the marshals and police that protect them. The courthouse went up in the 20s. A century later it can come down. Everything else, including the upkeep of the building, is part of the budget. The budget can be zeroed out. And money not appropriated cannot be spent. Republicans know that very well, which is why they keep holding up the budget and it’s time Democrats took that knowledge to heart. Stop the Court. Shut it down.

The Court has been a tool of devotees of the so-called “Lost Cause,” the cause of slavery and disunion, consistently dismantling the voting rights of African-Americans and promoting gun rights that only rebels could appreciate. When the NRA  was taken over by insurrectionists, it found things it wanted the Court to do to help them dismantle the US in favor of the Confederacy.

Except for the Warren Court, the Supreme Court has been more of a problem than a help. To heck with mincing words – it’s time to call this outrage treason, dismantle the Court, take it out of rebel hands, and then maybe we can reorganize and put it in better hands. No, I wish I were kidding but I’d do whatever it takes to get rid of the Roberts Court. At the very least, I’ll do what I can to keep Trump, who appointed three of its members, out of the White House.

— Steve Gottlieb – If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on March 26, 2024.

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[1] Stephen E. Gottlieb, Bush v. Gore Typifies the Rehnquist Court=s Hostility to Voters, in The U. S. Supreme Court and the Electoral Process 58 (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, David Ryden, ed., 2^nd ed., rev., 2002).

[2] Stephen E. Gottlieb, Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics 212-26 (New York: NYU Press 2016).

Antisemitism and Other Hatreds

There have been waves of prejudice in our country lately that are very troubling, a combination of hardened attitudes and outrageous mistreatment of different minorities, including Muslims, Jews, Asians, immigrants, Blacks, Hispanics and LGBTQs, reflecting in surveys, legal battles and attacks, much of it encouraged by Trump for political advantage. But do those waves of prejudice make sense for any of us?

The Constitution repeatedly grants rights to “person[s]” and imposes penalties on “person[s]” – at no point does it impose penalties on families and it abolishes “corruption of blood” – an old feudal practice that imposed familial penalties that lasted through the generations. One hesitates to imagine who would be penalized if we imposed penalties on the families of every murderer, terrorist or other criminal. None of us should welcome that idea but prejudice, antisemitism included, imposes such a notion of collective responsibility and without the benefit of any constitutional protections, due process or otherwise, for a penalty far more severe and dangerous than any the Constitution permits. Group prejudice is an anti-American abomination, which liberals who fight for the accused and conservatives who wave the flag should both certainly understand.

As Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the radicals in the House of Representatives who fought for the crucial Reconstruction Amendments that recognized African-Americans as citizens and as equals, told his fellow members of the House, he longed for a world where “no distinction would be tolerated in this purified republic but what arose from merit and conduct.”[1] Slavery had made disability follow race but Stevens and his colleagues had abolished it and he was protecting all people as individuals, not authorizing renewed disability by race nor overruling the Constitution’s ban on collective punishment for the sins of others.

Jewish culture stresses education. Kids are supposed to make something of themselves when they grow up. But Jews would be more popular if we were neither honored nor condemned, just invisible. Stick your head up and someone has a beef not just with the individual but with Jews. Do the antisemites want to get rid of Zelensky or Soros? Love or hate them because they support what liberals like? Actually they’re both loved and hated for the same behavior and the hate is generalized. Soros supports liberal causes. Hate Jews. Liberal antisemites don’t draw the hate conclusion for Soros but they draw it from Netanyahu and generalize – Jews are bad because Israel under Netanyahu is behaving badly – never mind that they remember with pride and pleasure that they stood, marched and even shared the podium with Martin Luther King. Apparently heaven forbid anyone should talk about the good things Jews have done for all of us – for equality, for unions, for social justice.

Let me be clear – though antisemitism is personal to me, so is prejudice against my Muslim friends, my Black friends, my Asian friends, my LGBTQ friends. There are good and bad on both sides in every war on every continent now and in the past. Equality and equal respect must encompass all of us or we are all targets for the mere fact of having been born.

— Steve Gottlieb – If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on March 19, 2024.

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[1] Thaddeus Stevens, a Pennsylvania congressman and Republican leader in the fight for the 14^th Amendment, in the House of Representatives, Cong. Globe,  39^th Cong., 1^st sess. 3148  (1866) (June 13, 1866).

Time for Ultimatums

For years I’ve supported Israeli acceptance of Palestinian rights to what we call the West Bank and what Israelis call the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria. Thomas Friedman argued in the New York Times that eliminating Palestinian warriors would be impossible and, because it would be impossible, it would be useless. I agree. Multiple Administrations of both parties consistently supported a two-state solution – except when the White House was occupied by a narcissistic TV game-show host.

When negotiations for a two-state solution still seemed possible, I argued the Biden Administration should avoid ultimatums except as part of the price for a settlement. That no longer looks possible and I’ve lost my patience. I cannot support arming a so-called “ally” while it gives the finger to American presidents – as when Netanyahu showed up in Congress over the objections of President Obama – nor can I support arming Israel while it flouts American policy – pursuing the so-called “settlement” of the entire West Bank and an indiscriminate attack on innocent Gazans, both over American objections. Israel is entitled to pursue its own policy but it’s not entitled to American arms for it, or to act as if American support is guaranteed and unconditional no matter what they do.

Israelis are rightly concerned about the survival of Israel but don’t understand that their survival depends on public reactions. That may be morally wrong but reality and morality don’t track each other well. Einstein was Jewish but few if any Israelis are Einsteins. Israel needs support, here and elsewhere, but it has foolishly been trashing its supporters.  

Some Americans are convinced that support for Israel is unshakable because of the horrified reaction to the Holocaust, the general American consensus on freedom of religion plus the conviction of many evangelical Christians that reunification of ancient Israel is necessary to bring about what they call the Rapture, though they believe Israel would be destroyed after it.

But it is a disastrous mistake to think that American support is irrevocable. Palestine is Muslim; Israel is surrounded by Muslim nations; the world’s Muslims are a large multiple of the Jewish population; all of which puts pressure on America. American leftists used to support Israel but their support is clearly waning. Hamas was horrendously immoral but reactions recede in time while Israeli killing of innocents continuously irritates the conscience, making it impossible to preserve the world’s outrage with Hamas and keep support for Israel. In this world, America’s best gift to Israel would be tough love – an ultimatum that conditioned American support on stopping the war, stopping the eviction of Palestinians; and stopping the settlement of Jewish Israelis on what was Palestinian land.

Hamas will no doubt take advantage of any weakening of American support for Israel. But a battle for international support cannot be won simply by military means. Israel found and got rid of most of the perpetrators of the Olympic massacre with intelligence and police work. America has killed or captured many mass murderers without exterminating the communities, no matter how prejudiced, from which they came. The battle has to be fought that way. Israel cannot go it alone while surrounded by Muslim countries.

— Steve Gottlieb — If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on March 12, 2024.