Thursday, March 28, 2019

What Is A "Semite," Anyway?

Since I'm about to launch into a discussion of an understandably sensitive topic, I might as well clarify in advance my personal interest in it.

I am a recent convert to Judaism, having been married for nearly 27 years to a Jewish woman and, for much of that time, having been a fundamentalist Christian and then, for a time (and the subject of another post, soon), not much of anything, religiously speaking.  I came to Judaism not because of the influence of my wife and stepchildren (and their families), but  because it seemed, over time, the best and most enlightened way of having a relationship with G-d.  In particular, the influence of Jews in this country in culture and liberal politics has always given me a favorable view of both Jews and Judaism generally.

So I am proud to say that I am Jewish, to identify with the Jewish community, and to offer unqualified support to the current and continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state and a homeland for Jewish people from all over the world.  And, as a consequence, I treat any statement that impinges on those interests in any way, shape, or form with the strongest possible opposition, consistent with my values as a Jew.

And, I am sorry to say, recent remarks by Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota fall directly into that category.  I contributed to her campaign, and see then (and now) the value of having not only Muslims in Congress, but Muslims having a greater role in American life in general, not just because it's consistent with our values as a nation, but because it also offers a chance to formulate policy based upon a rational understanding of Muslims, and not an "understanding" largely shaped by Fox News.  I repudiate her statements without reservation or exception.

But calling Representative Omar's comments out as "anti-Semitic," as some conservative Jewish commentators such as John Podhoretz have done, is a very different story.  And I'm writing this now, in part, to explain why that is true.

Despite the ancient nature of Judaism, the term "anti-Semite" (and variations thereof) as a term for hatred of Jews and Judaism is relatively recent.  In fact, it has a very specific geographic origin:  Germany, where Adolf Hitler used it in his book "Mein Kampf" to explain in part the basis for his perverted view of the world and his people's place in it.  Given that fact, as well as the subsequent historical record of Nazism in the Third Reich and the post-World War II world, and the Holocaust above all, it is not surprising that the terms "Semite" and "Jew" have become interchangeable in contemporary culture.  And that is not entirely due to Hitler; the origins of the link predate him by a considerable margin.

Take a look at this Wikipedia article, which discusses in detail the biblical origins of the terms "Semite" and "Semitism."  Originally, the term covered a wide number of racial and religious cultures in the Middle East, including Arabs.  That ended beginning in the nineteenth century in Germany, when it became fashionable in Germany, Hitler's adopted country, to use the term as a form of shorthand for spreading hatred of Jews.  This became the cultural and political topsoil in which the seeds of Nazism were to sprout in the following century.

So, when conservative commentators use the words "anti-Semite" or "anti-Semitism" as a vehicle to attack the remarks of Representative Omar, and similar remarks made by Arabs or Muslims, or people otherwise linked to Semitic peoples or cultures, I am sorry to have to point out that they are (hopefully without meaning to do so) ratifying a use of language that has the most unsavory origins possible.

And that should trouble Podhoretz at least a little bit, not only because he is Jewish, and a staunch defender of Israel's existence and identity as a Jewish nation, but also because he was an advocate of spending trillions of dollars, at an additional and more horrific cost of thousands of lives--Jewish, Christian, and Muslim lives--on a war of choice that has destabilized the entire Middle East, and offered an invitation to Vladimir Putin to expand the influence of Russia in the region.  Russia, a nation with its own notorious history of persecuting Jews.

It should trouble Podhoretz, and others on his side of the political fence, that their indiscriminate use of these words may have played a role in the worldwide spread of violence against Muslims, including the recent tragedy in New Zealand.  Go ahead and say that I'm stretching a point; I don't think I am.  To borrow a quote from this article, "it's like a virus."  Go ahead and point out that the speaker was talking about white supremacy; try and tell me where white supremacy begins and hatred of the Jewish people begins.  I have followed bigotry as a Christian and a Jew, and I have always found white "pride" and hatred of Jews to be joined at the proverbial hip.

It should trouble Podhoretz that his words indirectly ratify the "soft bigotry" of evangelical Christians toward Jews, the kind that professes undying love for Israel while cloaking its desire to convert every single Jew on the planet, in and outside of Israel, under the pretext of "completing" their Judaism.  Yes, "completing" it.  Again, I lived in the belly of this particular beast for more than 12 years of my life, so I can assure you from personal experience that I know what I'm talking about.  Would it help if you had an example of what I'm talking about?  

Well, here you go.  Take a good look at it.  It's less than two minutes long, so it shouldn't be inconvenient to do so.  And overlook what you will in it.  For example, the fact that, for most of this prayer, she neither bows her head nor closes her eyes.  This is clearly not aimed at a deity, for whom no physical reverence is being shown; it's aimed for a far less supernatural audience.  Or, if you wish, you can overlook the no-fewer-than-13 references to the "name of Jesus"--I'm sorry, the "NAME OF JESUS"--mixed in with the neat little commercial for T**** and his allegedly pro-Israeli policy.

But what you shouldn't overlook is the fact that the leader of this prayer goes out of her way to show blatant and grotesque disrespect for the purpose of the legislative session:  the swearing-in of Pennsylvania's first Muslim state legislator.  Under the circumstances, there could not have been a worse way to open the session, unless possibly the phrase "Death to Islam" was thrown into the mix.

And sometimes, the bigotry is not always soft.  Sometimes, it's much more overt, as in this case.  Yes, I am sorry to say, there are still plenty of examples of this type:  evangelical ministers who profess to love Jews but make it clear that this "love" gets folded into a decidedly Christian agenda, not one that respect the rights of Jews and Christians to worship G-d in very different ways.  And, as Jeanine Pirro demonstrated recently, the hard bigotry has a place in our secular culture, where it extends to Muslims as well as Jews (and kudos to the very neoconservative--and Jewish--Bret Stephens for calling it out).

Above all, what should trouble Podhoretz is the fact that, in Israel, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has now become a persecutor not only of Muslims, but of other Jews.  With reference to the former, it has attempted to create security for Israel by turning the West Bank region into a de facto prison for Palestinians, and an opportunity to marginalize the Palestinian presence on the West Bank through additional settlements.  It has, in the process, only bought temporary "security" for the Jewish state by continuing war by other means, and created a new generation of terrorists in the process.  In Netanyahu's mind, the only road to "peace" in the Middle East is the one that enables one Semitic people to control the fate of another one.  (Again, do you think I'm exaggerating?  Take a look at this and tell me if you still feel that way).

Perhaps worst of all, it allows Netanyahu to define which Jews get to be protected by him at the expense of the rights of other people, including other Semitic people.  Israel was founded on the basic of a distinctly Jewish vision, but emphasized as part of that vision the rights of all people, Jewish or otherwise, to live in secular equality with each other and freely practice their respective faiths.  That was the Israel that I grew up supporting, and still support.  Netanyahu's Israel--an Israel where one part of the Jewish community can persecute another not merely with impunity, but with the blessing of the government--is not that Israel.  Read this very carefully, and see if you still disagree with me.

My point?

Podhoretz, and anyone else wishing to call out persecution of Jews (as should we all) should re-think what it means to reflexively use a phrase that itself was born out of bigotry, and whose continued use without a proper understanding of its place in history runs the risk of fueling bigotry toward the very people it should actually serve to protect.  Perhaps our particularly divisive moment in history, nationally and internationally, ironically provides an opportunity to re-think what we mean when we talk about anti-Semitism.  Perhaps we can broaden our usage of it in order to condemn not only hatred toward Judaism and Jews--which must and always should be condemned--but to also condemn hatred of the other cultures and peoples who rightly should be considered Semitic as well.  Whether Podhoretz likes it or not, Jews and Arabs are both children of Abraham; we might as well build our ability to relate to one another around that fact.

Perhaps doing so will help us to realize that someone from Representative Omar's background, as a refugee and a Muslim, has the capacity to broaden her understanding of human suffering, and call out injustice when she sees an example of it particularly offensive to Jews, as she did in this instance.  Where was Podhoretz's response to either her tweet, or to the offensive behavior of the Representative that led to it?  To borrow from the linked article itself:

{Crickets}

That's my point.  As long as Representative Omar continues in the right direction on her learning curve, I will continue to support her.  And as long as Podhoretz continues to use the phrase "anti-Semite" as an epithet of convenience against people to whom he is effectively related but with whom he lacks the ability to reason, I will continue to call him out.

Saturday, March 16, 2019

And, Just To Really Clinch The Case ...

... here are two news stories from the past week that should help Speaker Pelosi, and the rest of her caucus, understand that we are not in a place in which politicians have room for calculation.  In the first one, T**** threatens, not to subtlely, to use police officers, fire fighters, and even motorcycle gangs to protect himself from his political opponents.  In the second one, his former "fixer," Michael Cohen, raised the possibility of violence breaking out should he lose the 2020 presidential election.

The statement from T**** himself, made during an interview, is hard to evaluate in one sense.  On the one hand, it's made in the course of an interview with Breitbart, a right-wing media outlet, so there's the possibility that he's just throwing red meat to his political base.  It's also possible that, if the reports of his mental decline are true, he's just rambling on about whatever pops into what's left of his mind. 

On the other hand, even if it's just red meat, it's 100% prime.  Maybe 150%.  In my experience, in this hemisphere, the only leaders who go around bragging about having the support of the military are dictators south of the border, and not elected officials north of it.  Given what I know about our armed forces, I can't even begin to imagine them responding to a clearly illegal order from T****.  But I'd hate to have to see them put into that position in the first place.  They and their families have enough to contend with as there is.  And, even though I'm confident that 99 44/100% of our military personnel will always do the right thing, there's always the Jack D. Ripper scenario.  As for the bike gangs, I have no confidence in them at all.

But when you combine T****'s comments with Cohen's testimony before a congressional committee, it becomes impossible not to take the substance of the Breitbart interview more seriously.  Even if Cohen is a confessed perjurer--and he is--he is no longer in a position where he has to lie.  And the fact that his testimony mirrored the interview on the question of T****'s willingness to use violence as politics by another means should frighten anyone into taking action to prevent such a scenario from becoming a reality.

Madame Speaker, too many people have lost their lives in the past decade as a consequence of right-wing political violence.  Calculation at the price of even one more life simply isn't worth it.  Don't calculate, and don't legislate.  And don't investigate if the main purpose of doing so is to spin the wheels of the House and let someone else do the job that the Constitution has given to you and your members to do.

Impeach T****.

NOW.

The Case For Impeachment

In the nearly 250 years of the American republic, no President of the United States has been removed from office by way of impeachment, the provision provided in the Constitution for the removal from office of "all civil Officers of the United States" on "Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."  It has almost happened three times.  Two instances resulted in acquittals after trials in the Senate, and the third instance never got as far as a trial; it was resolved through the resignation of a President who tactfully noted in his resignation speech that he had lost his "political base."

Removing an elected President from office is not something anyone should relish.  It requires, however justly, the thwarting of the will of the people in what is hoped to have been a free and fair electoral process.  On another level, on which the President is viewed not merely as the leader of the national government but also the head of state, it is the closest thing the Constitution provides for regicide with due process.  Impeachment is a process with no political winners.  Yes, it is a legal process that gives Congress a procedural path for removing a chief executive who has acted in such a way that he or she can no longer be trusted with the constitutional requirement to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.  But it is also an occasion for national embarrassment.  Were a President to be actually removed from office through this process, the American people would have to confront an unpleasant reality:  they elected a crook.  In the meantime, on the political front, the process would serve to even further polarize partisan sentiment in a deeply polarized populace.

So there is a strong case for treating the impeachment option with respect to a presidency gone badly wrong as the fire alarm box of truly last resort.  One breaks the glass of that box not in malice or in anger, but with the sorrow that comes from a love of one's country and its standing in the world, as well as a knowing and utter lack of other options.

Which brings me, unsurprisingly, to the subject of D****** T****.  But it also inevitably brings me to the subject of the current partisan split between the two houses of Congress.

When the 2018 election produced a strong Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and a narrow Republican majority in the Senate, it created the obvious good news/bad news divide for the American people, perhaps the one that many of them wanted at this moment.  Each house could check the impulses of the other that voters hated, but neither of them were likely to work together on any legislation that each of them might actually pass--to say nothing of the ability to survive a presidential veto.  In fact, you need look no further than this past week for an example of that dynamic actually playing out:  the House and Senate passed a resolution designed to nullify T****'s declaration of a "national emergency" in connection with refugees at the southern border, which led directly to the first veto of his presidency. 

And that kumbayah moment on the part of a divided Congress was more about protecting its constitutional prerogative to spend than it was about accomplishing something in the political arena.  In other words, it was a marginally hopeful sign that even a divided Congress could respond to an existential emergency on behalf of constitutional government.  Which is more than even I expected out of this Congress, along with many others.  The hope that most of us had was the the Democratic House would use its powers of oversight and investigation to begin the formal process of impeaching the most impeachable President in the history of the republic.

I don't say that lightly, and I certainly don't enjoy saying it at all.  Nobody wanted this presidency less than I did (with the possible exception of T**** himself).  But, as I have said on more than one occasion, I have followed his public and private shenanigans for nearly 40 years, and nobody has been less surprised than I have been by the level of disgrace he has brought to his office and our nation.

By way of illustration, let's single out the two specific crimes mentioned in the constitutional language relative to impeachment:  treason, and bribery.  I'll take them in reverse order.

Before he even took the oath of office, T**** made it clear that he had absolutely no intention of separating himself from his world-wide business interests during his Administration.  He even floated the unbelievably ridiculous idea that he could serve on a part-time basis, running the country from the Trump Organization in New York while only occasionally coming to Washington.  He has, since then, disdained the idea that money could be a corrupting influence on a public official, arguing that people with money were the kind of "successful" people that the government needed.

Spoken with the kind of confidence that comes from someone who has always inherited or borrowed money, but never truly earned it.  Never mind.  The point here is this:  T**** was telling all of us, up front, that he was going to make no distinctions between the private and public sectors as President.  So far as he was concerned, he was free to mix them up as much as he wanted.  Or, to put it another way, he was willing to be bought if it served his personal interests, even if it harmed those of the U.S..

And some of those who were willing to do the buying also happened to be among those who led nations whose interests are not always allied with our own.  There is Saudi Arabia, for example, which provided most of the terrorists for the 9/11 attacks, and which executed a journalist who was an employee of a newspaper T**** hates and an lawful permanent resident of this county--doing so, in fact, with little more than a verbal slap on the wrist from Trump.  And then, most notoriously, there is Russia, where T**** has had business dealings for decades--dealings that, by his son's own admission, include loans from Russian lenders.  Effectively, that means loans from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a former KGB agent who runs the country on behalf of Russian mobsters with the same ruthlessness he displayed on behalf of the former Soviet government.  And equally effectively, it means that T**** is indebted to the Russian mob.  Yet he finds no irony or shame in trying to tout that relationship as an asset.

There you have it, folks.  Evidence of both bribery and treason.  Beyond a reasonable doubt?  Perhaps not.  Probable cause?  To quote someone who came a lot closer to being Vice President than she should have?  You betcha.  Or, to use an oft-used Maya Angelou quote:  when someone tells you who they are, believe them.  And is Congress--or, at least, the House--using its powers to delve into the probably cause it has had now for some time?

Unfortunately, not far enough.

Nancy Pelosi, in her second go-round as House Speaker, has decided that it isn't politically correct to pursue the question of impeachment, at least for the time being.  She has stated that the House will not move forward in any impeachment process until there is a bipartisan consensus that it should be done.  Otherwise, in her words, "he's just not worth it."

He's just not worth it.

Well, never mind whether he's worth it for the moment.  Maybe that would matter if we were just concerned with the question of feeding T****'s martyr complex, or the martyr complex of the T**** base, or the T**** media.  Maybe that would matter if we just didn't want to help him continue using his presidency to get ratings, or clicks.  But it doesn't.  Because there's that nagging question of whether WE are worth it.  We, the People, the ones who allegedly ordained and established the Constitution to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Don't we deserve as a people to know beyond any doubt that we have a President who is working for us, and not his business interests?  Hasn't the Constitution provided you with a tool for removing a President if he or she has been found to be guilty of treason and bribery, two things T**** may have found a way to mix?  And didn't the vote on the phony "national emergency" at the border suggest that even the current crop of Republicans can be persuaded to reach across the proverbial aisle in the face of an existential threat to our form of government?

Madame Speaker, the answer to all of those questions is yes.  And you owe it, as a constitutional officer and a leader in a co-equal branch of a tripartite government, to not only have the courage that this moment requires, but to impart some of that courage to the wavering Democrats in districts that T**** won in 2016.  Let them talk to some of the veterans of the Watergate era, if necessary, about the importance of stepping out of one's comfort zone when the moment requires it.  It is all too easy to pass the proverbial buck when it seems possible to do so--to Robert Mueller, to state law enforcement agencies, to the media, to all of them at once.  None of those parties has the specific duty to pursue the removal of a President who has broken the law and betrayed the trust of the American people.  You do.

When a house is burning down, you don't hope and pray that the water pipes will burst in time to contain the damage.  You call the fire fighters.  Madame Speaker, our constitutional house is burning down.  You and your colleagues are the fire fighters.  Your tools are not axes and hoses, but your authority as members of Congress and your political ability to build a credible case.  That always involves taking risks, and no one should take those risks likely.  But, as an attorney, I can tell you can cases do not always build themselves; more often than not, someone has to build them, even when the prospects of doing so are daunting.  Perhaps they are daunting here.  But going forward is absolutely necessary.

So do it, Madam Speaker.  This is not a moment for calculation, but a moment for resolute action.  To paraphrase Richard Nixon, who resigned as President rather than face an impeachment trial, and as he once said in the context of law enforcement, you have the tools.  Do the job.