Tue, 11/27/2012
David Bernstein
Special To The Jewish Week
All too often I hear people in the pro-Israel community lump together “liberals” and “leftists,” suggesting that these two distinct worldviews are equally critical of Israel. Such imprecise language does not help us improve Israel’s standing in the U.S. Liberals and leftists see the world in very different ways, and those differences matter in how we advance understanding of Israel in the U.S.
Let’s take a look at two disparate ideological archetypes:
Janet, 48, runs a food co-op in Boulder, Colo. She’s involved in a range of progressive issues, from protesting the Keystone gas pipeline to Occupy Boulder to the Colorado Progressive Alliance, which fights against “systemic demographic inequities that have allowed corporate and high-wealth interests to grow at the expense of low-income and people of color.”
Jack, 53, is an attorney in Philadelphia. While not especially politically active, he consistently votes for Democratic candidates for higher office, and supports marriage equality, separation of church and state and a stronger safety net for the disadvantaged.
Jack is a liberal and Janet is a leftist. Knowing nothing else about them, it is likely that Jack is mildly supportive but troubled about reports of Israel’s waywardness, while Janet is highly disapproving of “Israeli occupation and militancy.” Jack’s long-term view of Israel is in play; Janet’s is not.
The pro-Israel community should spend the lion’s share of its resources on the Jacks of the world — the movable middle — who are crucial to maintaining two-party support for Israel, and a minority of its resources on the Janets, who will never be close friends of the Jewish state. More importantly, mainstream liberals will have a far greater impact than leftists on the future of American foreign policy. (Likewise, we should spend a minority of our resources on loyal supporters on the political right who may need less convincing and attention.) In order to allocate resources accordingly, we need to know what distinguishes liberals from leftists.
The far left offers not only a set of policies to confront social inequities, it proffers a set of causes for why there are social inequities in the first place. It believes that there are “haves” and “have-nots,” and that the “haves” cause the adverse conditions of the “have nots.”
Classical liberals, on the other hand, typically offer only policy prescriptions for assisting the “have-nots,” but avoid placing all the blame on the “haves” for social inequities. They believe, for example, that the rich have a responsibility to help the poor, but did not force them into poverty. They might say, “It’s complicated.”
One expression of the far left’s worldview is “dependency theory,” which holds that resources flow from poor countries to wealthy countries, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. In other words, the reason that there are rich and poor nations is the rich nations exploit the resources of the poor nations.
Another expression is the notion of “institutional racism,” which argues that racial inequality is caused by economic and political structures that place racial minorities at a disadvantage in relation to whites. The institutional racism concept doesn’t just highlight racial inequality, it tells you the cause in no uncertain terms.
Both dependency theory and the institutional racism charge are forms of political and economic determinism — power structure determines behavior — which consigns no agency to the weaker party.
Those who buy into a zero-sum-game explanation of inequality are likely to see Israel as a powerful country that brought about Palestinian suffering. If someone believes that social ills in Latin America are a function of Western domination, they will also likely believe that Hamas’ rockets or suicide terrorists are a function of Israeli occupation. In this worldview, Israel has agency, and the Palestinians don’t.
While we might prevail upon the far left to view Israel in the context of the much larger Arab world in which the Jewish state is the weaker party, leftist views on the victimizers and victims are mostly set in stone and out of reach. Fortunately, the anti-Israel left constitutes only about eight percent of the U.S. population, and has much less sway on mainstream sensibilities than its counterpart in Europe
The best we can do with the American far left is to steer away some of its less dogmatic adherents from de-legitimizing rhetoric and activities, such as boycotts.
While Janet may never support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, she may be convinced that there are better ways of advancing peace than having her food co-op boycott Israeli products. To contain such divestment efforts, the pro-Israel community should exert some effort to persuade Janet to find more productive ways to show empathy to the perceived underdog.
Pro-Israel organizations should make their highest priority, however, maintaining Jack’s local Democratic party platform of support for U.S.-Israel relations. Giving Jack more attention than Janet is hard because Jack is not contemplating boycotts. He’s just slowly drifting. To win over Jack, we need to hold more missions to Israel with non-Jewish elites, encourage more pro-Israel voices to take a role in left-of-center causes, engage in more intergroup relations with ascending minority groups and do more cultivation of Democratic politicians.
Not only are liberals and leftists not equally critical of Israel, they are not equally critical to Israel.
Remember: Jack’s the linchpin.
David Bernstein is executive director of The David Project, a national pro-Israel advocacy group based in Boston.
daddyholes posted:Jack is a liberal and Janet is a leftist . . .
A dedicated member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist) and a beautiful Labourite fall in love the summer before she goes off to university. She's got every thing going for her. He's going for her with every thing he's got.
Edited by ArisVelouchiotis ()
Barbarossa posted:Every time I read one of these cold blooded "strategies for Israel" it makes me think about how Israel is making the racist stereotype of the Jew real through their actions as a state, and it is kind of funny but mostly not.
i think about how nakedly their propagandists exploit identity and drag other jews into their vortex of shit by getting these things published in magazines with names like the jewish week. hi Baffler.
edit: in thinking abou this, if I either gave money to or recieved money from HAMAS I think I could or would be considered a supporter of terrorism and thus a terrorist myself loln so funny
Edited by Barbarossa ()
daddyholes posted:i think about how nakedly their propagandists exploit identity and drag other jews into their vortex of shit by getting these things published in magazines with names like the jewish week. hi Baffler.
for anyone not a member of the site this, post got a million upvotes pretty much instantly because we here at the rhizzone are like you and create shareable disruptive thought ware technology wiuth you in mind.
Barbarossa posted:Every time I read one of these cold blooded "strategies for Israel" it makes me think about how Israel is making the racist stereotype of the Jew real through their actions as a state, and it is kind of funny but mostly not.
hindsight is 6,000,000/6,000,000
babyfinland posted:no one cares about you barbarossa. you wont go to jail and no one will read ur thing
classic babyfinland post. glad he's back to brighten up the place
babyhueypnewton posted:babyfinland posted:
no one cares about you barbarossa. you wont go to jail and no one will read ur thing
classic babyfinland post. glad he's back to brighten up the place
get better at posting and eventually people will be happy to read your posts, too
babyfinland posted:no one cares about you barbarossa. you wont go to jail and no one will read ur thing
they take crust punks and set them up to bomb car bridges for Critical Mass or whatever, and throw muslim teen engineers into supermax for having a koran in their house, of course they'll put a guy getting that HAMAS money in teh jail. U fuckin nonce
State.gov posted:Legal Ramifications of Designation
It is unlawful for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide "material support or resources" to a designated FTO. (The term "material support or resources" is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(1) as " any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who maybe or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(2) provides that for these purposes “the term ‘training’ means instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(3) further provides that for these purposes the term ‘expert advice or assistance’ means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.’’
And here is the penalty for knowingly supporting a group designated as a terrorist group:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339B
Cornell Law Online posted:(a) Prohibited Activities.—
(1) Unlawful conduct.— Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. To violate this paragraph, a person must have knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization (as defined in subsection (g)(6)), that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorist activity (as defined in section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act), or that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorism (as defined in section 140(d)(2) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989).
(2) Financial institutions.— Except as authorized by the Secretary, any financial institution that becomes aware that it has possession of, or control over, any funds in which a foreign terrorist organization, or its agent, has an interest, shall—
(A) retain possession of, or maintain control over, such funds; and
(B) report to the Secretary the existence of such funds in accordance with regulations issued by the Secretary.
(b) Civil Penalty.— Any financial institution that knowingly fails to comply with subsection (a)(2) shall be subject to a civil penalty in an amount that is the greater of—
(A) $50,000 per violation; or
(B) twice the amount of which the financial institution was required under subsection (a)(2) to retain possession or control.
(c) Injunction.— Whenever it appears to the Secretary or the Attorney General that any person is engaged in, or is about to engage in, any act that constitutes, or would constitute, a violation of this section, the Attorney General may initiate civil action in a district court of the United States to enjoin such violation.
(b) Civil Penalty.— Any financial institution that knowingly fails to comply with subsection (a)(2) shall be subject to a civil penalty in an amount that is the greater of—
(A) $50,000 per violation; or
(B) twice the amount of which the financial institution was required under subsection (a)(2) to retain possession or control.
You can also get charged under the PATRIOT act but only a few people ever have been:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providing_material_support_for_terrorism
Wikipedia.org posted:Providing material support for terrorism is a provision of the USA PATRIOT Act, codified at section 2339B, title 18 of the United States Code, which prohibits material support to groups designated as terrorists. The four types of support described are “training,” “expert advice or assistance,” “service,” and “personnel.” In June 2010 the United States Supreme Court upheld the law in an as-applied challenge in the case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, but also left open the door for other as-applied challenges. Plaintiffs in the case had sought to help the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam learn means of peacefully resolving conflicts.
donating one dollar to HAMAS or Cuba could right now garner you anywhere from 1 year to 15 years to life in prison, depending on how deadly your donation is considered by some judge somewhere. Donations to Israel and Israeli groups are of course tax deductible.
If I were to become a professional "pro-HAMAS" advocate and take donations of cash from private citizens or groups in return for my services, I may be able to be charged under one of these kooky laws. And if I was paid by HAMAS to do so then I would go straight to superjail. But the Finnish child has a good point, nobody'd probably care at all if I did that thing, im not that special but lol I wouldn't risk it
edit: nvm i read the last bit of your post where u said i was right. im glad u didnt take personal offense at my comment
Edited by babyfinland ()
-essay by aerdil, american and pro-hamas spokesperson, age 26
Materially supporting Hamas. User loses posting privileges for 1488 days.
babyfinland posted:barbarossa write those most endangering thing you can and post it here. if you get in any trouble i will pay anyone who quotes this post $500
what if he gets in trouble with his bourgeois parents & they stop payin' rent, tahts only gonna last a month tops
babyfinland posted:barbarossa write those most endangering thing you can and post it here. if you get in any trouble i will pay anyone who quotes this post $500
edit: nvm i read the last bit of your post where u said i was right. im glad u didnt take personal offense at my comment
Pay me $500.
EmanuelaOrlandi posted:wow tom you must be making scrilla. five hundred whole dollars? looks like tom finalyl got a job guys
who wants a stack
Edited by Peelzebub ()
Edited by Peelzebub ()