Jeffrey Goldberg

Here are two stories that will leave even the most committed cynic slack-jawed in wonder at America's promise, and also make you wonder if the people who think we should close our borders to immigrants are total idiots. (h/t Andrew Exum on the first story, Scott Stossel on the second).
This is from the AP, via Stars and Stripes:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Orlando Morel was 6 years old when he and his mother left Haiti on a crowded small wooden boat destined for America. Now 24, Morel remembers the blue of the ocean everywhere. And the hunger.

When a piece of bread fell into the water, Morel quickly scooped it up. "I will never forget that taste," he said, recalling the salty, soggy bread.

Nor will he forget when the Coast Guard showed up in a white boat and rescued him, his mother and other passengers.

Eternally grateful, the rescue led Morel to join the Coast Guard, and on Wednesday he will graduate from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut. He will serve on a cutter out of Florida whose mission will include migrant interdiction in the very waters where Morel was rescued nearly two decades ago.

"I can put myself in their shoes," said Morel, who can still speak Creole.

He says he would probably be dead had the Coast Guard not found him and his fellow migrants, who were lost and out of food. So, he's excited at the prospect of saving lives, just as his was saved.

"I don't think that anything I can do will be enough as payback," Morel said.

Read the whole thing; it's astonishing. Here's the second piece, from The Los Angeles Times:

NEW YORK-- For years, Gac Filipaj mopped floors, cleaned toilets and took out the trash at Columbia University.

A refugee from war-torn Yugoslavia, he eked out a living at the Ivy League school. But Sunday was payback time: The 52-year-old janitor donned a cap and gown to graduate with a bachelor's degree in classics.

As a Columbia employee, his classes were free. His favorite subject was the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca, he said during a break from his work at Lerner Hall, the student union building he cleans.

"I love Seneca's letters because they're written in the spirit in which I was educated in my family: not to look for fame and fortune, but to have a simple, honest, honorable life," he said.

His graduation with honors capped a dozen years of study, including readings in ancient Latin and Greek.

"This is a man with great pride, whether he's doing custodial work or academics," said Peter Awn, dean of Columbia's School of General Studies and professor of Islamic studies. "He is immensely humble and grateful, but he's one individual who makes his own future."

Filipaj, now an American citizen, was accepted at Columbia after learning English. His mother tongue is Albanian.

An ethnic Albanian and Roman Catholic, he fled Montenegro in 1992 as a brutal civil war loomed. He was about to be drafted into the Yugoslav army led by Serbs, many of whom considered Albanians their enemy. He had nearly finished law school in Belgrade.:

Today is the day Palestinians commemorate the "Nakba," the "disaster" that brought about the rebirth of Israel. I'm an advocate of a Palestinian state on 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza (with land swaps, obviously -- the nefarious Obama plan that the majority of Israelis also endorse) and of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, but what I won't do is label as a "nakba" a war that saw the 600,000 Jews of Palestine prevent their own slaughter at the hands of invading Arab armies.

The Middle East suffers today from the crucial mistakes made by Arab leaders in the late 1940s. The United Nations, you'll recall, voted to divide Palestine into two equal halves, one for a Jewish state, the other for an Arab state. The Jews accepted the plan; the Arab leadership, thinking its armies were strong enough to annihilate the Jews, invaded, and then proceeded to lose. As a consequence of the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees -- some were expelled by Jewish forces in the course of fighting, some fled, others were encouraged to leave by their leaders. Today, many of the descendants of these refugees are still warehoused in camps with the approval of the Arab states which, one might think, would have paid to resettle these descendants of refugees. Other refugee populations from the  tumultuous period following World War II have all been resettled, obviously.

The disaster, in other words, was the result of a series of mistakes made the leaders of the Arab states in 1948. There is not much recognition of this fact. Instead, those who romanticize the "nakba" argue that the Jews did not have a right to any slice of their historic homeland and that the Arabs were right to try to strangle the Jewish state at birth.

The Arab-Israeli parliamentarian Ahmed Tibi, speaking in commemoration of this day, said, "Recognition and empathy of the others' suffering is a lofty, humane value and a step towards peace between nations." This is absolutely true. Israelis should recognize that innocent Palestinians suffered because of their country's War of Independence. Palestinians today are not to blame for the current situation. But it is also true that men like Tibi should interrogate themselves about why the Palestinians became stateless. If Palestinian Arabs could bring themselves to recognize the simple fact that the Jewish people are from Palestine, much good would come.

This is not a commentary on Israel post-1967. The war that brought the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli control in 1967 was not of Israel's making, but efforts following that war to colonize the land with Jewish settlers in order to deny it to a future Palestinian state, well, these efforts have been a nakba for everyone. I'm not arguing that without settlements there would today be a Palestinian state on the West Bank and peace throughout the land, but I do know the chance for peace would be much greater if Israel didn't succumb to temptation and settle these territories. But "The Nakba"? Palestinians should open themselves up to the idea that this nakba was avoidable. And if this Nakba had been avoided, a lot of other disasters would have been avoided, as well.

And speaking of nakbas, here is a report about another, more silent nabka, one that caused the movement of 850,000 people across the Middle East, but one that doesn't get that much attention, in part because these refugees were cared for by their brethren. Matti Friedman writes about a different nakba, a Jewish nakba.

I have spent a great deal of time in the past four years interviewing people born and raised in Aleppo, Syria. Some of these people, most of whom are now in their eighties, are descended from families with roots in Aleppo going back more than two millennia, to Roman times. None of them lives there now.

On November 30, 1947, a day after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews, Aleppo erupted. Mobs stalked Jewish neighborhoods, looting houses and burning synagogues; one man I interviewed remembered fleeing his home, a barefoot nine-year-old, moments before it was set on fire. Abetted by the government, the rioters burned 50 Jewish shops, five schools, 18 synagogues and an unknown number of homes. The next day the Jewish community's wealthiest families fled, and in the following months the rest began sneaking out in small groups, most of them headed to the new state of Israel. They forfeited their property, and faced imprisonment or torture if they were caught. Some disappeared en route. But the risk seemed worthwhile: in Damascus, the capital, rioters killed 13 Jews, including eight children, in August 1948, and there were similar events in other Arab cities.

At the time of the UN vote, there were about 10,000 Jews in Aleppo. By the mid-1950s there were 2,000, living in fear of the security forces and the mob. By the early 1990s no more than a handful remained, and today there are none. Similar scripts played out across the Islamic world. Some 850,000 Jews were forced from their homes.

Read the whole thing.

Here's the quote of the day (from yesterday), from a story by the New York Times' man in Tehran, Thomas Erdbrinck:

"Without violating any international laws or the nonproliferation treaty, we have managed to bypass the red lines the West created for us," said Hamidreza Taraghi, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is close to the negotiating team.

There's been a lot of happy talk about the possibilities of real breakthrough at the upcoming P5 + 1 talks in Baghdad next week, in which the members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, try to steer Iran to an off-ramp. I've even been cautiously pessimistic (as opposed to vociferously pessimistic). But I keep hearing this little whisper from them that know: "The Iranians are better at negotiating than the West."

The Israelis are aware of this, and are worried that Iran will game the system until the point at which they have entered the so-called "zone of immunity," in which their nuclear program is so hardened and buried that no Israeli attack could set it back. This is precisely the worry of the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, and President Obama is keenly aware of Barak's worry. This is from my Bloomberg View column today:

Obama believes that Barak, and not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is the Israeli leader agitating most vociferously for a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, a strike the Obama administration thinks would be grossly premature and quite possibly catastrophic. (Your humble columnist concurs with this assessment.)

If Barak sees these talks as productive -- especially in light of evidence that the U.S. and its allies are doing a credible job of keeping Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold -- then Obama will have successfully pushed off an Israeli strike, at least until after the U.S. presidential election in November.

Barak has made clear that he seeks one thing above all in the nuclear talks: for Iran to shut down its formerly secret nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, near the city of Qom. Obama has made Barak's preoccupation with Fordo his own.

Anthony Cordesman of the The Center for International and Strategic Studies has published an extremely thorough report about Iran's nuclear program that should quell the doubts of those who believe that Iran's nuclear pursuits are benign or even TBD. The report, based on close readings of past IAEA reports as well as other declassified documents, paints a very sober, Monday-ruining kind of picture about the advanced scope of the Iranian program, the inadequacy of the current P5+1 agenda, and the limited efficacy of a potential strike on the program.

This report, taken with last week's news of the suspicious scrubbing of an Iranian nuclear site (along with the release yesterday of a drawing of an even more suspicious explosives containment chamber), have raised considerable alarm. In Haaretz, Anshel Pfeffer writes about the report in an article that, in the spirit of Israeli subtlety, is titled "The most important report on nuclear Iran that you are likely to read." A bit of the summary here:

Anyone who believes that Iran is not yet actively pursuing a nuclear-weapons program and merely developing the capabilities is committing an act of willful delusion. The intelligence supplied to the IAEA and verified by different "member countries," is clear on that Iran has been working on a wide range of projects for over a decade, all of which are specifically aimed at acquiring the capabilities necessary not only to enrich uranium to weapons-grade, but to assemble a nuclear advice that can be launched by long-range missile. Talk of a fatwa against nuclear weapons is just that: talk.

Despite sanctions and international monitoring, Iran has received highly specialized instruments and equipment, benefited from the knowledge of foreign nuclear weapons designers and made impressive advance in its own scientific centers, so as to be able to carry out most of the necessary testing for a nuclear device, without actually creating a nuclear detonation. There has also been preparation for an actual nuclear test.

Ahmed Rashid, writing in Haaretz, outlines what he sees as a highly likely response in the Muslim world to an Israeli, or American, strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. It's a worst-case scenario, but nevertheless a plausible one (h/t Hussein Ibish). Rashid says the locus of rage would be in Shia communities, but Sunnis might also erupt, as well. By the way, if someone has a compelling counter-argument, please send it along. Rashid:

In countries that border Iran, such as Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, all of which are subject to a powerful U.S. military or political presence, Iran, to protect itself against possible American incursions or sabotage, has trained local militants to attack U.S. targets in their respective countries in the event of any attack on Iran. This program had its origins during the second term of the Bush administration, when Vice President Dick Cheney spoke openly about attacking Iran. Iran organized and planned for retaliatory attacks against U.S. targets everywhere that it was in a position to arm and fund clandestine groups.

Thus, the Shia protest in the Muslim world would likely be organized and widespread, and would target Americans and Israelis, and include major acts of terrorism and extreme violence.

At the same time, anti-Americanism is reaching dangerous levels in predominantly Sunni countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both countries have extremist Sunni groups that engage in terrorism, as well as conservative Islamic parties that participate in electoral politics. Any attack on Iran could see a merging of all these Sunni elements as well as of the broader Sunni population, and one could expect widespread anger in the streets.

Such widespread and angry protests could make it almost impossible for Americans or Israelis to travel, work or do business across the Arab world and the Indian subcontinent. Such protests would almost invariably wipe out the gains and aspirations of the democratic movements within the Arab Spring countries, and lead to a reinforcing of Islamic fundamentalist parties, which could be expected to jump on the anti-American bandwagon. Widespread Sunni protests would invariably make the U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan planned for 2014 much more difficult and possibly lead to the strengthening of the Taliban. It also could lead to a possible new intifada among the Palestinians, who in any case see little hope of an agreement with Israel on a two-state solution.

Sorry about the slow output here, I'm tied-up at the moment working on a longer piece for The Atlantic, plus Peter Beinart and I have to plan our gay wedding (picking a rabbi has been difficult, but I have a feeling that President Obama might agree to perform a civil ceremony -- or semi-civil ceremony, at least) but here are a few of things worth reading:

1) Talya Minsberg's piece on the Atlantic.com about the new Israeli ban on underweight models. V. interesting;

2) Aaron David Miller on how to successfully negotiate a peace deal;

3) A story about an 18-month-old child on the TSA's no-fly-list (really);

4) This argument, from the International Crisis Group, about why a hiatus in the Middle East peace process is actually a good thing;

5) A report from Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman about certifiably insane ideas floating around a Defense Department staff college;

6) David Makovsky's analysis of the new Israeli governing coalition, in which he argues that Iran is a key to understanding why Netanyahu brought onboard Shaul Mofaz;

7) And this piece, it which it is noticed that The Atlantic runs a lot of articles about men and their shortcomings.

Jonathan Tobin writes in praise of my Bloomberg View column yesterday, in which I noted that the Obama Administration is rhetorically quite opposed to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's slaughter of his own citizens, but that it doesn't match the rhetoric with actions that would hasten Assad's departure. Tobin contrasts my understanding of Obama's inaction on Syria with my views on Administration policy toward Iran:

This is, after all, the same Jeffrey Goldberg who has consistently sought to assure friends of Israel that President Obama's stance on Iran is more than mere rhetoric though, in fact, it has consisted of little but a collection of ominous adverbs punctuated by defenses of engagement and diplomacy since he took office. Granted, the president has reluctantly embraced sanctions on Iran (though he was way behind France and Britain on this score), but it is fairly obvious that he did so only to maneuver Israel into a situation where it could not attack the Islamist regime on its own.

Goldberg rightly dismisses the notion that Obama's rhetoric about Syria consists of anything more than lip service, yet he believes Obama can be trusted to eventually escalate his stance on the Islamist ayatollahs from rhetoric to action. When people wonder why many in Israel have little faith in the president's word on Iran, especially once he gets the "flexibility" that a second term would provide, perhaps we should refer them to Goldberg's column on the administration's verbal offensive against Assad.

The reason I criticize Obama's Syria policy and don't criticize his Iran policy is that they are two different policies.  Obama, in my opinion, has been resolute in seeking crippling sanctions against the Iranian regime; he has supported many acts of subterfuge and sabotage against Iran's nuclear program; he has supported a strong Israeli defense and he has funded various anti-missile programs that directly aid Israel; and he has gone on record numerous times saying that he will not allow Iran to cross the nuclear threshold. The Syria policy flummoxes me, for the obvious reason that the downfall of the Assad regime would be very damaging to its Iranian ally. I hope Obama toughens his Syria policy. But what he's doing in Iran is different than what he's doing in Syria. If you don't believe me, ask the leadership of the Israeli defense establishment, many of whom believe Obama when he suggests he will stop Iran by force, if necessary, from developing nuclear weapons.

A careful study of the rhetoric emanating from the Obama Administration on the subject of Bashar al-Assad's brutalization of his people shows a distressing gap -- a yawning gap, a chasm, even -- between what the Administration says and what it does. What it does is not much. There are plenty of excellent reasons, of course, why the U.S. should not want to involve its own forces in the conflict, but there's a great deal the U.S. could do short of direct military intervention to help speed the downfall of the regime. The regime's end would have an obvious humanitarian impact, and it would also be of strategic use to the U.S. But American sanctions have been comparatively weak, and there is hardly any attempt to create safe zones, or to help Syrian opposition forces organize.

In my Bloomberg View column this week, I look at the U.S. campaign against Bashar, which is mainly waged through the deployment of very strong adjectives and adverbs. The words the Administration uses to describe Bashar's crimes are appropriate, but they long ago began to ring hollow:

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, became a point person in deploying the full might of the American thesaurus. On Nov. 28, Rice accused Assad of perpetrating "outrageous and now well-documented atrocities," and noted that the "patience" of the international community had "evaporated." On Feb. 7, she reported Assad was now "off the reservation."

On Feb. 9, Rice said the world was "horrified to watch the violence" in Syria. On Feb. 23, she said the Syrian government "has accelerated the killing of its people," and the violence "has continued unabated for nearly a year at a breathtaking scale." On April 2, she spoke of Assad's "massive intensification of violence." She also said she expected the Syrian government would implement a UN-negotiated cease-fire "without any conditions or codicils." (The word "codicil" is known to strike fear in the hearts of dictators.)

Rice later said "a moment of truth" was coming up "very soon." It is hard to imagine the Assad regime can take such punishment much longer.

You can read the rest of it here.

The largest opposition party in Israel, Kadima, just joined Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's coalition, obviating the need for elections in September, and turning Bibi into something akin to what only Iran has previously had: a Supreme Leader. (Granted, one supreme leader came to power democratically, and the other did not.)  Bibi now stands to be the strongest prime minister of Israel in recent history. The newly-elected leader of Kadima, Shaul Mofaz, recently said he would never in a million years join a coalition with Netanyahu, so this was inevitable, I guess. Speculation is rampant about why Bibi brought in Mofaz. Here are some scenarios:

1) Bibi is forming the closest thing he can to a national unity government in order to strike Iran if he feels the upcoming P5 + 1 talks about Iran's nuclear program have failed. Mofaz is on record against a raid, but his support would be important, and no doubt Netanyahu (and his sidekick, Ehud Barak, the defense minister) could convince him that it is necessary, if they come to the conclusion that they have to act.

2) Bibi wanted to reduce the power of his party's right-wing by diluting it with the centrists of Kadima; this he has now done. This gives him slightly more flexibility to reopen negotiations with the Palestinians. Do not, however, hold your breath waiting for meaningful negotiations. I wish he would go forward, of course, because Netanyahu is the only Israeli politician who could deliver 75 percent of Israel's Jewish population to a compromise deal.

3) Bibi wanted to kill the Left, in particular a new party, Yesh Atid ("There is a Future"), and the Labor party, whose apoplectic leader, Shelly Yacimovich, just accused Bibi and Mofaz of being very "masculine," which is not the most effective insult in Israel. The "There is a Future" Party has a dubious future, and Yacimovich, though now the head of the opposition, is, at best, a speed bump.

4) Bibi wanted as broad a coalition as possible so that he could reform the way ultra-Orthodox men are drafted into the army without fearing the loss of his ultra-Orthodox coallition partners.

5) Bibi wants  to euthanize Kadima -- a Likud offshoot -- and bring its members back to the party. Mofaz knew he would get slaughtered in upcoming elections, so is more than happy to subcontract out his future to Bibi.

6) Bibi wants to be able to say to President Obama: More than three-quarters of the Knesset is with me. I am Israel. 

7) All of these things, with a special emphasis on numbers 1 and 6.

Bibi Netanyahu seems to have solidified his coalition through 2013 by bringing in the Kadima Party, formerly headed by his arch-foe Tzipi Livni, now headed by his not-so-arch foe Shaul Mofaz. If the reports out of Israel are true, this means no election September 4, and it means that Netanyahu can proceed apace with whatever he's thinking about doing re: Iran's nuclear sites. This is not to say that he brought Kadima into his coalition to clear the way for an attack; Mofaz -- Iranian-born, by the way -- is on record as opposing an Iran strike, though people I speak to say he would back such a strike in a crunch (namely, if he saw proof Iran was rapidly approaching the "zone of immunity," in which it could enrich uranium in impregnable bunkers). In any case, all this happened because Livni lost the leadership of Kadima. She and Netanyahu could not have coexisted in the same government. On the Let, there seems to be some unhappiness on the left about this deal:

Meretz head Zahava Gal-On expressed outrage over the surprise move, calling it a "mega-stinking maneuver by a prime minister who wants to avoid elections and a desperate opposition chairman facing a crash."

Mega-stinking! That's much worse than regular stinking.

The left, of course, doesn't matter very much in Israel these days. (This unity government is a particular challenge for a new party created by the television personality Yair Lapid.)  For Mofaz, this is a deal that saves his party until it can be reintegrated into the Likud (Kadima, created by the former prime minister and Likud splittist Ariel Sharon, hasn't had much reason to exist) and Bibi gets stability. And stability is what he likes, for its own sake, and also because he would want to lead as broad a coalition as possible should the Iran issue come to a head.

The prominent Israeli commentator Amnon Abramovich argues that Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to go for early electons -- now scheduled for September 4 -- means that Netanyahu (and his defense minister, Ehud Barak), will still have plenty of time to launch a preemptive strike before the American presidential election in early November:

After the September elections, which all polls show Netanyahu winning easily, he will head a transition government for several weeks while a new coalition is formed. During that period, Netanyahu "will not be beholden to the voters," and will be free to take decisions on Iran that many Israelis might not support, Abramovich said....

And finally, said Abramovich, the September-October period would see Obama, who has publicly urged more patience in allowing diplomacy and sanctions to have their impact on Iran, in the final stages of the presidential election campaign, with a consequent reduced capacity to try to pressure Israel into holding off military intervention.

Obama, "on the eve of elections, won't dare criticize Israel," said Abramovich. From Netanyahu's point of view, "the conditions would be fantastic."

Seems doubtful to me, for what it's worth. Too many moving parts, too many risks involved -- Netanyahu doesn't like risk (especially when compared to his militarily adventurous predecessors) and the timeline is very short. It's hard to believe he would order a (cataclysmic, IMO) strike on Iran while trying to build a governing coalition for his next term.  I also tend to think he would not order a strike during Obama's second term, should Obama win reelection. Abramovich is right that Obama would have a hard time being critical of Israel before the upcoming American election. But he would be freer to punish Israel after. What I wouldn't rule out is a Netanyahu-ordered strike before he goes to elections. Not immediately -- he needs to see what America can accomplish in the upcoming negotiations with Iran (my prediction: nothing much), but sometime after that, especially if intelligence suggests that Iran is moving centrifuges into the hardened facility at Fordow at a more rapid clip. But an October surprise? Not probable. 

Andrew Sullivan and I hugged it out at at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner last weekend (and we have witnesses, in case anyone doubts it). We do this from time to time, but it doesn't mean that he's going to stop thinking I'm some sort of apologist for fascism, or that I'm going to stop thinking he holds Israel to a ridiculous triple-standard. It's always nice to see him, though. Don't ask me to explain why.

Nevertheless, I wish I had known last weekend what I know this weekend, which is that the  Equality Forum 2012 Summit meeting in Philadelphia, the largest gathering of LGBT civil rights activists in the country, has made Israel its "featured country," and it hosted the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, at its convention yesterday.  I would have loved to have shared this news with Andrew, who is, of course, one of the most influential thinkers on gay rights in the world.

The honor granted to Israel by the Equality Forum comes after Gaycities.com named Tel Aviv the best gay city in the world for 2011. I suspect this recognition derives not only from the fact that gay Tel Avivis, and gay visitors, find the place so welcoming and open, but because Tel Aviv is also a refuge of sorts for gay Palestinians, who, if they lived the lives they were meant to live in their home cities and villages, would risk isolation, excoriation and even death.  (Here is an interesting piece from the Times of Israel about Tel Aviv's "Palestinian Queer Party.") My impression is that fair-minded gay rights activists know that Israel is the one place in the Middle East in which gays and lesbians can serve in their armies and run for elective office and have domestic partnership rights, and most gay rights activists judge Israel not against a utopian standard but the standards of its neighborhood -- and the standards of its foremost adversary, Iran, where men have been executed for the state for being gay. (Read this report from Human Rights Watch if you want to know just how atrocious is the level of anti-gay persecution in Iran.)

Now there are some people who say that Israel is engaged in "pink-washing," an attempt to convince the world to ignore the plight of the Palestinians by focusing on how progressive Israel can be toward the LGBT community. Israel's tolerance for gays, of course, long pre-dates the modern leftist anti-Israel delegitimization movement, which makes "pink-washing" one of its main charges, and, in any case, a society can't be forced by its government to be accepting of gays of lesbians simply by explaining that tolerance makes for good propaganda. And most important: It's not pink-washing if it's true, and it is true that Israel is a pretty good place to be if you are gay. Israel is progressive on matters related to gays and lesbians because it is, still, an essentially liberal, free and democratic state. There are forces lined-up on the right side of the political spectrum trying very hard to turn Israel into an illiberal place, and they must be fought. But I do not think they will win.

Here's an excerpt from the Globes story on Michael Oren's speech to the Equality Forum:

Oren mentioned three cases that highlight Israel's liberal attitude toward the LBGT community: two women IDF soldiers who harassed a lesbian soldier were sentence by a military court to prison; and an Israeli diplomat, who received a top posting in Europe, asked and received without further ado full rights for his partner; and the Israeli government did not capitulate to intense pressure from religious parties to cancel the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, which was held to great success under heavy police protection.

"Our activists have faced many challenges, but they can build on a solid foundation of liberty," said Oren. "Today, Israel's LBGT community is part of the country's diverse and thriving social fabric. Together, we are soldiers, professors, legislators, judges, factory workers, members of the medical professions, and teachers. Together, we are not gays, heterosexuals, bisexuals, or transgenders, but proud Israelis."

Oren added, "In fact, two Palestinian organizations that are fighting for LBGT rights in the West Bank, operate out of Israel because they cannot operate freely in the Palestinian Authority."

Oren said that it is not difficult to be more liberal than Israel's neighbors, adding that Israel must be more advanced not only in the region, but in the world. "We must never cease our efforts to remove the remaining obstacles to total equal rights in Israel. We must ensure that these rights are guaranteed in law, and we must ensure that abuse at school, intolerance by certain religious circles, and public prejudice become unacceptable. Period," he said.

UPDATE: Yes, I'm aware Andrew called Sarah Schulman's infamous pinkwashing op-ed for The New York Times nonsense. What Andrew doesn't do is acknowledge that Israel's treatment of LGBT issues has larger meaning. In other words, Israel's treatment of gay people is reflective of Israel's treatment of other minorities among its citizens -- and that its citizens, all of its citizens, have rights unheard of across the greater Middle East. And yes, of course, the occupation is a shame, and Israel must decide whether or not it is going to extend democratic rights to the Palestinians of the West Bank or let them go free, but the truth of the matter, as Carlo Strenger put it in an eloquent piece for Haaretz not long ago, is that we risk stripping language of meaning when we say we are "appalled" by Israel's behavior, and also "appalled" by Syria's behavior. My only request of people like Andrew Sullivan is that they gain some perspective.

UPDATE #2: A Goldblog reader suggests I'm setting the bar too low, by asking critics like Andrew Sullivan to compare Israel's record to Iran's:

You are right to highlight how much more tolerant Israel is than its neighbors toward the LGBT community. The same argument can be made about Israel's treatment of racial minorities and the disabled. But let's face it: it is easy to be more tolerant than Iran or Saudi Arabia. A more compelling argument can be made on Israel's behalf, namely, that it is also more tolerant than many *Western* countries. This is certainly true for gay rights. Speech in Israel is, arguably, freer than in the US. Arabs are, arguably, better integrated into Israeli society than into French society. Etc etc.

In short the proper bar to judge Israel is not by its neighborhood, but by North America and Europe. And Israel does pretty well by comparison.   

Adam Yauch, MCA from the Beastie Boys, has died. A huge performer and creative force, a deeply committed friend of Tibet, and a continual inspiration for outer-borough Jewish boys. Here he is in Sabotage, as Sir Stewart Wallace:

 

I'll leave it to others to parse Ben Bernanke's policies. Instead, I'll do the crucial work of parsing Ben Bernanke's beard. This is from my Atlantic advice column, "What's Your Problem?": My answer, which follows the question from reader W.B., was prepared with the assistance of the magazine's Sarah Yager, who did the relentless reporting necessary to break this story wide open:

As hard as I try, I cannot get my beard (which I have had for 44 years) to look as perfect as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's. Does he have a stylist work on his every morning, or is it fake?

W.B., Seattle, Wash.

Dear W.B.,

It is not well known that Ben Bernanke's doctoral thesis, "Long-Term Commitments, Dynamic Optimization, and the Business Cycle," contained a separate appendix titled "Caring for Your Luscious Chin Curtain." You are right that Bernanke has an ostentatiously silky and highly civilized beard. In fact, the chairman's personality finds fullest expression in his beard. Also in his many gang tattoos. I did not know much about his beard, however, so I assigned the research-and-analysis division of "What's Your Problem?" to learn more.

Bernanke's grooming needs are met by a barber named Lenny Gilleo, whose shop is located at Federal Reserve headquarters, in Washington, D.C. Gilleo tells us that he shapes and trims Bernanke's beard every three or four weeks, but he did not mention any secret techniques or the use of any particular grooming products. Of possibly greater interest to the nonbearded public: Gilleo, who has cut the hair of the past five Fed chairmen, says there is no fixed price at his barbershop. Payment is a "whatever-you-choose type of thing." If this principle were applied broadly across the American economy, chaos would ensue. Actually, this principle was put into practice already, during the years leading up to the subprime-mortgage crisis.

Jim Fallows has once again done a service to humanity (or at least the slice of humanity that reads The Atlantic) by framing some of the key questions about the Iranian-Israeli conundrum. You should read his entire post before you read what I'm about to say. But in essence, Jim is asking a straightforward question: Are the odds of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities lower today than they were a month ago? Jim points to various developments, including and especially the P5 + 1 talks between the major powers and Iran that have not yet borne fruit, but have not yet not borne fruit, either, as well as statements from various Israeli security leaders (and others) who have been critical of what they see as Benjamin Netanyahu's rush to unilateral military action.

Jim writes, "Please tell me that my 'war is not at hand' inference is correct. Or, if you can't in good conscience do that, please tell me how you read this recent news."

Jim: War is not at hand, though not mainly for the reasons you outlined. It is true that it would be very difficult for Netanyahu to launch an attack on Iran's facilities while these negotiations are taking place (the next round is scheduled to begin on May 23) -- or, more to the point, it would be difficult for Netanyahu to launch a strike if Barack Obama were to indicate publicly, after the next round, that he thinks the negotiations were going somewhere, and should be given time to work. (My prediction: Obama says this almost no matter what happens, because it's in his short-term interest to push off international crises until after November, though, of course, he can't be made to look like a patsy, which is what Mitt Romney will call him almost no matter what happens).

Another prediction: the negotiations probably won't work, since it is in the Iranian regime's best interest to preserve a latent nuclear capability. They do watch the news in Tehran, and they know what happened to the nuke-less Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi at the hands of the Americans).

And it also true that many Israeli figures, including the former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the former head of the Shabak, the Israeli internal security service, have come out strongly against the Netanyahu govenrment on the issue of Iran (The former Shabak head, Yuval Diskin, joins the former Mossad head, Meir Dagan, in the camp of those who say they believe a preemptive attack would be foolish.)

Three observations about this phenomenon before I move to the other looming issue:

1) These ex-security chiefs are saying what they are saying because they believe that Netanyahu (and the defense minister, Ehud Barak), are dead serious about a strike on Iran. There's no reason for them to come out the way hey have if they thought Netanyahu was bluffing. Whenever one of them launches a public attack on the current government,  I assume (perhaps wrongly) that they have specific information, or at least a good sense, that Netanyahu and Barak have moved closer to a decision, and so are trying to stop them from advancing toward a strike. So, from a certain perspective, this should make you nervous.

2) These men aren't saints, motivated solely by pure selflessness. They seem to desire political careers of their own, and so their critiques have to seen in this light.

3) It doesn't matter that much what they say. Ehud Olmert is a disgraced ex-prime minister, who unlike Netanyahu, has taken Israel into controversial wars. As for the ex-security chiefs, think about this in the American context for a minute. Assume that Barack Obama is contemplating launching some sort of strike in the Middle East (actually, he is, against Iran, but next year, or the year after). Now assume that there is a public debate about Obama's presumed plan, and a series of former CIA directors come out against the plan. Does Obama dump the idea simply because Michael Hayden went on Meet the Press to denounce it? What if ex-generals come out and call Obama an idiot? Does Obama change his national security strategy because Tommy Franks doesn't like it? don't think so. 

One permutation: It is thought that men like Diskin and Dagan are speaking for intelligence officials still inside the system, men who are still reporting to Netanyahu. Let's assume, as is reasonable, that Tamir Pardo, the current head of the Mossad, is opposed to a unilateral strike against Iran. He makes his case to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu rejects it. Does Pardo resign? Probably not. Does he help carry out Netanyahu's decision? Yes, he does, as does Benny Gantz, the current IDF chief of staff, who also has some qualms about the time-line. The simple fact remains: The prime minister and the defense minister are the ones who will make this decision, with the backing of their cabinet. Everything else is commentary.

And now for the most important reason you might be able to breathe easy: Netanyahu is appear to be going for early elections. He's popular right now, the opposition is weak, and he looks to be going to try to solidify his hold on power, and possibly re-order his coalition, to bring in centrist parties and dump some of the lunatics in his cabinet. It makes little political sense for him to launch an attack on Iran in the run-up to an election. He's a fairly cautious man (again, look at his record of going to war vs. that of Ehud Olmert), and in any case, the election campaign will coincide with the P5 + 1 talks.

The question to ask at the current moment is: When exactly will these elections take place, if they take place? If they're held in August, and assuming that Netanyahu will be able to form a government in four-to-eight weeks, this will take us into late September, or early October. Still time, in other words, to launch an attack before the American presidential election. But if the Israeli elections aren't scheduled until September, then it looks as if he wouldn't have time to launch an attack. And, as I've written before, if Netanyahu doesn't launch an attack before November, then I doubt he'll launch an attack at all.

All of this is good news if you, like me, think that the question of military intervention should be pushed off, and if you, like me, believe that President Obama is sincere in saying that he will not allow Iran to cross the nuclear threshold. Because this is the ultimate question: If Netanyahu believes that Obama "has Israel's back," as the President has said, then there's no need for Israel to do anything precipitous or unilateral.

P.S. I haven't yet dealt with the impact on Netanyahu of his father's death (a relationship -- the ideological component, at least -- I wrote about here) but I will.

Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion, died earlier today at 102. He was the hardest of the hard -- a man for whom compromise was anathema -- but he was all too often tragically correct about the nature of what he called "Jew hatred" (the term "anti-Semitism" wasn't for him; it was coined by anti-Semites to give a civilized gloss to anti-Jewish prejudice). His masterwork, "The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th Century Spain," posited racial, rather than religious, motivations for anti-Jewish persecution, and for the elder Netanyahu, race-based Jew-hatred was an immortal phenomenon. He was profoundly influential on his son (and all of his sons, as those who have read the collected letters of Yoni Netanyahu, his oldest son, who died at Entebbe, surely know):  Many people who watch the prime minister believe that his father's passing will allow him to take steps toward compromise he wouldn't have made so long as his father was living nearby. There's something to this, of course, but I'm not sure how much. I'll explore some of these questions later.     

Okay, I now have definitive proof that al Qaeda has actually won. It hasn't achieved the dissolution of the United States, or succeeded in murdering millions of Americans, or  re-established the Caliphate, but it has caused our government to debase itself in the name of security. To wit:

My mother-in-law was traveling home to Rhode Island from Washington Reagan airport this past Tuesday night when, passing through the TSA naked-porno machine, she triggered an alarm.

 A bit of background before I continue: My mother-in-law, though youthful in outlook and an all-around very attractive person, is also 79-years-old,  4'11" if she's lucky, and weighs about 110 pounds. She was in Washington to visit her grandchildren, and to lobby the Rhode Island congressional delegation as part of the American Library Association's National Library Legislative Day. She is not a threatening person, in appearance or demeanor. I don't know this for sure, but I think she was probably carrying a library tote bag of some sort -- or perhaps it was an NPR tote bag -- as she approached the security checkpoint. A general rule: terrorists don't carry tote bags.

She entered the machine and struck the humiliating pose one is forced to strike -- hands up, as in an armed robbery -- and then walked out, when she was asked by a TSA agent, in a voice loud enough for several people to hear, "Are you wearing a sanitary napkin?"

Remember, she's 79.

My mother-in-law answered, "No. Why do you ask?"
 
The TSA agent responded: "Well, are you wearing anything else down there?"

Yes, "down there."

She said no, at which point, the friend with whom she was traveling, also a not-young volunteer library advocate, came over and asked if there was a problem.

The TSA agent said, again, in full voice, "There's an anomaly in the crotch area."

This is, of course, a painful post for me to write. Like most normal American men, I don't want to see the words "my mother-in-law" and "crotch area" in the same paragraph. But let me go on anyway.

My mother-in-law said, "As far as I know I don't have any anomalies in the crotch area."

The TSA agent told her she would have to go through the scanner again. She demurred, saying she didn't like the machine very much. The agent told her she could opt for a pat-down. My mother-in-law refused to be frisked, figuring, correctly, that "they were going to pat-down my crotch area. I mean, there wasn't an anomaly in the chest area."

So she went through the scanner again. Of course, this time -- one minute later -- the TSA found no "anomalies," and she was free to go.

The experience left her flummoxed, however. "What did they think I was, a lady underpants bomber?"

I asked her if she felt  embarrassed by the manner in which the TSA treated her.

"I'm not embarrassed," she said. "I just think they're stupid and their machinery is defective and they should learn to whisper when they're talking about my crotch, or anyone's crotch."

The question is, How did it come to pass that the federal government takes official and invasive interest in the "crotch areas" of 79-year-old grandmothers? Have we just gone crazy?

UPDATE: I missed this crotch-related TSA story when it first came out earlier this week:

A freshman Republican from Texas says the TSA got a little too friendly during a recent pat-down in San Antonio -- leading to an exchange where the congressman and the TSA agent wanted each other arrested for assault.

Last week, a TSA agent at San Antonio International Airport patted down Francisco "Quico" Canseco, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee.  The agent, Canseco told POLITICO, was so aggressive in his pat-down that Canseco ended up batting the agent's hand away.

"As he was moving up my leg, he moved his hand aggressively up to my crotch and he hurt me," Canseco said.  "The natural reaction is when someone goes for your crotch and it hurts, you're going to pull back -- and my right arm came down and moved away his hand briskly."

That's when the agent stopped the whole process, Canseco said.

"As I moved his hand away, he claims, 'I've been assaulted, I've been assaulted,'" he said.

The agent then called the police over and asked them to arrest the lawmaker.

"I told him, 'Hey, I'm the guy who was assaulted,'" Canseco said.

It took 20 minutes for police to untangle the spat, but no charges were filed and no citations were issued.

But the story doesn't end there, Canseco said. Earlier this week, he was patted down again in San Antonio.

ICYMI, here are a couple of excerpts from a very important op-ed by Ami Ayalon, Gilead Sher, and Orni Petruschka and what Goldblog thinks of as "modified unilateralism," a plan for Israel to exit much of the West Bank unilaterally, without the negative consequences of the 2005 Gaza pullout. A pullout from the West Bank, of course, is a very dangerous thing for Israel; not pulling out, over time, is more dangerous:

Israel should first declare that it is willing to return to negotiations anytime and that it has no claims of sovereignty on areas east of the existing security barrier. It should then end all settlement construction east of the security barrier and in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. And it should create a plan to help 100,000 settlers who live east of the barrier to relocate within Israel's recognized borders.

Would the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, do this? No, not right now, alas. The conundrum is this: Precisely because he's so reluctant to to make a grand gesture toward the Palestinians, Netanyahu is the one  politician most Israeli Jews would trust to carry-out a painful withdrawal. I maintain a hope that, one day soon, he will realize the value of the grand gesture (and realize the cost, demographically, spiritually, and reputationally, of keeping Israel so entwined in the lives of West Bank Arabs) and go to Ramallah to share a two-state vision with the Palestinians. Will it happen? I don't know. But the more these three men -- all of whom come from the Israeli mainstream, not the miniscule Israeli left -- talk about the dilemma rationally, the easier it will be for Netanyahu to eventually act. They go on:

That plan would not take full effect before a peace agreement was in place. But it would allow settlers to prepare for the move and minimize economic disruption. Israel should also enact a voluntary evacuation, compensation and absorption law for settlers east of the fence, so that those who wish can begin relocating before there is an agreement with the Palestinians. According to a survey conducted by the Israeli pollster Rafi Smith, nearly 30 percent of these 100,000 settlers would prefer to accept compensation and quickly relocate within the Green Line, the pre-1967 boundary dividing Israel from the West Bank, or to adjacent settlement blocs that would likely become part of Israel in any land-swap agreement....

Under our proposal, the Israeli Army would remain in the West Bank until the conflict was officially resolved with a final-status agreement. And Israel would not physically force its citizens to leave until an agreement was reached, even though preparations would begin well before such an accord.

Removing the hardcore settlers will be difficult, but the overwhelming majority of Israelis would choose compromise over settlement if they felt the compromise would work

We don't expect the most ideologically motivated settlers to support this plan, since their visions for Israel's future differ radically from ours. But as a result of our discussions and seminars with settlers of all stripes, we believe that many of them recognize that people with different visions are no less Zionist than they are. We have learned that we must be candid about our proposed plan, discuss the settlers' concerns and above all not demonize them. They are the ones who would pay the price of being uprooted from their homes and also from their deeply felt mission of settling the land.

This last bit, in case you missed it, is meant to be a rebuke of Peter Beinart, who has called for a boycott of the settler-made goods. Such a boycott would only serve to send the hardest-headed settlers further up Masada. 

A Washington Post headline this morning states: "Israeli Military Chief: Iran Will Not Build Nuclear Bomb." From the story beneath the headline:

Israel's military chief said in an interview published Wednesday that he believes Iran will choose not to build a nuclear bomb, an assessment that contrasted with the gloomier statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pointed to differences over the Iran issue at the top levels of Israeli leadership.

The comments by Lt. Gen Benny Gantz, who said international sanctions have begun to show results, could relieve pressure on the Obama administration and undercut efforts by Israeli political leaders to urge the United States to get as tough as possible on Iran.

It is well-known that Israel's army leaders have been more cautious about the Iranian issue than their civilian bosses, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the defense minister. Gantz's predecessor, Gabi Ashkenazi, was eased out of his position in part because he was strident in expressing his opinion (the correct opinion, I think) that Iran's nuclear program was not an issue that Israel could address alone, but was one that required the concentrated attention of the international community.

The particular statement that prompted The Washington Post headline seems to be this, from the interview that Haaretz's Amos Harel conducted with Gantz:

Iran, Gantz says, "is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided whether to go the extra mile."

As long as its facilities are not bomb-proof, "the program is too vulnerable, in Iran's view. If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will advance it to the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, but the decision must first be taken. It will happen if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a response. I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don't think he will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people. But I agree that such a capability, in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who at particular moments could make different calculations, is dangerous." (my italics)

This is a much-more nuanced statement than The Post headline, and story, suggest. First, Gantz seems to be endorsing Ehud Barak's analysis that Iran is trying to enter a "zone of immunity," in which its key nuclear facilities would be hardened against attack before the Supreme Leader gave instructions to actually build a bomb.  Barak has often suggested that once Iran enters this "zone of immunity," it would be too late for Israel to attack, though it wouldn't necessarily be too late for the U.S. to attack (and obviously, Gantz recognizes that the U.S. could do a more complete job of demolishing Iran's nuclear sites than his air force could.)

Gantz seems to be delivering a subtly-worded threat to Khamenei in this interview: "I know you're a rational guy, and as a rational guy, you know that my political leadership will order me to attack your nuclear facilities before you make them invulnerable to a response, so of course, you wouldn't think of trying anything funny. And even though I think you're capable of making rational, self-interested decisions, I also know you're a fundamentalist, and we don't trust you."
 
A couple of other interesting aspects to the Gantz interview. When asked if this year is the decisive year for dealing with Iran, he balked: "Clearly, the more the Iranians progress the worse the situation is. This is a critical year, but not necessarily 'go, no-go.' The problem doesn't necessarily stop on December 31, 2012. We're in a period when something must happen: Either Iran takes its nuclear program to a civilian footing only or the world, perhaps we too, will have to do something. We're closer to the end of the discussions than the middle."

These are words that will comfort Gantz's friends in the Pentagon, and they will certainly provide comfort to the White House, which does not want to see an Israeli attack on Iran before November. My guess is that Gantz trusts President Obama to take action against Iran next year more than Netanyahu trusts him, and this, of course, takes us to the key issue: There would be little worry about a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran this year if Netanyahu believed that a re-elected President Obama would attack Iran's nuclear facilities next year (I'm assuming he believes that President Romney would carry out an attack, as Romney has suggested he would).

More circumstantial evidence that Gantz trusts Obama: He also told Harel that sanctions appear to be working.

So what is Gantz up to? A few possibilities, none of which exclude any other:
1) He's warning Ayotallah Khamenei not to try to enter the zone of immunity, because Israel will stop him before he does;
2) He's warning Netanyahu and Barak that he's unenthusiastic about launching a unilateral strike, and he's telling them to give sanctions more time;
3) He's throwing sand in the eyes of everyone, especially the Iranians, who might come away from coverage of the issue that they can breathe easy until the end of 2012.

It's important to remember, of course, that if the prime minister and the defense minister order Gantz to launch a strike against Iran, he'll launch. If Barak were to have a change of heart on the subject, now that would be hugely important.

Newt Gingrich isn't my favorite politician, but he's certainly one of the most interesting politicians I've ever interviewed. Actually, I interviewed one of the other politicians in the most-interesting category, Marion Barry, jointly with Newt for a New York Times Magazine cover story about the future of Washington, D.C., which ran 17 years ago (crazy, because I'm only 31.) I would provide a link to this story, except that it was published in the Neolithic era, before the age of links.

Newt, who is dropping out of the Republican primaries approximately five years after it became obvious he couldn't win, isn't a particularly nice person, and I certainly don't appreciate the dog-whistling, and the whole treatment-of-his-wives issue, but I appreciate his curiosity about the world. It took me a while, but I finally figured out who comprises his core constituency. This is not a core constituency admired by many conservatives, but it's a constituency he should be proud to have: Scientists working for the federal government.

In recent weeks, I've run into three different scientists, working in the far reaches of different government bureaucracies, who were fantasizing about the thing that will never be, the Gingrich presidency. They knew in their bones that President Newt would have shared their love of basic science, of conservation, and most notably, of space exploration. One scientist, until recently employed by the Smithsonian, put it to me this way: "Most presidents never visit most of our museums, but with Gingrich, we'd probably have a hard time getting him out of the museums."

Gingrich's enthusiasm for science, for zoos and conservation, and for human exploration of everything worth exploring, makes him stand out in a Republican Party that, among other things, kowtows to partisans of creationism. Gingrich came to mind the other day when I was watching the Space Shuttle Discovery shuffle off into the sunset, and I wrote about why I thought of him in my Bloomberg View column this week. I was watching the shuttle pass over Washington from another shuttle, the Delta shuttle, which then proceeded to break down on the runway of Reagan National:

We returned to the terminal, and I watched on CNN as Discovery finished the journey to its nursing home in the Virginia countryside. Only then did the obvious thought cross my mind: Newt is right.

This isn't a thought that has often crossed my mind, especially over the past several months, but on the matter of space exploration and the role it has played in teaching Americans that they are capable of performing exceptional acts of creativity and bravery, Newt Gingrich is exactly right.

So I called him and told him so. He is, from what I'm told, still busy running for president. But he seemed happy to talk about space and the terrible mistake the Obama administration made by canceling the Constellation program, which was meant to get Americans back to the moon.

Gingrich was particularly keen to talk about his Republican rivals, who had savaged him during a debate in Florida for proposing that the U.S. -- mainly with private funding -- establish a colony on the moon.

This is what Mitt Romney said at the time: "If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, 'You're fired.' The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea."
The small-minded Rick Santorum piled on, saying, "Let's just be honest, we run a $1.2 trillion deficit right now ... and to go out there and promise new programs and big ideas, that's a great thing to maybe get votes, but it's not a responsible thing."

Gingrich told me he was "shocked that night" by Romney and Santorum. "If I had been clever, I would have said to Romney, 'You would have fired Christopher Columbus and John F. Kennedy because they were proposing daring and large things. They were proposing to go out and discover entire new worlds, and they did.'"

He believes that human settlements on the moon, or on Mars, are inevitable. "I can tell you flatly that there will be a human colony on the moon," he said. "It may be Chinese, but there will be a colony on the moon. Anyone who watches the Chinese space program and doesn't think we're facing a competitor is foolish."