Jeffrey Goldberg

The scene: The ayatollah's bunker, midnight. The ayatollah walks in, steamed and cursing. He turns to a chair:

Ayatollah Khamenei: 'All options are on the table, huh?' I got your options right here, buddy-boy.

(Pause)

Ayatollah Khamenei: Really? Are you kidding? You could set back our nuclear program 10 years? What are you smoking? You know, I liked you when you first got elected. I figured I could game you -- peaceful nuclear program, all that bullshit. But now you're just a pain in my ass.

(Pause)

Ayatollah Khamenei: Excuse me? Excuuuuse me? You didn't just say that, did you? Ahmadinejad? That clown? You're comparing me to a clown? The guy is a clown. I'm the  supreme effing leader. Supreme leader! Much better title than you have. 'President.' That's a title for a woman, or a Jew. Or a Jewish woman. Like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. If you're really so powerful, Mr. President, why don't you just do it, why don't you just bomb Fordow already?

(Pause)

Ayatollah Khamenei; That's what I thought. Too chickenshit. Going to hide behind the perfidious Zionist entity like always, right? It's time for you to go. Why am I even talking to you?

(Turns to second chair)

Ayatollah Khamenei: Bibi, you're a disgusting Jew. If you were a real man, you'd attack Natanz. Holocaust this, Holocaust that, I'm sick of it. Whine, whine, whine. About something that didn't even happen! I'll give Mahmoud this: He's right about one thing.

Via Dominic Tierney, the latest Atlantic Iran War Dial panel prediction:

"I strongly reject any threat by any [UN] member state to destroy another, or outrageous comments to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust. Claiming another UN member state does not have the right to exist or describe it in racist terms is not only utterly wrong but undermines the very principles we have all promised to uphold."

                                                              -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

It's not as if Ayatollah Khamenei will now change his mind on the matter of the Jewish right to national self-determination, but it's still good to hear this kind of language. Of course, if Iran ever tried to make operational its vision of Israel's eradication, the UN would do nothing effective to stop it.

No, the answer is no -- it is not possible to think about the Holocaust too much. You don't have to be W.G. Sebald, the German novelist, who has argued with only a touch of hyperbole that "no serious person thinks of anything else," to understand that finding a way to purge the impulse that leads some groups to seek the physical elimination other groups is an enormous challenge facing our species, a challenge we have obviously not yet met. It's not even a challenge we particularly want to talk about. When the leadership of Iran, for instance, uses genocidal language -- language lifted from themes explored at length in "Mein Kampf" -- to discuss the "problem" of the so-called perfidious Zionist entity, and in response, much of the world shrugs its shoulders, and even accuses Jews who mention the obvious historical echoes heard in Iranian regime invective of ethnic panic and hysteria, we know that we are very far from Sebald's definition of a serious person.

I bring all this up because Ron Rosenbaum has written an extremely important essay for Slate, in which he dismantles the argument that Jews (and non-Jews, as well) who take regular note of Iranian eliminationist rhetoric are neurotic special-pleaders. Rosenbaum's essay should be read in full, but I wrote about it a bit in my Bloomberg View column this week:

(W)hat is happening here is something virtually without precedent in our allegedly enlightened age: A member-state of the United Nations, Iran, regularly threatens another member- state, Israel, with annihilation. It's important to bear in mind a fundamental asymmetry: Israel doesn't seek Iran's elimination. Iran seeks Israel's.

Regime apologists will note that Iranian leaders talk about the elimination not of "Israel" -- a word they generally refuse to utter -- but of the "Zionist regime," which, to the naive and the cynical, implies the replacement of one government with another. This is a pernicious euphemism. Without the "Zionist regime" -- which is to say, the democratically elected government of Israel, its armed forces and security services, and the courts and structures of state -- the Jews who survived the onslaught that "dismantled" their government would face immediate dispossession, and perhaps much worse.

Rosenbaum, an expert on Hitlerian euphemism, told me that one difference between Nazi rhetoric and that of the Iranian regime is that the Iranians' words are blunter, especially when compared with pre-Kristallnacht Nazi language. Rosenbaum notes, in particular, the Iranian reliance on epidemiological metaphor when describing Israel: This year, the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Israel is "a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off."

Which returns us to Rosenbaum's central question: Is it obsessive for a group of people who not long ago saw a third of their number slaughtered to worry when the leaders of Iran call Israel a cancerous tumor? Or is it the natural and appropriate response of a people who, conditioned by history, choose to err on the side of caution?

Noam Neusner, who knows how to provoke, provokes:

If our goal is to heal the wounds in the world, maybe the right way to do that doesn't involve seizing wealth from people who work hard to give it to people who don't. Maybe it shouldn't involve the construction of a vast super state of regulatory czars and czarinas, people capable of writing a rule that could, without review from elected legislators, destroy a citizen's life work. Maybe we should ask ourselves whether tikkun olam means making people even more dependent on the goodwill of the state.

Maybe the best form of tikkun olam is to give people freedom and free markets as opposed to more state-sponsored goodies. Freedom and free markets have worked pretty well in lifting people out of poverty, creating strong middle-class societies, and supporting great voluntary and charitable institutions.

And by the way, freedom and free markets have been good for the Jews and for tikkun olam. Cast your eyes over the sweep of our 5,000 years of history. Wherever Jews have lived in relative freedom and free markets -- the United States, Britain and its commonwealth, the Ottoman Near East, post-Enlightenment Western Europe -- we've done pretty well. We've built great communities. We've devoted ourselves to Torah. We've pursued tzedakah, charity, with abandon.

In re: this strange incident in which two U.S. government employees, suspected to be working for the CIA, were shot in Mexico, this note, buried deep in The Washington Post's coverage of the incident, struck me as odd:

The two U.S. employees and a Mexican navy captain serving as an interpreter were heading Friday to a navy training camp south of Mexico City when, the U.S. Embassy says, they were ambushed.

They needed an interpreter? Really? Assuming these two employees were, in fact, CIA, what does it suggest about our intelligence agencies that they don't have adequate numbers of Spanish speakers to deploy to Mexico? A dearth of Arabic and Farsi and Pashto speakers, I understand -- it's only been, you know, more than a decade since 9/11. You can't expect the government to rush its employees into hard-language courses. After all, these hard languages are... hard. But Spanish?

I'm trying to find out more about this. But it is consistently astonishing to me, after years of traveling in odd, and not-so-odd places, how few American government employees are fully fluent, or even partially fluent, in the languages of the countries to which they are deployed.

UPDATE:  A smart person I know called to suggest that perhaps these two government employees were in Mexico on a training mission, teaching a specific skill, and that therefore language-proficiency was a secondary concern. This is plausible. It is also plausible that they were stationed there permanently. But it is a fair point to make, that people dispatched to other countries on temporary duty to perform a single task can't be expected to speak all known languages.

To mark the occasion of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's keynote address at the Republican National Convention tonight, I thought I would post a long but edited transcript of one of our several talks about politics, the economy, Republican priorities, and Bruce Springsteen (the story I wrote about Christie's Springsteen obsession can be found here).

I would say that this conversation, below, will be mainly of interest to people who are trying to understand Christie and his role in the party, and especially to people who know the lyrics to most, or all, Springsteen songs. Much of the discussion has to do with how Christie squares his fiscal conservatism with Springsteen's much more expansive view of the role government should play in the economy.

One favorite moment, which I'm lifting out of the transcript: How everything Christie does, or doesn't do -- including deciding not to run for president -- can be related to a Springsteen lyric. This is what he told me about that: "The reason I couldn't pull the trigger was that it didn't feel right. It would have been wrong to leave. I made a commitment to being governor. It felt to me like you asked some woman to marry you, and she did, and then a really great woman walked by and said, 'Come with me.' And if I would have run that have been me saying yes to that woman, and saying to the woman I was married to, 'Sorry, I didn't know she was available when I married you.'"

I responded: "You had a 'Hungry Heart'-type situation there. To which Christie replied, "Yes, but I didn't go down to Kingstown. I didn't make a wrong turn and never come back."

Anyway, here's the conversation. This discussion took place in his office in Trenton, in the presence of Maria Comella, his communications guru, who is not the hugest Springsteen fan:

Christie: Did you know that Maria was born when 'The River' came out?
 
Goldberg: She's probably a big Bon Jovi fan. When 'Slippery When Wet' came out she was probably in kindergarten.

Christie: He's from Sayerville. Bon Jovi's from Sayerville.
 
Goldberg: You a fan?

Christie: I don't like dislike Bon Jovi. He is what he is.

Goldberg: Why does Springsteen resonate with you?

Christie: He makes me understand in a vivid way of how lucky I am. Hearing stories of desperation creates gratitude. He helps create sympathy - it's not empathy, it can't be empathy in the sense that I'm not experiencing it - but sympathy for those people who don't have what I have. And there's the shared experience - when I was at the Stone Pony (in Asbury Park) recently and here's this guy, 62, running through the audience, climbing on top of the bar, singing on the bar, hugging people, kissing people, his concerts have always been this shared experience.

Goldberg: Is there a religious component for you?

Christie: I wouldn't say religious, I would say spiritual. No question about it.  "It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive." That just jumps out at you. You think about the fact that here's a guy who wasn't quite 30 years old, and to have the insight he had, the insight into human nature, to understand what people are going through, it's unbelievable.
 
Goldberg: You've identified 'Thunder Road' as your favorite Bruce song. Why?

Christie: It is the most lyrically descriptive of his songs. I can close my eyes and often do and listen to this song, and I can just see it. I can see the whole thing. I  don't know if I'm right. But what I see is what I see, cute brunette in a sundress coming out through the door and Bruce sitting in that convertible seat, beat-up old convertible she hops and and off they go. I mean, I close my eyes and I see it. The other part is, the stage of life when you're at when these songs come out is important to you. I'm coming of age at this, I'm 14 when this comes out, when you're starting to become aware of yourself, stating to thinking about dating. It's all happening, and you listen to him, and he gets it.

Goldberg: Most politicians don't have a relationship with art, or artists. You haven't shed your fascination with this music, and he is the most interesting writer, along with Dylan -

Christie: -- And the most prolific.

Goldberg: And the most prolific.  When did you first take notice?

Christie: I was 13 years old and I bought Born To Run. The first two had come and gone without my noticing, I was ten or 11 and finally getting an allowance, I had some money and I wanted to buy "Born to Run," I had heard it on the radio, and I said to my mother I want to go buy that album and I went to the record store at the Livingston Mall, and you know what, you walk into the record store and there it was, the big display picture, and that picture, jumping right at you, and for me, I remember the moment of buying it, buying the album, it jumped at me, really. I took it home and I played it until it wore out. And to me it's still my favorite album and the best album as a single piece of work.

Goldberg: At that age, you weren't growing up in the sort of pinched, economically straitened situation he's writing about, though. It wasn't recognition like that.

Christie: At 13, what spoke to me was simple - I recognized the places that he was writing about. He was writing about the places I knew and lived, I went to vacation to the Jersey Shore, I knew about the places he was talking about in those songs. So to me, that was the first thing that grabbed me about.  Bruce is one of the greatest gifts to New Jersey. You can say what you want about us, we got Bruce. That's why we were so angry when he moved to California. Malibu? Stop being stupid. Get back here. You're ours. As a teenager, he made Jersey cool.

Goldberg: Long Islanders like me have Dee Snider and Billy Joel.
 
Christie: Not in that order. Listen, New Jersey has a lot of image problems, and having Bruce wasn't one of those image problems.

Goldberg: Was 'Thunder Road' your favorite song right away?

Christie: "Jungleland" was my favorite song when I first listened to it, and I remember thinking, how could he have written that, all those feelings contained in that seven-and-a-half, eight minutes? Where does it come from? And so the first thing that fascinated me, how could he write something like that, how does something like that happen? To sit down and actually do it, I loved the song and I loved the sax solo, and then the rest of the album I just played until my entire family  --  I lived in a pretty small house and I like to listen to music loud and so I wore my family out with Bruce. It took my brother years to become a Springsteen fan because I killed him with it.
 
Goldberg: What was your first show?

Christie: First show was in 1975, or 1976, at Seton Hall, in the Walsh gym. I really got into. The way 'Born to Run' made me feel listening to it, and then there was just a geometric increase in my love after I saw Bruce live. I didn't care - Bruce could stand on a soapbox on the corner of Broad and Market streets in Newark and read the phone book and if I had the chance to be there, I would be there. There is something so great about watching someone who loved doing what they do so much. That was so attractive then, and that attracts me now, it  made me go back to the Stone Pony for the 126th time. It's just electric to be around somebody performing who loves what they do as much as he does.

Goldberg: Much of what he write about is work - finding fulfillment in work, not finding fulfillment in work, not finding work at all. I was listening to 'The River' the other day, you know, "I got a job working construction, for the Johnstown Company, but lately there ain't been much work, on account of the economy." When did you notice he was singing about something deeper than cars and the girls and the Jersey Shore?

Christie: It was 'Darkness on the Edge of Town." It took me a while to like "Darkness." I was 16, and when "Darkness" came out I didn't like it at first. I was looking for "Born to Run 2." Where was that upbeat, aspirational feeling? And this just showed, in retrospect, my lack of maturity. All that stuff was there, in "Prove it All Night," and "Badlands," and "Adam Raised a Cain."  It was all there. I just wasn't mature enough to understand it. "Darkness'' was an acquired taste, and that's when he made his first turn. We all know why he turned from "Born to Run" to "Darkness." The whole change in his life, the dispute with his manager. But to me that became a whole different kind of writing. I think that's when he started talking about work, the fulfillment and the frustration. That comes from adult problems, as opposed  to the first three albums, which I saw as escapism from teenage life, and how you're hopeful, you wanted to get the hell out of where you were because you knew that something bigger and better was down the road, you just had to get out there and find it.
 
Goldberg: But "Darkness" is definitely less aspirational, which is the quality of his writing you seem to like.

Christie: There is some work that is dour and down, but what attracted me to his music is just how aspirational it is, aspiration to success, or to fun, to being a better person, to figuring out how to make your life better. And you can't say that about other people's music. They become successful and they become self-consumed and boring and narcissistic.
 
Goldberg: Did you come back to the first two albums?

Christie: Oh yeah, I came back to the first two after "The River," when I was in college and we had a lot of time to kill.
 
Goldberg: That's an excellent advertisement for the college experience.

Christie: Well, this was my college experience. Others may have been working harder than I did. In law school, I had this study partner, Bobby Brenner, he was in our wedding, we were in a fantasy football league. When we were in law school, we used to pull out Springsteen albums and force ourselves to say, okay, let's reconsider "The River." We would put albums on and analyze them song by song. Time to reconsider "Greetings." It was the way we did our study breaks. What are we going to reconsider today? And we would go song by song.

Goldberg: Man, that's...
 
Christie: It was in college that I came back to "Greetings" and "The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle," right after "The River" came out, because "The River" just so opened up my curiosity, because now, I'm like, this guy has combined "Born to Run" and "Darkness." When I heard "The River," I realized he took the aspirational material, the fun stuff, and the dark stuff and put them together on the same album. "The River" is when I became a true addict. That's my line of demarcation. I was a sophomore in the fall of 1981. That's when I realized that the stuff that was crap on his albums, if it was on any other artist's albums, that would be the really good stuff for them.
 
Goldberg: Wasn't there a rule made by your roommates about how much Springsteen you were allowed to play?

Christie: I was the one who bought the stereo. My view was that I could play whatever I wanted.

Goldberg: "Atlantic City." What does this song evoke for you as governor?

Christie: Look, I'm very tied to this state. Whatever appeal I may have as governor is that people know that I'm from here, from this place, and that I'm rooted in that. That was the biggest difference between me and Jon Corzine (who he defeated for the governorship.)  I hear him sing about Atlantic City, and I think about how I'm this kid from New Jersey who has no more business being in this office based upon lineage, based on what my parents did, you know. This state is about hard-charging , hard-edged people who if they want something bad enough go out and get it. There's millions of stories like mine.

Goldberg: What about the desperation in a song like "Atlantic City," economic desperation? I mean, maybe you're misinterpreting something here. I mean, Springsteen thought Ronald Reagan was misinterpreting him in with "Born in the U.S.A."

Christie: Well, I dispute that. I think Bruce wanted it both ways. If you want "Born in The U.S.A." to be interpreted simply as the desperation of a veteran returning home to a country that didn't respect his service, and to a country that was not giving him economic opportunity, you'd play the acoustic version of the song, then there's no mistaking that. But you put a bandanna on your head and the American flag behind you and the baseball cap in your back pocket and you start your concerts with that song, pumping your fist in the air and screaming "Born in the U.SA.," don't tell me you're not trying to be anthemic. What bothered him was that it was Ronald Reagan. I think if Walter Mondale had adopted it, there would have been less trouble.
 
Goldberg: That's why he moved to the acoustic version after a little while, precisely so he couldn't be misinterpreted.

Christie: There are moments not where Bruce surprised me, but where I think he can be a little bit inconsistent. He has every right to say Reagan misinterpreted his work. I take him at his word, but on the other hand, don't try to tell me you're not being anthemic. It's an anthem. This was Jon Landau (Springsteen's manager). Landau knew how to help Bruce with his music so it sold, right? "Greetings" didn't sell. "Wild, Innocent" didn't sell. Landau came in and was involved in "Born to Run," just the song, and one of the things that caused the schism with (Mike) Appel (Springsteen's first manager). So I think that's another line of demarcation, Springsteen being influenced by Landau about how he could get his music more broadly heard.
 
Goldberg: You mean Landau snuck in the political message under the thunder?

Christie: I think Landau would say you can do both at the same time. It's okay. I think Landau's attitude was you could do both. But just don't deny to me that you're trying to do both.

Goldberg: Talk about the politics more. Springsteen sometimes used to say "Nobody wins unless--"

Christie: "Unless everybody wins."

Goldberg: I always had a logic problem with that. If everybody wins, no one wins, I guess I mean. There's no delineation. How do you judge who won?

Christie: Yeah, he wants everybody onboard the train. That's a theme. But America is also a place that will reward you for hard work. Some people have more natural talents than other people. Like Bruce Springsteen. I don't square it. It's one of those things that doesn't make sense to me. What the hell is he talking about? It's one of those things he says that doesn't make sense. I think the quote should be, "Nobody wins unless everybody has the opportunity to win." That's what America is. It's the opportunity to win, the chance to win. If he had just added that word, "opportunity," I'd be 100 percent on board.

Goldberg: When was the moment in your political development when you said to yourself, "Oh, man, I think I disagree with Bruce Springsteen about something."

Christie: It was in the mid-80s. It was during "Born in The U.S.A." I remember he sort of talked a lot more about the political stuff. I saw him at Giants Stadium at that one, and at the Meadowlands Arena. Maria wasn't in kindergarten yet. That's when I noticed him talking about politics more. "The River" shows were rollicking fun, and crazy, four hours. That's the last time I remember him doing an intermission. He would stop the show after two hours, take 25 minutes off, do another two hours. a some more.  And that's when all of the "nobody wins" stuff started coming in.

This is when I realized, you know, people should have an equal shot, but not all people are in fact equal in talent, in drive, in ambition. The thing that's bad is when people don't get an entry ticket into the race at all. That's where Democrats and Republicans differ. Democrats believe that someone should be guaranteed success. Republicans believe that everyone should have the opportunity to achieve their success and when they do, they shouldn't be penalized for it.

Goldberg: If Bruce were governor, how do you think he would spend the money you have to allocate in your budget?
 
Christie: I don't know. I think he would find it much more difficult than he apparently thinks. I'd say I made a lot of cuts and every one of them hurt me. Oprah asked me what was the most difficult thing I had to do professionally and I said, it was the budget cuts. The first four or five months in the administration where I would have these meetings in the treasurer's office, where we would go literally line by line, 'What does this program do, what does that program do?' Man.

Goldberg: What was the hardest thing to cut?

Christie: God, I can't remember, there were so many hard ones to cut. I can't remember what the hardest one was. I used to come those nights and my wife knew when I worked in the door if I had had a budget meeting. She'd say I looked awful.
 
Goldberg: If you had an endless pot of money, would you spend it like Bruce Springsteen might spend it?

Christie: No, because I believe government should provide only for those who are the neediest, and allow people to create circumstances where people can achieve greatness. I don't want it to be entitlements. People don't want to be dependent on government. They have dreams like everyone does. If they think they're too old to reach their dreams, then they dream for their kids. Their dream is not a check from the government every month. You don't hear people say that. People don't say, 'I hope my son grows up and gets a good mid-paying government job with great benefits when he retires. People don't say that. You hear anyone say that? They want something better for their kids. They want an opportunity for their kids to be Mark Zuckerberg.
 
Goldberg:  But there are Republicans, in my experience, don't have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the guy who isn't as lucky as they are.

Christie: I think both parties have members who have their shortcomings in that regard. And I think that sometimes the media plays up those people and those shortcomings. The brighter and more vivid extremes are more fascinating, right? I have no problem saying that some Republicans are people I don't have a great deal of admiration for, the same way I feel about certain Democrats. I make the judgment on what they do.
 
Goldberg: There are a lot of people out there who have been cut out of the very possibility of having opportunities. They would say that it's government's job to open up some opportunities. You say to government, 'Get out of the way,' but what about leveling the playing field so people can play? Is there some sort of middle ground?

Christie: What I don't understand about the argument about income disparity is the people who say we should raise taxes on the wealthy. I say to myself, "How does raising taxes on the wealthy do anything to improve income disparity for the middle class. Someone has to make the case to me. It doesn't do anything to improve the guy's life who's in the lower-middle class. Does he say, "Oh, shit, I can't buy a new car now, but I feel better because that guy can't buy two boats now?" That's not going to put anything in that guy's pocket. It's not going to do anything to help make that guy's life better. What are we doing? Building a jealousy society, an envy society?
 
I'm happy to talk about ways in which the government can assist the market in creating better-paying jobs. But my disconnect with the argument right now is, I listen to people talk about this subject, and I haven't seen anyone draw a straight line between the two and until they do, I'm not for raising taxes.

Look, the stuff he writes about is really consistent with who I am inside. Politically, and how I express myself politically. He would differ, I'm sure. But I think I can convince him, if we just had the chance to talk about it.
 
Goldberg: What do you think of the song "The Ties That Bind."
 
Christie: As far as I'm concerned, the message of "The Ties That Bind" is exactly right. We're going to sink or swim together. Don't try to deny it. You're going to try to deny it but we're bound together. Whether you're talking about personal relationships or the country, we have these ties and we're going to sink or swim together."
 
Goldberg: There's this consistent concern in Springsteen's writing that the jobs aren't there, that the way life is structured in a capitalist society basically means that some people will get ground down and thrown away.
 
Christie: As with most of us, most of our experiences and our thoughts and feelings come from our parents, and when I hear say all those things, I think he's reliving watching his father's life and frustrations over and over. Everyone one of these songs is a variation on his father's life. His father who got beaten down and ground down by the boring nature of life, the way he was treated in his work, and that this is a good guy, why can't he get something better? Everybody thinks their father is a good guy, at least initially, and I think despite his disputes with his father, he writes about his father's experience over and over and over again. Despite his own success he can't get away from it.
 
It's like the lyrics in "The Wish," he says something to his mother, you let me look into Dad's eyes but you never let me crawl in. His father showed this dark, awful, difficult side and his mother saved him from that. She's the one who got him the guitar. His father was an example of hopes and dreams extinguished.
 
Goldberg: And he's kept that up, singing about blue-collar workers and migrant workers -
 
Christie: I think he writes about it as he experiences it. He moved to California and he saw the immigrant worker subculture that he never saw in New Jersey. So I think he made new discoveries.
Goldberg: What do you think of "The Ghost of Tom Joad?"

Christie: It's not on my favorite list. I went to the Tom Joad show, at the State Theater in New Brunswick. It's the only time I ever got man-in-blacked. Mary Pat and I were sitting way at the top row, the balcony, I got tickets through Ticketmaster, and she was eight months pregnant with our daughter Sarah, so we climbed the stairs up to the top balcony and we're not moving. And I see this guy comes walking out all in black. Bruce sends a roadie out and he goes to people in the worst sets and he moves them down. I don't know if he still does it. I saw some people it happened to at the Garden.  And this guy says, "These your seats?" And I say, "You really think I would fake it and sit up here?" and he said, do you want to sit in the second row?  And down we went. So we got man-in-blacked for the Tom Joad show. That's the worst.

People weren't ready for that show. Up there by himself, acoustic harmonica, slicked back long hair. People weren't ready. He was all in black and it was dark. And you had idiots in the audience - he's playing acoustic guitar, dark stuff - and they're, like, screaming "Rosalita"! He gets pissed. They're like, "Candy's Room"! Get over it. It's not happening. And so he was really angry at that those shows. I appreciate the artistry and the work on that album. But I almost never listen to it.  I like the live version of "Youngstown." It's very powerful. But it reminds me of the negative concert experiences of that tour. If you talk to any Bruce fan, what they'll tell you is, one of the magic parts of going to a show is to walk out feeling exhilarated, feeling as high as you can possibly feel. Can you believe he played this? Can you believe he played that?  I walked out of the Tom Joad concert and wanted to put a gun to my head.
 
Goldberg: Well, isn't this one of those moments he would say, "Governor, that's the reality of America and I'm going to communicate that."
 
Christie: And I would say back, "I don't need to pay 100 bucks to see it." It's not that I don't recognize the artistry. Everybody goes to Bruce shows for different things, but I think one of the universal feelings of going to a Bruce show is you're going to walk out feeling better than when you walked in. He's going to take you on a ride for three hours. I tried to love Tom Joad, I really did, I love the guy, but I just didn't feel it.

Goldberg: Stay on this idea that you two disagree on the formula for making America better. He probably sits there thinking that if Chris Christie likes what I'm doing he would not go up against the unions, he wouldn't cut funding for the homeless. Have you played this out in your mind?
 
Christie: I think part of the reason why I don't think there's a problem between us is that he had a real problem he would have come out for Corzine in the race, and he didn't. Corzine, from a policy perspective, is much closer to Bruce than I am. I know that the Corzine campaign tried to get Bruce involved, if for no other reason than to get in my head, and Bruce is certainly a powerful figure in the state who could move some people to get involved in the race, and he affirmatively refused. It's not like no one asked him. We didn't try to get him involved. Anything that has happened since then I just kind of feel like, that's him, I've got accept that. I've said that if Bruce and I sat down and talked he would reluctantly come to the conclusion that we disagree on a lot less than he thinks. But I don't think I'm a priority for him right now.

Goldberg: You know, sometimes it's overrated, meeting your idols.

Christie: I don't think I'd get that feeling with him. I met him backstage at The New Jersey Hall of Fame when Danny DeVito was being inducted, and he gave the induction speech.  And here's Springsteen backstage and he made a clear differentiation between the way he treated me, very proper, and the way he treated my children. They are by necessity huge Bruce fans, each one has been to a Bruce show in utero. And he was very formal with me. He said congratulations on becoming governor and we shook hands but it was very clear to me the conversation wasn't going further.
 
But my children said to me, "Can we go say hello?" and I said yes, and he started chatting with them and he couldn't have been nicer, Sarah went up to say hello, and he said "You are a beautiful young lady." Just engaged them in a very nice fatherly conversation. And so I took some solace from this, too. He may not be ready to break the ice with me, but he was really nice to my children. They would have been crushed if he hadn't been nice. Instead they walked away feeling really great.

Goldberg: Do you think Bruce is still a regular Jersey guy?

Christie: "I don't think that fact that he's successful and that he uses his wealth as he sees fit are a proof point of the fact that he's lost touch with who he is. I think the exact opposite. I think his success is proof that what he writes about in "Born to Run" is absolutely achievable. He did it. He got out. I disagree with the people who say, 'Look at Bruce now, he doesn't drive a beat-up car.' Good for him that his goods go to fancy schools and ride horses.  I think he's the personification of the American dream. This kid from Freehold whose father had nothing but a bunch of very difficult and seemingly unsatisfying jobs, and a mother who was a working-class office worker, and now he's one of the wealthiest people in music. He should enjoy it. What's funny is that his progression is what Republicans believe can happen. That's what Republicans believe - hard work, talent, ambition. We all know he's the hardest working man in show business. It's a meritocracy.

Goldberg: He doesn't seem to understand this the way you do, though.

Christie: This is where he's inconsistent. I'd love to have that conversation with him. How does he square this? Maybe he'll have a way to square it that makes sense to me, but from the outside, it doesn't makes sense to me.
 
Goldberg: I'm trying to imagine the conversation between the two of you.

Christie: I'd love to have the conversation with him, to ask him how squares this. Maybe he'll have a way to square it that makes some sense to me, but on the outside it doesn't make sense to me. But that my desire to have a serious conversation... I don't think I would be disappointed. If I had a conversation with him, the chance to have that conversation with him, earlier in my life, it would have been the idol conversation, like, 'Oh, my God, what were you thinking when you wrote 'Prove it All Night,' it would have been one of those conversations that he would have been incredibly bored with, you know, "How did you think to write 'Does This Bus stop at 82nd Street,' and the answer would be, "I was on a bus and I wondered if it would stop on 82nd St."
 
The conversation I would have now, I think it would be much more deep and nuanced, about his experience as a New Jerseyan and mine, and a lot of other things. I would love to delve into where we agree and where we disagree.

Goldberg: What do you think your voters think of his politics?

Christie: I think they think what I think, which is, 'That's Bruce." Look, I'm not that he would be unhappy with certain programs cut that are not fully funded. If you talk to folks who have associated with him, he is, from a business perspective, a no-nonsense capitalist. He runs his business like a capitalist, he's the boss, he's in charge, he's the one who makes the most money, he determines how much money everybody else makes. He knows about budgets."

Goldberg: Has his music, his political music, influenced you in any way about the world?
 
Christie: I think that some of his music opens up to me a different world. I'm not a very desperate person. He opens up for me the fact that desperation exists in other people's lives. He gives great voice to that. Not just economic desperation. I've been fortunate in my life not to experience a lot of desperation so I think to have someone able to give voice to that is important.

Goldberg: If you have a job you like, and a job you like, that makes you a fundamentally different person than many Springsteen characters.
 
Christie: Besides my children the biggest blessing in my life is that I've got a job I love. That's a great gift. So knowing and understanding that, it diminishes your ability to put desperation into words. So he had to watch a father who at least from his characterization seemed like he was desperate at times. So I think that's where that gift comes from. You give voice to it because your emotional experience with your parents is a bottomless well. I don't think it ever dries up.
 
My mother is gone now for eight years there is not a moment if I want to, if I take the time, where I can draw emotional inspiration from my life with my mother. So here's Bruce, who has this relationship with his parents, and I think every time he sits down to write, if he wants to he can draw from the well of his father's disappointment, his father's desperation, his father's work ethic, his father's hope and dreams dashed, right? I always knew that there was desperation out there. His words help me understand it better.

Goldberg: Give me an example.

Christie: "Darkness." The whole album is desperate. Ask me the old question, you're on a desert island with only one album, I still go with "Born to Run" because I think it has it all, and with "Darkness" I think I'd kill myself. But you know, all those songs, "Factory," "Adam Raised a Cain," fantastic. There's a lot of stuff on "Born in the U.S.A." that's desperate. It's all packaged, but "Darlington County," getting arrested at the end of it, "Working on a Highway," "Glory Days" is fun, but it's an ex-high school baseball player drinking himself to death, a lonely woman whose husband left her. You listen to "Glory Days," you're dancing, but it's desperate. "Dancing in the Dark," same thing.

You know, this brings me back to that Reagan stuff. Bruce and Landau aren't being completely honest. They're not being dishonest, but they're not being straight. This is the genius of Landau, he knew that this guy was in his moment, he knew the moment, and he said we're going to put 12 songs down that are going to make you jump out of your seat, with the exception of "My Hometown." I mean there's only one song you can't dance to on that album, and yell and scream to. You know, "Cover Me," another depressing song. Completely depressing, but it's completely upbeat, up-tempo. They wanted it both ways, and I can't blame them.

Goldberg: You haven't even brought up "Nebraska" as songs of desperation. "Nebraska" is the best album Springsteen ever made.

Christie: I have a friend, Charles McKenna, huge Bruce fan, who says anything he's done after "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" sucks -
 
Goldberg: That's ridiculous.
 
Christie: But that's Charlie, he's a complete absolutist. He says everything that came after that, is the same chords, same beat, who gives a crap, I completely disagree with him.
Goldberg: What's your favorite moment, favorite show?

Christie: Favorite show would be when he played "Born to Run" and "Darkness" back to back on the order they were presented on the albums.  The most fun moment - it's impossible to pick because I've had so many incredible moments. If you remember those Giants Stadium shows, people wanted him to play "Rosalita" and he wouldn't. I was there in the front row when he finally decided to play it and it was the last show. I thought the stadium was going to come down. You could feel it shaking under your feet. And the exhilaration of that song. That stand at the stadium sold half-a-million tickets. For nine nights people were holding "Rosalita" signs up and he would say, "Put those fucking signs down."  And on the 10th night he played it.  He did this whole riff, I think it was during "Light of Day, where he would talk about the differences between New York and New Jersey, you know, the Giants play in New Jersey, the guy who sings "New York, New York" is from Jersey. For a person from Jersey, that never gets old.
 
My wife saw her first show with me at Giants Stadium. I courted her at Bruce shows. It was a requirement for our relationship that she had to learn the music, become part of this thing.

Goldberg: I disagree with you on "Thunder Road," but what's your second-favorite?

Christie: "Because The Night."  The third is "Growin' Up.  Just loved it. I really didn't get into it until college. I just thought that this was a great way to talk about that experience. The experience we've had of awkwardness and the mystery and the nervousness of being a teenager.
 
Goldberg: You told me once that you think Bruce has done much of his best work in the last ten years. I'm not so sure, but why do you think that? Is it "The Rising" that did it for you?

Christie: I was overjoyed at "The Rising." Overjoyed and I went to see the Today Show performance in Asbury Park. I was U.S. Attorney at the time time and it had special meaning for me because I was dealing with those 9/11 issues, with families that lost loved ones. It was vivid. And I thought as I listened to it, "Wow, he's rediscovered his voice."
 
Goldberg: You know, when I was listening to 'The Rising," I thought he could have a little more of a nod toward the fact that 9/11 wasn't a natural disaster, that it was something done to us -
 
Christie: But Bruce's dominant emotion that he express in his music is never anger, it's always desperation. To me, to express that feeling you just talked about, would require a song filled with anger, and no American could feel anything but anger after that. It was murder. But what the album is filled with is desperation, sadness and longing. It's what he expresses best, what he does best. "You're Missing," I mean, I defy anybody who had a connection to 9/11 to listen to that song and not weep, it's so vivid.  Your shirts in the closet, shoes by the bed, letters in the mailbox, I mean, come on.  Amazing. Look, the past 10 years were greatest years in the band's life, they were more sure, they were better with each other, they were tighter as a band, his songs were great, and you just found a way to love every minute of it.
 
Goldberg: You've mentioned "Lonesome Day" from "The Rising" before.
 
Christie: I will listen to that a lot.

Goldberg: Are you very sentimental?

Christie: Yes, with kids, friends, I'm very sentimental. You can kind of wallow it. And my sentimentality comes from realizing how incredibly lucky I am. We're incredibly lucky to have four great, smart, healthy kids, incredibly fortunate. I have a great group of friends that go back all the way to high school. I have an incredible group of professional I've been surrounded with who have taken me to heights I wouldn't have achieved by myself.  When I think of the fortunate things in my life, I get very sentimental.
 
Goldberg: You really go in for the melancholic songs sometimes.  So it's the fragility of life in "Lonesome Day" that gets you?

Christie: Exactly. How you've got to pay good care to everything. That it doesn't just happen. Whether it's your marriage, your relationship with your kids, your relationship with the people you work with. It all needs attention. Left unattended, it can just evaporate. Once it's gone it's hard to get back.

Goldberg: Is there one song that teaches you how to lead your life?

Christie: I tell you, "A Long Walk Home," that one, it's seven or eight deep on a later album, "Magic," it's not one that got pushed out or that people got right away. But I think, you know, 'What we'll do and what won't.' We have certain things we stand on, certain things we won't, and that connection to home. For him, once again, it's a long walk home but it's all familiar to him. Main street in Freehold, and it's all back to that. To me, it's all about what we'll do and what we won't. If you have an understanding of your ore, everything else becomes much easier. If you don't you're much more likely to drift.

Maria, you want to talk about a song, you want to jump in?

Comella: I'm just, what is that about driving all night to bring you a pair of shoes, in "Drive All Night."

Goldberg: That's your question?

Christie: This isn't hard. He wants to buy some shoes in order to taste her tender tongue.  He wants to kiss her so he bought her some shoes. Sometimes a Springsteen song is just what it says it's about.

Last week, I posted on the subject of the West Bank's two-tiered justice system, dredging up something I had written several years ago but still believe adamantly: "Inside the borders of Israel proper, Arabs and Jews are judged by the same set of laws in the same courtrooms; across the Green Line, Jews live under Israeli civil law as well, but their Arab neighbors -- people who live, in some cases, just yards away -- fall under a different, and substantially undemocratic, set of laws, administered by the Israeli Army."

This elicited a response from Yisrael Medad, a prominent settler, who wrote on his blog the following:

People, like Jeffrey Goldberg, complain of a two-tiered justice system on the West Bank.
What "two-tiered"?

Let's get this straight: the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are not citizens of Israel.  So, they can't vote. Just like an Israeli living in the United States but who is not a citizen cannot vote. Arabs of the new Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, if they opted for an Israeli ID, can vote in the city's municipal elections.

Otherwise, they have a democratic system in place.  And they can enjoy justice.

They can appeal, still, to the High Court of Justice.  The police, firemen and Hadassah Hospital are their's. As long as no peace treaty has been fully worked out, and their terror continues, and their incitement continues, and their educational system is hateful, among other negatives, why shouldn't there be a two-tiered system?

Let's run through this quickly. First, "Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are not citizens of Israel. So, they can't vote." Imagine the following sentence, justifying apartheid: "Blacks in South Africa are black. Therefore, they can't vote." How is this an argument and not a tautology? Obviously (or not obviously, to some people) this is the crux of the situation -- Arabs on the West Bank are denied voting rights in Israel, and are also denied the right to separate completely from Israel. (Their leaders haven't helped the situation, but the Israelis have not helped much either.) A more accurate, if still tautological, statement would have read: "Israel will not enfranchise Arabs living in Judea and Samaria. Therefore, they are disenfranchised."

Next: "Just like an Israeli living in the United States but who is not a citizen cannot vote." Is this what passes for a deep thought among the intellectual leaders of the settlement movement? There's one crucial difference between an Israeli immigrant in America and a Palestinian on the West Bank: The Israeli immigrant in America voluntarily moved to America. The Arab on the West Bank is from the West Bank. He didn't move to Israel, Israel moved to him.

Of course, the occupation of the West Bank was justified militarily, after Jordan used it to launch an attack on Israel in 1967. But that doesn't change the basic fact, known to all, that Arabs happened to be living on the West Bank when Israel arrived. They are not immigrants to the West Bank. They are native to the West Bank.

As for the rest of Medad's post, I simply don't know if he sincerely believes that Arabs on the West Bank have equivalent legal rights before Israel's High Court, or equal access to Israeli services, or if he knows he's pulling our legs.

One of the most dispiriting aspects of the Middle East conflict is the inability of both sides to see that their enemy also has legitimate claims to the territory in dispute. Palestinian rejection of the right of Jews to live in their ancient homeland is absurd and immoral. But so is the notion that Palestinians on the West Bank are somehow immigrants, and should be punished as immigrants until they agree to enjoy their punishment.

If you have a moment, read the introduction to the Times's "Room for Debate" feature, which this week asks the question, "Has support for Israel hurt U.S. credibility?" and see if you can identify the enormous analytical failure embedded within:

The president of Israel is resisting calls for a unilateral strike against Iran, but it's just the "unilateral" part that he finds troubling: "It is clear to us that we have to proceed together with America." Even if this is just posturing, the statement shows one reason the U.S. struggles to make allies in the Arab world: Israelis and Arabs alike assume that the U.S. will take a side in Mideast conflicts, and that the U.S. will side with Israel. Are they right?

It's not that difficult to see the fatal flaws and assumptions built into the exercise. Iran is a Persian country, not an Arab country, and its leadership and ideology are loathed across much of the Arab world. The leaders of Arab nations ranging from Morocco and Jordan to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all of whom are American allies, see Iran as the primary threat to peace and stability in the Middle East, and have been asking President Obama to confront Iran for three years. You'll recall that the king of Saudi Arabia urged the U.S. to "cut off the head of the snake" before it was too late, and many other Arab leaders, as well, have lobbied President Obama vociferously. Whoever wrote this introduction doesn't read the Times, apparently: Arab anxiety about Iran was covered extensively by The Times during the massive Wikileaks release.

It is not only the leaders of Arab countries who fear Iran. There is a reason the Iranian regime has failed to export its revolution to the Sunni Arab world, and that is popular suspicion of its motivations, as well as a range of other sectarian and religious disputes. And Iran is especially unpopular now that it has sided with the minority Alawite regime in Damascus, against Syria's Sunni majority.

In other words, American action against Iran could be understood as America siding with the Arabs, not only with the Israelis. This is not news, of course, except to the author of this contentious and ill-informed introduction.

There is another flaw in the suppositions advanced in this introduction, that if America acts against Iran, it will be doing so mainly in Israel's interests. Now would be a good time to remind everyone what President Obama said about the American interests at stake if Iran attempts to cross the nuclear threshold:

"(I)f Iran gets a nuclear weapon, this would run completely contrary to my policies of nonproliferation. The risks of an Iranian nuclear weapon falling into the hands of terrorist organizations are profound. It is almost certain that other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons. So now you have the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world, one that is rife with unstable governments and sectarian tensions. And it would also provide Iran the additional capability to sponsor and protect its proxies in carrying out terrorist attacks, because they are less fearful of retaliation."

The Times probably should have let David Sanger, or another expert on the complicated Arab-Iran-Israel dynamic, look at this feature before posting it.

Andrew Sullivan, in a recent post about my recent posts on the attempted murder of an Arab man by a gang of Jewish hooligans in Jerusalem, wrote:

To be fair to [Goldblog], since his first rather defensive post on a recent Jewish attempted lynching of Arabs, he has posted context that makes clear that the rise of this kind of bigotry and hatred is real - as Peter Beinart bravely reported to Goldblog's dismissal - and that the authorities in Israel are genuinely rattled by it. The Israelis have ridden the tiger of settler racism for a long time; it's now leaping from the West Bank to Israel itself.

He posted this after writing a bit of drive-by post on my post. What he wrote in the second post is fair, as far as it goes, although the "defensive" post I wrote made the argument, ultimately, that this is all very complicated, and Andrew has previously expressed disdain for the idea that the Middle East conflict is complicated. And the implication that, unlike Peter Beinart, I'm a recent convert to the idea that hardcore settlements are spawning hate and violence, is unfair. (And it's not Peter's criticism of the settlements that sparked my criticism of his book.) Andrew and I used to talk about this subject frequently, so he's aware of my views. But just in case he forgot them, here's something I wrote last December:

The Israeli Defense Forces are increasingly confronting a truth that many Palestinians learned awhile ago: A not-insignificant number of the Israelis who have settled on the West Bank are unhinged zealots who, in their self-righteousness, myopia and contempt for those with whom they disagree, comprise a kind of Jewish Hamas... Violent bands of settlers have been throwing rocks at Palestinians, and on occasion defacing their mosques and ripping up their olive trees, for some time. These are known as "price tag" attacks, meant to scare the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of making concessions on settlements. (Every demolition of an unauthorized "hilltop" settlement comes with a price, in other words.)

Here's something I wrote several years ago, part of a long piece on the settlers for The New Yorker (titled, by the way, "Among the Settlers: Will They Destroy Israel?":

The most hard-core settlers are impatient messianists, who profess indifference, even scorn, for the state; a faith in vigilantism; and loathing for the Arabs. They are free of doubt, seeing themselves as taking orders from God, and are an unusually cohesive segment of Israeli society. Hard-core settlers and their supporters make up perhaps two per cent of the Israeli populace, but they nevertheless have driven Israeli policy in the occupied territories for much of the past thirty years....

...A de-facto apartheid already exists in the West Bank. Inside the borders of Israel proper, Arabs and Jews are judged by the same set of laws in the same courtrooms; across the Green Line, Jews live under Israeli civil law as well, but their Arab neighbors--people who live, in some cases, just yards away--fall under a different, and substantially undemocratic, set of laws, administered by the Israeli Army. The system is neither as elaborate nor as pervasive as South African apartheid, and it is, officially, temporary. It is nevertheless a form of apartheid, because two different ethnic groups living in the same territory are judged by two separate sets of laws.

Careful readers know that I've tried to stop using the word "apartheid" to describe any aspect of the conflict, in good part because it so highly-charged a word that it shuts down conversation completely. But the description of a two-tiered justice system on the West Bank is still relevant today, and the threat to Israel's democracy, and good name, posed by settlement ideology is more real than ever. I realized this a long time ago -- twenty years or more, back to the time when I was writing a column for The Jerusalem Post, and before. 

Some thoughts from Daniel Seidemann, who knows more about the demographics, politics and sociology of Jerusalem than just about anyone. I don't always agree with him, but he knows his city. He sent these notes below to me in response to my post yesterday on the Jerusalem lynching (and he wanted me to note, in the interest of fairness, that, Prime Minister Netanyahu has just condemned the attack):

This has not ceased being the lead item in the printed and electronic press. With much of the editorial judgments commercially driven, and the IBA subject to governmental pressure, this wouldn't be happening if the editors did not believe this genuinely concerns a large chunk of the public. I think they are right.

 A lot of Israeli denial is based on the fact that these things happen "there", in the West Bank, not "here." And stuff like this does happen in Hebron and East Jerusalem (not all the time, but not rarely), and receives little coverage outside the media of the ideological left. (Look at Youtube on the abuse of Palestinian kids by soldiers and plainclothesman in Hebron just over the last couple of months). But there is nowhere in Jerusalem that is more "here" than Kikar Tziyon (Zion Square), and the comfort zone is narrowing. We may be witnessing the Hebronization of Jerusalem

3. Israelis are laboring under a lot of anxiety this summer, some over Iran, some over Bibi and Barak, and I would guess that there is a plurality a bit spooked by both. And then there is the turmoil on our northern and southern borders, and an economic crunch already felt and getting worse. I think that patience among many Israelis (who don't need superfluous worries) about settler violence is wearing thin.

4. Things might be best summed up by taking a hard look at the public pronouncements of three prominent figures on this: Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, condemned "any expression of violence, both verbal or physical, by any party," turning both victims and perps into faceless, odorless, colorless, tasteless entities. He's got elections in a year, and will need the support even of the radical right.

Netanyahu called Abbas and expressed concern over the fire-bombing in the WB, not the assault in Jerusalem. To do so would be to imply that Abbas had some kind of tie to the Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Nosiree sir, not for him to imply a divided Jerusalem.

And then there was Deputy Prime Minister Bogie Yaalon. I never have had much admiration for Yaalon, the politician. Watching him, this secular former kibbutznik,  pander much more than he would like to the settlers makes me squirm. And he condemned the attack in no uncertain terms, as "hate crime" and terror.

First, this is a game-changer in terms of the discourse. It's not only the "Arabists" at State that call this terror, this is from our Deputy prime minister, who is not about to get a prize from B'Tselem (Israel's most prominent human rights group).

Second, I don't think he was putting his ear to ground and listening to public opinion. He will be standing in Likud primaries some time soon, and he probably caused himself electoral damage by this statement, and did it with open eyes. And he did it because in spite of his move to the right, because this violates his values, and worries him. My guess is he is not alone.

Finally - as to the backgrounds of the attackers: not clear yet. The reports from the courts were "kids with no prior criminal records", but also haven't heard the euphemistic "...from normative backgrounds".

Rabbi David Wolpe, who is in remission from lymphoma, argues that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad misunderstands the nature of the disease when he compares it to the perfidious Zionist entity. He offers several reasons why, including:

"(H)ealthy cells predate cancerous ones. Cancer is something that afflicts a body after it is formed. Since the state of Israel goes back 3,000 years, and Islam began the 7th century (thus dating 1,500 years). It seems anachronistic, to say the least, to imply that Israel is an alien growth. Here, of course, a trained engineer may be forgiven for his ignorance of biology and history."

And this one:

Finally, may I say as someone who has gone through two neurosurgeries and chemotherapy, at this stage of cancer treatment we know only how to either cut it out or blast it away? So how does one eliminate a cancerous people? The analogy leads inevitably, inexorably, to the prospect of genocide. When you define a nation as a cancer you imply the solution is mass murder. My cancer was put into remission by a line leading into my vein that dripped life-giving poison. What would the Iranian leadership use as a "cure" for Israel? Radiation, no doubt.

Amos Yadlin, one of the smartest Israeli analysts there is (and a former chief of military intelligence), argued this weekend in a Washington Post op-ed that President Obama might be able to forestall an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities by going to Israel and making the case, before the Knesset, that a nuclear-armed Iran is a national security threat to the United States. Showing Israel, and the many Arab countries that worry as well about a nuclear Iran, that there is a direct U.S. self-interest in preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, could serve to convince doubtful allies that Obama means what he says -- that he will stop Iran, by whatever means necessary, from gaining possession of a bomb. Yadlin:

(Obama) must convince Israel, Iran, Russia and even Saudi Arabia that the U.S. military option is credible and effective.

A gesture directly from Obama could do it. The U.S. president should visit Israel and tell its leadership -- and, more important, its people -- that preventing a nuclear Iran is a U.S. interest, and if we have to resort to military action, we will. This message, delivered by the president of the United States to the Israeli Knesset, would be far more effective than U.S. officials' attempts to convey the same sentiment behind closed doors.

In my Bloomberg View column, I explicate on Yadlin's point:

A visit to Israel would do more to delay a strike on Iran than any other step the administration could take. The beauty of this idea is that Obama won't have to say anything new. He's on record explaining why the idea of containing a nuclear Iran isn't an option; he's on record promising to stop Iran by whatever means necessary; and he's on record explaining why a nuclear-free Iran is in the interests of the U.S.

"If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, this would run completely contrary to my policies of nonproliferation," he told me in an interview this year.

When I asked him what his position would be if Israel were not in the picture, he answered: "It would still be a profound national-security interest of the United States to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."

These words, delivered in the Oval Office, are powerful. But delivered in Jerusalem, before the Knesset, they would deeply reassure the prime minister and the Israeli public. What could be more effective than the U.S. president explaining to Israelis, in Israel, that their two countries share the same interests?

Yes, Obama is running for re-election, and it is hard to leave Ohio and Florida. But a trip to Israel -- a place he hasn't visited as president -- would put Iran on notice that Obama is deadly serious about thwarting their plans. Combined with stops in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such a visit would also allay the fears of our Arab allies. Most important, such a visit could prevent war. Which, of course, is a very presidential thing to do.

Zach Beauchamp argues that the attempted murder of a group of Arabs by a larger group of Jewish teenagers in Jerusalem cannot be understood without understanding the growing violence of some settlers:

These incidents fit into a disturbing pattern of growing violence committed by radical Israelis, particularly in the West Bank. Last December, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned about "homegrown terror" attacks committed by extremist settlers against Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians. There had been an uptick in "price tag" attacks, referred to as such because the terrorists were intending to exact a price for any moves by the Israeli government towards dismantling illegal settlements or withdrawing from the West Bank.

A new report written by two experts on Israeli counterterrorism at the Brookings Institute, Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs, suggests that the problem may be more serious than some had previously thought. Byman and Sachs, citing UN numbers, find that the number of "price tag" attacks had roughly doubled from 2009 to 2011 with limited response from Israeli authorities: over 90 percent of investigations into incidents of settler violence over the past ten years ended without indictments. The attacks have escalated recently, Byman and Sachs argue, as a consequence of the rise of an extremist subculture among young, religious settlers:

[O]ver the last several years, the evolution of the settler community has also led to the growth of a small but significant fringe of young extremists, known as the "hilltop youth," who show little, if any, deference to the Israeli government or even to the settler leadership. No matter how strongly Gush Emunim opposed government policy, it always officially avoided vigilante violence. But these young radicals, who largely live in settlements deep in the West Bank and do not affiliate with traditional religious authorities, have embraced it. These settlers -- likely no more than a couple thousand, a small but dangerous minority within the broader community -- are the ones leading the "price tag" attacks against Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers. They have lost faith in the notion that the state, under its current leadership, is key to settling the Land of Israel. Instead, they see it as an obstacle to God's will.

Isabel Kershner files a report about an attack on three Arab youths by a large group of Jewish hooligans in downtown Jerusalem. One of the Arabs nearly died; Israeli police have arrested seven teenagers so far in connection with the attack:

On Monday, some of the teenage suspects commented near the courthouse where they were remanded, adding to the shocking nature of the case. "For my part he can die," said one of the suspects, who admitted taking part in the assault. "He's an Arab," he told reporters outside the courtroom by way of explanation. "He cursed my mother.

"If it was up to me, I'd have murdered him," he added.

The attack, described by one witness as a "lynch," has laid bare the undercurrent of Jewish-Arab tensions that plague this mixed but politically divided city and that is leading many Israelis to question how their society could have come to this.

Several observations:

1) This sort of thing isn't actually that new. As someone who covered the funeral procession of Meir Kahane, the racist rabbi assassinated in New York more than 20 years ago, I can attest to the fact that Jewish hooligans, mainly from Jerusalem's poorest neighborhoods (and many who are descendants of Jews who fled, or were expelled, from Arab countries), will periodically set themselves upon innocent Arabs. They did it at the funeral, and in subsequent incidents.

2) This type of attack isn't that common. One of the strange things about Jerusalem is the way in which Arabs and Jews have achieved, in the city's public spaces, a kind of side-by-side integration. Which is to say, the big shopping malls in predominately Jewish West Jerusalem are filled with Arab shoppers, who go unmolested, generally. There's not a lot of friendliness, but not much hostility (Jews tend to stay out of Arab neighborhoods, except for settlers, who are there on purpose.) And Arabs and Jews ride the new surface rail system that connects Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, generally without incident. (The city's hospitals are actually places where there is often noteworthy warmth between Arabs and Jews -- the maternity wards, especially -- and it is no big deal that Arab doctors treat Jewish patients, and vice versa.)

3) Jews are sometimes attacked by Arabs in Jerusalem, without much attendant media coverage. I was in Israel earlier this year when an Arab East Jerusalemite attacked a Jewish man with an axe near the Damascus Gate. Jewish violence sometimes draws more coverage than Arab violence against Jews, and it certainly draws more attention than Arab-on-Arab violence. Such is the nature of things.

4) I'm always perplexed, after an incident like this, to read emotional statements like the one from Kershner, who said that the attack "is leading many Israelis to question how their society could have come to this." First of all, which Israelis? Name some. Name one. I'm not saying they don't exist. I know they exist, I just want to know if this includes only people in Kershner's liberal circles. Second, it's quite a broad statement, one that you almost never see in The New York Times following a heinous act of violence against an ethnic or racial minority in this, or any other, country. It's a bit of a reflex at The Times, which seems to be believe that Israelis are -- or should be -- wringing their hands constantly.

5) It's obviously a healthy sign that the police made arrests in the case, but the acid test comes if these suspects are convicted. Will they be given sentences that match the gravity of the crime, or will they get off easy? It would be appalling, but unsurprising, if this is ultimately not treated as an attempted murder.

David Carr tried to induce mass depression among members of the Magazine-American community last week by suggesting, in his Times column, that magazines were done for, kaput, KO'ed, history, toast. And he used actual numbers, damn him, to make his case:

Like newspapers, magazines have been in a steady slide, but now, like newspapers, they seem to have reached the edge of the cliff. Last week, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that newsstand circulation in the first half of the year was down almost 10 percent. When 10 percent of your retail buyers depart over the course of a year, something fundamental is at work.

I talked to an executive at one of the big Manhattan publishers about the recent collapse at the newsstand and he said, "When the airplane suddenly drops 10,000 feet and it doesn't crash, you still end up with your heart in your stomach. Those are very, very bad numbers."

I have higher hopes for magazines like The Atlantic and The New Yorker (a category that includes... mainly The Atlantic and The New Yorker, as well as a small handful of other titles). These are magazines that provide readers with deeply reported, closely argued, entertainingly written, carefully edited, and rigorously fact checked articles about serious and complicated subjects. But I recognize that no magazine is immune to the problems David identified.

The other day, a few of us were sitting around, thinking through new ways to ensure the continued viability of our wonderful product, when James Bennet, The Atlantic's illustrious editor in chief, brought up the scene in one of those Bourne movies where Matt Damon kills a guy with a rolled-up magazine. We all thought that this was a potentially interesting new product application, and we all agreed that while you could kill a guy with an iPad, you probably wouldn't want to, because you could break an iPad, but you can't break a rolled-up magazine.

I then proceeded to do a little Web-based research, and learned that this is a real thing, killing people, or at least disabling them, with magazines, as the video below demonstrates. We're not sure what we're going to do with this information yet, but Atlantic subscribers should know that they're not only buying wonderful articles and penetrating criticism, but also a killing machine (and please, watch the video, it's so worth it):

I post this without comment:

An 11-year-old Christian girl has been arrested in Pakistani capital on a charge of blasphemy after she was accused of burning pages of the Quran, police said on Saturday.

Officials of Ramna police station said an FIR had been registered against Rimsha Masih, a resident of Umara Jaffar in sector G-12 in Islamabad.

The girl was arrested on Friday by personnel from a women's police station after a man named Syed Muhammad Ummad filed a complaint against her.

However, an NGO named 'Christians in Pakistan' reported on its website that the girl has 'Down Syndrome' and had been falsely accused of burning 10 pages of the Quran.

The NGO said other Christians living in sector G-12 had been "threatened by extremists" who wanted to burn down their village on Friday.

Here's the thing: If you were looking for a safe place to store nuclear weapons, would you choose a country that is the epicenter of global jihadism, and that sees its military bases, and even its military's general headquarters, attacked with some regularity, and some success? If you answered no, you are correct!  Once again this week, we see Pakistani radicals having some measure of success attacking a base at the heart of the country's military-nuclear complex. From The Times:

The attack on the Minhas air force base in Kamra, 25 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad, was a stark reminder of the militants' determination to attack Pakistan's most sensitive installations despite ongoing military operations in their tribal hide-outs.

The sprawling air base, in the Attock district of Punjab, is believed to be one of the locations where elements of Pakistan's nuclear stockpile, estimated to include at least 100 warheads, is stored. It is also home to a variety of warplanes, including American-built F-16s, and contains a factory that makes JF-17 fighter jets in conjunction with China. 

No nuclear material went missing this time. It is, however, only a matter of time before a more serious breach is made, with enormous consequences. Last year, Marc Ambinder and I wrote about Pakistani nuclear security in our Atlantic cover story "The Ally From Hell," and we provided some detail about previous attacks on Pakistani nuclear sites. We also conveyed Pakistan's assertions that, hey, everything is fine, no worries:

In an interview this summer in Islamabad, a senior official of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), the Pakistani military's spy agency, told The Atlantic that American fears about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons were entirely unfounded. "Of all the things in the world to worry about, the issue you should worry about the least is the safety of our nuclear program," the official said. "It is completely secure." He went on to say, "It is in our interest to keep our bases safe as well. You must trust us that we have maximum and impenetrable security. No one with ill intent can get near our strategic assets."

Like many statements made by Pakistan's current leaders, this one contained large elements of deceit. At least six facilities widely believed to be associated with Pakistan's nuclear program have already been targeted by militants. In November 2007, a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying workers to the Sargodha air base, which is believed to house nuclear weapons; the following month, a school bus was attacked outside Kamra air base, which may also serve as a nuclear storage site; in August 2008, Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers attacked what experts believe to be the country's main nuclear-weapons-assembly depot in Wah cantonment. If jihadists are looking to raid a nuclear facility, they have a wide selection of targets: Pakistan is very secretive about the locations of its nuclear facilities, but satellite imagery and other sources suggest that there are at least 15 sites across Pakistan at which jihadists could find warheads or other nuclear materials.

UPDATE: I received this email from one Khawar Ayub in response to this post:

Dear sir,

why you are against pakistan so much.
why dont you write against the biggest terrorist of the world who used nuclear bombs against innocent humans if you have guts write truth.

Regards