'How Many Bubbles in a Bar of Soap?' Jimmy Carter Fails the Literacy Test
Back when Jimmy Carter was young, they used to have literacy tests to keep black people from voting. The black person would go to the polls and have to take a literacy test in order to vote. The pollworkers would ask the black person questions like, "How many bubbles in a bar of soap?" When the black person couldn't answer, they couldn't vote.
The Times is enforcing the literacy test on Israel/Palestine. Jimmy Carter failed. He made too many mistakes so he can't offer his opinion. Only experts can vote, usually centrist-right Jews who have no interest in or idea what's going on in the Occupied Territories. People who are blind to an outrage, people like Ken Pollack who can't even say the word occupation. A president who negotiated a lasting peace deal between Israel and Egypt and who has visited the area countless times: he's not well-informed enough to comment.
The literacy test has worked. It's sharply narrowed the mainstream discourse on Israel/Palestine. Democratic discourse is supposed to be contentious: You get a lot of views, and everyone makes some mistakes. Big deal; it's the ideas that count. But intimidated by the literacy test, a lot of liberals won't go near this issue, people who would be shocked to see what goes on in the Occupied Territories. Tony Kushner first explained this to me months ago. Even if you're sickened by what you see on TV, you're made to feel you're an idiot and not allowed to open your mouth till you know the difference between the Anglo-American commission and the Peel report and U.N. partition and Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration and Transjordan and a ton of other historical debris. How many bubbles in a bar of soap?
It's hurt us. For many years the left had a reasonable position, Palestinian state, that was outside the firewall the Israel lobby created that limited mainstream views. Now mainstream views have finally come around, mostly, to that opinion, Palestinian state, but some on the left are moving on, saying we missed our chance. They're talking about a binational state. At NYU last week Tony Judt said Yes he believes the idea of a Jewish state is "anachronistic," when you consider that as a Jew, he is allowed to move to Israel tomorrow, but a person born in that state and speaking the Hebrew language better than any of us can is not allowed to live there. Because they're Muslim or Christian. An interesting, important idea. The mainstream won't touch it. America's loss.
That Philip Weiss should argue for ideas not grounded in fact comes as no surprise. Where does the Times article label Carter a "raving lunatic"? Did Weiss leave his brain in his lost hat?
Yeah, those facts and details are so trivial...
That's what makes Weiss so bogus, he makes up facts and details, because the actual ones don't fit his bogus ideology.
In a US court, the judge instructs the jurors that they can disregard all testimony of a witness if that witness has given one piece of false testimony. If Carter, reports one thing falsely, why trust anything else? The same holds true of Weiss.
http://mondoweiss.observer.com/2006/08/how-muslims-are-prevented-from-visiting-a-holy-site-in-jerus.html
Jimmy Carter may fail another test: The Eyrrick Enlightenment test.
He is absolutely right on the Israeli side.
But he fails the test if he can not write an honest book on the Palestinian errors or crimes.
Or even on the Iranian errors or crimes.
The Palestinian allies like the Soviets, and the Iranians have forced the Palestinians to commit grave crimes.
The occupation is bad, but the crimes of the terror are also inexusable.
Is Weiss on drugs???
Carter is NOT mentioned in the blood type article and the Arts article does not have the work "lunatic" in it...
"On the sports age, he was described as "soft-spoken, cautious, reserved, conformist, reliable" (a piece on blood types). But the other article was in Arts, and labelled him a raving lunatic. "
What's going on????
I think Weiss owes his readers an explanation...
Phil,
This isn't exactly on topic, but I read that Walt & Mearsheimer have written a rebuttal paper to their critics. Do you know if the rebuttal is online, and if so, where it's available?
Another thing: I can't believe Tony Judt said that a Muslim or Christian born in Israel is not allowed to live there. Or has he gone as loopy as Weiss
Fall in love only with Jews
By Haaretz Editorial
Sat., December 02, 2006 Kislev 11, 5767
In recent years the state has been trying to make the entry into Israel and naturalization of non-Jews more difficult. Six months ago, the justices of the Supreme Court criticized the amendment to the citizenship law barring any family unification involving Arab Israelis and Palestinians. The petition against the law was denied, but the justices argued that the right of citizens to be in Israel with the partner they choose should not be harmed, and that it is necessary to legislate a new and more flexible citizenship law. The Justice Ministry promised to do precisely that.
It turns out that the hope for a more humane law was exaggerated. Now, the Knesset is seeking to extend the temporary citizenship law by another two years, and it will also vote in a second and third reading on the law on illegal aliens, which will prevent the unification of families for those who resided in Israel illegally for as little as a month. In theory, this law is meant to counter illegal immigration; in practice it is another measure for blocking citizenship to those who are not Jews, even if they have family ties with an Israeli.
Arab citizens have to marry among themselves, or emigrate from Israel. Any possibility of marrying an Arab from a different state or the territories will be blocked by the citizenship law or the law on illegal aliens. However, the law on illegal aliens will also hurt families of Jewish new immigrants who want to bring with them non-Jewish family members. These include non-Jewish children from previous marriages, non-Jewish elderly parents of new immigrants and also foreign workers who fell in love with Israelis and would like to live with them in Israel. The strict immigration policy that Israel is adopting with these laws completely ignores the breadth of possibilities stemming from ties of love and human relationships. Henceforth, the government recommends, through legislation, it is advisable to fall in love only with Jews, or to give up living in Israel.
The citizenship law was originally created to open the door to non-Jews to also live in Israel. While the Law of Return is the law that instituted the Jewish state and provides for automatic naturalization for any Jew, the citizenship law is meant to solve different human problems. But since the demographic panic began, and the rumor was spread that the Palestinians are trying to manifest the right of return through marriage with Arab Israelis, and hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish new immigrants from Russia arrived, and the number of foreign worker rose, a coalition of those fearful for the future demography of Israel emerged, which led to superfluous legislative initiatives.
No doubt, Israel, too, like all Western states, must formulate a reasonable immigration policy. The difference between such a policy and the hunting down of parents, children and partners of Israelis, most of them living in Israel illegally because of the circumstances, is enormous. A country of immigrants like Israel cannot ignore the slew of human problems that emerge, and family members should not be asked to separate because some of them do not meet the entry requirements. Preventing the unification of families of Arab Israelis with their partners is discrimination of the worst kind. It has nothing to do with immigration, but with the right of every citizen to live in his/her country with his/her partner and children.
This editorial doesn't lend any credence to Judt's alleged assertion. Are you reduced to having to cite an impeccably Zionist source like Ha'aretz? Can't you do better?
"By maintaining silence on this important matter that is close to their hearts, these journalists have violated their American oath: to inform the people."
It takes real bravery needed to launch the kind of sustained critique of the Lobby that Phil Weiss has been making on this site. He deserves much credit and thanks.
I encourage him to continue to focus on the media side of the lobby. All the arms of the octopus need to be watched, but even more than AIPAC and AEI and WINEP and ADL it's the media that holds the reins of power in the modern mass democracy. Unfortunately of all the aspects of the lobby it's also the hardest to talk about. Because, as the quote above reveals, it's impossible to talk about without talking about opposing loyalties.
In the political sphere legitimate differences of opinion can exist between people who honestly respect each other, but in the media sphere it's different. We're no longer talking about arguing over different interpretations of the data, but of purposely denying others access to the data they need to form an opinion--of censoring what they can see.
When you act like this, it's hard to pretend that you still respect those you are manipulating. To act like this, you must in some sense despise them.
Steve,
Your evenhandedness is misleading. How about me and some other wronged people (say, Kurds) come in your community and confiscate your land, take your houses and force you to live as refugees, then when you reach for your gun we cry "terrorist"?
Here is Noah Cohen explaining the "Cherokee Case":
**********
"Entitled "History
First, I would invite every person in America to read the two articles in the Ny Times that little Phil links to. If that doesn't prove that he is totally out of his mind I don't know what does. Second, anybody born in Israel is allowed to live in Israel, another lie by little Phil. Third, it would help anybody to know a little history about the area. Basically what little Phil is saying is that it's unfair to ask somebody to actually know what they're talking about before they comment on the situation. But considering his columns I can certainly understand how he would see it that way. But on to Jimmy Carter. Our sainted 39th president. First, he's an author on tour trying to sell books, that's all he is. Second, the Carter center is financed by the Saudi's
He is bought and paid for by the Arabs. Nothing wrong with that but don't pretend your some sort of objective observer when your completely partisan. Lastly, Jimmy Carter is a 1946 graduate of the naval academy. I'd like everybody to contemplate that one for a second. That means that he was a presumably healthy 18 yr old in the fall of 1942. That navy, the real navy, was on convoy duty in the Atlantic and facing off with the Japanese in the Solomon island. There are tens of thousand of navy men at the bottom of the ocean who went to war when he sat it out in Annapolis. And yes, I question the courage of anybody who went to college in the fall of 1942. Particularly somebody who trades on his military career like Jimmy Carter.
Having read the links to the NYT items, I see that Phil's detractors are all bent up by the fact that the link to the New York Times article about Japanese blood types doesn't refer to Jimmy Carter; hence Phil is "on drugs.' But actually the hard-copy does, I think (I don't have it anymore)--there was a little graphic linking various (American) celebrities to their blood types and personalities, translated from the Japanese. They were an eclectic bunch, and I think Carter was one of them. I feel stupid having to correct such trivia -- Phil, as more and more people are coming to realize, is talking about important subjects in an extremely interesting way--perhaps using the power of the internet in the best possible way. It is this which has his detractors all obsessed, and hoping to impeach his comments by reference to trivial errors. BTW, I'm sure Phil is wrong about some stuff, perhaps even important things --he is searching as we all are. But like, why don't one of you who gets so distraught at his blog make a stab at being Cynthia Ozick or Leon Wieseltier, and try to take him down with a little style ?
To Peter H.
Walt & Meerscheimer answered their critics in the same publication, The London Review of Books, a few weeks after their original essay appeared there.
To Steve:
"(Carter) fails the test if he can not write an honest book on the Palestinian crimes or errors."
I don't think so, Steve. Fox (Likud)News doesn't set the rules for the entire American discourse, thank heaven. We've had quite enough of "fair & balanced", so-called. You can call a painted pig whatever you want, it remains a painted pig.
To Peter H.
Walt & Meerscheimer answered their critics in the same publication, The London Review of Books, a few weeks after their original essay appeared there.
To Steve:
"(Carter) fails the test if he can not write an honest book on the Palestinian crimes or errors."
I don't think so, Steve. Fox (Likud)News doesn't set the rules for the entire American discourse, thank heaven. We've had quite enough of "fair & balanced", so-called. You can call a painted pig whatever you want, it remains a painted pig.
Palestine is a tough problem.
I have lived in oppression.
Outside help was not available.
We could not free ourselves from our own forces, because we were hopelessly divided.
The solution is to find a Palestinian person of high integrity to steer the Palestinians away from their unenlightened allies toward to a decent compromise and peace with the moderate Israelis.
December 13, 2006 10:35 PM EST | Link
If I were Jimmy Carter...
posted by Helena Cobban
(which I'm not)... I would not have written a book with an attention-grabbing title like Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid without using even just a little portion of the text to make the case why this title is appropriate.
If I were Jimmy Carter, which I'm not, I would have noted that there are indeed many many things that Israel's projects in the occupied West Bank and Golan have in common with South African apartheid, and very few if any of them have to do with skin color. (US citizens have this hang-up about skin color issues, which goes back deep in their collective past, obviously. Their common understanding of the word 'racism', for example, completely limits it to discrimination based on skin color, unlike just about everywhere else in the world where 'racism' has a far broader meaning.)
If I were Jimmy Carter I'd have noted that in both South Africa and the Israeli-occupied territories, the central project of a ruling government constituted by the settler immigrant community is the expropriation of the land and other natural resources of the indigenous people, involving the systematic expulsion of the indigenes from their ancestral lands and their relocation into economically quite unsustainable territorial holding pens.
The term "Bantustans" is generally appropriate in both cases.
If I were Jimmy Carter I'd have noted that this completely antidemocratic system of rule is sustained only through the power of armaments and lethal violence, backed up by whole enormous aparatuses of administrative violence and control.
I'd note that, yes, there are many clear instances of outright discrimination-- based not on skin color as such (ever since the Israelis a while ago imported a bunch of black-complected Jews from Ethiopia to defuse that accusation), but Jewishness, pure and simple.
Whole road systems, housing developments, systems of social services, schools, and hospitals exist in the occupied West Bank-- for Jews alone. Palestinians have to make do with horrible, constrained lives as untermenschen.
It's all "justified" of course, on the basis of "security"-- the security of just one of those groups, that is... Just as in apartheid South Africa.
And we can't talk to the "terrorists" can we...
Just as in apartheid South Africa.
So I guess I wish Jimmy Carter had been a bit more forthright about some of these comparisons-- in the text of his book. Which sadly, he wasn't. The title of the book seems more like an afterthought, really.
Apart from that, it's a sweet and haunting book, in which he gives an intimate portrait of how he came to learn about many aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli issue, and much well-presented information about the nitty-gritty of the Israeli-Palestinian encounter in the occupied territories. But really, I wish he'd done a bit more with that title of his.
Comments (74)
From "Just World News" published online by Helena Cobban
Regarding Scott McConnell's remarks on Philip Weiss, yes, he is indeed talking about important things, but not in a new, interesting, or informed way. What he is attempting to do is mainstream the old Chomsky/Said eliminationist line with the same gentrified euphemism, binational state. As for the mainstream media, it is absurd to suggest we don't hear the Palestinian point of view or that their plight is screened out of consciousness. Screened out in recent history are the Kurds, Tibetans, Chechens, and more currently the Darfur victims and Iraqi refugees.
Weiss's method of argument is usually little more than "Walt&Mearshimer/Tony Judt/Jimmy Carter said it; I believe it; that settles it." Sometimes there are you-are-there reports on anti-Israel speakers (often with breathless cooing over their sartorial splendor--anti-Zionism as fashion statement).
Weiss would be a lot more interesting if he would speculate on how his desired goal is to be achieved: how is the Israeli state to be dismantled, what is to be put in its place? where will millions of Jewish refugees go when the new state is effectively Palestinianized? God know what position "some on the left" will have moved on to by then. Perhaps Weiss does not deal wtih these issues because he is, so he tells us, an idealist. This is not reassuring. Idealism has a rather spotty history, but then history is just so much debris, isn't it.
As for today's "trivial errors" I don't think anyone was bent out of shape or distraught by them, just amused (because it came in a posting citing the old Southern literacy test) and astonished that anyone would think it conceivable that the staid NY Times would refer to an ex-president as a "raving lunatic." This sounds less like a mistake and more like a hallucination (hence, I suppose, one reader's reference to drugs).
Finally, it is no easy thing to simply become a Leon Wieseltier or Cynthia Ozick, but then Weiss is no Edward Said or (pre-Iraq) Christopher Hitchens.
Laurence,
We have read enough from you to know one thing: You are just an apologist who doesn't like what people like Weiss or Judt or Carter are doing, which is informing the incredibly uninformed American people of some very embarrassing facts and truths.
Your efforts are touching, but taking you on your word, what exactly are you doing in a worthless blog which is "indeed talking about important things, but not in a new, interesting, or informed way"?
And how informed are you? What Weiss is "attempting to do is mainstream the old Chomsky/Said eliminationist line with the same gentrified euphemism, binational state"???
Some elementary, introductory reading for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_State_Solution
You either don't know a thing about the history of this issue or you are trying to present it as a diabolic effort by lunatics like Chomsky or Palestinians like Said to destroy Israel!
In case you didn't notice, some people commenting here are very knowledgeable of the issues involved. Just like in that thread on Zionism and Rabbis, or on Israel immigration policies, you are way out of your depth.
And Christopher Hitchens? Pllllllllease!
One final question: Has it occured to you that you are in the company of people like Bill Pearlman and Tommy?
P.S. If you seriously don't believe that the Palestinian point of view or their plight is screened out of consciousness, explain the ADL efforts to silence Tony Judt or why every Congressman knows that talking about the Palestinians is a career suicide.
Spelling error: Occurred
Alan:
Tony Judt, Phil Weiss, and the sainted Jimmy Carter are all about the destruciton of Israel, and that's all their about. What their motivation is, who knows, and who cares. But the irrefutable fact is that if the miliatry balance ever tips against Israel then they're dead, half of world Jewry will die. You want to see that happen, I don't. And that's really the bottom line here.
Now, Helena Cobban informs us that she's not Jimmy Carter? Boy, was I fooled all those years.
Pearlman,
Have another espresso while demanding American and Israeli soldiers to die for your Biblical fantasies.
P.S. I don't consider the one-state solution feasible. I've read enough to know it will never happen. Right now I worry more about the forcible "transfer" (ethnic cleansing) solution that your hero, Avigdor Lieberman (in the ideological footsteps of your other hero, Meir Kahane) is preparing to enforce.
Alan,
There is nothing of substance in your post. You don't know what I do or don't know and since you and your pal Anonymous (I'd take a good, hard look at the company YOU keep) are incapable of sustained, rational argument you either link to the idiot-level agitprop you copy your tripe from or to material that proves nothing except that Israel has flaws like other nations (a Ha'aretz editorial, for godsake. I probably read it when it first came out). You say I
don't like what Judt, Weiss, and Carter are saying. Well, of course not, I think they're wrong (and for the record I never said nor do I think that Chomsky and Said are lunatics; the word is probably still bouncing around in your cranial cavity from Weiss' post), but they're getting a hearing (as they should), even as you and your associates keep banging on ridiculously about the cancellation of a single lecture by the martyred Judt. What you reveal through the wreckage of your clanking syntax and rudimentary powers of expression (spelling errors are the least of it) is an intolerance of any dissent from your hate-driven and small-minded orthodoxy. Anyone who disagrees with you had just better shut up or you'll throw another verbal tantrum.
Pearlman: "Tony Judt, Phil Weiss, and the sainted Jimmy Carter are all about the destruciton of Israel, and that's all their about."
Yeah, and everyone here wants to kill you and eat your babies--because you're a JEW!
(Now you can go to sleep contented.)
Laurence,
Your pseudo-intellectualism cannot hide the fact that you are not very well informed.
Your ad hominem attacks don't help. You can shoot me, the messenger, all you want, but the fact is that you resort to that because you can't deal with the issues.
You tried to present the one-state solution as "the old Chomsky/Said eliminationist line with the same gentrified euphemism, binational state".
You probably never read Martin Buber or Hannah Arendt, you like Hitchens after all!
You tried to disprove Judt but an honest look at Israel's immigration policies prove that either you have no idea or that you are simply trying to distort and misinform. That Haaretz article certainly didn't support your position I'm afraid.
On the Zionism discussion, you tried to present the Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum as a fanatic and once I proved with actual quotes the misgivings many Rabbis had (and still have) with Zionism, including their terrible accusations regarding Zionist actions during the holocaust, you simply disappeared.
The wreckage of my clanking syntax and my rudimentary powers of expression prove that even a simpleton like me can blow a pseudo-intellectual like you away with some research on the actual issues discussed!
But your cheap shot at my spelling mistake due to fast typing is your example of worthy debate tactics!
Right!
P.S. A good way to avoid verbal tantrums is to be informed and contribute to a discussion. Apologists tend to forget that.
"It clearly galls Philip Weiss that Herzl was proved right and the alleged universalists wrong about the Jewish future in Europe. Establishing a place of refuge (and a great deal more) for Jews is "negative" only in Weiss's addled brain."
Posted by: Laurence Mintz | December 12, 2006 1:54 PM
**********
This is Laurence's idea of a worthy comment. Ad hominem attacks, trying to discredit and silence Mr. Weiss just like Pearlman, Tommy, "the wise king" and other wonderful contributors.
And while he assures us he doesn
Alan,
After I sent my post off, it occurred to me that English might not be your native language or that you might be five or six years old. If either or both are the case I apologize. I am still trying to untangle the skein of non-sequitors and irrelevencies you sent in lieu of a reply, but it might be best to keep things simple, i.e., at your level.
1. Yes I have read Hannah Arendt, sometimes in agreement, sometimes not. She is hardly anti-Israel by your standards (cf. the Bruehl-Young biography for her reaction to the '67 war).
2.Your comment linking Judt with the Ha'aretz editorial (which rightly called for immigration policy reform) doesn't make any sense, so I'll only say that I object to two leading ideas that are the foundation of Judt's argument (a) that Israel is an anachronism because the nation-state is a relic of the 19th century and (b) that a binational state is anything other than a form of ethnic cleansing. As to the first, I see no evidence of the nation-state withering away anywhere nor why Israel is the only nation that must disappear. You will undoubtedly say that it must as just punishment for its oppression of the Palestinians. Fine. Are you also calling for the undoing of Russia for its crimes against the Chechens (a quarter of a million dead since the early 90s) on another site? Or of Australia for its decimation of the Aborigine population? I won't even mention Sudan since by your lights Arabs have a dispensation from heaven to kill anyone they like.
3. I don't give a damn what Teitelbaum et al. had to say about Zionism and it is not clear to me what you "proved with actual quotes." What, that some rabbis are anti-Zionist? Golly, you don't say! I'm sure you'd get a sympathetic hearing from the jokers now sojourning with the maniac Ahmadinajad.
4. Why does Hitchens bother you so much? To the best of my knowledge he is as anti-Israel as ever. Is it that he was genuinely outraged by the Palestinian suicide bombers, in spite of his sympathy for their cause? A traitor for sure.
5. Lastly, I can only laugh at your notion that you've blown me away with your foul emissions of hot air.
This is getting boring, but here we go for one last time.
1. Why are ad hominem attacks perfectly ok when launched against supporters of Israel?
2. Alan is twisting my words with a false use of quotation marks; In reply to an earlier post I said the neocons deserved more of the blame for the Iraq catastrophe than even Pat Buchanan, a hostile critic of Israel, was willing to assign them. Yes, Alan, the blood is on the hands of Bush&Co. Your assertion that they are scapegoats is disgraceful. Or is this another thing you "proved" with your glittering intellect?
3. What am I doing on this "worthless" (your word, Alan) blog? I'm beginning to wonder myself.
4. "Every congressman knows, etc" How does Alan know what every congressman know? Does he revolve in Washington's inner circles? The Jewish vote is not large and Philip Weiss (I wouldn't expect anything from Alan) has never explained why the all-powerful Lobby and all-controlling neocons have never been able to deliver it to the Republicans, not even close. I beleive most American Jews would like to see an administration seriously committed to the peace process as Bill Clinton's was. Hardly "a [sic] career suicide" for him.
5. I was not ridiculing Judt; I have read his books (have you Alan?) and respect him enormously as a historian. Still, he overreacted to a trivial incident that only proved Abe Foxman is an oaf with a political tin ear. Whether Judt is still dining out on this incident I don't know.
And while we're at it, Alan, please explain, if you can, exactly how I am trying to "silence" Philip Weiss.
Laurence,
I see more ad hominem attacks! I probably touched a nerve there I guess.
1) Nobody said Arendt was anti-Israel. I redirected you to that Wikipedia simple introductory article to prove to you that the one-state solution is nothing new, that many early Zionists were for it and that this idea is certainly not "the old Chomsky/Said eliminationist line with the same gentrified euphemism, binational state" since it is an idea that originated even before Chomsky or Said were born!.
2) My comment linking Judt and the Haaretz editorial Brian posted makes a lot of sense because it proves that Judt is right. That's why you are evading the issue. In your first post you said "this article proves nothing except that Israel has flaws like other nations". I don't know of many nations with immigration policies like Israel's, and this flow is exactly what Judt has repeatedly pointed out.
Your other objections to Judt's article in the New York Review of Books have already been addressed by him. I will object though to your reflexive equation of a one-state solution (which I don't consider feasible by the way so I am not for it) with the destruction of Israel. If that is so, then Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt were for the destruction of Israel as well. That