Good times

Memories of Washington, D.C. and the 9:30 club. One of the most chill, light-hearted birthday times I've ever had.



Thanks, Brandi.

The fruits of repression

At so many levels, this is the consequence of repression in lieu of liberal values and liberal education animating a culture.

Afghan held for sister's alleged ad hoc abortion

When you go to bed at night and thank your lucky stars that you live in a free country, the greater likelihood of avoiding this type of near-tragedy should be among the many reasons why.

Repression creates fear, not understanding or an appreciation for others or for the value of human life.

Free and open education, debate and discussion makes greater understanding possible.

For free societies to move forward, we need to honor this fact of our lives that liberal values have made possible.

It is time to end it

A fascinating history of the 100 year Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the current The Economist.

The hundred years' war in Palestine

The last portion of that history:

"In Lebanon three years ago, and today in Gaza, Hizbullah and Hamas seem to have invented a new military doctrine. Israel has deterred its enemies mainly by relying on a mighty conventional army to react with much greater force to any provocation. But non-state actors are harder to deter. Hizbullah and Hamas, armed by Iran with some modern weapons, can burrow inside the towns and villages of their own people while lobbing rockets at Israel’s. A state that yearns for a semblance of normality between its wars cannot let such attacks become routine. That is why today, as in the 1950s, Israel responds to pinpricks with punitive raids, each of which had the potential to flare into war. Israel’s operation in Gaza is designed not only to stop Hamas’s rockets but to shore up a doctrine on which Israel thinks its safety must still be based.

At Camp David in 2000 Israel and the Palestinians discovered that even with goodwill it is hard to agree terms. How to share Jerusalem? What to offer the refugees who will never go home? How can Israel trust that the land it vacates is not used, as Gaza has been, as a bridgehead for further struggle? But—and this is the fourth thing that keeps the battle alive—the two sides are seldom left alone to tackle these core issues.

For too long the conflict in Palestine was a hostage to the cold war. America was once neutral: it was Eisenhower who forced Israel out of Gaza (and Britain out of Egypt) after Suez. But America later recruited Israel as an ally, and this suited the Israelis just fine. It gave them the support of a superpower whilst relieving them of a duty to resolve the quarrel with the Palestinians, even though their own long-term well-being must surely depend on solving that conflict.

It may be no coincidence that some of the most promising peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians took place soon after the cold war ended. But now a new sort of geopolitical confrontation stalks the region, one that sets America against Iran, and the Islamist movements Iran supports against the Arab regimes in America’s camp. With Hamas inside Iran’s tent and Fatah in America’s, the Palestinians are now facing a paralysing schism.


Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, has been saying all week that, although Israel’s immediate aim is to stop the rocket fire and not to topple Hamas, there can be no peace, and no free Palestine, while Hamas remains in control. She is right that with Hamas in power in Gaza the Islamists can continue to wreck any agreement Israel negotiates with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. Mr Abbas, along with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, may quietly relish Hamas being taken down a peg. Egypt is furious at Hamas’s recent refusal to renew talks with Fatah about restoring a Palestinian unity government.

There is a limit, however. Taking Hamas down a peg is one thing. But even in the event of Israel 'winning' in Gaza, a hundred years of war suggest that the Palestinians cannot be silenced by brute force. Hamas will survive, and with it that strain in Arab thinking which says that a Jewish state does not belong in the Middle East. To counter that view, Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also that it is willing to give up the land—the West Bank, not just Gaza—where the promised Palestinian state must stand. Unless it starts doing that convincingly, at a minimum by freezing new settlement, it is Palestine’s zealots who will flourish and its peacemakers who will fall back into silence. All of Israel’s friends, including Barack Obama, should be telling it this."

Any decent person can understand Israel's sense of insecurity and impatience with this situation.

The challenge for Israel, Palestinians, and the world, at this point is that it is time to end it.

If they'll accept it.

Endgame in Gaza

If they'll accept it. If Palestinians will accept an Israeli enforced endgame.

I am completely open to idea that they might. And, frankly, I want this history of bloodshed between Israel and Palestine behind us as quickly as possible.

The big question is would/will Palestinians accept an Israeli enforced endgame.

The reason I am a skeptic (but a skeptic terribly sympathetic to the Israeli dilemna and not completely convinced that I would choose differently, unless I thought there was a better plan, which I think there might be/might have been) is because that big "if" makes all the difference, in the long run. If Palestinians will not accept an Israeli crushing of Hamas, I am concerned, then they will support stronger measures from those who promise to continue Hamas' legacy.

If they will accept a Hamas defeat as a signal of the need for a more comprehensive and long term peace (and a secondary, but important question, is whether these deaths are worth a short term dose of deterrence, another question that I am agnostic on, at this point) then I am open to being wrong on this matter.

But if this offensive stiffens the resolve of Palestinians, then it confirms my original concern, which is that this offensive, like the military effort in Iraq, ignores broader political matters with the belief that overwhelming force resolves political matters it is not capable of resolving.

As I heard about this offensive, my first thought was that if this was going to be effective, Israelis needed to work with moderate Palestinians to stage arrests and/or offensive military operations, ideally with the backing and support of international forces (all of which would increase the risk of spoiling the element of surprise, but which could be done covertly and have seriously increased the probability of long-term political as well as combat success of such an effort), and to build into that effort political negotiations for an independent Palestinian future to peel away provide hope to Palestinians that might support the likes of Hamas of a decent future for Palestinians while their hardliners are being corralled and crushed.

If this unilateral offensive, is effective and civilian deaths are minimized as much as possible, I'm open to it being an effective route to finally end Hamas' stranglehold over Gaza. I'm not sure that a short term deterrent effect is worth the lives of innocent Palestinians, but I am open to that, as well, given sufficient deterrence.

What I am not open to is ignoring the potential downsides, here, for future political efforts, which I think, at this point, are the only sustainable path to long term peace.

And if this operation creates any serious setbacks to a peace process, I think we should reconsider its wisdom, as precedent for future action as much as a matter of immediate concern.

The empirical consequences matter if we are to resolve this matter once and for all. It is not enough to wish or defend our policies into success.

We'll see what the future holds on this question.