I recommend a book called something very similar to "The Israeli-Palestinian Confilct: A Documentary History".

It isn't really an authored book so much as it is an anthology. It's full of papers, essays, letters, statements, etc from the beginning of the 20th century from & to Zionist/Israelis or Palestian (supporters). Quite an education in that book.

I think the least understood aspect of the problem relates to the Israeli policy of settlement expansion. The least understood/reported single event is the Israeli construction of the wall on Palestinian land.

To be sure, I have huge sympathy for Israel. (If anything I'm pro-Israel.) But understanding why and how the Palestinians feel backed into a corner is key to understanding the tension. Truth is, they really are backed into a corner...

I agree 100%. The flipside is that a lot of the best bloggers out there give hate sites like Pandagon and bigots like Amanda Marcotte a pass that is no longer deserved.

Bigotry of low expectations, fears of political blowback, or just PC in general?

The issue here isn't Jews, women, or blacks (Israel, feminism, race)--it's that these are all groups which tend to huddle under the umbrella of 'liberal' ... but them often feel themselves excluded, insulted, or betrayed by the liberal (and non-Jewish, female, or black) policymakers and pontificators.

It's not -despite- the fact that they are liberals that liberal blogs tend to shy away from controversy, it's -because- they are liberal. There's no war like civil war.

How about if I mention that many of our policy makers hold dual citizenship with Israel! If they held it with other countries,people would complain but you're not even supposed to say anything if its Israel. Let the rants start!

Good point, Kevin. I eagerly await your posts on feminism, Israel, race and biology versus culture.

but shouting at each other, sticking to the talking points no matter how absurd they might be, is so much more fun. why try to be reasonable, why try to understand the other side when that only muddies the water? hell, if you try that you might even find common ground and make real progress toward solving the problem. where would you be then?

I got started organizing my town's Democrats during Howard Dean's campaign. I raised the Israeli-Palestinian question once in our first meeting, and was met with such anger from my ordinarily even-tempered co-chair, who I did not realize was Jewish, that I never raised the subject again. I tell myself that there are so many issues facing us that I can leave that one off the table, but I know I am simply being a coward, feeling in NH still such a minority as a liberal Democrat, that I don't dare risk alienated another Democrat.

One reason you might be reading such expressions of reserve from people like Yglesias is that those who sympathize with the plight (not the tactics) of the Palestinians have been pretty wrong the last few years. I include myself among this group. As a general proposition, we've felt that talking, a la Oslo, was the solution, not violence. We nearly all opposed Bush's marginalization of Arafat, and his support of Sharon tough policy using assassination and physically trapping Arafat. It turns out that Bush's and Sharon's strategy was pretty good, and Sharon's incapacitation is now seen as a blow to peace (despite his sneaky wall-building). I think Matt's last line about not engaging in this debate right now is evidence of a respectable degree of self-awareness: its a complex situation over there, and we would all benefit if we'd all just shut up about it for a bit long enough to find a sensible solution.

This whole post is a cop out. The blogosphere isn't particularly civil about anything, and bloggers don't lose their readerships by starting controversies. Bloggers don't generally say much about Israel because they don't care enough to spend a few days researching the situation so that they have something interesting to say.

There have been some well-behaved discussions of Israel on Dailykos. The boogeymen that people are worried about often fail to materialize.

What insult could you possibly be called that you haven't already been called?

What insult could you possibly be called that you haven't already been called?

Are there going to be prizes awarded for this contest?

I find the dual citizenship question interesting. Frankly, I don't see how anyone should be allowed to hold a senior position at the federal level if he holds dual citizenship---it's obviously questionable.

hate sites like Pandagon

personally, i wouldn't call it a "hate site", but it's certainly not a fun place to be anymore. and that's really unfortunate because it used to be one of the best. more specifically, Jesse was one of the best; but when he left, i stopped visiting.

and i totally agree with Yglesias, and Kevin - there is no almost position to take about Israel that won't get you attacked by zealots. it's almost the same with abortion. and, in the case of Pandagon, any position out of line with the proprietor's guarantees you a hail of "woman hater!" comments.

There are few other reasons for opting out of some of these discussions beyond the extreme rhetoric.

1) Some of these discussions feel pretty hopeless. How many smart people, and capable Presidents have thrown themselves at the Arab - Israeli conflict? And other than our great bribe to both sides Sinai deal - how much does anyone got to show for it? If two sides hate each other so much, maybe the best course is just to make sure that they don't sink us too.

2) The intelligence and race or gender debate also get futile since so much of the discussion gets so hazy so quickly. In these debates a lot of disinformation and outright racism has flourished for years. Because what appears to be overwhelming true is that the commonalities between people vastly outweigh the differences.

The failure to openly discuss the Middle East situation, and its resolution, is at the heart of our biggest national security and foreign policy problem. Thus, this failure is clearly dysfunctional, no matter how you ultimately stand on the issue.

There is no excuse for this issue not be at the forefront of political discussion, as the current situation feeds hatred around the globe, it was cited as the chief motive of the mastermind of 9-11, and we are quite clearly collaborators with Israel, for better or for worse.

Any pretense of our neutrality, or ignoring of the vast arms and aircraft we have sent to Israel, is dishonest.

The basic human rights of Palestinians is so far off the table for discussion by US media and US politicians (see, for instance, Pelosi's support of Israel's apartheid security wall) that even to mention Palestinian rights causes fear and trembling among armchair liberals. It's too bad because what's happenning to Palestinians today will be happening to progressives tomorrow.

Any pretense of our neutrality, or ignoring of the vast arms and aircraft we have sent to Israel, is dishonest.

I should also say, along with "dishonest", "lacks integrity". The obvious reason we ignore the issue is at the heart of why our political system is so rotten in the first place - special interest influence and corruption. Anyone who dares stray from the silent party line on Israel is directly threatened with large mobilization of dollars and resources to ending their representation.

"Truth is, they really are backed into a corner..."

Pretty much of their own making if Dennis Ross and Clinton can be believed.

A new tactic which may blow open a lot of sub rosa stuff is the class action suits coming against big banks that are supporting Hamas fund raising. There are 10 or so plaintiffs now, victims of terrorist attacks, and more to come.

The article is behind the WSJ wall but an excerpt from Instapundit is:

"Three years ago, Tzvi Weiss, an American, was badly injured in Israel by a suicide bomber on a mission from Palestinian terror group Hamas. Now, he and his family are seeking damages from a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, one of the world's biggest banks, for what he alleges is the bank's liability for his wounds.

Mr. Weiss's case, in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., raises the prospect that the world's biggest banks -- which have paid heavily for their alleged involvement in frauds at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. (the current MCI Inc.) -- could now find themselves under attack by the victims of terrorism for wittingly or unwittingly acting as conduits for terrorist funds. Mr. Weiss and his family are one of many affected by some 10 terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003 who are bringing the claim.

The complaint alleges that a London-based charity that had accounts at Royal Bank of Scotland's National Westminster Bank unit acted as a fund-raising arm for Hamas. The complaint, which lists Mr. Weiss and five family members as plaintiffs, was filed in September; NatWest filed for dismissal late last month. According to court documents, an amended complaint is expected to be filed soon.

The London-based charity in question, called Interpal, was named by U.S. authorities as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist after the 2003 bombing that injured Mr. Weiss. . . ."

This is a new tactic as far as I know. It might pry out a lot of documents about European support of the PLO and Hamas.

I agree 100%. The flipside is that a lot of the best bloggers out there give hate sites like Pandagon and bigots like Amanda Marcotte a pass that is no longer deserved.

Hate site? Like Stormfront?

Wow, they must be pretty bad over there if you're saying they're worse than neo-Nazi sites.

So what do they do? Call for the castration of all men? What hateful things has Amanda said lately?

I have a friend who is a professor who has spent time in Israel with students. Last holiday season we had a chance to speak and he told me the Israeli - Palestinian conflict was intractable. I became a little upset because he did not acknowledge the US participation in the conflict, namely over $3 Billion/year in financial and military aid to Israel. As a US citizen I may or may not have an opinion about the conflict BETWEEN I and P, but I certainly do have an opinion about all of the aid the US sends to Israel, allowing Israel to stay on the offensive rather than seeking a resolution to the conflict. My friend, the professor, had decided to overlook that little fact that keeps the conflict funded.

I think part of the difficulty about carrying on such a discussion is a lack of direction and continuity.

I think most informed observers would agree that the boundaries of a possible deal have been pretty well determined, and the issues defined and prioritized, over the past few decades. Any serious discussion should at least begin there and try to work inward.

I also think the questions of what would be fair and possible as a lasting outcome, and how that outcome could be brought to pass, could be discussed separately, at least to begin with.

Doing that would require bringing participants up to speed on the basics, and it would require that the participants agree to respect both the process and the goal of the discussion. Both of those are rather difficult requirements to fulfill in blogspace.

So the difficulty may be inherent in the medium. It's just TOO freewheeling.

This may also be why the problem can't be expected to be solved in the real world via grassroots or parliamentary processes, but instead likely will both require strong leadership and be carried out by a small group of seasoned and knowledgeable negotiators.

It's kind of astonishing to read that most people seem to believe that Israel has simply "won", without ceding anything of importance to the Palestinians.

Look, Israel is a moral timebomb. Everybody knows that the non-Jews in Israel are winning out in numbers demographically. Toward the middle of this century, by all sensible projections, even within Israel proper, non-Jews will exceed Jews. And anyone looking at the forces in play here understands that there is no way out of this; Jews are NOT settling in Israel anymore in appreciable numbers, are not reproducing at a good rate, and the Arabs have a high birth rate.

When those numbers turn against the Israeli Jews, what will happen to the concept of a Jewish democracy? It will simply explode into its inherent contradiction: Israel must choose being a Jewish state and an Apartheid on the one hand, or being a democracy on the other. I find it nearly inconceivable that it will choose to remain a democracy of one person, one vote. Why? Because a true democracy would under those circumstances serve Palestinian and Arab interests, not those of the settlers. How could the settlers stop the new Israel from declaring their settlements illegal, or from instating a law of return favoring the Palestinians? They could not -- which means they would likely foster civil war before they would accept one person, one vote.

The extremists may laugh today about the frustration of the Palestinians. But in fact being able to dismiss the concerns of Palestinians today allows them to make the continuation of a true democracy in the middle of this century all the more untenable, because the Arabs in Israel will only feel more disenfranchised.

So what we can expect that about the time of its first Centennial, Israel will become an indisputable Apartheid, denying the vote to its own citizens.

What moral person will be able to celebrate that Centennial with any amount of pride? Can those people who have seen in Israel a grand culmination of thousands of years of longing, be content that it could not survive a single century without turning into a moral disgrace?

Most Americans have opinions about Palestine that almost the entire rest of the world disagrees with.

Of course, they also have opinions about the Bible that almost the entire rest of the world disagrees with.

For example, 64% of Americans think "The story about Moses parting the Red Sea so the Jews could escape from Egypt" is "literally true, meaning it happened that way word-for-word."

http://www.pollingreport.com/religion.htm

The U.S. has the ability, with our Security Council partners, to compel a solution. We should do so along the lines of the Geneva Accord, with democratic affirmation by both people (of course). We should do so for our own national security and for the security and well-being of the world.

The conflict has gone on too long, and it's time to put a fairly immediate stop to it. The absence of Sharon from the process should help the resolution, though I wish him the best personally in his recovery (as I would anyone).

Well, its the result of marginalizing the great liberal arts tradition of critical thinking because its not a market based value to society.

Anyway, there is a consensus globally from a minority school of thought that the big power players of the world like, the U.S. and Europe, are the source of the problem. Quite often the North and South Korea divide has been used as the central theory of this thesis for analyzing other land divides such as Israel and Palestine. The conclusion is that as long as the big players intervene directly or even indirectly, there will never be a resolution. Therefore, the smaller players have to work out their divide on their own as Korea has wanted to do for decades. Facilitating and assisting the small players with the conflict resolution are non-governmental groups, or non-State players, consisting of people both sides acknowledge and respect and are not threatening as agents of the big players politically or economically.

like many of the aforementioned controversies attracting the lunatic fringe, we may be better served by remembering that america's right wing is absurdly backward and primitive relative to the rest of the civilized world's conservatives.

excluding them from these discussion (as having nothing serious to contribute) would go a long way towards silencing the most virulent reactionaries on the left, and the exploration of these compelx issues would, in my opinion, be further advanced.

I find the dual citizenship question interesting. Frankly, I don't see how anyone should be allowed to hold a senior position at the federal level if he holds dual citizenship---it's obviously questionable.

Not so obvious to me. Why?

Not so obvious to me. Why?

Dual citizenship implies dual national loyalties, which could be in conflict.

But in a globalized world, we'll all be citizens of the globe (except for the terrorists, of course).

OK, this is fairly off-topic but the current thread is the closest to providing a segue as I can find.

I'd like to commend Kevin for patching things up with Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler after an early December misunderstanding, as evidenced by comments on the Daily Howler yesterday.

Regarding the current thread, I think it's a great thought, there are plenty of us out here who feel unwilling to comment on these "hot button" issues because we can't match the passion that inevitably comes back at us from the hard core fanatics.

The Arab/Israeli conflict will never be settled by any of us.

"...near-insane levels of vituperation..."

Strike the "near-" .

and i totally agree with Yglesias, and Kevin - there is no almost position to take about Israel that won't get you attacked by zealots.

If people aren't willing to have their ideas assailed by zealots, in general, they shouldn't be sharing them in public. This is hardly limited to either the Israel-Palestine issue or blogging as a medium.

There's plenty of issues where you know the comment threads and other people linking to you are going to go ballistic -- heck, anything touching on abortion, religion, or even school vouchers seems that way, here, even ignoring foreign policy.

That's hardly an excuse to not bring up the issue if you have something to say. And I don't think the "zealots will say nasty things no matter what I say" reason is why bloggers are reluctant to wade into the I-P issue, since its clear that that's true of many of the things many of the same bloggers are more than willing to jump into.

I suspect the real reason is more that people have instinctive positions on the issue that they have trouble rationalizing with their broader opinions, so they'd rather avoid the topic altogether. And, hey, its a hard issue, because by any reasonable standards, major parties on both sides of the conflict are so incredibly in the wrong that it is impossible to excuse their behavior, or even tolerate it, even given the behavior of the other side (or perhaps even particularly with the behavior of the other side, since the wrongs of each side often promote, rather than preventing, the wrongs of the other side), but, at the same time, there is no clear and obvious set of recommendations that would reduce the problems, and most that offer the hope of doing so seem to reward wrongdoers on one or the other side (or both sides).

Its a genuinely tough issue; its easy to come up with things that need to end up happening for a "good" solution (or, at least, that if they happened might enable such a solution), but its pretty hard to sketch out a credible route to those results that doesn't require large groups of people to spotaneously have radical changes of behavior patterns on the hope that other large groups of people will do the same.

give palestine back to the palestinians...give america back to the native americans......

Folks continue to ignore my Nobel Prize winning solution: Split up the three religious groups and move them out of the so-called Holy Land. There are plenty of decent open spaces left in the world, e.g., the American Great Plains, Brazil, the Yucatan, the Antipodes, etc. The peoples now living at the eastern end of the Mediteranean Sea have proved themselves poor custodians of that unhappy land.

Insofar as it is genuinely impossible to have rational discussions of the subject, as partisans of both Arab and Jewish views usually get th eupper hand, I like to propose insanse solutions such as returning the whole kit and kaboodle to the Turks. They were so delightfully corrupt in ruling the area last time, it should unite all in hating them.

Today, NPR reported earlier, Madeleine Albright raised a couple of issues with Bush during the five-minute discussion before the photo op. She pissed him off by being critical. I say, hurrah Maddie! No one and I mean no one should be safe from challenge in a grown-up world.

The notion that we should shut up about Israel-Palestine because only one side is right is simply absurd. Many of us are set back on our heels by accusations of anti-Semitism, but that kind of ad hominem attack only diminishes the accuser. I don't care which side of the issue you're on, I just know that neither of us has the right to silence the other. The dialogue may be difficult but you'll be defending not so much your opinion as the sensible democratic standard of expressing an opinion. Let's not let ranters have the only say...

Hey, and respond intelligently to some of the neo-kneejerk-feminist junkola which crops up all over the blogosphere. Intelligent response on that subject is much needed, and you'll survive!

The U.S. has the ability, with our Security Council partners, to compel a solution.

Well, certainly we might arguably have a legal authority, if we worked with the Security Council, to do so. Whether we have the practical ability to compel any solution, at a cost that is tolerable, is another question.

We should do so along the lines of the Geneva Accord, with democratic affirmation by both people (of course).

This presumes that both peoples would, indeed, affirm it democratically, which seems optimistic.

We should do so for our own national security and for the security and well-being of the world.

How, exactly, are we going to compel a solution?

The conflict has gone on too long, and it's time to put a fairly immediate stop to it.

Well, yeah. And if you said that 30 years ago, you would have been right, too.

The absence of Sharon from the process should help the resolution, though I wish him the best personally in his recovery (as I would anyone).

I don't think that's particularly true. While I have no personal affection for Sharon -- him being a war criminal, and all -- I don't think he is anywhere close to the biggest obstacle to peace, and I think that his inability to continue as PM and as leader of Kadima probably, at least in the short term, makes things worse, not better, for a peaceful resolution.

Please, people.

What we're talking about (or, more precisely, not talking about) is the fear of having the "Anti-Semite" albatross being hung around one's neck.

Mr Yglesias himself tackles this to some degree, and good for him, in a post from yesteryear:
http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/getting_lucky.html

His second to last paragraph pretty much says it all.

Yes, it is a deeply complex issue. But that shouldn't make anyone, least of all Matt, shy away.

cmdicely: It's true that bloggers aren't generally afraid of controversy. But the vituperation level is genuinely different for some subjects, and it's sky high for Israel-Palestine (as well as the others I mentioned). It's fine to say that if you can't take the heat you should quit blogging, but the fact is that most bloggers are just ordinary people and will eventually abandon topics if the attacks start to get too rough. It's just human nature.

I prefer to read those bloggers who are weird people.

The core problem of blogs in general is the knee-jerk tendency of responding within an argumentative framework. If the purpose of a blogs is simply to provide a space for people to express their opinions and observations or to see if others share their views, that’s great, but pounding each other over the head with opposing points of view is little more than intellectual masturbation. Positions get locked into, and there is very little increase in awareness on either side (or varying sides). It is rare, but I have heard bloggers figuratively sit side-by-side and look at the issue, comparing sources, and come to some common ground, or at least a clearer understanding of why the other person holds the view they do. Of course there are those on both sides whose primary pleasure is to agitate a reaction or show off their intellectual swagger—and I admit, it’s entertaining to read at times. But at the end of the day, it’s all masturbation. I think that the powers that be, whatever entities you deem are working against your views, surely prefer all of us bickering amongst ourselves and remaining divided. We are much easier to control that way. I would like to see more consensus building.

cmdicely: It's true that bloggers aren't generally afraid of controversy. But the vituperation level is genuinely different for some subjects, and it's sky high for Israel-Palestine (as well as the others I mentioned).

Sure, buts its just as sky-high for otherissues that people that shy away from Israel-Palestine have no, or at least far less, reluctance to discuss (such as abortion).

Its my impression that there is more to reluctance to discuss Israel-Palestine than just the level of zealotry on both sides of the issue.

Beyond what I said above, I think part of it is probably that the alignment on the issue, while it has some correlation with the left-right alignment, doesn't really line up with it that well and, particularly for left-leaning bloggers who deal with their usually left-leaning audiences, there are zealots of both sides in the American Left, and you can't really predict sympathies on the issue based on beliefs in any other area. So that left-wing pundits -- bloggers and others -- are more likely to be attacked with great venom by people that they are otherwise aligned with when the issue comes up, whereas otherwise the most vicious attacks come mostly from the usual suspects which can be counted on -- and ignored -- as predictable sources of violent disagreement on every topic.

The absence of Sharon from the process should help the resolution,

another cockeyed optimist seconding what jimm said. just as there were israelis who never would deal with arafat, there are palestinians who would never deal with sharon.

Perhaps the "we" that appears so "liberally" in Kevin's post up above can answer these questions for me:

1) Where did the Palestinians mostly live before there was an official state of Israel?

2) For how many years did they live there?

3) Were they asked to move? Or were they made to move?

4) What sort of compensation was given?

After the "we" answers those questions... we can begin to dialog.

Until then... you might as well leave the conversation to the fanatics.

another cockeyed optimist seconding what jimm said. just as there were israelis who never would deal with arafat, there are palestinians who would never deal with sharon.

Yeah, sure, I won't argue with that. OTOH, I think Sharon leaving the scene right now doesn't make it likely that anyone who Palestinians would be more likely to deal with (or who would be more likely to deal with Palestinians) will be the next PM. Particularly, if another Likud-led coalition government with the more extreme religious parties is formed and Netanyahu is the next leader, I think the prospects for peace in the near future are rather poorer than they would be if Sharon's Kadima led the next government, particularly, as seemed most likely if they won at all, in a coalition with Labor.

Of course, I could be completely wrong (I'm hardly an expert in Israeli domestic politics), or, alternatively, Kadima could find a new strong leader, or Labor could be even stronger than expected.

Or Netanyahu could have a Grinch-like transformation. Who knows?

Look, Israel is a moral timebomb. Everybody knows that the non-Jews in Israel are winning out in numbers demographically. Toward the middle of this century, by all sensible projections, even within Israel proper, non-Jews will exceed Jews.

That's when you'll see cuddly euphemisms for ethnic cleansing showing up. "Population relocation", "religious rightsizing", "cultural adjustment"...

I'd also like to see some examples of Pandagon's so-called "hate" speech. I've disagreed with Amanda in the past without being grossly vilified.

Peace is not just the absence of war. It's a total commitment to going beyond the occasion of war.

There will not be peace while weapons are such a profitable commodity.

We agonize over gruesome deaths yet won't boycott weapons manufacturers.

No amount of heavy-fisted "blow them to smithereens" will ever secure a lasting peace.

Frankly the I/P conflict seems almost indulgent.

What the blogsphere needs to do is create a new paradigm for humanity, one that shows the utter foolishness of warfare and seeks to grasp a way to lasting peace for generations.

And don't give me that "we must be strong against our enemies" crap. Look what shock and awe has done to Iraq. How do you define winners?

"give palestine back to the palestinians...give america back to the native americans......"

Posted by: imbroglio on January 6, 2006 at 5:43 PM

But imbroglio, the Zionists (not the same as "the Jews") claim they are the equivalent of the Indians, and the real difficulty is that they were, and are, not.

koreyel on January 6, 2006 at 6:38 PM
On the money!

The US had almost absulute power over Israel until it "connived at" Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons. To our cost the US was threatened in 1973 that israel would use its nuclears on Egypt, so stripped war-ready equipment from its NATO commitment to re-arm Israel.

However, the US has merely, very publicly, to tell Israel that the money stops tomorrow, that the annual forgiving is rescinded, thus calling in the annual multi-billion debts, but that the tap will be turned off slowly as the Israeli Regime applies Resultions 242 and 338, together with all succeeding resolutions, therefore (removes the post-1967 settlements, ceases stealing the Palestinmians' water, and so on), permits absolute right of return with compensation, compensates the Palestinians for each and every destructive act carried out since 1948.

It will be for the Palestinians then to decide if they feel any Jews other than those who can show substantial descent from Jews Resident as found in the Turks' last census.

Pretending that this is one group of fanatics equally balanced by another set of fanatics is an order of magnitude more dishonest than saying Abramoff is a bi-partisan scandal.

Within U.S. politics there is one side with carte blanche access to power and one side that gets nothing.

I remember hearing a radio personality in Chicago rationalize the IDF killing 17 Palestinians as collateral damage by saying, "those are 17 Palestinians that will never be suicide bombers." There was no mention of it in the Chicago media, no request to apologize.

What if someone used equivalent eliminationist rhetoric about Israelis? It would be a national media event.

So don't play this off as one set of fanatics against another. That's just what the Israel lobby wants to avoid discussing the details of the real situation.

If there were no oil in the middle east, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be of as much interest -- which is to say, of as little interest -- to the great powers of the world as any of the numerous other ethnic conflicts going on all over the developing world, which while horrendous for those directly affected by them, are no big deal to the USA, Europe, etc., do not involve the major powers of the world in seeking "solutions", and are not the subject of endless, hysterically emotional, and extremely repetitious argument in this country.

Nor would the US government be arming one of the factions in the conflict to the teeth with billions and billions of dollars in military aid -- if there were no oil in the region.

It is really all about the oil. Everything the USA does in the middle east is about the oil.

I don't know if anyone will get this far down in the comments, but I have to say I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality reading them. Who on earth is afraid to criticize Israeli policy on the west bank? It is first of all a fundamental feature of ISRAELI political life, with the Labor Party for example and groups like Peace Now arguing forcefully for withdrawal. Second, a second's worth of a google search will reveal hundreds of websites dedicated to the proposition that Israel is vile, the US ought to stop supporting it, the settlements are evil, and so on. Pat Buchanan and the American Conservative Party, to cite a well-known example, have criticism of Israel and American support for it virtually as a daily feature. So does well-known commentator on the mideast Juan Cole. So you get angry emails? Big deal. Live with it. Speaking for myself, in public, I think Israeli policy on the West Bank is a nightmare. One little problem is there never would have been a refugee issue if Arab governments hadn't attacked the nascent state in 1948. Another little problem is that it isn't Israel but Arab countries, Egypt and Lebanon in particular, that have kept Palestinians locked up in camps. (The Lebanese Prime Minister was quoted a few years ago saying that letting the Palestinians out would "upset Lebanon's demographic balance.") And a final little problem is that if Israel withdrew to the '67 borders tomorrow, is there anyone who thinks they would suddenly find their neighbors peaceful? That said, they should never have built those settlements, and the sooner they get out of them the better, because all they do is make a bad situation worse. Anyone who feels they can't say that is a fool and a coward. Try it. I just did.

One solution availble to any blog author that wants to discuss issues that they are otherwise afraid to tackle is to start a new blog under an assumed name and link to it.
Just a thought.

In the case of U.S. commentary about Israel, you are being less than honest to say that you will get flack from both sides in the debate if you state what you really think about the conflict. Obviously, the abuse will come chiefly from zionists. So zionists have so poisoned honest debate about Israel in this country that you can't even speak honestly about not speaking honestly! The difference between this issue and the others you have mentioned (e.g. race relations) is that our failure to apply tough love to Israel needlessly jeopardizes our national security.

Who on earth is afraid to criticize Israeli policy on the west bank?

Almost every politician in America.

" I became a little upset because he did not acknowledge the US participation in the conflict, namely over $3 Billion/year in financial and military aid to Israel. As a US citizen I may or may not have an opinion about the conflict BETWEEN I and P, but I certainly do have an opinion about all of the aid the US sends to Israel, allowing Israel to stay on the offensive rather than seeking a resolution to the conflict. My friend, the professor, had decided to overlook that little fact that keeps the conflict funded.

Posted by: Powerpuff "

Interesting that I see no mention of the equivalent sum going to Egypt. Israel was originally supported by the USSR, then France. We opposed the Israelis in 1956. They even attacked a US ship then.

When the Arab countries mostly became Soviet clients, we responded with more support for Israel. That was after the Aswan Dam incident, when the Republican administration refused to fund the dam because the Egyptians had confiscated the canal without compensation.

The answer to the question about where Palestinians lived is that those who are descendents of refugees are descended from war losers, just like the Germans whose ancestors lived in Sudetenland or East Prussia. The Russians moved Poland several hundred miles west in 1945 and the Germans fled from the land leaving all behind.

Now, your point was ?

Do you think the Arab countries should be forced to accept the 500,000 Jews expelled since 1948 and their descendents ?

Interesting to see the level of anti-Israeli sentiment.

What the blogsphere needs to do is create a new paradigm for humanity, one that shows the utter foolishness of warfare and seeks to grasp a way to lasting peace for generations.

While certainly this is arguably necessary for someone to do, I don't see how it became the unique responsibility of the blogosphere.

cmdicely

Peace is a concern for everyone. Cyberspace and realtime blogging itself leads to new paradigms. How else can humans, from anywhere, engage in what often is thoughtful and useful dialog?

So, while I agree with you that the blogosphere should not be the sole creator of a new paradigm of peace beyond war, it is in a unique position to do just that.

Yes Kevin, seems to me many people are afraid to speak frankly about this issue.

If you think about it logically, the way the state of Israel was created was pretty weird. There was no way under the sun that act was not going to cause problems for many years.

But that's water under the bridge. Israel is there and, like Egypt, I recognize it.

Also under the bridge are two UN Resolutions that are decades old that Israel has never been sufficiently pressured to live with. The occupied territories do not belong to Israel, yet look at the extremely aggressive settlements. The longer you hold a people down and push them around, the worse it seems to get.

I grew up being taught to emphasize very different facts about Israel. But as an adult, with a mind of my own, I emphasize these facts.

With regard to the Middle East, I must bring to your attention the sad fact that the Syrian, or Golden, Hamster, Mesocricetus auratus, is believed to be extinct in that region, its native habitat. No Syrian Hamsters have been observed in the wild since 1980, when two of them were captured by a rodent control officer in a town in Syria.

Of course, Syrian Hamsters survive in captivity, where they are commercially bred for sale as pets, and for use in laboratories. However, this beautiful, intelligent, inquisitive, resourceful, adaptable and courageous animal has apparently been extinguished from the natural world, a victim of habitat destruction and deliberate extermination (as an agricultural "pest") by humans.

It would be nice if the "new paradigm for humanity, one that shows the utter foolishness of warfare and seeks to grasp a way to lasting peace for generations" that Tom Nicholson exhorts the blogosphere to create would include compassion and respect for the non-human sentient beings who have as much right to live in peace on this planet as humans do.

Others can pray for peace between Israel and Palestine. I will pray that one day, the wild hamsters will return to Syria.

Gary, the issue was blogger fear. Politicians want to get elected, and that - to them - requires cowardice. Not too many anti-NRA politicians outside LA and NY. But there's no reason for bloggers to feel the need to restrain their own opinions. The greatest arguments against the settlements are proposed by centrist and left Israelis themselves. Surely we don't have to pull punches here.

Thanks Mike K for your comment. To read this series of posts one would think that the Palestinians bear no responsibility whatever for their condition. If they had used non-violence, which MLK used to overthrow much legalized racism, and which Gandhi used to oust the British empire, they would have had tens thousands of Israelis blocking settlement bulldozers with them. Too bad they elected to blow up kids in pizza parlors. But none of that justifies the settlements in the first place.

To my memory, Howard Dean's fall was immediately preceded by two comments. One was that the United States had to adopt a more even-handed policy in the ME. Another was a remark that the concentration of the media in so few hands called out for re-regulation, ala something like a return to the former 'fairness doctrine.'

He immediately went from the hottest candidate to a radioactive one, and was swiftly kicked to the curb, perhaps, however indelicate it is to mention, courtesy some Bonesmen love to Kerry in the electronic voting machines.

I don't think the two are unrelated. However, neither I nor anyone in America can state the full thesis without expecting a withering attack.

The tactics of the Palestinians have been a disaster.

Imagine if Arafat had returned with a counter proposal in 2000. Some say Barak could never have delivered but that was an example of the US really pressuring Israel, contrary to some comments above. Dennis Ross has said (and I heard him do it) that venture capitalists were ready to invest in Palestine in 2000 as soon as the agreement was signed. There were millions of dollars ready to build the Palestinian state.

The warm summer the year Breshnev died was attributed by many Europeans to the gates of Hell opening for him. Maybe global warming is the same for Arafat. He killed his people most likely. All of them.

Read Marty Peretz account of Gaza now.

cmdicely,

The only thing protecting the Israelis from the UN and sanctions is the US (countless vetoes over the decades). Also, we enable them in many other ways. If we credibly came down on them in a convincing way that we would no longer support them unless they went to the table and started with Geneva Accord parameters, or they would face the UN without our veto, Israel would likely do so. That they haven't yet is purely the result of our backing them with arms, aircraft, and UN vetoes.

Once the parties actually sit down and come to an agreement, I imagine that the Israeli people would be happy to sign off on it, and the Palestineans too, if we did a hard sell on it, especially since the Geneva Accord agreement, to my understanding, already is quite popular. I do not assume, however, that they will pass the agreement. If they don't, we'd have to go back to the drawing board, or try to sell it again, but we would be a lot farther along.

So, I should say we can compel a negotiated solution, but we cannot compel democratic acceptance and affirmation of this solution. Being that we can frame this democratic affirmation through the legislatures and elected councils, rather than popular referendum, or vice-versa, we can probably fenagle acceptance.

As for Sharon, he is a very strong leader who was quite clearly opposed to a just solution. He never would have signed off on the Geneva Accord, or something similar, and would have weakened the Labor party by forming a 3rd party. Now that he will not be able to do that, Labor will be in a very strong position, and we can force a negotiated solution to be agreed upon in a short frame of time.

Of course, I don't expect Bush and his neocon brigade to do this, but I would certainly lobby the next leadership team to make this effort. We desperately need to start ramping down tensions in the Middle East region, and this is Ground Zero.

The silence around the sensitive topic of Israel and Palestine is orders of magnitude more deafening than other "silent" issues not because of the vehemence per se, which is the same with other hot-button subjects, but that there is no mainstream political divide on the issue.

Both parties are bought in to the Israeli lobby and agenda, and most bloggers, if we're honest, basically frame their topics as mouthpieces for their prospective party. "Pragmatics" they call it when you call them on it. Abortion is a very hot topic, but people will discuss it much more than Israel because it fits safely into the parameters of "Democrats/liberals are one side, and Republicans/conservatives are on the other; and moderates try to mediate". The Israel/Palestine conflict does not fit this metric, so it the most silent issue of all. Both parties are in hock to the right-wing Israeli agenda, and thus most bloggers and blog commenters are also in hock to the right-wing Israeli agenda (whether they realize it or not, because they frame allowable discussion on partisan politics).

I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with that, if that's your objective, but it is an explanation for why we don't dispassionately and rationally discuss one of the biggest issues of the day. It's TABOO - for both parties.

I don't know if anyone will get this far down in the comments, but I have to say I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality reading them. Who on earth is afraid to criticize Israeli policy on the west bank? It is first of all a fundamental feature of ISRAELI political life, with the Labor Party for example and groups like Peace Now arguing forcefully for withdrawal.

It is darkly comical that "allowable" or non-taboo debate and dissent about Israeli/Palestine conflict is far "wider" in Israel than it is in the U.S. Here there is no question what we should do, and there doesn't seem to be any hint that there is a deep conflict in Israel itself.

Reading our mainstream media and bloggers, you'd be hard-pressed to even know there is a popular citizen's peace initiative called the Geneva Accord, or another popular non-governmental initiative with similar proposals (can't remember the name at the moment...there you go!). It's taboo in most cases just to bring it up.

Maybe one reason that some bloggers don't care to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply that they realize there is nothing to say about it that hasn't already been said millions of times.

Personally, whenever I talk about the conflict, I don't get distracted trying to debate the merits of who did what or when, but I insist that:

1. U.S. threaten to stop enabling Israel with arms/aircraft/aid and UN vetoes of UN resolutions so they get serious about a negotiated and just settlement;

2. Intensely encourage these negotiations to begin with Geneva Accord-style parameters.

I'm not concerned with debating who is more in the right or wrong. I want this conflict to lighten up, and to give peace and Palestine a chance. Our national and global security depend on it. And, because our national and global security depend on it, American liberty depends on it.

I'm not giving up my liberty for Israel, and especially the right-wing Zionist agenda, so I want to clarify the issues, stop enabling either side, and get a negotiated settlement done (that is fair and just to both parties).

Period.

Yes, but in spite of the fact that "there is nothing to say about it that hasn't already been said millions of times", many Americans are still totally unaware that Arab disgust with the United States’ knee-jerk support of Israel is universal.

It’s not just the terrorists who cite treatment of the Palestinians as an atrocity. It’s the whole Arab world. The terrorists will never be justified because of this. But they will always be there.

We should not change our policy because of the terrorists. But we also should not their existence stop us from correcting a wrong policy.

Maybe one reason that some bloggers don't care to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply that they realize there is nothing to say about it that hasn't already been said millions of times.

That's part of it.

The other is that we know perfectly well that absolutely nothing anybody says will change the fundamental political dynamic in this country on the issue.

That dynamic is that there is absolutely no electoral upside for politicians to criticize Israel, and devastating downsides. Justice for Palestinians has no real constituencies in the US, and Israel has just about nothing but.

You might as well argue that an avowed Atheist should be able to run for President and win. Its truth is the least important thing about that statement; its fecklessness is everything.

"So what we can expect that about the time of its first Centennial, Israel will become an indisputable Apartheid, denying the vote to its own citizens."

Since the West Bank is ruled by Israel, this is already the case.

There is a highly focussed, active constituency for Israel in the U.S., together with a vast majority that doesn't really know or care about the situation. As with so many other political issues, this means success for the special interest group.

Since the West Bank is ruled by Israel, this is already the case.

You can make the case that it's like an Apartheid, and, for people willing to face the facts objectively, it's a persuasive argument.

But notice I made the point that when non-Jews exceed Jews in Israel proper, it will become an indisputable Apartheid. It will be indisputable because it will, of necessity, have to deny some of its own citizens an equal vote, or it would become an emphatically NON-Jewish state, with the speed only pent up resentment from a century of callous treatment can enable.

That will be the Day of Reckoning for Israel and its supporters. And projections suggest that it will take place just about on its first Centennial.

frankly0: You're right about American support for Israel. But I think it's a matter of taking the American people a long time to educate themselves about the this issue.

After all, over 40 percent of Israelis have favored withdrawal from the occupied territories and accommodation of the Palestinians for a long time. They think it’s in their own security interests and morally correct.

And Jimmy Carter went out on a limb years ago and got the most militarily threatening Arab country, Egypt, to make peace with Israel. But he had to pressure Begin pretty hard, while ignoring our right-wingers. Our politicians are normally loath to take such chances.

Just curious: Why is there no upside for the Democrats in a more balanced Middle East policy when Republican foreign policy has been hijacked by neoconservatives, who are frequently zionist, Israeili spies have infiltrated the government, Israel didn't uncover the 9-11 plot (what exactly are they good for?), and the Iraq fiasco has served the interests of zionists but not the U.S.? We don't have to advocate the end of Israel, just a return to the Geneva Accords etc. as discussed above --- the "tough love" approach mentioned above?

frankly0: I also agree that the fact Israel is supposed to be a "Jewish" state is a long term problem.

The Western democracies are secular and have staying power. I have to wonder about a country with citizens who intend to remain faithful to a particular religion. Going a bit against the grain.

In case anyone is under a delusion that Israel is likely to come to peace with the Palestinians before Israel proper becomes predominantly non-Jewish around 2050, it might be worthwhile to contemplate all the tremendous strides that have been made toward peace and harmony since the 1967 war, now close to 40 years ago.

Not much progress, you think? And what makes anyone think the next 40 years are going to turn out in any important way differently -- especially if the Israelis feel smug in the belief that they can just wall out their troubles?

As usual, Dr MikeyK is full of misinformation - The Eisenhower Administration pulled the funding for Eqypt's Aswan Dam because Eqypt recognized the People's Republic of China. I guess when one is so busy denying work comp claims, it is hard to keep track of world events.

Back in the pre-blog days, gun control was another one. On the Straight Dope Message Board, where I did most of my political debating back then, I could count on a decent debate over practically any other semi-rational idea. But the moment I'd float an argument for any sort of gun control, the fanatics would come out of the woodwork.

Which is why I figure it's just as well that the Dems have quietly been dropping their connection with the issue. It just ain't worth the trouble, and after five years of Bush, we've got much bigger problems.

Well, what do the readers of this blog think about a country that intends to remain "Jewish". The only was to ensure that is to implement practices that are not democratic.

This is the reason I think it's a genuinely weird country. It’s the antithesis of the democratic and secular West. Think about it. What institutions do we have to ensure that a majority of our citizens will remain Christian? None. And that’s as it should be.

Interesting to see the level of anti-Israeli sentiment.
Posted by: Mike K

and so the idiocy begins.

On the subject of a negotiated settlement: That is precisely the reason the problem seems intractable. Who does Israel negotiate with? The Fatah led Palestinian Authority? Under Arafat and now Abbas, the PA has shown that they are either unable or unwilling to actually deliver on any peace deal, period. Every time an Israeli PM demanded any period of cease-fire leading up to any talks, regardless of the length of the proposed cease-fire, the PA has failed to even attempt to deliver. This raises the question of how can the PA deliver on their end of a permanent peace deal if they cannot deliver a 48 hr cease fire? So who is left? Hamas, Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad? They all have declared that they will only accept the total distruction of the Israeli state. Not exactly a position that Israel is able to negotiate.

So even if you take the religious angles out of the equation there is no way to hold negotiations under these circumstances. Wether or not you agree with the idea of a religious state (and for the record, I don't. Whenever god gets involved in politics it always seems to lead to bloodshed.)
the bottom line is that Israel has no one to talk to across the table. This leaves Israel prone to its own religous fanatics and continuing the criminally stupid settlement program. They refuse to accept that at some point there must be a pull back, only the extent remains to be seen. In the process they are bankrupting themselves both morally and fiscally to placate their own religous zelots.

I hate to be the fly in the ointment again, but from these comments you would hardly believe that the majority of American Jews are far closer to the Labor than the Likud side of the issue, and overwhelmingly support removal of most of the settelements. The support for the latter position comes almost entirely from extremely orthodox Jews, who are a tiny minority (about 300-400,000 people of all ages in the US), and Jewish conservatives, who aren't much larger. I think the "power of the Jewish lobby" is a canard. I think a candidate outside NY who said something like "we should support Israel and make sure it can defend itself, but that doesn't mean we should support the settlements" would still get opposition from AIPAC and other groups, but I don't think he or she would lose an election because of it. (They might even get more votes - including many from the many Jews who agree.) For goodness' sake, SHARON has said many of the settlements should go. And the rise of the centrist party in Israel, with Likud now a distant third in the polls, suggests where sentiment even in Israel proper lies. The NY Times has editorialized against those settlements for years. I think some of this resentment and noise about how discussion on this issue is suppressed seems exaggerated.

Hey, lil ole Jim, here's what you do. Make sure Catholics are exiled, persecuted, and slaughtered for about 2,000 years, then have a civilized country gas about 1/2 of the remainder, and see if Catholics don't decide they need a little country of their own. Just a little thought experiment for you to consider.

jerry:
"I agree 100%. The flipside is that a lot of the best bloggers out there give hate sites like Pandagon and bigots like Amanda Marcotte a pass that is no longer deserved."

Mnemosyne:
"Hate site? Like Stormfront?

Wow, they must be pretty bad over there if you're saying they're worse than neo-Nazi sites.

So what do they do? Call for the castration of all men? What hateful things has Amanda said lately?"

Well, actually, no, he didn't say or imply that they're worse than neo-Nazi sites. Nor he suggest anything as ridiculous as that they called for "the castration of all men".

This exchange is the problem in a nutshell: you didn't respond to what he said, but made a strawman caricature of it. Scale that up 50dB, add ridicule and personal insults, and you have Pandagon, or rather, Amanda and me-toos. It's possible to ignore sneering invective, but the frequent argument in bad faith makes useful discussion difficult.

Sheldon: and once the Catholics get a country of their own, they can proceed to discriminate against all other religions in order to keep their country Catholic? I don’t think so.

People can’t agree on religion. You can give a glib and over-simplified version of history if you want, but it will take more than that to justify a country based upon a religion. Do you disagree with separation of church and state?

Maybe Israel should allow only Jew to immigrate? Make it a law? Maybe they should go back to their practices in years past and force non-Jews out of the country?

Just asking.

Couldn't we get the Wedding Crashers to arbitrate the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

Raise Atlantis out of the ocean and give it to the Israelis.

The subject is one of the worst ideological black holes in the blogosphere, but there are others. You can't talk about climate change either, without reaping a hail of serdar argic (SF author Ken MacLeod's term for ideological spam disseminated by political spambots / humans indistinguishable from)

Or abortion.

Or progressive taxation.

I blog more about Israel than I used to, but I completely agree that it's such a hot-button issue that you have to ask yourself before blogging, "Is posting what I have to say on this subject worth the potential deluge of crap in comments"?

and so the idiocy begins.

Did the idiocy ever stop?

One of the things that I like about this blog is that it always goes after the really difficult subjects--there are dozens of threads about torture, health care, religion.

I've never been the least bit impressed with Matt Yglesias. Today didn't change that at all.

Kevin:
I wondered why I stopped reading your blog. With this completely stupid & condesending post, I remember. DINO.

I find no lack of will to discuss the Israeli-Arab conflict on the blogs or on the street. Everyone has an opinion. I do find that there is alot if dis/mis information on the subject.

Israel is 80% Jewish and about 15% Muslim or about 20% Arab(including Christians, Druze and others). I havn't seen the projections that you are referring to but I find it hard to believe that Israel proper, not including the occupied territories, will be predominately non-jewish in 2050. I would be interested to know where you, frankly0,get your figures. I know that the birth rates of Jews in Israel is about 2% and the Arabs is about 3% but that also is a fluctuating number and does not account for Jewish immigration into Israel.

To be sured, Israel does recieve an lot of US support, but since the Egypt-Israel peace accord, Egypt receives about the same. In 1998 Eygpt recieved about $5 billion, in 2003 about $3 Billion. Saudi Arabia also receives quite a bit in US support as well as Military assistance. I think the key is this, for peace in the Middle-East the US is willing to deal economically with you. Jordan receives in excess of $300 Million in US aid 2/3 of it economic and 1/3 military.

The UN Plan to partition Palestine in 1947 invisioned a 2 state solution but the Arab countries in the area preferred war and the expulsion of the Jews in Palestine instead.

Israeli Arabs have equal right under the law and have political parties. They can vote and actually have arab members of the Knesset. In 2003 when the parliment tried to ban the arab parties in the election the Israeli Supreme court overturned the decision. Arabs have a vote in Israel. In contrast, Iran has more Jew living within their country than most other Arab nations with around 10,000. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebonon together have fewer jews than Iran.
To say that Israel will one day deny the voting rights of the Arabs flies in the facts

I wondered why I stopped reading your blog. With this completely stupid & condesending post, I remember. DINO.

What the hell is that even supposed to mean?

One of the things that I like about this blog is that it always goes after the really difficult subjects

One of the things I don't like about this blog is the clock is always wrong. Mr. McGill, happy New Year. From your absence I assume you were on holiday. I trust it was all it should have been, and welcome back.

Phil

I would be interested to know where you, frankly0,get your figures. I know that the birth rates of Jews in Israel is about 2% and the Arabs is about 3% but that also is a fluctuating number and does not account for Jewish immigration into Israel.

Here's a quote from a source, more or less at random via Google:

Within Israel, Arabs are an increasing proportion of the population. The Arab population doubled over the past 20 years, reaching 1.2 million in 2001. The Jewish population grew from under 3.3 million to 5 million, a 67 percent increase due primarily to immigration. In the 1990s, nearly one million Jews immigrated to Israel, a large majority of them from the former Soviet Union. In 1996, just over 60 percent of the Israeli population was Israel-born. Israel continues to encourage Jewish immigration; it expected about 45,000 individuals in 2001.

In 2002, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Palestine of 5.9 children per woman was more than twice as high as in Israel (2.9), which is reflected in their respective rates of natural increase (3.5% annually versus 1.5%). The TFR in the Gaza Strip was one of the highest in the world at 6.6 births per woman (2001). Similar trends can be seen within Israel: Jewish women have a TFR of 2.6 compared with 4.7 for Muslim women (2001).

Look, the basic fact I've been pointing to is a matter of demographics, of simple science, of the most obvious kinds of extrapolations, accepted pretty much on all sides by rational parties. Why are you even trying to spin this obvious demographic problem away? What is even the point? At about 2050, give or take, there will be more non-Jews than Jews in Israel proper. How is your spin today going to stop that fact tommorrow?

Really, some of you supporters of Israel seem so deeply in denial that it just takes my breath away.

Yes, you can pretend that today there is no problem. But tommorrow comes. And tommorrow, Israel must choose either to be a democracy or a Jewish state. And if it were to choose to be a democracy, it would become powerfully NON-Jewish, literally with a vengeance.

You can deal or not deal. Obviously, you choose not to, but I have no idea what it gains you -- it sure isn't do anything for your kids if you have them.

Just to respond a bit to the precise point Kevin made in his post, I do think that discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict IS mostly fruitless on blogs.

But one reason I favor pointing out the existential moral dilemma facing Israel in the future is that it really IS a matter of science and fact that that day will come. How can any rational person pretend it will turn out otherwise, having seen the numbers?

And it is always striking to me how decisively this fact shuts up the Israel-Right-or-Wrongers. What can they say? They have NEVER, in all my discussions of this issue, come up with anything approaching a satisfactory response. There is indeed simply nothing to say.

They are waiting for the hangman, and they know it. It will be the end of their claims of any moral stature.