Load those questions!

Heading their 17 March press release '49% Say Israel Should Stop Building Settlements As Part of Peace Deal', Rasmussen reported last week on their 'National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters Conducted March 15-16, 2010'.

At first I thought it was just a headline, but it turns out that what they actually asked was,

As part of a Middle Eastern peace agreement, should Israel be required to stop building new settlements in occupied Palestinian territory?

Leaving aside the little matter of the commonplace that an agreement between Israel and the PA, which is what they mean, applies to the entire Middle East, as the expression 'a Middle Eastern peace agreement' suggests, this is a curious way to frame the question.

All previous versions of the two state 'solution' have explicitly aimed to end the occupation of at least some of the territory that Israel seized in June 1967. Obviously Israel occupies all of Mandadory Palestine, but the likelihood that those drafting the question or those responding understood it that way is vanishingly small.

At least on the face of it, as I read it, the question assumes that the agreement will countenance continued occupation of 'Palestinian territory' – the West Bank and East Jerusalem, since the occupation of Gaza no longer involves building new settlements. So the question becomes not whether the occupation should end, or even whether existing settlements should be evacuated, but only whether new ones should be permitted as part of the envisaged peace agreement.

Taken at face value, it seems preposterous that anyone could imagine even the craven PA would agree to a 'peace' that entailed continuing occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, much less an occupation with ongoing settlement expansion. But 29% of the respondents said they didn't think the agreement should require Israel to stop building and another 22% weren't sure. Even the 49% who thought construction should stop were prepared to accept continuing occupation.

On reflection, however, it's not as farfetched as all that. I'm not aware of any advocate of partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state who doesn't envisage some kind of 'land swap', which, as I've emphasised repeatedly, retroactively endorses Israel's cynical construction of facts on the ground for the past four decades and more.

In any case, I think it's clear that what Rasmussen meant and what respondents understood them to mean was whether whether Israel should be required to stop building new settlements as a condition for negotiations to proceed towards the Peace Agreement. So why should they stop building on the areas they plan to annex – in other words, continue to occupy?

It's a bit of a disappointment to learn that Rasmussen would field a survey with such shoddy question wording. I had somehow formed the impression that they were professionals.

In the same vein, they ask,

As part of a Middle Eastern peace agreement, should Palestinian leaders be required to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state?

It's worth noting that acknowlege is a 'factive' verb – one that assumes the truth of its object. So there is no question whether Israel possesses the 'right to exist as a Jewish state', just whether Palestinian leaders should be forced to admit it. It's bad enough when you find these semantic tricks in journalism, although it's common enough that you have to expect it, but to insinuate such a contentious assumption into a survey question like that is truly beyond the pale.

Again, as I've written before, to 'acknowlege' Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state implies endorsing the ethnic cleanisng that enabled Israel to establish a Jewish majority in the first place and relinquishing the refugees' right to return – hardly a strong foundation for a peace agreement. Even so, 75% of those polled agreed that Palestinian leaders should be required to make such an acknowlegement, and 20% weren't sure, even though it's obvious that any leader doing so would certainly not retain a position of leadership for long.

Rasmussen only tabulate the results of three other questions, although from the breakdowns they report in their press release it's clear they asked others. One of these revealed that 73% don't consider a 'lasting peace' within the next decade likely and 58% consider Israel a US ally, while a surprising 32% think it's 'somewhere in between' an ally and an enemy.

Like last year, it's once again thanks to Richard Silverstein that I learned of the latest J Street poll, conducted 17-19 March. A quick look suggests that this year Gerstein | Agne, J Street's pollster, has not lifted their game, asking many questions about the US national interest and such. The only thing that struck me as worthy of comment was the headline of their press release, which proclaims 'American Jews Continue to Support Obama Push for Two-State Solution...', when in fact, they didn't even ask about the two state 'solution' or any aspect of it. But I'll have a closer look in due course and post something if anything comes to light. For my analysis of last year's J Street poll, see 'Across the Potomac'. I also had occasion to compare last year's J Street results with those from the Anti Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee's polls in 'A feather in our cap'.

Meanwhile, Zogby released their latest poll on the subject yesterday. I haven't managed to find the questions or a tabulation of the responses on their site, so I was forced to watch a video of John Zogby presenting the results to the New America Foundation. He claimed he'd selected the most interesting for his slideshow, but I can't say that anything piqued my curiosity. It seems that Republicans think the US should side with Israel, while Democrats think the US should be evenhanded. As if.

Friends like these

 

You might have thought that if it was anybody's job to look after Israel's occupation forces, it would have to be the Israeli taxpayer.  But it transpires that 

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) has assumed the responsibility of providing these soldiers with love and support in an effort to ease the burden they carry on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide...with the mission of providing and supporting social, educational, cultural, and recreational programs and facilities for the young men and women soldiers of Israel who defend the Jewish homeland...Providing financial aid to soldiers in need, granting academic scholarships to former combat soldiers, helping bereaved families, and sponsoring fun days for combat battalions are just some of our endeavors...reinforce the significant bond between the Jewish community in the United States, the soldiers of the IDF, and the State of Israel.

FIDF builds sports and cultural centres for the IOF all over Israel and, if I read the map correctly, in the West Bank, as well as providing mobile recreational facilities for those too busy humiliating Palestinians at remote checkpoints or bashing down doors in the middle of the night to get to one of the more permanent centres.

If IOF soldiers carry the burden of occupation and oppression 'on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide'  doesn't that constitute 'Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel', one of the ways 'in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel', according to the EU Monitoring Commission's 'Working definition'? 

Anyone who wants to contribute to this blatantly antisemitic project is in luck.  Next Tuesday, 9 March, FIDF is holding its National NY Gala in the Grand Ballroom of Manhattan's historic Waldorf-Astoria, where

More than 1,300 people will gather together to support Israel’s soldiers and the State of Israel. At the dinner, you will have the unique opportunity to hear from Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi Chief of the IDF General Staff and meet combat soldiers who fight on the frontlines to ensure the safety of the state of Israel.

For just US$180,000, you can book a table for ten, although only $179,678 of that will be tax deductible.  Or if you're too tightfisted to fork over a week's pay to defend Western Civilisation from the barbarian hordes at the gate, you can buy a seat for $1000.  I just can’t help wondering how much of contributions to Friends of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades or Friends of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, or even Friends of the Canadian Land Force Command would be tax deductible?

Alternatively, you can join the protest march, assembling at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue at 5PM on the day - next Tuesday, 9 March.

[H/t to Lou Proyect]

Heil mein Führer

When I got home yesterday, I found this promotional message from Ha'aretz in my inbox. 

Headed 'Property Management – An Occupation In and Of Itself', at first I thought it must be a spoof, an impression further buttressed by the principal's unfortunate surname.  But it turns out that there really is a Dov Fuehrer at Firer Property Management, providing professional services to absentee landlords who 'own' stolen land.  On reflection, I surmise that 'An Occupation In and Of Itself' was just a curiously revealing variation on 'A profession in and of itself'. 

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz also alerted me to the opportunity to 'come home for Pesach' and enjoy a week of five star festivities at the Inbal Jerusalem Hotel for just US$2240 per person, exclusive, I gather, of airfares.  Newsflash: I am home.

Defamation

Mark Elf of Jews sans frontières has been writing a lot about Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir’s documentary Defamation lately, attracting a fairly lively discussion.  Mark has written mainly about a short segment filmed at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s annual conference on Antisemitism featuring the English sociology lecturer and infamous Zionist apologist, David Hirsh, who Shamir filmed addressing the conference and in an animated altercation with the noxious Prof. Dina Porath, Head of The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University.  Hirsh came across as remarkably sensible in the excerpts that made the cut.  But he has since taken exception to the editing, linking to the full text of his talk.  And Shamir has responded.  The point that Hirsh makes is that one of the reasons for contemporary antisemitism is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, an issue nobody else at the conference had mentioned. 

Some websites have restricted access to Defamation so it can only be viewed in the UK for a few weeks, but I believe this link will work for anyone and will not expire.

Shamir is a young Israeli filmmaker who says that as an Israeli, he had never experienced antisemitism and wanted to find out what it was all about.  He weaves two principal themes through his documentary: He follows the ADL’s thuggish Abe Foxman around as he tours the world bullying the mighty into taking his line on antisemitism.  And he accompanies a group of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Poland they and their classmates carry out annually.  Inculcated from infancy with the idea that ‘everybody hates us’, more than 30,000 kids a year undergo special indoctrination to prepare them for the trip, where they will not be permitted to interact with locals at all, who they are instructed are dangerous to them, as evidenced by the secret service minders who accompany them at all times. 

Before discussing the film, let me just make a few points about antisemitism.  First of all, in my view, antisemitism is just a special case of racism.  It essentialises Jews as a race and discriminates against Jews on that basis.  There are historical reasons that it suited the ruling classes of mediaeval Europe to discriminate against Jews that I won’t go into now.  Suffice it to say that hatred of Jews and other attitudes that support discrimination derive from the discrimination both historically and conceptually, not the other way around.  Understood in this way, it is ironic that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) specifically excludes cases of actual discrimination in employment, housing, education, and the like from its Annual Audit of Anti-semitic Incidents.

ADL does not include cases of alleged employment discrimination in hiring, firing or promotion, unless the situation includes evidence of overt anti-Semitism...Such claims involve a different kind of anti-Semitic problem which, while hurtful to the complainant, are nevertheless distinct from overt expressions of anti-Jewish hostility.

In other words, in their view, expression of racist attitudes, even ‘Events which create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation to Jews, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist events, rallies, and speeches’, which may not be explicitly antisemitic, are on the whole of greater significance than actual racist actions, with the exception of assaults, which do count.

When it comes to the relation between antisemitism and Israel, I happen to agree that ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is antisemitic.  In fact, I think that’s the only point in the EU Monitoring Commission’s ‘Working definition’ of anti-Semitism, which I’ve demonstrated itself holds ‘Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’, I do agree with.  By the same token, when Former Israeli PM Tzipi Livni harps repeatedly on Israel as ‘a homeland for the Jewish people’ and when we read that youth and relief organisations are saying, ‘As the representative of the Jewish people, the State of Israel is leading the relief effort’, it’s no big surprise when the uninformed take them at their word and blame the Jews Israel purports to represent for what Israel does in our name.  Nor does it help when nearly every Jewish organisation and individual Jew takes it for granted that Israel does represent them.

An important aspect of antisemitism is that it’s one of the few forms of racism that has its own special term.  Although it was in fact the antisemite Wilhelm Marr who coined the term, it has turned out to be very convenient for the ADL, the Community Security Trust (CST), and the rest of the antisemitism industry to be able to purport to combat antisemitism without having to pretend to oppose racism more generally.

Another point that I thought was implicit in the film is that Israel has a special interest in exaggerating the extent of antisemitism.  For one thing, it engenders a barricade mentality among Israelis, strongly evidenced in interviews with high school students and with Shamir’s own grandmother.  The Israeli educational system quite cynically exploits the real sorrow and indignation the concentration camp visits elicit from the students to inculcate serious racist attitudes.  One girl said she wanted to kill all the Nazis.  When Shamir pointed out that those responsible for the Holocaust were all dead, she responded that they had progeny.  It hadn’t really occurred to me that perhaps the preeminent targets for Hasbara are actually Israeli kids.

Perhaps more importantly, it mobilises Jews outside Israel – the so called ‘diaspora’ – to support Israel, right or wrong, as an ‘insurance policy’ against the inevitable coming wave of antisemitic violence.  Shamir films a sad, but hilarious, discussion among some members of Foxman’s entourage where they determine that their love for their own country is like love for a husband, but their love for Israel is like the love for a child.  In some cases, fear of antisemitism motivates foreign Jews to immigrate, as intended. 

It’s worth noting that although the Nazis killed millions of non Jews, Israel has appropriated the Holocaust to denote the judeocide alone.  Jews have been uniquely victimised.  It is antisemitic to suggest that anything else in human history was as uniquely horrible as the Shoah.  In fact, Foxman takes his Ukrainian interlocutor to task for intimating a similarity with the death of millions of Ukrainians.  The underlying assumption is that antisemitism lurks in the heart and liver of every non Jew and that it’s just a matter of time before the next Holocaust.  Shamir’s grandmother, who despises the canny, lazy, greedy non Israeli Jews, asks whether we’re just waiting for Hitler to come along. 

Finally, a bit off topic, you often hear it said that Israel is antisemitic because ‘Arabs are Semites too’.  There are two problems with this.  First, Marr coined the term specifically to denote discrimination against and hatred of Jews and it has never meant anything else, whatever problems anyone may have with that.   

More importantly, when they say, ‘Arabs are Semites too’, they effectively create a race of Semites, which would comprise Jews, Arabs, and the peoples who speak Semitic languages in the Horn of Africa.  There are people who hate Jews because we’re Jews and there are people who hate Arabs because they’re Arabs.  Perhaps there are even people who hate Amharic speakers because of that.  There are certainly people who hate both Jews and Arabs but I doubt there’s anyone anywhere who hates Jews and Arabs because they are Semites, per se – speakers of Semitic languages and their descendants.  Since race is not a meaningful biological category, we can only know that a race is a race because of the racism against its members.  And since there is no racism against Semites, as such, there is no race of Semites and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to try to appropriate the term antisemitism for a form of racism that doesn’t exist.

Returning to the point, I liked the film a lot.  It didn’t evidence very high production values, but I assume that the amateurish interview from behind the handheld camera technique was deliberate. 

There are revealing interviews with rabbis in Crown Heights and Kiev and members of Foxman’s delegation, as well as with the students.  The Crown Heights rabbi points out that it is not the same thing for a mugger to target Jews thinking they are soft targets as to target Jews because they hate Jews.  He also mentions that people like Foxman have a vested interest in exaggerating the threat and fomenting an atmosphere of panic because their jobs depend on it. 

Shamir also interviews both Jews and Blacks in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights district and attends a conference in Israel on antisemitism.  One of the Crown Heights Blacks strongly endorsed what he called ‘The elders of the protocols of Zion’ and his two mates agreed, although they clearly were not as familiar with it as the first guy was.  Even though he was aware that The protocols was a hoax, to all appearances, they really believe that there’s a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, a transparently antisemitic attitude, also articulated by a cabdriver at the very beginning of the film.  There may well be genuine cause for concern if such views are prevalent.  The fear and resentment those interviewees displayed could easily turn nasty.  But the question arises how they came by their opinions.  One reason may be that they haven’t had much social contact with the Jews in their neighbourhood, who are principally, if not exclusively, the notoriously insular Hasidim.

In one of Defamation’s highlights, Foxman may offer some additional insight.  In an in car interview, he confesses that his raison d’etre is actually to instil and cultivate the impression that Jews have great power and influence as a tool to bully his interlocutors to put on a song and dance about how they don’t believe Jews have inordinate power and influence.

To be honest, I didn’t think the interviews with Mearsheimer and Finkelstein contributed much.  Mearsheimer makes the undeniable point that it’s nearly impossible to prove a negative – that, for example, he is not an antisemite, ‘which is one reason that this charge is so effective’.  ‘My arguments are not in any way, shape, or form hostile to Jews or hostile to the state of Israel.  And in fact Steve Walt and I go to great lengths to make the case that we think The Lobby’s policies are not in Israel’s interests or in America’s interests.’  In protesting that he is not hostile to Israel and his concern for Israel’s interests as evidence that he is not an antisemite, of course, he demonstrates pretty conclusively that, if you agree that bracketing Jews with the state of Israel is antisemitic, he is in fact an antisemite.

Finkelstein does not come out of the film looking very good, either.  This could be an artefact of Shamir’s editing.  He filmed the interview in at least four locations – on the boardwalk, presumably adjacent to his flat, in the loungeroom, in the kitchen, and in the stairwell.  When asked about the traditional complaint that Israel is ‘singled out for criticism’, Finkelstein responds somewhat unconvincingly, ‘Listen, I open the radio.  I hear nonstop about Sudan.  I hear nonstop about Tibet.  I hear nonstop about Darfur. I hear a lot.’  He does make the salient point, however, ‘The only place I hear excuses made for is Israel.’  But he goes on to undermine himself with the familiar claim, ‘We do have to remember that it’s the oldest occupation in the world.  I mean forty years really is enough’.  It never ceases to amaze me how intelligent and well informed people draw a line in the sand in June 1967, as if Zionist colonisation of Palestine didn’t go back a lot further than that.  In a 27 January article on the Electronic Intifada, Columbia University academic Joseph Massad attributes the reduction of Palestine to just the West Bank and Gaza, which seems to me to lie at the heart of this misconception, to Oslo.

...By transforming the PLO, which represented all Palestinians in the Diaspora and in Israel and the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, into the Palestinian Authority (PA) which could only hope to represent Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, constituting one third of the Palestinian people, the Oslo agreements engineered a major demographic reduction of the Palestinian people...

The insidious part of this process is how the PA, conscious of this transformation, continues to speak of the "Palestinian people," which had been reduced through the Oslo accords to those West Bank and Gaza Palestinians it now claims to represent.

(I strongly recommend, by the way, making a point of clicking the link to ‘How surrendering Palestinian rights became the language of "peace"’ and reading it in full.  Massad really gets some of the stuff I’ve been trying to hammer for years.) 

But beyond that, it always strikes me as a bit rich for an American to claim the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as ‘the oldest occupation in the world’, as if they weren’t even aware of the US occupation of such colonies as Puerto Rico, Guam, and ‘American’ Samoa, which goes back to the end of the Nineteenth Century.  When I point this out, a lot of people object that those aren’t exactly like the Israeli occupation, sometimes indicating particular differences.  And they’re right.  But once you redefine occupation to mean only an occupation exactly like the occupation of the West Bank, assertions that it’s the oldest become utterly vacuous. 

At another point, Finkelstein tells Shamir, ‘It’s the best thing that will ever happen to Israel if they get rid of these American Jews who are warmongers from Martha’s Vineyard...it’s been a disaster for Israel...it’s a curse.’  So it turns out that at least one of the things that concerns him, like Mearsheimer, is Israel’s interests.  Beyond that, he seems to be suggesting that Israel would be fine if it weren’t for these American Jews, as if warmongers like Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, whose work he is intimately familiar with and who he mentions in another part of the interview, needed any prodding.

Shamir attended a meeting with Foxman, Joel Levi, ‘NY Regional Director’, and Bob Wolfson, ‘ADL Regional Director’, about, Foxman says, ‘...what looks like a spike in um antisemitic and racist...um...activities or manifestations.  Now New York seems to be at the centre, or at least getting the attention.  How do you see it?’  Levi responds, ‘There is a wave.  There’s no question about it.’  And Wolfson speculates that it may ‘be attached to the time of the year’ or ‘maybe attached to the Presidential election’, placing the filming prior to November 2008.

It transpires that the ADL headlined the 1 June 2009 press release for its own Annual Audit of Anti-semitic Incidents for 2008, ‘Anti-Semitic Incidents Decline for Fourth Straight Year in U.S., According to Annual ADL Audit’.  In 2008, the ADL recorded ‘1,352 incidents of vandalism, harassment and physical assaults against Jewish individuals, property and community institutions in 2008, representing a 7 percent decline from the 1,460 incidents reported in 2007’ and a 26% decline from the 2004 peak ‘when the League reported 1,821 incidents’. Of those 1,352 incidents, 37 were actual assaults, a category not reported in previous years.   Of course it wouldn’t be the first time that a prominent American Jewish organisation has contradicted its own findings.

It was interesting to learn that in the fortnight prior to Shamir’s visit to the ADL’s main office in Manhattan they had collected a grand total of five reports of antisemitic incidents: someone who thought they had detected antisemitic remarks on a website and another who believed they had perceived ‘antisemitic undertones’ in a newspaper article, as well as a teacher, another employee, and a nursing student who ‘had issues’ taking leave for Jewish holidays.  Another report was a letter from a woman to her congressperson alleging that she was utterly crushed to overhear a cop on duty guarding a big funeral telling someone on the phone that he wouldn’t be free until ‘after this Jewish shit’. 

What I got from Defamation  is that a lot of Jews, including Israeli Jews, exhibit a hysterical paranoia about antisemitism completely at odds with the actual danger.  According to the ADL Audit, the chance of an American Jew being the victim of an antisemitic assault are about 1 in 160,000.  Nevertheless, the latest American Jewish Committee Survey shows that 99% of American Jews thought antisemitism was a problem, 56% a ‘Very Serious problem’, and 45% said it was getting worse. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common enough kind of phenomenon.  Hundreds of millions are more worried about a terrorist attack than about driving down the shops even though they are thousands of times more likely to be killed or injured in a traffic accident than in a terrorist incident.

Shamir also makes it clear that there are organisations, ranging from the ADL to the State of Israel, that have a vested interest in provoking and exacerbating antisemitic attitudes, exaggerating antisemitic incidents, and aggravating the hysteria about them.

Unfortunately, he ends the film on the lame note, ‘Maybe it’s about time to live in the present and look to the future’.

Notwithstanding the useful insights and revealing admissions Defamation presents, ultimately, whatever Shamir’s intentions, it ends up as part of Israel’s rebranding exercise.  Shamir shows that at least some Israelis are talented and caring people.  He goes out of his way to challenge the received wisdom – the very foundation of Zionsim.  And the whole project was sponsored by the Israeli Council for Cinema, among others.  Clearly, Israel must be a true democracy that ‘shares our values’ even to tolerate, much less support, a film like Defamation.

Alistair Hulett dead at 57

Another one bites the dust.  

Dave Rovics's obituary

Alistair Hulett has has died
 

Icon of Scottish folk music, international socialism, and Australian punk rock dead at 57

Today is my daughter Leila's fourth birthday, and while this occasion brings my thoughts back to the day she was born, the past 24 hours have otherwise been full of fairly devastating news.

If the left can admit to having icons, then two of them have just died. Yesterday it was the great historian and activist Howard Zinn, with whom I had the pleasure of sharing many stages around the US over many years. Much has been written about Zinn's death at the age of 87, and I think many more people will be discovering his groundbreaking work who may not have heard of him til now.

And then less than a full day later I heard the news that my dear friend, comrade and fellow musician Alistair Hulett died today. He was thirty years younger than Professor Zinn, 57 years old, give or take a year (I'm shit at remembering birthdays, but he was definitely still years shy of 60). Ally had an aggressive form of cancer in his liver, lungs and stomach.

I last saw Alistair last summer at his flat in Glasgow where he had lived with his wife Fatima for many years. (Fatima, a wonderful woman about whom Ally wrote his love song, “Militant Red.”) He seemed healthy and spry as usual, with plenty to say about the state of the world as always. He was working on a new song about a Scottish anarchist who had run the English radio broadcast for the Spanish Republic in the 1930's.

I first met Ally in 2005, at least that's what he said. I seem to recall meeting him earlier than that, but maybe it's just that I was already familiar with his music and had been to his home town of Glasgow many times before I actually met him. His reputation preceded him – in my mind he was already one of those enviably great guitarists who along with people like Dick Gaughan had done so much to breath new life into the Scottish folk music tradition. I had also already heard some of his own wonderful compositions, sung by him as well as by other artists.

In 2005 the Scottish left was well mobilized, organizing the people's response to the G8 meetings that were happening in the wooded countryside not far from Edinburgh. Alistair was involved both as an organizer and a musician, and we hung out in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, outside a detention center somewhere, and out by the G8 meetings in an opulent little town with an unpronounceable Scottish name.

I asked him then if he wanted to do a tour with me in the US. He took me up on that a year or so later and we traveled from Boston to Minneapolis over the course of two weeks or so, doing concerts along the way. Many people who came to our shows were already familiar with Alistair's music, while many were hearing it for the first time and were generally well impressed with his work as well as his congenial personality, despite the fact that many people reported to me discreetly that they couldn't understand a word he was saying.

Americans aren't so good with accents at the best of times, and to make matters worse Alistair was largely doing songs from his Red Clydeside CD, which is a themed recording all about the anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist rebellion that rocked Glasgow in 1917. Naturally the songs from that CD are also sung in a Glaswegian dialect which can only be understood by non-Scottish people in written form, if you take your time.

Alistair was determined to retaliate for my having organized a tour for us in the US, which he did three years later in a big way, organizing a five-week tour for us of Australia and New Zealand from late November 2008 until early January of last year.

Our tour began in Christchurch, New Zealand. This turned out to seem very fitting, since Christchurch is where Alistair moved as a teenager, along with his parents and his sister, in the mid-1960's. He resented having to leave Glasgow, which was at that time a major hotbed of the 1960's global cultural and political renaissance -- a renaissance which had decidedly not yet made its way to little Christchurch, New Zealand. Alistair described to me how the streets of this small city were filled with proper English ladies wearing white gloves when he moved there as a restless youth.

The folk scare came to Christchurch, though, as with so many other corners of the world at that time, and at the age of 17 Alistair was in the heart of it. Our tour of New Zealand included a whole bunch of great gigs, but it was also like a tour of the beginning of Alistair's varied musical career. All along the way on both the south and north islands I met people Alistair hadn't seen for years or sometimes decades. I cringed as someone gave us a bootleg recording of Alistair as a teenager, figuring wrongly that it would be a reminder of a musically unstable early period, but it turned out to be a fine recording, a vibrant but nuanced rendition of some old songs from the folk tradition.

After two weeks exploring the postcard-perfect New Zealand countryside, smelling a lot of sheep shit, and getting in a car accident while parked, we headed to Sydney. Upon arriving in Australia I discovered a whole other side to Alistair and his impact on the world. Though his Scottish accent never seemed to thin out much, he lived for 25 years in Sydney and was on the ground floor of the Australian punk rock scene, playing in towns and cities throughout Australia with his band, Roaring Jack. The band broke up decades ago but still has a loyal following throughout the country, as I discovered first-hand night after night. In contrast with the nuanced and often quite obscure stories told in the traditional ballads which Alistair rendered so well, Roaring Jack was a brash, in-your-face musical experience, championing the militant end of the Australian labor movement and leftwing causes generally, fueled by equal parts rage against injustice, love of humanity and alcohol.

Since the 90's Alistair has lived in his native Glasgow, while regularly touring elsewhere in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. He's played in various musical ensembles including most recently his band the Malkies, but mostly his work has been as a songwriter and solo performer, also recording and occasionally touring with the great fiddler of Fairport Convention fame, Dave Swarbrick. His more recent songs have run the gamut from a strictly local Glasgow song written to support a campaign to save a public swimming pool to the timelessly beautiful song recorded by June Tabor and others, “He Fades Away.”

“He Fades Away” is about an Australian miner dying young of asbestosis, from massive exposure to asbestos, a long-lasting, daily tragedy of massive proportions fueled by, well, greedy capitalists. It is surely more than a little ironic that Alistair was taken from us at such a young age by the industrial-world epidemic known as cancer, so much like the subject of his most well-known song.

The song is written from the perspective of the wife of a miner who is dying of asbestosis. The melody of the song is so beautiful that quoting the lyrics can't come close to doing it justice, and I won't do the song that injustice here – just go to the web and search for “He Fades Away,” it's right there in various forms.

It is undoubtedly a privilege of someone like Alistair that he will be remembered passionately by people, young and old and on several continents, long after today – by friends, lovers, fellow activists, fellow musicians, and many times as many fans. And he will long be remembered also as one of the innumerable great people, including so many great musicians, who died too young.

On our last tour, so recently, he was meeting new friends and renewing old friendships every single day, so very full of life. Among the friendships he was renewing was that with his elderly parents, who came to our show in Brisbane, a couple hours from where they retired on the east coast of Australia. Though the exact causes of Alistair's illness will probably never be known, it seems to be a hallmark not just of war, but especially of the industrialized world's ever-worsening cancer epidemic, that so many parents have to see their children die so young.


David Rovics
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A cup of sugar

Lubavitcher Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, bestselling author of The kosher sutra and father of nine, has a bee in his kippah. 

One Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgham, with the collusion of the US Department of State and the Englewood, New Jersey cops, ‘stealthily moved in and took up residence as my immediate next-door neighbor’.  His gripe against his new neighbour?  ‘Every time my kids hit a baseball a bit too far’, it goes ‘onto the lawn of a man who last week disgraced the U.N. Security Council by showing a gruesome slide show featuring images of mutilated Palestinians with Israeli soldiers as the culprits’.

Imagine the chutzpah of suggesting that Israeli soldiers could possibly be implicated in the mutilation of Palestinians.  Sure, they may have rained tons of ordinance all over the densely packed Gaza Strip for over three weeks, but they never intended to do anyone any harm any more than they did when they shelled the beach at Beit Lahia in June 2006, killing eight.

And if that weren’t enough to make any innocent neighbour see red, ‘His condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza made no mention of the thousands of Hamas rockets that have been fired without provocation at Israeli children’.

At the risk of repeating myself, everyone knows about ‘the thousands of Hamas rockets’.  Each one is lovingly documented – here, for instance, is a list of those launched in 2007, and Wikipedia has an entry for attacks each year.  Now a Qassam rocket has no guidance system.  You can point it in a general direction, but you can’t really aim it.  So when Rabbi Shmuley claims they have been fired at children, it is at best hyperbole.  Furthermore, it’s not entirely obvious that there was no provocation.  As far as I can tell, nobody has enumerated the missiles, shells, and other destructive projectiles Israel has lobbed into Gaza since 2001, the period over which armed Palestinian groups have launched some 8600 rockets, or for any part of that period.  Suffice it to say that whatever the number, it almost certainly dwarfs those fired back, and more importantly, has killed many more than 28 Palestinians.  And if that weren’t provocation enough, Israel has destroyed Gaza’s air and seaports, electric generation plants, water and sewerage treatment facilities, even the Rafah Zoo.  And then there’s the little matter of the siege.

So to assert that the rockets were ‘fired without provocation’ is just a baldfaced lie.  But it’s not just any old fabrication.  There’s a reason he, like so many others, can say it, and even believe it themselves.  Palestinians provoke, Israel retaliates.  They can’t tolerate Jews, so they attack ‘us’.  And ‘we’, Israel, have no option but to reluctantly go crazy, destroying everything in sight, lest they get the idea they can perpetrate another Holocaust.  There is never any context for a Palestinian attack, that’s just the way they are.  In short, it’s an unabashed racist conceit.

Disgracing the UN Security Council was not Mr Shalgham’s only crime.  He is the Ambassador to the UN of Libya and nobody could be expected ‘to borrow a cup of sugar from a man whose government murdered American servicemen while they danced at a disco’.  Now I once saw a documentary that asserted that the best British and Israeli intelligence blamed Syria and Iran for the April 1986 bombing of Berlin’s La Belle Discotheque, which killed two US servicemen, and there are other theories.  For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that Colonel Gaddafi really did order the bombing.  After all President Reagan assured us that the evidence that justified the retaliatory bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi was ‘direct’, ‘precise’, and ‘irrefutable’, and he wouldn’t lie.  You just can’t help but wonder how Rabbi Shmuley would react if the diplomats who moved in next door represented a government that murdered 34 US servicemen.

To add insult to injury, ‘they are the same Libyans who have shown our city undisguised contempt by refusing for over a quarter of a century to pay even a single dollar in taxes’.  Apparently the good Rebbe is unaware of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations provision that

The sending State and the head of the mission shall be exempt from all national, regional or municipal dues and taxes in respect of the premises of the mission, whether owned or leased...

The nature of the State Dept’s collusion is complying with Article 23(1)

In accordance with the VCDR, foreign governments are entitled to exemption from real estate taxes on residences that are owned by such governments and used for the purpose of housing the head of its diplomatic mission.

Again, you’re compelled speculate about Rabbi Shmuley’s views on the undisguised contempt shown by some other diplomatic missions that refuse to pay taxes.

The reason the rabbi is suffering this deplorable antisemitic attack is that, ‘Without sounding paranoid...Across the globe it’s open season on Israel and the Jews’.  But all is not lost.

We are a powerful global economic market and we must seriously consider boycotting the products of countries whose shameful behavior mistreats Jews. For example, the situation in Britain is out of control: There have been attempts to ban Israeli professors from academic conferences; a magistrate issued an arrest warrant against Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and the government issued an advisory allowing retailers to label products originating from the West Bank as being produced in Israeli settlements or by Palestinians. A serious conversation about whether or not to vacation in Britain or buy its products should now occur.

I won’t go over the arguments for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel or boycotting Israeli products or for universal jurisdiction.  What’s interesting, however, is that he goes on to castigate the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government.

Here in the United States we have had to contend with the Obama administration’s canard that Israeli settlements are a major obstacle to Middle East peace. And it’s more than a little disappointing that the Netanyahu government has endorsed this fraud by instituting a 10-month freeze on settlements, thereby unjustly identifying some of Israel’s most patriotic citizens as its most intransigent.

But curiously, he doesn’t recommend a serious conversation about whether or not to vacation in Israel or buy US products.

Percent of what?

You may have come across a new poll that's doing the rounds.

According to to Yaniv Reich, reproduced at Information Clearing House ‘53% of Israelis think ethnic cleansing is the solution to the conflict’.

The actual question was ‘What's the best solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict?’, and the response options were

• Two states for two peoples, 30.8%
• Transfer of Palestinians to another Arab country, 53.2%
• Maintain status quo, 1.3%
• Give Palestinians Jordanian citizenship, 14.5%

As I’ve often pointed out before, if the response options don’t exhaust all the possibilities, if only by offering an ‘other’ option, it inevitably distorts the results. In most cases, as in this one, failure to include other possibilities, like extending Israeli citizenship to everyone in the area Israel currently controls, or federation with neighbouring countries, for example, means that the poll is actually more an exercise in propaganda than research —an attempt to form rather than to measure respondents’ views.

But in this case, that hardly matters. To his credit, Reich disclaims of Israel National News (Arutz 7) ‘its a right-wing rag’. As far as I’m aware, its principal audience is settlers, presumably, hard core English speaking olim. So the population ‘sampled’ is already heavily skewed to the extreme right.

At the same time, apparently picking up on Arutz 7’s claim of ‘more than 6,400 people surveyed’, he gives Arutz Sheva too much credit in describing the number of votes as ‘sample size “more than 6,400″’.  In reality, the poll was not a survey as usually understood, where respondents are selected at random from identified ‘strata’ of a population to ensure that the sample reflects demographic characteristics of the whole population, like sex, age, location, etc. The ‘sample’ was entirely self selecting. We have no way of knowing whether respondents corresponded in any way even with the population of Arutz Sheva readers, much less with Israeli Jews, much less with Israelis in general.

Based on this thoroughly bogus online vote, it is not possible to say, as Reich does, that ‘53.2% of surveyed Israelis say the “solution” to the conflict was the ethnic cleansing (”transfer”) of Palestinians out of occupied Palestine and into other neighboring Arab countries’. Because there was no proper sampling, we can’t calculate the ‘margin of error — for all we know, it’s 90%, or 3%.

As for the other results, Arutz Sheva is actually more honest than Reich in claiming, ‘The "two-states for two peoples" solution being pushed by the United States and the international community received 30.8 percent support’, where Reich writes, ‘only 30.8% of Israelis support the “two-states for two peoples” framework for peace’. It’s not 30.8% of Israelis — it’s just 30.8% of those who voted in the poll, since they don’t represent anyone else. Bear in mind that this was an online poll, so anyone at all can vote, Israeli or not, Jewish or not.

According to Tel Aviv University’s October War and Peace Index, however, which does purport to be based on a genuine sample of 514, with a margin of error of 4.5%,

...the distribution of views among the Jewish public is quite clear : the majority, about two-thirds (64%), favor the principle [of “two states for two peoples”] compared to a third who oppose it.

So it’s highly probable that the proportion of Israeli Jews who support ‘two states for two peoples’ is actually more than double what this poll claims.

It’s worth reiterating that for Israeli Jews, ‘two states for two peoples’ does not necessarily mean The International Consensus. As I pointed out in July, 60% of Israeli Jews say withdrawal to the Green Line is ‘unacceptable’, and 53% consider evacuation of the settlements unacceptable, while 45% insist that it’s ‘essential’ for all of Jerusalem with its expanded boundaries, to remain annexed to Israel, etc. October’s War and Peace Index found that 54% of the two state supporters ‘thinks continued construction in the settlements will not ultimately detract from the realization of the two-state solution’.

Real opinion polls, for all their legion faults, provide us with at least a gross indication of the level of unabashed and unalloyed racism among Israeli Jews, whether they support establishing a Palestinian bantustan, and what form they want it to take, among other things. And we can use that information in countering the perennial hasbara onslaught about ‘Israel’s quest for peace’, but wherever you may read about it, this Arutz Sheva poll tells us squat and it is self defeating to pretend that it does.

Save the Galillee!

 I don’t usually go for the low hanging fruit, but the other day, I received an advert proclaiming,

Jewish Galilee In Danger

Do you want to do something about it? Be A Partner in Saving The Galilee! Buy A Piece of Israel! "Because it's time to take our country back!"

It had never occurred to me that Jews could buy indulgences, but it transpires that

"One who purchases 4 cubits (amot) in the Land of Israel is assured a portion in the World to Come"

- Midrash Zuta on Megilat Ruth (4:5)

For US$100, you can not only buy a plot in the afterlife, but also 4 square metres ‘of Lower Galilee farming land for B'Ahavat Yisrael's Avoda Ivrit (Jewish Labor) youth farming project’. 

That’s right, Hebrew labour is back.

The land will be farmed exclusively by Jewish youths and the more land that is purchased and worked by Jews the better chance we have of ensuring Jewish sovereignty in the Galilee!

But wait, there’s more!

Special Offer: Dedicate your own section of 18 plots for only $1,500!

Not only that, but if you’re a US resident, your little investment in ethnic cleansing is tax deductible.

On his website, beneath the slogan ‘...because it is time to take our country back...’, B'Ahavat Yisrael’s founder and director, Yosef Ben Tzion (Joel Busner), writes,

If you read or see CNN or the BBC or even the more even handed FOX news, you may come away with the feeling that the government of Israel's settlement policy is an illegal impediment to Peace...

He is scandalised that,

...the Arabs are voting citizens...they receive more National Insurance per capita than Jews...they are causing more deadly car accidents per capita...the media, the Judiciary, and the overall control of the 'system' are controlled by self hating Jewish leftists...the Arabs are winning point after point as the base of a Jewish state dissolves with each point...Thanks to Israel's Extreme Leftist dominated Supreme Court the Israeli Land Authority can no longer develop a new community exclusively for Jews...Arabs can now buy homes in Jewish villages...The Negev is being taken over by blatant Bedouin land grabs and there are thousands upon thousands of illegal houses all over the Negev...

If have the stomach for more racist autoparody, follow the link.

Capitalism: a love story

Revolutionaries steeped in Marxist theory and the history of class struggle who flog socialist papers on street corners and picket lines, who organise and leaflet for protest marches, play an important part in fomenting revolution.  But as everyone knows, ultimately, we are not the ones who are going to overthrow capitalism once and for all and create a new society based on solidarity and cooperation.  Cast in that role are the ordinary working grunts who make everything and do everything and comprise the vast majority of the world’s population.  It’s no mystery why ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves’.  Through our collective activity in the process of revolution we learn that we have the capacity to run our society ourselves, in our own interests, without the benefit of bosses, politicians, and clergy.  It’s also through this process that we acquire the skills that enable us to organise production and distribution.

For all the criticism Michael Moore has copped for his latest film, Capitalism: a love story, he manages to address an audience of millions and tens of millions of the very people that revolutionaries can only dream of reaching in ones and twos.  So I was keen to see what message he was conveying and whether it was the kind of thing that would provoke people to walk out of the theatre proclaiming, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore’.  A free pass to the preview last night provided the opportunity.

As it turns out, I couldn’t form an impression of how it would impact on such an audience.  Screening in what I think is the biggest cinema in a pretty small town, the crowd didn’t quite fill it.  There was scattered applause at the end, which might have been for the film, or perhaps, as a comrade speculated, for Tony Babino’s swing rendition of The Internationale.  Anyway, I doubt the preview attracted many of the people I thought Moore was trying to reach. 

When push comes to shove, Moore does not seem to be a revolutionary.  He clearly wants to create enough anger to propel people onto the streets, but I think he would like our objective to be to ‘get Obama’s back’ so he can implement the ‘kinder and gentler society’ Moore believes he really wants in his heart of hearts. 

Furthermore, he resiles from pigeonholing himself as a socialist, as shown in this exchange from the end of his 24 September interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales on Democracy now!

AMY GOODMAN: In a word, would you describe yourself as a socialist?

MICHAEL MOORE: Well—

AMY GOODMAN: We have ten seconds.

MICHAEL MOORE: I’m a heterosexual. I’m, you know—I’m—I’m—

AMY GOODMAN: Six—

MICHAEL MOORE: I’m overweight.

AMY GOODMAN: —five, four—

MICHAEL MOORE: I’m, uh—

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Moore, here on Democracy Now!

Maybe he’s not a socialist.  Or maybe he just doesn’t want to distance himself from the demographic he’s trying to appeal to by accepting the label.  But that’s not a criticism of the movie.  If he can motivate millions onto the streets, it won’t be up to him what we demand.

The film itself comprises interviews with foreclosees and politicians, pilots earning US$20K or less and economists, actor Wallace Shawn and some priests; footage of foreclosures and resistance to foreclosures, the inspiring and successful Republic Windows and Doors occupation, and Katrina victims stranded on rooftops; along with typical Mooreish stunts and scenes of dilapidated abandoned houses and demolished factory sites.  The ruling class is wise to him now, so he never gets close to a CEO.  If you’d never seen a Michael Moore gag before and missed the trailer, the ‘give back the money’ scene with the moneybags and the armoured car or the crime scene tape around Wall Street might have raised a chuckle or two, but on the whole I thought the stunts fell flat without making much of a point. 

This contrasts unfavourably with his brilliant 2007 effort Sicko, where he takes a group including volunteers from the 11 September 2001 disaster in New York who were denied medical coverage to the US concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay where the unconvicted prisoners are alleged to receive exemplary free health care.  Failing to gain entry, they receive free treatment in the unoccupied part of Cuba and procure ridiculously cheap prescriptions to take with them to the land of opportunity.  He also interviews doctors and patients in Canada, Britain, and France about the quality of treatment they provide and receive under the dreaded scourge of socialised medicine.  He also focuses on some of the victims of the US’s ‘nonprofit’ health insurance companies, forced into bankruptcy or worse when their insurers found loopholes in their policies and withheld or withdrew payment and interviews with the insurers’ employees, who explain how it’s done.  Frankly, I expected that movie to launch a healthcare revolt in the US.  From what he told Democracy Now!, Moore thinks Obama should have stuck to his erstwhile ‘single payer’ policy, claiming that would ‘it would make the town hall meetings and the teabag stuff look like the Disney Channel’.  According to a Rasmussen poll conducted in August, however, 57% of Americans oppose single payer, 52% believing it would reduce quality of care and 45% that it would increase costs!  Another Rasmussen survey, released yesterday, found that 51% oppose even Obama’s current lukewarm proposal.  So go figure.

In Capitalism, Moore lets his interviewees speak for themselves without glossing over, in fact emphasising, how inarticulate many of them are.  The grieving families of the victims of ‘Dead peasant’ schemes, where the employer somehow manages to name itself the beneficiary of life insurance policies, collecting in some cases millions of dollars and leaving the survivors with squat, are understandably choked up.  And he reveals in glaring detail the cynicism of the policyholders.

The foreclosees who earn US$1000 for a week’s work emptying and cleaning out their houses on behalf of the bank are poignant, but really don’t have a great deal to say.  I gather Moore dwells on them because they are iconic of his viewers – overweight, underpaid, and with no assets but the house they’ve lost to the ‘vultures’.  ‘There but for the grace of god’ sort of thing.  Time will tell whether depicting these victims’ sorrow and suppressed rage evokes the fury it deserves.

When it comes to the economists he interviews about derivatives and credit default swaps, their inability even to begin to explain what they do barely merits a snicker and leaves the viewer no better informed.  I suppose the point he’s making is that these exotic financial instruments are so arcane that nobody understands them, including the regulators, such as they may be.  It wasn’t at all obvious to me what Wallace Shaun contributed to the economic analysis, or to the movie.

I guess I have three principal complaints about Capitalism: a love story. 

Moore focuses his attention on a couple of the most cynical, depraved, in your face abuses of unregulated finance capital.  I think it would have been a more powerful condemnation of the capitalist system had it devoted some time the quotidian depravities that pass below the radar – the way under the dictatorship of capital, we ‘educate’ our children to groom them into adults who can successfully market themselves as if they were commodities to prospective employers who may then determine in their infinite wisdom whether they merit the privilege of being employed, literally, to do their bidding for a significant portion of their waking day for most of the days of their adult lives.  Stuff like that. 

It’s true that he does condemn capitalism outright as a system, but this is couched almost wholly in religious terms.  It was kind of clever to dub capitalist platitudes over scenes from Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth.  But then later in the film, he interviews two priests, not exactly selected at random – the ones who presided at his wedding and his sister’s – but he claims not chosen for their outspoken socialist positions, either.  They readily concede that capitalism is entirely contrary to Christian values and is indeed a ‘sin’.  The bishop he interviews makes similar concessions somewhat more reluctantly.  I suppose it goes without saying that in general I consider appeals to religion a counterproductive distraction.  But even if Moore is right to think it’s useful, in a country where over half the population is avowedly protestant, and less than a quarter catholic, I’m not convinced that this is the most persuasive strategy. 

The second issue is some confusion about class.  Moore is nostalgic for the middle class household he grew up in and seems to think everyone is entitled to.  His father, who appears briefly at the site of GM’s flattened AC Spark Plugs plant in Flint Michigan, where he worked for over 30 years in a unionised shop, earned enough on his single wage to pay off the house before Mike started school, enjoyed comprehensive medical and dental cover for the whole family, and had a generous retirement plan – benefits later generations of American workers can’t even imagine.  But the hard won gains organised workers achieved through decades of struggle do not magically elevate them into the middle class.  Small businesspersons, self employed professionals, middle managers, and the like are middle class.  Their relations to the means of production are quite distinct from those of workers, whose interests are systematically and diametrically opposed to our employers’ interests. 

From some of the things workers he spoke to said, I surmise that this is a common misconception, and maybe it helps to connect with that audience.  But by eliding relative prosperity with the actual relations of production, Moore misses the central contradiction of capitalism – the relation of exploitation whereby the boss pays workers the market value of their ability to work and enjoys the much greater rewards of the value that their labour creates.  Consequently, he can’t explain why it is workers, however well remunerated, who are uniquely positioned, as the middle class is not, to wrest control of production from the exploiters.

Arising directly from this, Capitalism: a love story is virtually silent on the crucial question of how we get from here – the dog eat dog world of production of social goods for private profit, of exploitation, oppression, poverty, and war, to there – a world of creation of social goods for social need, of empathy, solidarity, care for our only planet.

He does hint obliquely at a way forward in depicting the successful efforts of a small group of Miami residents – it looked to be about 30 strong – who held nine squad cars full of sheriffs at bay when they came to foreclose on a member’s home.  And as I mentioned before, there are scenes from the Republic occupation, which while inspirational, ultimately failed to inspire other workers to adopt their tactics, as I hoped it would at the time.  For their efforts, the Republic workers secured all their demands, which left each of them some six grand ahead, but still without their jobs.

In an ironic twist, on 10 September, too late to include in the film, Cook County court remanded Republic CEO Richard Gillman in custody when he was arraigned and failed to post the required US$10 million bail.

Gillman and two other undisclosed executives abandoned Republic Windows' crushing debt, stole its assets and secretly trucked the equipment from the plant to the new operation in Red Oak, Iowa, the charges alleged.

But that operation failed, too, just a month and a half after it started, leaving hundreds of employees from both Chicago and Iowa out of work and devastated.

All told, Gillman and the others defrauded company creditors who were owed at least $10 million and stole more than $200,000 cash from Republic Windows, prosecutors alleged.

Poetic justice.  The system must really work, after all.

Beyond that, he visits a worker owned robotics manufacturer and bread factory.  They are doing well at the moment, with assembly line workers at the bakery, he emphasises, earning three times the pay of an entry level pilot working for a regional airline in the US.  I gather he reckons this is the way forward, or perhaps backward, to the halcyon days of the long boom when factory workers earned enough to imagine they had become middle class.  To all appearances Moore is unaware of the failure of the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation, the kibbutz movement, and other experiments in worker management.  In isolation, such enterprises are doomed to fail.  If they refuse to exploit workers as ruthlessly as their competitors, they are almost certain to be forced out of business.  And if they exploit themselves effectively enough to survive, they aren’t much of an improvement.

On the whole, I thought Capitalism: a love story was not nearly as moving or funny as Sicko.  It fails to address crucial issues and is way off track on others.  But that would all be much much more than forgivable if it manages to connect with ordinary workers and mobilise them to start organising seriously against the capitalist behemoth.  As I always say, you never know what the last straw is going to be.  But it’s been over a month since the US release, attendance is declining steadily, and we haven’t yet witnessed an upsurge in working class mobilisation. 

A feather in our cap

The American Jewish Committee has just released the results of their 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion to the acclaim of David Harris, Executive Director of the AJC, in his Jerusalem Post blog. Slagging off ‘surveys sponsored by right-wing or left-wing groups...

These ideologically-driven organizations always magically find polling outfits, construct questions, and present data that somehow undergird their preconceived views...

Enter AJC's Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. No doctrinal axe to grind, no effort to tilt the questions, no desire to withhold "inconvenient" results.

Last year, the AJC reduced the sample size for their survey from 1000 to 800, implausibly claiming the same 3 percentage point margin of error. At the same time, they also reduced the question set from 38 questions to 15, unconscionably interrupting the time series I had so laboriously constructed for several questions.

This year, they have retained the reduced sample size but reintroduced some of the old questions, along with a few new ones. Lest anyone accuse me of cherry picking, I’d better go through all 21. I might just mention in passing, though, that both Harris’s blog post and the AJC press release claim that ‘there's little difference in attitudes towards Middle East matters among the various generational cohorts’. If they can disaggregate the responses by age, it’s a variable they must have collected, but have declined to report. So while there may be no desire to withhold inconvenient results, they have actually withheld some significant results, which can only make you wonder what else they have kept to themselves.

The poll begins with three new questions,

1. How would you characterize relations between Israel and the United States today? Are they very positive, somewhat positive, somewhat negative, or very negative?

2. Do you approve or disapprove of the Obama Administration’s handling of US-Israel relations?

3. Do you approve or disapprove of the Netanyahu government’s handling of Israel-US relations?

Like so many questions in AJC and other opinion polls, whatever little information you may be able to extract is ambiguous, contingent upon how you believe respondents interpreted it. When the survey went into the field, 30 August to 17 September, it was already clear that Israeli PM Netanyahu had absolutely no intention of humouring Obama’s insistence on a freeze in settlement construction. In that context, some may have felt Israeli defiance was a positive development, some that Obama’s humiliating retreat was positive, some that it was positive that he put on a show of confronting the Israeli government in the first place. Others might have thought the very same things evidenced negative relations, whatever that means. A wide variety of other aspects of the relationship could have struck respondents as positive or negative, depending on factors they were not asked about. For what it’s worth, 81% said relations were positive, 54% approved of Obama, and 59% of Bibi.

A fourth new question was slightly less ambiguous than most AJC questions,

4. Do you agree or disagree with the Obama Administration’s call for a stop to all new Israeli settlement construction?

If we assume that respondents believe that new settlement construction has nothing to do with expansion of the matrix of control over the population of the West Bank and is simply an effort to provide accommodation for younger generations born in the settlements, then it’s possible that the 51% who disagreed just think it would be unfair to force the Jewish settlers to live in more crowded conditions than they’re accustomed to, or to move their young families into ‘Israel proper’. It goes without saying that the AJC neglected to ask how American Jews felt about the restrictions on issue of building permits to accommodate the natural increase among Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, or in ‘Israel proper’, nor about the home demolitions and evictions.

Of course we know that settlement expansion is not just about natural growth. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics’s Statistical abstract of Israel 2009 (Table 2.4), 31% of the population growth in ‘Judea and Samaria’ of 14,000 in 2008, was due to migration – 700 immigrants and 3900 internal migrants. The ICBS itself attributes only 69% to ‘Natural increase’. In 2007, migrants accounted for 37% of the increase. Since the data don’t disaggregate the areas of the Jerusalem District occupied in 1967, I have excluded it.

Yet another new question asks,

5. As compared with one year ago, are you more optimistic about the chance for a lasting peace between Israel and the Arabs, less optimistic, or do you think the chance for a lasting peace is about the same as it was one year ago?

This is even less informative than a typical AJC question without considering it together with a question about how they felt last year. We don’t know what the 2009 sample thought about the long term prospects for peace last year, but we do know how the 2008 sample answered a question the AJC has been asking since 2006,

10. Do you think there will or will not come a time when Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to settle their differences and live in peace?

It’s a different sample of course and it’s kind of bodgy to compare percentages of percentages, but since that’s all the AJC has given us to work with, it turns out that 38% last year said that they thought there will come such a time and 56% that it will not. Among this year’s sample, 43% said there will and 51% there will not. So 13% more of this year’s sample said there will come a time and 9% fewer said there won’t. So you might expect some 22% to say they feel more optimistic and 78% to say they felt the same. In fact, only 12% were more optimistic, 23% less optimistic, and 65% the same as one year ago. They are not the same people, but if the samples were truly as representative as the pollsters claim, it shouldn’t matter. Of course, it’s possible that people discerned that they were more optimistic, while still thinking peace unlikely, and vice versa. Ultimately, the two variables aren’t strictly compatible. It’s not that the answers are inconsistent with each other, it’s that the respondents can make very fine measurements of their level of optimism.

Closely related to these two questions is Question 9, asked every year since 2000, except 2008,

9. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.”

It is, I suppose, mildly encouraging that with 75% agreeing, this has fallen to its lowest level since 2001, seven points below the proportion who agreed in 2007 and below the 78% average over the nine observations. That means that 28% of the sample who believe ‘the Arabs’ aim to destroy Israel also think that they will someday settle their differences with Israel and live in peace. Anyone familiar with Zionist discourse will find contradictions like this unsurprising. Furthermore, as I mentioned in 2007,

What this question does above all else is invite the respondent to buy into racism. By refusing to specify whether ‘the Arabs’ are ‘the moderate Arab states’, the PA, the Palestinians in general, Arabs in general, or whatever, the question’s framers force the respondent to accept the racist presupposition that ‘the Arabs’ are of one mind. They are duplicitous in pretending to demand the return of the territories occupied in 1967, but in reality, they are bent on Israel’s destruction, a second Holocaust. Again, we can’t really tell much about those who disagreed without knowing why they did so. But it’s pretty clear that those who agreed were prepared to accept those assumptions.

Just imagine a poll asking,

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The goal of the Jews is not the establishment of a viable Palestinian state but rather the annexation of all of historic Palestine.”

The AJC would be among the first to excoriate the pollsters for their blatant antisemitism. And rightly so.

The last question concerning the prospects for peace, which has featured in the last three iterations of the survey, is,

11. Do you think that Israel can or cannot achieve peace with a Hamas-led Palestinian government?

The proportion saying Israel cannot achieve peace with Hamas has risen by 11 percentage points from 2008 to 79%, the highest level in the three years the question was asked.

I assume that the reference to a ‘Palestinian government’ is just lazy shorthand for a Hamas majority in the Palestinian National Authority, a strictly administrative body whose mandate under the Oslo accords to police designated areas of the West Bank on the occupier’s behalf was to have expired in 1999. Still, by calling it a government, the question invites the respondent to think of the PA as a separate country that can treat with Israel on the basis of some sort of equality. And it is an important component of Israeli propaganda to represent Israel and the Palestinians, who are always assumed to be just the minority of Palestinians who happen to reside in the West Bank and Gaza, as adversaries. When couched in these terms, liberals can comfortably demand evenhandedness in treatment of the two sides, recognise that each has hurt the other, that each has suffered at the other’s hands, and that each ought to be willing to make painful sacrifices and compromise in the interests of peace. Explicitly recognising that Israel is the coloniser and the occupier would undermine such conceits and raise the spectre of recognising the Palestinians’ right to resist.

By asking whether Israel ‘can achieve peace’, the question further demands that the respondent accept that peace is Israel’s objective, that it is something Israel aspires to and is exerting itself to bring to fruition. There’s no point in reciting the litany of offers of peace, including recent ones from Hamas, that Israel has ignored or rebuffed. I think it will suffice to mention the siege imposed on the suffering people of Gaza and the shower of white phosphorous and whatnot that Israel treated them to earlier this year with the explicit aim of annihilating Hamas and the ‘infrastructure of terror’, like schools, hospitals, prisons, government buildings, warehouses, factories, farms, orchards, mosques, houses, power plants, and so forth, to evidence just how hard Israel is trying to achieve peace with Hamas.

Harris writes that American Jews, ‘understand that if peace with the Palestinians is to be achieved, it will require two states’. Now understand is another one of those ‘factive verbs’, like recognise, that presuppose the truth of the content of the that clause. So if American Jews understand that ‘it will require two states’, then it must really require two states. Apart from deploying a slimy rhetorical trick, therefore, Harris reveals his own preconception and ‘doctrinal axe to grind’.

Four questions bear on the respondents’ view of the two state ‘solution’. The first, an old standby, but a casualty of last year’s cull, returns this year.

6. In the current situation, do you favor or oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state?

This year, 49% favoured a Palestinian state, three percentage points more than in 2007 and below the average of 52% over the eight years they were asked, while 41% opposed it, two points less than 2007 and just over the 40% average.

But as I wrote in 2007, the last time they asked,

What’s interesting about the question, however, is not the numbers, but the wording, ‘In the current situation, do you favor or oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state?’ Without additional information, the answers to such a question don’t tell us very much. Some respondents may favour establishment of a Palestinian state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Others may favour a series of disconnected bantustans whose borders, airspace, port, communications infrastructure, etc. are under Israeli control. Some of those opposed may prefer a single democratic secular state throughout historic Palestine, or the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza to Israel and the expulsion of the remaining non Jewish population. So it is not at all obvious that favouring establishment of a Palestinian state is necessarily a progressive view, or that opposing it is not. In fact, even if it were safe to assume that all respondents understood the question the same way, as something like the Geneva initiative, with a return to more or less the Green Line and a ‘symbolic’ gesture towards justice for the refugees, that is a long way from progressive. As I’ve discussed before, it entails accepting that ethnic cleansing and terrorism are acceptable nation building strategies, that territory can legitimately be acquired by force of arms, that refugees deserve permanent exile and statelessness, that it’s ok to privilege one group over another on the basis of religion or ethnicity, and other positions that are prima facie anti progressive.

To understand what the opinions about the establishment of a Palestinian state mean, I would have liked to see answers to questions about the refugee issue, about Israel’s status as a Jewish state, whether a Jewish state can be democratic, the status of the Israeli Arabs, ‘targetted assassinations’, checkpoints, the boycott of Hamas and the siege of Gaza, the bypass roads, the future of the ‘large settlement blocs’, (In 2005, the last time they asked the question, 36% opposed dismantling any West Bank settlements, the highest ever and up seven points from 29% in 2004.), the construction and route of the wall (In 2006, 73% supported ‘the Israeli government's decision to build the security fence separating Israelis and Palestinians?’, up from 69% the previous year.), among other things. In particular, I’m interested in the proportion of US Jews who subscribe to views that I would define as Zionist, that is, who believe that a state that privileges Jews is acceptable. But I wasn’t really expecting them to ask that. I think it is clear from the phrasing of other questions, the ‘destruction of Israel’ question in particular, that those framing these questions simply assumed that it went without saying that all respondents do hold such views. It would be frightening, but not really surprising, if they are right.

Question 7 has been part of the AJC questionnaire since 2000, apart from last year.

7. In the framework of a permanent peace with the Palestinians, should Israel be willing to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction?

This year, 37% said yes, one point less than in 2007 and below the nine year average of 40%, while 58% said no, above the average of 55%, and 6% weren’t sure.

As I wrote last time,

Like most of the questions in the AJC survey, there are problems with the wording. To begin with, it rests on the assumption that ‘a permanent peace with the Palestinians’ is conceivable without a capital of the Palestinian state, whatever its configuration, in al Quds. And that already betrays further assumptions – that ‘the Palestinians’ means the PA; that anyone purporting to represent ‘the Palestinians’ could negotiate sovereignty over Jerusalem, that ‘peace’ means simply the end of all resistance. Furthermore, the question assumes that it would be a compromise for Israel to relinquish sovereignty, when not even the US recognises Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem. Anyway, the answers to this question do shed a little light on the Palestinian state question.

Specifically, if all of the 41% who oppose establishing a Palestinian state and all of the 1% who weren’t sure and all of the 9% whose response the AJC has not tabulated, presumably refusals, also said Israel should not compromise on Jerusalem, that means that a minimum of 7% of those who favour a Palestinian state want that state to exclude any part of Jerusalem, suggesting that the Palestinian state they envision falls short even of the miserly Arab peace plan or the Geneva initiative.

The next question, which the questionnaire included from 2001 until 2005 and again this year, asks,

8. As part of a permanent settlement with the Palestinians, should Israel be willing to dismantle all, some, or none of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank?

As with the Jerusalem question, this one rests on the assumption that there is some conceivable permanent resolution to ‘the conflict’ that would leave Jewish settlers in occupation of a portion of the sliver of territory east of the Green Line. This is of course consistent with the principal partition proposals, which envisage land swaps to compensate the Palestinian state for the land Israel would annex in the West Bank for the facts on the ground.

A significant proportion – 37% — want to retain all of the settlements. To be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these actually believe that position is consistent with establishing a Palestinian state. It’s virtually inconceivable that any of the 8% of American Jews who told the AJC that they were prepared to countenance dismantling all of the settlements were among the 41% who oppose partition. Another 52% said it would be ok to dismantle some of them. That’s a larger proportion than the 49% who said they favoured establishing a Palestinian state, so even if I’m wrong about the ones who would dismantle all the settlements, there are still some in the sample who think Israel should be willing to dismantle some settlements even though they oppose partition. Which makes you wonder why they want to dismantle settlements. I can only speculate that they may harbour some resentment towards some particular group of settlers, perhaps because they’re too secular, or not secular enough?

One of the ironies of positions that Israel should retain control of all of Jerusalem, or all or some of the settlements, is the assumption that after the UN allocated 55% of historic Palestine to the Jewish state in the 1947 partition resolution and after Zionist forces captured and annexed an additional 23% in 1948, it is Israel that would be compromising if it were to relinquish control of part of what it annexed in 1967. Those who, like Nobel Peace Laureate Barak Obama, say, ‘Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided’, are comfortable with Israel conquering territory by force and annexing it permanently.

The last question about the partition agreement is brand new,

12. Should the Palestinians be required or not be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement?

On the face of it, you’d think this was evidence of Harris’s assertion that the AJC has ‘no desire to withhold "inconvenient" results’, because this requirement, supported by a whopping 94% of the sample, is a true showstopper. And yet, when he writes in his blog

The most decisive response: 94 percent of those surveyed believe that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state in the context of a final peace agreement.

you’d think he didn’t even realise that this requirement was a serious, probably insuperable, obstacle to any kind of agreement with the Palestinians. Not that it’s contentious or anything – it was, after all, one of the principal demands of The Quartet whose Road Map peace plan has enjoyed so much success. Furthermore, as I’ve argued before, partition of Palestine actually presupposes the existence of a Jewish state because ultimately the whole point of creating a separate Palestinian state is to preserve the Jewish character and Jewish majority in Israel.

But to recognise Israel as a Jewish state implies accepting the legitimacy of Israel’s foundation as such, which required the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous inhabitants to establish the required sustainable Jewish majority, effectively relinquishing the refugees’ right to return. It is certainly not out of the question that some unrepresentative quisling Palestinian administration, like the current Abbas regime, might be prepared to humiliate itself even further by selling out the refugees and the Palestinian Israelis to retain control of some rump Palestinian state and the lucrative perks that go with being the big fish in a small pond. But that’s not a position widely favoured among Palestinians.

The 29 September AJC press release announcing the results of the survey quotes Harris,

“AJC surveys have consistently shown that American Jews yearn for Arab-Israeli peace, and back compromise through negotiations, but remain skeptical of Arab intentions, and disheartened by a tough environment in the Middle East, especially with Arab refusal to recognize Israel’s very legitimacy,” Harris said.

In reality, the questions in this year’s survey, as in previous iterations’, provide evidence for only one of these assertions – that American Jews are sceptical of Arab intentions. If you assume with Harris that establishing a Palestinian state has some prospect of delivering peace in historic Palestine, then all we can say with any confidence is that less than half of American Jews favour that, and most of them wouldn’t even go that far if it doesn’t involve the humiliation of the Palestinians by forcing them to accept the legitimacy of their dispossession. And many don’t yearn for peace enough to support withdrawing from the territory conquered in 1967. I think what he means is that they yearn for ‘calm’, the media euphemism for a situation where Israel persists in building settlements, restricting movement, demolishing homes, shooting protesters, committing extrajudicial executions notwithstanding ‘collateral damage’ and Palestinians don’t react. Their yearning for peace extends to Israeli Jews. And if that’s what he thinks, he may be right, but the AJC survey hasn’t asked any questions that would support it.

Only 8% of the sample, the lowest proportion in the six years they’ve asked, were prepared to compromise to the extent of dismantling all of the settlements, which can only mean that they reject withdrawal behind the Green Line. Over the six years they’ve asked, the average proportion was 11%, peaking at 15% in 2005. As in each of eight previous surveys, a majority won’t even consider ‘compromise’ on part of Jerusalem, with an average of 55% rejecting it. And hardly any of them would compromise on recognition. So it’s not at all obvious how he arrives at his conclusion that American Jews ‘back compromise’.

In 2000, 59% said they supported the Israeli government’s handling of ‘negotiations with the Arabs’. Between 2001 and 2004, majorities of between 60% and 63% agreed ‘Regardless of their individual views on the peace negotiations with the Arabs, American Jews should support the policies of the duly elected government of Israel’. Then in 2007, 55% said they thought ‘negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cannot lead to peace in the foreseeable future’. And that’s all we know about American Jews’ views on negotiations from the Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. On this basis, I couldn’t claim that ‘AJC surveys have consistently shown that American Jews back compromise through negotiations’ without significant embarrassment.

On the whole it would appear that David Harris is unconcerned with presenting data that somehow undergirds his preconceived views. His preconceived views are independent of and impervious to his own data.

Moving right along, the survey goes on to ask three questions about the most pressing issue for American Jews, for Israel, and well, for everybody,

13. Do you approve or disapprove of the Obama Administration’s handling of the Iran nuclear issue?

A plurality of 49% approve, 35% disapprove, and 15% aren’t sure. As usual, there’s a hidden agenda. To answer the question requires respondents to accept that there is some Iran nuclear issue. The Iran nuclear issue is not that Iran has built uranium enrichment facilities, including one it has just announced it is constructing near Qom, in strict accordance with their obligations as a party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, that the IAEA and the US ‘intelligence’ community can find no evidence of any intention to develop a nuclear weapons capability despite the most intrusive inspection regime anywhere and despite imminent threats of attack by both the global and the regional superpowers. No. That wouldn’t be it. The Iran nuclear issue is that the fanatical mullahs, determined to exterminate all Jews even at the price of their own obliteration, are on the verge of producing two deliverable nuclear warheads with the inadequately enriched uranium it has stockpiled. It goes without saying there is no India nuclear issue and no Pakistan nuclear issue, at least not yet, much less an Israel nuclear issue or a US, UK, or France nuclear issue.

In their yearning for peace, only 56% support ‘the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons’ (Q14) and just 66% support Israel doing so (Q15).

The next two questions seem designed to undermine confidence that the respondents possess any grasp on reality whatsoever.

16. Do you think that anti-Semitism around the world is currently a very serious problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem at all?

Ninety-nine percent said they thought antisemitism was a problem, 56% a ‘Very Serious problem’. Now there are cases in the US of nazi hooligans attacking Jews, and doubtless of landlords refusing tenants and employers refusing jobs to Jews because they were Jewish. But I doubt if there’s been a case of the police harassing anyone because they were Jewish in living memory. Nor of denying admission to university or any of the other manifestations of racism.

According to the Anti Defamation League’s 2008 annual audit of antisemitic incidents, they had declined for the fourth consecutive year, and the vast majority of incidents involved remarks or graffiti. And the ADL has a very low threshold for perceiving antisemitism. They were impelled, for example, to write to Garry Trudeau on 1 June to complain about his 31 May cartoon, where a child uses the expression 'moneylenders' in a conversation about the Bible with the vicar.

I assume, without much confidence, that Abraham Foxman’s noxious ADL excludes expressions of antizionism and mild criticisms of Israel from their enumeration of ‘incidents’, as Britain’s Community Security Trust claims to in its reports on antisemitic incidents. Of the 1352 incidents their audit enumerates, 37 involved actual assault, that is, if we accept the ADL’s claims that these were unambiguously racially motivated, about 1 assault for every 162,000 Jews in the US.

And as if that weren’t ample evidence of profound and delusory paranoia,

17. Looking ahead over the next several years, do you think that anti-Semitism around the world will increase greatly, increase somewhat, remain the same, decrease somewhat, or decrease greatly?

Only 10% expect antisemitism to decrease, while 45% anticipate an increase, 15% greatly, despite the ADL’s claims that it is declining.

The survey then asked about party affiliation and religious denomination.

18. In politics as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent?

Sixteen percent of the sample claimed to be Republican, 53% Democrat, 30% Independent, and 1% Not sure.

19. Do you think of yourself as . . .

Orthodox               9

Conservative       24

Reconstructionist 2

Reform               27

Just Jewish         36

Not sure                1

Without the original dataset, you can’t crosstabulate these with any other variables, so I don’t find them especially interesting. In any case, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, crosstabulating variables with a sample of 800 results in very high margins of error. Or to put it another way, you have to be less confident that the estimate really represents the population it’s supposed to.

For example, Harris claims,

The gap in perspectives between self-identified Orthodox and Reform Jews is astonishingly wide. For instance, while 59 percent of Reform Jews approve of the Obama administration's handling of U.S.-Israel relations, among Orthodox Jews the figure drops to only 14 percent.

Only 9% of the sample – 72 respondents – said they were Orthodox, and they are supposed to represent the views of all the Orthodox Jews in the US. I suspect that the margin of error – the confidence that 14% of American Orthodox Jews have the same views as those ten respondents – is higher than the estimate itself. If Harris were honest, he would mention something about that. If you think crosstabulations like this are of any interest, the press release reports some.

Not to leave anything out,

20. How important would you say being Jewish is in your own life?

Although I don’t really know what the question might have meant to respondents, 84% said it was important, a slim majority of 51%, very important. Those estimates are lower than the averages over the six years they’ve asked of 88% and 55%, respectively. The 15% who said it wasn’t very important represent the highest level so far.

Finally, what struck Harris as ‘The saddest figure’,

21. How close do you feel to Israel?

As I wrote in 2007,

...without knowing respondents’ motivations – without asking why – we don’t know whether those who feel ‘very distant’ from Israel oppose any discussion of dismantling settlements and favour immediate forcible transfer of all Palestinians from ‘Eretz Yisra’el’, or object to the existence of a Jewish ethnocracy...

Encouragingly, the proportion who felt Very distant remained steady at 8% since last year, although the 22% who felt fairly distant represented a one point decline from 2008, but 30% distant is well above the ten year average of 26%.

It might be kind of interesting to go through Harris’s blog post in detail, refuting every claim, but I’ll confine myself to two more points. The 29 September AJC press release announcing the results of the survey quotes Harris,

While ideologically-driven Jewish groups of the left and right assert that a majority of American Jews share their views on the Middle East, it just isn't true. The AJC survey results reveal very clearly that, in fact, the bulk of American Jews hold largely centrist views, at times tilting to the left, at other times tilting to the right. [my emphasis]

It may provide some insight into what he means by ‘left’ and ‘right’ to consider a couple of paragraphs from his blog post.

The problem for the right: A plurality of American Jews, by a margin of 49 to 41 percent, supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the current situation.

In addition, a majority of American Jews, 54 percent, supports the Obama administration's handling of U.S.-Israel relations. 32 percent do not.

Clearly, there are American Jewish organisations, like the Zionist Organisation of America, so far to the right that Obama’s insincere and ineffectual pleas for negotiations offend them.

If Harris reckons a 49% plurality of American Jews supporting some kind of Palestinian state is a problem for the right, he must consider it some kind of left wing position. Since, as I mentioned before, the main rationale for partition of Palestine is to preserve Israel as a Jewish state, it takes a long stretch to perceive supporting it as left.

In any case, the AJC survey doesn’t really provide scope for respondents to express unambiguously left wing positions. They could, of course, say they felt very distant from Israel, but we can’t be sure of the extent to which that category may be polluted by ZOA supporters and their ilk. Surely the positions majorities adopted on Jerusalem and recognition of Israel and settlement construction and bombing Iran and, perhaps above all, the Arabs’ goal, do not betoken centrism – these are extreme positions. Beyond that, insofar as the sample truly represents the views of American Jews, they are deeply confused if they think, as some do, that a Palestinian state that accommodates Jewish settlements and foregoes all of Jerusalem is a recipe for peace. And whether the paranoia about antisemitism is clinical, or arises from their uncritical consumption of ADL fear mongering, it strongly suggests we accept their opinions cum grano salis.

Harris expresses contempt for the ‘ideologically-driven Jewish groups of the left and right’ and the polls they’ve conducted. I surmise that ‘the ideologically-driven Jewish groups of the left’ must be J Street, whose National Survey of American Jews I analysed in April. And the only group I know of to the right of the AJC, if you can imagine such a thing, and has conducted any recent polling is the ADL.

I have to concur with Harris that those are pretty ordinary, ideologically driven and rather bodgy polls. The ADL survey results only appear to be available in the form of a little slideshow. The J Street poll is full of loaded and complex questions that by and large can only tell you anything about those who give affirmative responses.

But it takes considerable chutzpah to criticise others’ polls for the same things your own is guilty of. Anyway, it transpires that, to the extent that they are comparable, the results are not that different. For example,

• 54% of the AJC sample approved of Obama’s handling of US-Israel relations, as did 72% of the J Street sample; 55% pf the ADL sample approved Obama’s handing of ‘US policy towards Israel and the Palestinian Territories’.
• 62% of the ADL respondents were as optimistic as last year about prospects for peace; like 65% in the AJC poll, well within the margin of error.
• 49% of the AJC sample support establishing a Palestinian state, like 61% of the ADL sample and 76% of J Street’s.
• 74% of the ADL sample approved the ‘military action that Israel took in Gaza’, as did 75% of the J Street sample.
• 66% in the ADL survey and 69% in the J Street poll thought the ‘military action’ was not disproportionate.
• 49% of the AJC sample, 55% of the ADL sample, and 40% of the J Street sample support a US attack on Iran.
• 58% of the ADL sample and 66% of the AJC sample support an Israeli attack on Iran.

The results of at least two of the three surveys are close on several measures, and where they depart, it’s not always in the expected direction. So if the ADL is spinning results to support a right wing agenda, how does it come to pass that the ADL reports a much larger proportion than the AJC supporting the purportedly left wing position on establishing a Palestinian state? Or that the ‘left wing’ J Street admitted that more of their respondents supported Israel’s pogrom in Gaza than even among the ADL’s?

So it would seem that Harris talks out the wrong orifice. He is prepared to make assertions about what his own poll found that are inconsistent with the very results he’s presenting and promoting. He lampoons those he seems to perceive as his competitors for the same gaffes he makes even as he does so. He seems to imagine that he can compensate for his ignorance and hypocrisy with arrogance and bluster.

And guess what! A few weeks back, the American Jewish Committee boasted,

David Harris, AJC’s executive director, has been elected a Senior Associate Member of Oxford University’s St. Antony’s College for the academic year 2009-10. He will also be a Member of the college’s European Studies Centre.

“This is a big feather in our cap,” said Richard Sideman, AJC’s president. “It is yet another sign of the esteem in which our staff is held around the world. For AJC, it means, above all, precious exposure to the world of thinkers and ideas affecting the environment in which we work. This, in turn, will further strengthen the agency’s ability to fulfill its ambitious mission.”

Needless to say, my first thought on reading of this was, ‘What an embarrassment for the fifth greatest university in the world...like Oxford needs its very own Dershowitz’. But it turns out that a Senior Associate Member is not such a big deal.

Senior Associate Members are normally visitors to the College and the University for periods of up to a year who are pursing [sic] a specific research objective of their own. They or their academic work must be known to the Governing Body Fellow who is acting as their Sponsor.

If St Antony’s know about the honour they’ve proffered to the AJC, they’re not doing a song and dance about it, because Harris’s name appears nowhere on their site.