Enabling Antisemitism

David Adler's guest post at Z-Word blog is definitely worth reading: John Pilger and the Enabling of Antisemitism.

Paterson to Drop Out of Governor Race

Paterson to Drop Out of Governor Race

I wonder if he'll eventually have to resign.

By Friday, some newspaper editorial writers were demanding something more than an end to his campaign: they were calling for his resignation. That only added to the increasing sense that it would be nearly impossible for him to run the state and the campaign with the abuse case in the background...

And many had said publicly this week that Mr. Paterson’s chances had been damaged, perhaps irreparably, by the disclosures that the governor himself had stepped in on behalf of David W. Johnson, 37, a close confidant who rose from being a young intern to being Mr. Paterson’s driver and scheduler and, later, to a wider role in Mr. Paterson’s operation.

Last fall Mr. Johnson’s longtime companion accused him of brutally assaulting her , telling the police that he had choked her and thrown her against a dresser. She also said that Mr. Johnson had kept her from calling for help.

Twice, the woman was granted a temporary order of protection against Mr. Johnson. But she complained in court that the State Police had pressed her to drop the allegations.

Then, on Feb. 7, the day before a court hearing about a final protective order, Mr. Paterson spoke to her on the phone. She did not show up for the hearing the next day, and the judge dismissed her the case.

Domestic-violence experts and advocates said it was inappropriate for the governor, the most powerful state official — and a close friend of Mr. Johnson’s — to have any contact with the woman. At the same time, questions were emerging about the role of State Police officials, who had initially described their contact with the woman as an effort to offer her counseling and let her know of “her options.”

But on Thursday, two people who had been briefed on the matter said that the head of the governor’s security detail, Maj. Charles Day, had contacted her himself. Former and current state officials said that was a highly unusual move, given that the State Police had no jurisdiction in the case.

The administration’s handling of the case will now be investigated by the state’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, who wants the governor’s job. Some government-watchdog groups said that given Mr. Cuomo’s hopes for the future, an independent prosecutor should be appointed.

The political fallout appeared to be devastating. Even before his speech at Hofstra last week Mr. Paterson had resisted pressure from within Democratic circles to stand down in favor of Mr. Cuomo, whom many Democrats believe would have a better chance of winning in November.

Through the day on Thursday, allies had urged Mr. Paterson to call off his bid for election. They said his political standing had been damaged beyond repair. Among those who said Mr. Paterson should stand down were senior Democratic members of New York’s Congressional delegation, top Democratic lawmakers in Albany and a number of black Democratic officials, including some from Harlem, Mr. Paterson’s home base.

Good News! I just got tenure!

Updated Post

 I got some really good news last week - I was just granted tenure and promotion to associate professor at Ithaca College.

Last Thursday the Board of Trustees met and voted on the candidates for tenure, and on Thursday afternoon the dean called and let me know the good news. I just got the president's letter in the mail today.

It's been a long slog - I finished my Ph.D. in June 1995 and then went on to a series of short term appointments. My first job was actually in Ithaca, at Cornell, as a sabbatical replacement in the Near Eastern Studies department. I then went to Columbia for two years, having received a fellowship at the Heyman Center for the Humanites. That was a great experience; I really liked living in New York. The next year I went to Jerusalem for the year on a Lady Davis Fellowship, which was also great. Then, back to the U.S., and a year teaching at Vassar and then another year at Bucknell University in central Pennsylvania. I liked Bucknell but Lewisburg, PA is a really small town. Then the job at Ithaca College was advertised and I was hired on a three-year contract.

I started teaching at Ithaca College in the fall of 2001 (two weeks later were the 9/11 attacks, so it was a rough start). During my third year, a tenure-track position in Jewish studies was opened up. I applied for it and got it, and I'm in the sixth year of that contract. I'm very happy that I've finally gotten tenure.

Governor Paterson in Trouble Again

Here we go again: Questions of Influence in Abuse Case of Paterson Aide

I wonder if Paterson will also ultimately have to resign. At the very least, he should end his chimerical campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York.

Maybe this is what Paterson was really afraid was going to come out a couple of weeks ago when there were all those rumors about possible affairs.

Why do Americans support Israel?

Matthew Yglesias points to an interesting new series of polls done by Gallup on Israel/Palestine and American attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He names his post, "American Public Prepared to Support Israel in Endless War With Arabs."

When I look at the charts that Yglesias provides for this post, I don't come to the same cynical conclusions he does.

Gallup reports: Support for Israel at 63%, near record high.

In the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict, a striking 63% of Americans currently say their sympathies lie more with the Israelis, the highest level in nearly 20 years. Support for the Palestinians, at 15%, is about average for the same period. At the same time, Gallup finds Americans' fundamental views of Israel no more favorable than they have been for the past several years. Israel does continue to enjoy a substantial advantage over the Palestinian Authority in its general image, a fact that clearly colors the ways Americans view the conflict.

Americans are no more optimistic today than they were last year that peace can be reached between Israel and the Palestinians -- and they are, in fact, less optimistic than they were toward the end of the Bush administration. This is largely owing to a drop in optimism among independents.

And here's the charts:





It's clear that Republicans are consistently more favorable toward Israel than Democrats, although in 2001 there wasn't much of a gap between them. Views among Democrats have fluctuated a bit between 2001 and 2010, but with no really big differences. Independents have risen significantly since 2001. Why do these differences exist?



This poll is interesting - during the years of maximum effort by the Clinton administration, the optimism about peace was fairly high, but I can't remember anything in particular happening in 2003 or 2005 that would have led to such optimism. Am I forgetting some significant events? The Iraq War started in 2003 - not something that would have led me to optimism about peace. In the summer of 2005 Israel left Gaza - perhaps that was the factor.



It would be interesting to compare these charts with polls of Israelis and Palestinians taken during the 2000s - would the optimism level chart the same way?

Yglesias' analysis:

Both support for Israel and pessimism about the possibility of peace are correlated with Republican partisan self-identification. To conjecture a bit beyond what the data can strictly tell us, I think it’s plausible to posit that there’s a large Republican-identified Christian Zionist bloc that’s extremely comfortable with the idea of aligning itself with Israel for the purposes of an endless religious war and of course they have their counterparts in the “revisionist” strand of Zionism in Israel and among American Jews. To my way of thinking—and I think that of most Jewish liberals—this is a chilling vision and we choose to believe that the conflict both can and will be resolved at some point. But many Americans have a level of cultural and ideological affiliation with violence and coercive domination that makes it easy for them to identify with this version of future Israeli history.

He's probably right that much of the Republican/Democratic difference here is based on different religious attitudes in the large conservative Christian portion of the Republican support. But why would he think it's for the purpose of "endless religious war"? What evidence is there in these charts? I don't see it. The charts just report on the party differences, they don't tell us the reasons for them. I also think it's deeply cynical to say that the reasons "many Americans" support Israel because of American's "level of cultural and ideological affiliation with violence and coercive domination." This is not an analysis, it's an expression of his ideological beliefs. I'd like to see some survey evidence to back up his claims.

I would like to know why conservative Christians actually support Israel. Not why people like John Hagee support Israel, but the spectrum of conservative evangelicals and Catholics, broken down by type of religious movement (Pentecostal, African-American church, non-Pentecostal evangelicals, etc). Based simply on some meager anecdotal evidence, my experience with conservative Christians is that they support Israel because they view Judaism and the Jewish people as forming the roots of Christianity, and they believe that the covenant between the Jewish people and God has not been abrogated by the rise of Christianity. But again, this is not evidence. If any of my readers have an idea of where to search for this information, I'd be happy to know.

Huh? Since when is attempting to blow up a federal building NOT an act of domestic terrorism?

David Neiwert, as usual, is on the case: Huh? Since when is attempting to blow up a federal building NOT an act of domestic terrorism?