Thinking About Consequences

Yesterday, around 6 am, I was in a car in the Tel Aviv area, when I saw a mass of men sitting by the side of the highway. The following conversation took place in the car:
Father: Look at all those Arabs waiting for work. I can't believe Jews hire them.
Son: Of course Jews hire them. They'll work for cheap, even for below minimum wage, sometimes even for ten shekel an hour. (Note: This is about 3 dollars an hour.)

Israel does not have official discrimination against its Arab citizens.* Israeli Arabs are represented in Israeli universities and the Israeli parliament more proportionally than African Americans and Hispanics are in American colleges, and more proportionally than African Americans are in Congress. Yet there is much unofficial discrimination: The idea of a half-Arab Israeli prime minister is laughable. The construction and paint industries, along with other manual industries, are dominated by Arab workers, to the point where there even was a joke about it in the Oscar-winning short film, "West Bank Story".** Illegal immigration from Thailand, the Philippines and China has forced the Arab workers to become more competitive when pricing their wages - ie, to work for even less money.

For a moment, I had an image of myself unionizing the Arab workers. I had an image of myself saying, "So-and-so will only work for minimum wage." I had an image of myself trying to restore to people the sense of human dignity which backbreaking labor for little pay can often shatter. But then I realized: If I did that, the probability is that the bosses would simply not hire the Arab workers. They hire them because they can get away with illegally paying them less than minimum wage. If they had to pay minimum wage, they'd look for other workers. So the Arabs would lose their jobs and livelihoods, and going from poverty to even worse poverty.

At least, that would be the short-term consequence. But in the long term, maybe we would succeed: Maybe they would permanently unionize and wind up making it standard practice for them to be paid minimum wage, at least. Most liberation movements are bad for people in the short term, during the movement, but worth it afterwards. Think about the civil rights movement and people languishing in prison, or even the Exodus: After Pharaoh made the Jews build their own bricks as punishment for their new notions of freedom, the Jews all rose up against Moses. But he sure did help them in the long term by leading them to eternal freedom.

So how do you measure the consequences of your actions, especially when those actions can immensly impact the lives of others?

* I would like to distinguish between Israeli Arab citizens, who live in Israel proper, and Arabs who live in the territories won in 1967, who do not have Israeli citizenship.
** I highly recommend the film

Some things to keep in mind About Obama's Healthcare Plan

1. People complain about the high cost: Its true, the plan is expensive - but so is the current healthcare system. Right now, sick people go to the emergency room and receive treatments they can't pay for - treatments that wind up costing the hospitals, doctors, federal and local governments and taxpayer millions of dollars. The true cost of Obama's plan is the sticker price minus the current cost of healthcare - and that figure is not so large, especially since, unlike the current healthcare system, it will actually ensure that most people receive adequate coverage, the type that prevents them from having to go to the emergency room in the first place.
2. People complain it will be beaurocratic: It will be, but so is the current system, as anyone who's tried dealing with insurance companies knows. People say if government runs healthcare, you'll have to be on a waiting list for special surgery - but someone with insurance coverage under the current system might still have to wait a long time for special surgery, by the time they've gotten a referal from a general physician, found a specialist who is on their insurance's list of approved doctors, gotten that doctor to write to the insurance company testifying the surgery is necessary.... and at the end of the process they might find out that the surgery isn't covered by their insurance anyway, or that it's only partially covered. And we are talking about private insurance that people pay high premiums for.
3. If the government insurance plan doesn't satisfy people, they have the option of paying for private insurance. The government plan would be aimed at people who have no insurance now, or who can only afford the flimsiest insurance that pays for only basic services - and any insurance is better than no insurance, and if you're going to have a flimsy plan you at least shouldn't have to spend half your salary on it. Government plans benefit from competing with private plans, since when people buy private plans, it allows the government plans to serve less people and thus prevents them from becoming overburdened. People buying private plans still benefit from the government plan option, since it forces the private plans to keep their prices lower in order to compete with the government plan, especially if it wants to get money from the middle class. Right now, it knows it can rob the middle class because they have no other option.

Unilateral Withdrawal

Unilateral Withdrawal may now be the only way to end the Occupation. Waiting for a Palestinian government that is an acceptable "peace partner" in the eyes of Israel means waiting indefinitely, due to the stubbornness of Israel and the fact that until now, the Palestinian governments have been some combination of corrupt, extremist, powerless, and ineffectual, with the proportions of the various qualities varying, but the ingredients of the mixture remaining the same.

As long as there are settlements in the West Bank, these settlements will grow of their own accord. It is simply the nature of communities to grow, especially since many of the settlements have young religious populations, which tend to have many children. Furthermore, there is, in certain parts of the West Bank, a concentrated effort to increase the size of the settlements, in the hopes that doing so will prevent the Israeli government from ceding the land in peace negotiations. Such settlement increase only harms the settlers who move to these new settlement developments and will have to leave their homes, while if the settlements were not there they could remain in pre-67 Israel, and build homes which they will not be kicked out of. Giving up the West Bank is an inevitability; the question is merely whether we will give it up now unilaterally or in 20 years in peace agreements, so why prolong the pain, why let it affect more people than it has to?

There are three major objections to this point: 1. It does not help the Palestinians establish their own state. 2. It leaves Israel vulnerable to Qassam attacks. 3. It will not bring peace.

1. Unilateral withdrawal give the Palestinians the soveregnity necessary to establish their own state. It does not unite them with Gazans, yet to a large extent, the two cultures are separate anyway, and both areas have separate governments. When India was founded, many people were furious that Pakistan was a separate country, and not part of India. Yet today, we take it as a given fact. The same may be said of Gaza and the West Bank in 2o years. Furthermore, once the West Bank sets up its own government, should it choose to establish a diplomatic relationship with Israel, perhaps an agreement can be worked out. The Palestinians are better off under West Bank soveregnity than remaining under Occupation while waiting for some kind of deal to be struck that would unite them with Gaza. In the wake of the Israeli withdrawal, it would be up to the Palestinians to declare independence and set up a government, just as it was up to Israel to do so in 1948, in the wake of the British withdrawal. Nevertheless, in the months leading up to the evacuation, an international diplomatic team can be invited to help the Palestinians come up with a viable system of governance, an an economic team can help them come up with ways to improve the economy. Israel can have a task-force of Israeli and Palestinian academicians from around the globe come up with economic and political plans for the area, and hopefully the Palestinian Authority could start implementing those plans even before the withdrawal. This would not be a peace agreement, merely a plan aimed at improving economic and political life in the territories - something which is essential to peace. Poverty breeds violence. Once the Palestinian state is established, should it choose to engage in a diplomatic relationship with Israel, Israel can help its neighbor by establishing economic ties and lending a friendly hand. Should the Palestinians not establish a state, it is no longer Israel's problem, since Israel is no longer that factor preventing them from doing so. Should they not establish a diplomatic relationship, Israel is not obligated to help them, as she is not obligated to help any country she has no diplomatic ties with. (That being said, hopefully non-profits would go a long way in filling the vacuum.)

2. The war in Gaza has hopefully acted as a deterrent to Qassam attacks. Israel showed it is willing to retaliate in such a way that the entire population is effected. The civilians of the West Bank don't want the IDF to bomb their houses. Furthermore, without the Occupation, a major cause in the hatred of Israel and sending of Qassams will have been taken away. There may always be the extremist who will send a Qassam, just as, even after a successful peace negotiation, there may be the extremist Palestinian who will try sneaking through the border to carry out an attack, or the occasional Baruch Goldstein. If we define peace as the time when not one person on one side will want, or perhaps even attempt, to kill people on the other side, then we will be waiting for eternity. Extremists should not be allow to ruin it for the majority of the people. Hopefully, as the Palestinians spend more and more time living without Occupation, hatred of Israel will die down. This is a process however, that will take at least one generation, whether the West Bank is given away in a peace agreement, or not. So why wait?

3. Unilateral withdrawal will not bring complete, immediate peace. That will take at least one generation. Yet it will severely advance peace.  Many people doubted the peace agreements with Egypt would bring peace, yet they did. Granted, with Egypt there was a government agreement - yet peace ultimately depends not on governments, but on the will of the people.

East Jerusalem need not be withdrawn from just yet, but can be kept with the proviso that five years after the withdrawal it is to be negotiated with the West Bank Palestinian government. This gives the Palestinians ample time to have a somewhat stable government by the time negotiations are held, so any agreement about East Jerusalem can be legitimate. Giving  away East Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, as part of a unilateral evacuation that primarily effects the Jewish religious population could start a civil war or at the very least severely erode the trust of religious Jews in the state, and religious-non-religious relations. (Personally, I have long felt that keeping the Old City of Jerusalem under Israeli juristiction, while giving the rest of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, is a fair compromise, since the Waqf has effective control over the temple mount.) Furthermore, military experts should ensure the withdrawal allows Israel territory that is defensible, adjusting the withdrawal to conform to military needs. The criteria should be "least amount of territory that's reasonably defensible". Palestinians remaining in these areas should be offered the choice of being paid to move, or of receiving Israeli citizenship and remaining. (This is not unreasonable, since Israeli settlers are being forced into compensated evacuation - one of the choices being offered the Palestinians.) Furthermore, the Israeli government must ensure the settlers are provided with new homes and given assistance finding new jobs. After the Gush Katif evacuation, most settlers, even those who had signed up for government compensation, were left in trailers for months. Many former Gaza settlers still do not have real houses or employment. This is unacceptable, and constitutes a human rights violation in its own right. Israel essentially did to settlers what it is accused of doing to the Palestinians in 1948. Many settlers were convinced God would perform a miracle and not let Gaza be evacuated, so they did not sign up for government compensation. Hopefully, the fact of the Gaza pullout will be enough to convince West Bank settlers of the inevitability of leaving, so they will sign up for the government compensation, which will help facilitate the process.

Additionally, with the withdrawal and cessation of checkpoints, more crossing between the West Bank and Israel proper borders must be made, but these must be furiously guarded, like border crossings between countries.

Bayit Echad is an organization that helps compensate settlers for relocation. It is up to those of us who support unilateral withdrawal to literally put our money where our mouths are, and ensure that  means of the cessation of one humanitarian crisis do not cause another. It is better to live in less land in peace than in more land in violence. Yet anyone who has been to the West Bank, anyone who has ever seen a sunset on a yishuv on shabbat afternoon while listening to the laughter of children dressed up for shabbat, can not help but cry.

How to Contain Hamas

Often, the rhetoric of Middle East Peacemaking gets bogged down in idealism. What is needed is not idealism, but pragmatism. Most people want peace. Those who don't, don't deserve to be factored into the equation. On a pragmatic level however, it is the warmakers, and not the peacemakers, who are most important to a long and lasting peace.

Hamas, which does not wants peace and seeks the destruction of Israel, is the one with the guns, bombs and rockets, who not only controls internal Gaza infrastructure, but also is the one with the power to prevent peace. The Israeli army does want peace in the abstract, though the degree of that desire can be debated. If provoked however, it will not hesitate to act, thus continuing the "cycle of violence".

With the USSR, the key strategy was containment. Legal and economic sanctions, good intelligence (which history has later on proved may have not been so good) and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction kept a cold peace between the two super-powers. The USSR however, was essentially a rational government. Hamas does not care about the death, either of its own members or of its civilians. They are all martyrs who must be sacrificed for the goal of destroying Israel.

So what is to be done? First of all, the world must refuse to talk to Hamas and must cut off all of its financial resources. It must predicate acceptance of Hamas not upon acceptance of Israel, but upon willingness to adhere completely (no rockets) to a temporary cease-fire, along with a free press internationally monitered by a committee comprising of a Palestinian, an Israeli, and American, and a an EU representative. The UN has proved itself too corrupt to be trusted. Israel should offer conditional working cards to Gaza residents. The condition? Proving that one is not a Hamas member. Proving this could be difficult, but a signed revocation of Hamas, along with a personal reference, should suffice. Hamas has long gained support by running soup kitchens. Getting food meant loyalty to Hamas. Now it is time to force people to choose between food and Hamas, while also giving Palestinians a chance to work in Israel. Instead of bombarding Gaza from the sky, Israel should simply engage in targetted assasinations of Hamas leaders, both in Gaza and elsewhere. (though not in the West Bank, out of defference to Fatah) These targetted assasinations sometimes result in civilian casualties, but would result in less civilian casualties than the current air-bombings.

Furthermore, Israel must work hand-in-hand with Fatah to make the West Bank a desirable place to live that all Gazans will be jealous of. Providing jobs for Palestinians, and helping to start Palestinian businessess for Fatah supporters within the West Bank through small, low-interest loans, while helping Palestinians with no records of anti-Israel activity and no membership to militant groups to both attend Israeli university and to obtain jobs within Israel is a start. Israeli agricultural experts should work with Fatah experts to help them utilize the West Bank's natural resources. Israeli and Palestinian economists should help Fatah to engage in a healthy economic plan that allows it to provide vital social services. Economic success in the West Bank, besides weakening Hamas, also encourages peace. People with dignity and food in their stomachs are less likely to want to become suicide bombers. The pscyhological effect of poverty can not be under-estimated. Furthermore, if one looks at global conflict, it tends to center around extremely poor areas and can be seen as resource competition (in a land war, please keep in mind that land is a resource that can produce food) or extremely rich areas where greedy governments each want the wealth for themselves.

Mahmoud Abbas should be personally invited to dine with Shimon Peres, not as a politician, but as his personal guest. This is to prove good faith to Palestinians and show Hamas supporters that while Hamas can get nowhere with Israel, Fatah engages Israel to help its own people and commands Israeli respect. Furthermore, all Fatah prisoners without blood on their hands who were not caught in the process of trying to bloody their hands should be released, which snubs Hamas and shows Palestinians with loved ones in jail that it is Fatah, not Hamas, who will get those loved ones home. Checkpoints within the West Bank should be decreased, making life easier for everyday Palestinians. But checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel should be heightened in security, and become almost like border crossings, in order to ensure that no dangerous extremists are making it into Israel. There should be more soldiers per checkpoint, to lessen the burden of each individual soldier. The checkpoint soldiers should be given special sensitivity training, special perks, and monthly therapy sessions in order to deal with the trauma of working at a checkpoint. Right now, checkpoint soldiers are the most neglected. Furthermore, since they come in to face to face contact with Palestinians daily, checkpoint soldiers are in a powerful position to influence the sentiments of individual Palestinians towards Israel and Israelis.

There may be time later to argue about who has justice on their side, whether actions were provocations and responses were disproprotionate, and what exactly the borders of Palestine should be. Right now, the key issue is to contain Hamas and try to obtain peaceful conditions, so that later on permanent-status negotiations occur in a peaceful atmosphere. Because all residents of Israel and Palestine deserve to live in peace. The sooner we can help them acheive that peace, the better. Politics be damned.

Obam v Mccain Ohio Speeches

Ok, so a summary/analysis of the two speeches:

Mccain:

1. Attacks Obama (cites inexperience)

2. Claims Obama wants to redistribute wealth while he wants to spread it. Note: What exactly is the difference between the two, besides semantics?

3. Says the past 8 years have not worked economically speaking and accuses Obama of wanting to raise gov spending, but does not mention that by wanting to continue the war in Iraq, Mccain wants to continue one of the biggest expenses on our government's budget

4. Talks about his war veteran-hood

5. Speaks about cutting business taxes to stimulate economy. By business taxes, he means corporate taxes. Low corporate taxes are part of what led to the Great Depression.

6. Says he won't spend 750 billion to bail out Wallstreet, despite the fact that he was for the 750 billion bailout plan

7. Speaks about oil-drilling in Alaska as a solution to both high oil prices and energy dependence, despite experts' agreeing that drilling would take at least 5-10 years before it would have any effect, and that effect would be minimal

8. Mccain believes in this country while Obama does not. Mccain will fight for it as he has in the past. Mccain also implies voting for Obama would make America less safe.

Obama:

1. Professes faith in American people and gratitude to them for getting him this far

2. Says the crisis is bad and shows that the trickle-down theory of the past 8 years has failed

3. Says Mccain has "served this country honorably" and commends him for standing up to Pres. Bush on torture. Says however, that he has voted for all Bush tax cuts and agreed w Bush on economy and that even now "Senator Mccain has still not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he'd do differently than President Bush when it comes to the economy" This mixing of legitimate criticism with praise shows him to be more of a gentleman than Mccain, who merely attacked Obama vs Obama who attacks a specific position of Mccains, not Mccain himself, and even praised the man

3. Obama speaks about how Mccain has been attacking him and calling him names in order to win but it is time to show that those tactics do not work

4. He says America has had difficult times before and overcome them. Now we're in a difficult time and we must/can overcome it.

5. He says the gov's job is not to solve everyone's problems, but to "do what we can not do for ourselves". He then talks about America as the land of opportunity, and goes into details about his tax plan, citing exact figures. He talks about a 3000 dollar tax credit to companies for each job created on American soil, as well as job opportunities created by improving infrustructure (roads, bridges, etc. A recent NY Times article cited incredible need to improve infrastructure. Also, this tactic was used by FDR to create jobs during the Great Depression.) He then talks about investing in alternative energy sources. Note: This is more effective in the long term than Mccain's oil drilling, because it is more enviromentally friendly, cuts down energy dependence completely (as opposed to Mccain's plan which just minimizes it) and plans for the day when oil will run out/other countries will realize it is running out - and come running to whoever has the technology to replace oil with other energy sources. It thus could one day stimulate the economy, not to mention the jobs - both low-skill (physical labour involved in producing these technologies) and high-skill (thinking of the technologies, etc) it provides until that day comes, while strengthening the US's scientific clout in the world.

4. He then speaks about the need to improve education and healthcare. He says that an era of irresponsibility in which we forgot our responsibilities to each other and common sense of purpose led to this economic crisis, and we must renew our common sense of purpose and responsibility to each other in order to get out of it.

5. He then cites his belief in the American people to bring about change and the need to continue to hope. He ends by saying "God bless America". It is interesting that Mccain did not mention God at all, but pegs himself as the more religious candidate in order to get votes.

I am Pro-Life

I am pro-life. I am against the death penalty and unnecessary wars. I also am against unnecessary abortions. But I am pro-choice, as well. I support a woman's right to choose whether or not an abortion is necessary.

Pro-lifers have successfully framed the abortion debate in their own terms. As they croon about the sanctity of life, and how a fetus is a living thing, they have framed the debate as whether or not one is for abortions. But in reality, the debate is about whether or not a woman has a right to abortion, legally, which is something separate entirely. For example, I support women's legal rights to wear spandex mini-skirts. Yet, personally, not only would I not wear one, but every time I see someone wear one, I feel slightly nauseous.

Furthermore, many people who support a woman's right to abort are not in favor of abortion. They simply acknowledge the reality that abortions will happen whether they are legal or not. The question is whether they will be done safely in a doctor's office, or dangerously in a closet, using a coat hanger.

Pro-choice people must reframe the abortion debate: It is not about whether or not one supports abortions, but about whether, given that they will happen anyway, one wants those abortions to be safe or to endanger the lives of the women to happen.

To those pro-lifers I ask: Are your principles of sanctity of the life of a fetus worthy endangering girls? If so, would you be willing to look into the eyes of a frightened fifteen-year old's family at the funeral and tell them that? If the answer to either of those two questions is no, then maybe it's time to acknowledge that it is possible to be pro-life and opposed to abortion while in favor of a woman's legal right to abort.

Thoughts on Akko

1. While religion (an Arab driving in a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur) was used to ignite the riots, it is really nationalism and inter-ethnic tension that caused it. Religion was a pretense.

2. Both Jews and Arabs have acted wrongly in this matter, since both have been involved in the fighting and destruction of people's property.

3. The reasons the Jews started the riot was because they were angered by the Arab driving in the Jewish neighborhood on shabbat. The thought that religious (or in this case, tradtional) Jews have the right to have no cars drive in their neighborhood in shabbat (or in this case, Yom Kippur) has slipped into the national culture from the charedim, who have their neighborhoods closed off to traffic on shabbat, and sometimes throw stones at cars that drive through those streets not closed to traffic. It has been aided by religious enclaves, such as Bney Brak, where the entire city is officially closed to traffic on shabbat, and even by more modern orthodox/religious nationalist yishuvim, where when one agrees to live in the yishuv, one agrees to not violate shabbat. (or at least, not violate shabbat in public) The police's arrest of the Arab man who drove through the neighborhood only reinforces the notion that the Jews have a right to have no one, not even a non-Jew, drive in their streets on sacred days.

Instead, the government should be reinforcing the idea that non-Jews and non-religious Jews do have the right to drive where they wish on shabbat and holidays, provided the street they drive on is not officially closed off to traffic. Should Jewish religious residents have a problem with this, the proper thing is to ask for the street to be closed off, not to throw stones at drivers. Throwing stones will not be tolerated. The arrest of the Arab driver is particularly discouraging because he did not brake a law by driving there, and he has apologized for doing so, and expressed a desire for coexistence.

4. This problem was caused by Israel's mistreatment both of Sefardi Jews and of Israeli Arabs. Sefardi Jews faced discrimination for a long time, and while this discrimination is diminishing, the fact is that many Sefardi Jews are on the lower end of the socioeonomic spectrum, and this is because climbing out of the hole dug by discrimination takes time, even after the discrimination has ended. (In this sense, they are somewhat similar to African-Americans, who faced discrimination until recently. Now, even though that discrimination has, for the most part, ended, and the number of African Americans in the middle and upper classes has been steadily  increasing for the past ten years, many African Americans still find themselves born into poorer homes or crime-ridden neighborhoods with bad schools as part of the lingering after-effects of 200 years of discrimination. For Sefardim, the era of discrimination is much shorter, but the concept is the same.)

Israeli Arabs, while equal under the law, still face much unofficial discrimination. No real effort has been made to absorb them into the Israeli economic system, and most are lower class. When two different lower class ethnic groups are put into a small area and forced to live together, it takes nothing but a small spark to ignite tensions between them. This can be seen from race riots in the US, which were usually between working class whites and working class blacks. Underlying the riots is the issue of economic competition when two groups of people are each lacking material wealth, with each group being jealous (at least subconciously) of the others' possessions.

Using racial and ethnic tensions is an excellent way for the capitalist enterprise to deflect proletariat hatred of the bourgeois onto fellow proletariats, who are defined as "the other", the enemy, based on ethnicity. This ethnic division distracts the proletariat from what they have in common: their working class lifestyle, and that they are both being unfairly used by the capitalist system. By disuniting the proletariat, the system ensures there is no proletariat revolution. This is not a conscious decision on behalf of the bourgeois elite, but a natural consequence of the capitalist system. In an era of material wealth, in which the proletariat is disconnected from his material possessions, never feeling the full right to them because he has been so divorced from their material production, (for producing something earns the right to said thing; man is meant to eat the fruits of his labor, and eating the fruits of someone else's labour, without offering something of one's own labor in return, goes against the natural order of things. Money is not a tangible fruit of ones own labour, but a poor substitute, a piece of paper certifying that one has worked - in the case of the bourgeios, this work is not physical and tangible, but intellectual and not physically substantive. Thus the feeling of ownership of ones labour, as well as the feeling of earning something for that labour, is obscured: the labour is not real, and the payoff is a piece of paper whose production one has no part in.) one focuses on other things to make life seem meaningful. These things can be as trivial as an aesthetic sensibility and philosophy of fashion, in which couture is transformed into high art. They can also be as spiritual as religion. This bourgeois value mutates as it trickles down to the proletariat, but it is nonetheless absorbed by them in some form. In the United States, where the upper class idolizes fashion, lower-class people have begun buying cheap "designer" clothing, like Isaac Mizrahi for Target, and name their children names such as "Gucci".

In this case, the unique political situation gave rise to a focus on ethnicity. This focus was exacerbated by an extremist religious nationalist yeshiva that opened recently. It distributed leaflets saying that Arabs are sons of dogs, and tried to boycott Arab businesses. That such a stream of thought is found among the religious nationalist camp is disturbing. In this case, given the close proximity of Jews and Arabs, it provided the match that would be lit by a car driving in a Jewish neighborhood on the Day of Atonement - an ironic day for a riot to start. A day that perhaps showed how much there is to atone for.

Sending police in might quell the riots, but in order to ensure similar riots don't happen in the future, whether in Akko or in other cities, is to absorb Sefardim, Arabs and other minorities into the economic framework, to help them to move up on the socioeconomic scale and to encourage them to go to university. Such a challenge is daunting, especially given the current economic climate - but in order to ensure peaceful coexistence, one must first ensurethe  sustainable, respectable existence of each group.