Gazans throwing a Tantrum

I have tried, since moving to Israel in 2001-2, to really listen to what Palestinians want, rather than presuming that I ‘know’ from what the standard media says (left or right, Israeli or western.)  Why did they wage and support the intifada and suicide bombings, rather than continuing with the Camp David process?  Did they really want a state peacefully side-by-side with Isarel, in 97% or 100% of the WB and Gaza?  After a lot of listening then, it seemed that far more important to them–what they really wanted– was recognition of the Right of Return as legitimate, and total control over Jerusalem, and/or a binational state dominated by Palestinians; and because that wasn’t being heard, they reacted in rage.

What I hear coming out of Gaza now is even more simple and extreme.  Israel did withdraw, but far more than the West Bank, Gazans cannot live a full economy or full life without access to the outside world.  This was articulated– by Hamas– as continuing struggle or ‘resistance’ to get right of return and an end to Israel as a Jewish state, and they won elections on this basis.  They expressed this not only in words but in raids and rockets.  This also was in effect stated, by Gazan Palestinians, by their overwhelming the border with Egypt and hundreds of thousands of them flooding Egyptian Rafiach to shop and visit and, well, breathe.  I do hear them; they cannot live like this.

Hamas refused to recognize Israel, even though the Quartet and Egypt and Jordan pushed them to; Hamas also kept shooting rockets into Israel, and/or refused to stop smaller groups from continuing to shoot rockets into Israel.  The consequence of that– the inevitable consequence of that– is Israel kept Gaza in a partial state of siege.  Hamas and Palestinians have refused to take responsibility for those choices and their consequences.

Hamas also is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and is bitterly critical of the (semi-secular) Egyptian leadership, which fears and periodically persecutes the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  The (inevitable) consequence of this is that Egypt keeps ITS border with Gaza closed most of the time, (legitimately) fearing Hamas will destabilize Egypt.  Hamas is openly Israel’s enemy, fine, but they could have built open trade with Egypt, as Israel does not control that border; compare to Lebanon, which fully trades with other Arab states and the world, in spite of being totally cut off from Israel.  But Egypt does not want Gazans to have freedom of movement into Egypt, and this is compounded by the enmity of Mubarak’s regime to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Again, the Palestinians refuse to accept responsibility for their role in choosing to create this dynamic.

Lastly, the Palestinians–most of all in Gaza– are utterly dependent on aid from the outside world for basic subsistence for at least half the people.  The UN umbilical cord still has not been cut.  This creates an incredibly unhealthy dependence– far worse than ‘welfare mothers’, and debilitating to self-esteem, and creating frustration and resentment on the part of Palestinians.

The Palestinian movement towards statehood is, literally, still in its infancy.  The choices they have made and are making today in Gaza are indicative of a collective emotional state comparable to a toddler’s tantrum.  An inarticulate screaming and smashing things, even self-destructive, with no hope of actually defeating the far more powerful ‘parent’.  And they are refusing to take any responsiblity for the role their own choices have played in creating their plight.

Unquestionably, the unwilling ‘parents’– Israel, Egypt, the UN whose umbilical cord still has not been cut, Europe whose aid has been siphoned off to Arafat’s Swiss bank accounts, and the US who still supplies more of the money than anyone else– have all played roles, as well, in inhibiting and limiting what Palestinians can do to build a positive, self-sufficient future.  [Keep in mind, all the US direct aid and loan guarantees to Israel don't amount to more than 1-3% of Israel's nearly 900 billion dollar GNP; foreign aid represents close to half of Palestinian economic activity.]

But until the Palestinians truly stand up for themselves and OWN their choices, and take responsibility for the consequences of their choices and actions, no amount of outside help or intervention will help them.  I hear their pain; but until they stop throwing a tantrum, nobody can do anything for them.

Gaza and Unfolding tragedy

Visiting Ashkelon today, within reach of Hamas’ rockets, we could see– from the Ashkelon marina–the buildings of Gaza city, and hear the explosions of the Israeli air force’s attacks.  Ashkelon is a ghost town, schools and most businesses were shut and most people who could leave have (we went to give food to many new immigrants staying, and to give a ride out to a few.)  It’s mostly Russian and Ethiopian, and fairly poor, although fairly nice with great beaches (and some atrociously ugly Bauhaus concrete architecture).

I feel– and agree with many of my militarily connected friends– that without a ground operation, this war will not accomplish anything.  No air campaign has ever succeeded in disarming or forcing an enemy to do anything.  The rockets will continue until a far more effective infantry invasion of Gaza sufficiently disrupts and disarms Hamas.  It IS doable– Gaza’s not terribly defensible, and Hamas is nowhere near as well trained or armed or disciplined as Hezbollah.  Also Israel has far better intelligence and surveillance (witness the extremely high percentage of actual Hamas fighters killed in the bombings so far– close to 90%.)

But it IS urban warfare if we go in, and there will be booby traps and the like.  And the bigger question is– then what? Whether the IDF simply damages Hamas enough to force a cease fire on our terms, or totally re-occupies, there needs to be a solid exit strategy.  Many diplomats– and Egypt, oddly– are pushing for the (allegedly moderate, but at least secular and pragmatic) Palestinian Authority and Fatah to reassert their rule there.  The PA’s weakness and lack of credibility among Gazans makes this unlikely to work, as well as the fact that circumstances would make them seem like Israeli stooges.  Indeed, even if linked with a highway or corridor with the West Bank, Gaza would always remain a crowded and impoverished corner of a semistate even in the most generous conceivable future ‘Palestine’ Israel could ever offer.

Once a heresy among Israelis, another option is starting to come up: restore Gaza to Egyptian rule.  I think this holds the most hope of a solid future– the Palestinians already have 100% of Gaza and would rather shoot rockets and kill and die than build civil society. Merging with Egypt would connect them to a more-than-viable state and citizenship and economy.   Egypt has the state structure to effectively rule (and crush jihadist Islamism), and has a history of ruling Gaza.  Rather than maintaining Gazans on the world’s dole, welfare children who can’t and won’t help themselves, UN and Arab-oil generosity could help Gazans integrate into the Egyptian economy, which as a key point of world trade (Suez, the Nile) and as the biggest Arab economy, has genuine possibility of growth.

I’d even condone Egypt invading to ‘liberate’ Gaza from Israeli occupation, if it could be coordinated.  It could still be done it a way which might salve Arab pride.

All the other options will certainly result in continuing strife, continuing dead ends for Gazans, and more dead Israelis.  This at least holds out hope of a better future.

Faith Based Economics: video

A video of my recent shiur, summarized in the last post.

this should link, or copy & paste in your browser

Faith-Based Economics

(from “Faith-Based Economics: the Roots of the Financial Crisis”, a seminar I gave last monday at the PresenTense institute, video will be up soon: http://www.presentense.org)

The core of my thesis– from my ‘insider’ experiences at a fairly high level on Wall St.– is that ALL of the essential elements of the economy only have value because people believe that they do.  Money, stocks, bonds, real estate, ‘derivatives’, even gold and silver.  And they’re so inter-twined and tangled that even ‘commodities’– allegedly real things like grain, metal, or oil– have their values determined by the rest of the flawed system. The whole system is just games- gambling– played with belief, credit, faith, and all the money in the world.

This shouldn’t really be news, but people somehow don’t realize that this is the case or what it can mean.  Economists and actual bankers, brokers, and analysts generally treat that dynamic as a black box: however it is that people, by believing, assign value to each of these things.  They simply assume that people DO somehow value things, and make calculations based on that.

My point is thus that people value things only because they themselves have values– which are somehow expressed by putting faith into these things.  As a religious jew– religion in general, i think– has at least some degree of insight into what belief actually is, and what the practical consequences are of believing things matter, and how belief works and makes things real.

(“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Philip K. Dick)

The crisis has ripped away part of the veil– people are losing faith in the things (stocks, money, etc.) that somehow were holding the values they thought they had.  This CAN go all the way– our currencies and stocks really can go all the way to worthlessness, in the next months or years.  And of course the values of western, material society are hollow.

So: I assert, from a place of moral belief that this is not ‘illusion’, there is a real divinity in the world—there ARE real values on which we can base how we interact as individuals, and on larger scales.  Calling them ‘torah’ or ‘religious’ values doesn’t cut it, though, because they need to be translated into practical terms.  People need to understand how building real relationship between each other and with the earth and sustenance, can be expressed and VALUED in functional ways.  There needs to be, in effect, an actual, responsible way to express this as a system.  An alternative for when Babylon falls. The eastern Indians had wampum, western Indians had potlatch.  What will have or will we build?

The essence of money– the way it’s been in the world for the last five hundred or five thousand years– was as symbols of ’surplus value’– “extra” wealth above normal ‘fair’ exchange.  As such it always came, initially, from slavery, pillage, theft, or piracy.  There’s blood on all our hands.

Can we finally break the lie that money (or technology) is value-neutral?  It’s NOT just who uses it or has it, it’s not just what you want to do with it.  It, itself, its essence, comes from ‘impure’ things, and cannot be purified.

Can we create a new ‘currency’ that will, in fact, be moral?  Can we find a way of measuring and exchanging value in the world in a way which upholds real values?

Babylon the throne gone down, gone down…

Olmert performed a miracle!

Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister, achieved something that no other Jew or Israeli leader has done since the foundation of the state.  He unified all the Jews of Israel.  His approval rating, for a period of many months in 2006-2007, was actually zero; in polls with a margin of error of three percent, that meant that somewhere between 3% and -3% of Israeli Jews approved of the job he was doing.  As his time in office winds down, slowly and painfully, we ALL look forward to the day he resigns. 

Allegedly it will happen in about two weeks, on Sept 17 with the Kadima primary.  However, it would (sadly) surprise no one if he hangs on to office longer; there have been, since 2006, literally hundreds of perfectly good occasions for this failed leader to step down.  His failure in the Lebanon war; the veterans’ protests against the war; the Winograd commission; the many scandals.   His chutzpah in stubbornly staying in office is spectacular and unprecedented, and considering what Israel has been like since 1948 (a country practically defined by chutzpah), that’s really saying something!

Iraq: why should the US be there– or leave?

For a moment let’s leave aside our already-made-up minds about Iraq. 

Here’s the barest facts: the US has an occupying army there; 60% of the world’s oil is either in or within spitting distance of Iraq; radical Islam-both Sunni and Shia versions- is centered in or near Iraq and has openly stated designs on destroying and/or converting the West; and there is a many-sided civil war in Iraq, which is not over yet.

One can argue that the US invasion was massively destabilizing to the region and encouraged Islamic extremism; one can argue that invading caused the US to lose international support and legitimacy for all its actions, anywhere else in the world; one can argue that the invasion and occupation were badly executed, unnecessarily leading to an unstable Iraq; one can argue that democracy cannot work in the current middle east’s cultures until the basics of civil society evolve and become strong. 

Yet these and many other similar arguments– even if all valid, as many of them may be– do not necessarily dictate that the US should leave Iraq.  A premature or badly handled withdrawal might lead to any number of consequences far worse than the current state of affairs; and those consequences might still affect us all even if no US troops are within 7000 miles. 

The different Shiite and Sunni factions of Iraqis, and external forces including al-Qaeda, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia all might be involved in continued fighting in Iraq.  Like with Lebanon, once the genie of civil war is out of the bottle, all groups may switch sides and alliances, any number of foreign countries may be affected or may intervene, and there’s no telling who will wind up winning, if anyone. 

Even a perfectly handled withdrawal and a stable, democratic Iraq might turn out to be worse than what we have now.  The world’s increasing dependence on oil means that an Iraq incapable of exporting oil due to an escalated civil war would cause a crisis.  But a confident and stable oil-exporting Iraq, working together with other OPEC countries, could hold the world hostage, as in the ’70s.  Democratic elections seem likeliest to produce an Iraq aligned with Iran.

Iraq could fracture into three or more mini-states– Kurdish in the north, Sunni in the middle, Shia in the south.  Whether it’s a separate state or not, Kurds could destabilize Turkey– already Turkish Kurd separatist groups seek shelter there, and an Iraq without a US army could result in a situation much like Albania-Kosovo (against Serbia) or Hezbollah against Israel.  Similar forces could destabilize Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and even Jordan. 

The US population increasingly doesn’t want to be in Iraq.  The next president may feel the same– and may even be elected with a promise of leaving.  But the larger realities may dictate a different course of action.    The point is that there are, literally and figuratively, many sides to Iraq.  What is likely to happen with any of the possible courses of action?  What is the likely outcome for Iraqis, their neighbors, and the US?  And what is BEST for all concerned?

 

Is Development natural- in Jerusalem?

Everywhere in nature there is competition.  From different types of algae spreading across a pond, to beehives or tigers competing for territory with other beehives or tigers, striving for space is one of the most essential imperatives for life on earth.

We as humans are not so different, much as we like to think of ourselves as beyond or above nature.  We need space too, to live and to grow, to plant our fields and orchards and to graze our sheep and goats, to build our schools and solar panels and even roads.

Few things in the world draw as much controversy as building in or near the holy city of Jerusalem.  Where a new housing development or road in most places in the world is merely treated as a zoning issue, in Jerusalem every issue is somehow treated– by residents, and by the world– as somehow utterly essential, threatening the balance of the universe, a matter of life and death.  Whether it is the Safdie plan’s proposal to build new housing and roads into Jerusalem’s western forests, or the Area E or Har Homa developments putting up new housing in eastern Jerusalem’s remaining spaces, nothing can be done without courting controversy that splashes on the world’s front pages.

What are the implications of developing Jerusalem?  What issues are raised by building a house or road here and not elsewhere?  Can Jewish and Arab building in and around Jerusalem be handled sustainably and fairly?  Should competition play a role?  Is such a process natural?

Between evolution and intolerance

Only between 30 and 40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, depending on how the question is asked (according to a recent op-ed by Nicholas Kristof)– about the same percentage that believe in flying saucers, incidentally.

At first I was appalled by this statistic.  But on reflection, I realized that despite being highly educated and empirical– or perhaps because of it– I might be in that 60%-70% of non-believers.  Do I believe the universe is 15 billion years old? That the earth has had 4 billion birthdays? That unicellular life preceded trilobites preceded dinosaurs preceded birds, bees, and humans?  I can answer that with an unqualified yes, as I suspect much of that 70% does also. 

Do I believe the earth is only 6000 years old? That creation happened in literal days? That God directly created every species, fully formed, or even that He intervened with some sort of ‘Intelligent Design’?  I answer an unqualified No, despite myself being an observant– ‘religious’–Jew, and I see no contradiction with religious Jewish interpretations going back thousands of years.

But the question ‘do you believe in evolution’? is really a code.  Do any of us ’believe’ in Newtonian physics, or Ohm’s law, or chaos theory?  We might, or might not, but such a ‘belief’ says little about where we sit culturally or ontologically.  Science is interesting and has practical applications, but is constantly open to being superseded by better explanations of the facts.

But when we are asked whether we ‘believe’ in ‘evolution’, what is implicitly being asked is, do we believe that the entire history of life on earth happened randomly?  What is really being asked is, DON’T you believe that all life on earth is random bumpings of atoms and molecules?  DON’T you believe that NO divine presence EVER affected the course of the universe in a meaningful way?

The one species that we know the most about– all of us, even the non-scientists– is humans.  And humans conspicuously violate many of the alleged laws of evolution.  Handicapped people survive and live and reproduce; less successful, ‘poor’ people, live and somehow have MORE kids; in fact, seemingly stupid people have more reproductive success than intelligent people!  (The single biggest predictor of decreased birth rate is a college education.)

Decisions we make about reproduction– really, how we choose a mate, how and when we have children, and how our children survive and thrive and themselves reproduce– well, that’s a process that a great many of us non-scientists are indeed familiar with.  And in my (limited, empirical) experience, almost all of us find that the events and ‘coincidences’ that lead to falling in love, to marriages, to children,  are precisely the most significant events in our lives.   

But no, not just significant.  Not just meaningful. Magical.  Something or things happen that lead to these most essential moments of our lives, our decisions, even our mistakes, that are connected to far deeper things than words can express.  But a loose catchall word that most people use for this beyond-ness, this sense of purpose that threads itself through our lives, is God.

The overwhelming majority of humanity believes in God, even in allegedly secular or unaffiliated countries.  We are not necessarily stupid; we are, in fact, often quite intelligent.  We are not against science; many of us are scientists, doctors, engineers, wholly devoted to science. 

But most science does not require a declaration of atheism in order to ‘believe’ in it.  Let’s say, medicine: one can study in great detail the workings of the human brain (as I in fact have) and at the same time as we can grasp and understand the process at so many molecular and macro levels– ATP reactions, ion flows, firing neurons, neurotransmitters, serotonin or dopamine reuptake, even the great storms of activity associated with genius or music or seizures– and simultaneously marvel at the divine presence made manifest in the sheer existence of such complex magnificence.  The processes of the brain are themselves proof of God, for me and many others.

I do believe that a set of processes– no less explainable by science than serotonin uptake– can be understood and scientifically elucidated which DESCRIBES the origins and changes of all life on earth.  But even while neuroscience might seek to explain such products of the brain as consciousness, poetry, and love, no responsible scientist would ever REDUCE such meaning to the random firings of neurons.

Evolution is a dangerously broad term, which includes a huge variety of scientific exploration of life on earth, paleontology and fossils and DNA.  But to say that ‘natural selection’, allegedly ’random’, acting on what started out as lightning hitting inorganic molecules several billion years ago, is the ONLY motive force leading to all of life in creation, is not a SCIENTIFIC statement.  It’s a creed.  It’s scripture.

In our own reproductive decisions as humans, in our lives as humans, most of us think that we are not mere mindless copulators: that this is not just random.  We BELIEVE that there is reason and sense in the world.  That belief is precisely what leads to science– because we believe that there is reason, there is logic, and there is purpose.

When we are asked whether we believe in evolution, we are facing a modern secular inquisition.  DO you believe that ANYTHING more than randomness led to all of life in creation?  If so, you might be a heretic.  I applaud the 70% because we are right to stand up to the inquisition. 

“Evolution” is a term that might be better off being retired, much like the “Ether” which was the alleged substrate of the universe for 19th century phsyicists.  Physics itself survived, and became far better once it discarded and transcended poorly conceived catchall concepts like the ‘ether’ and addressed the full complexity and contradiction and paradox that is the essence of our physical universe. 

Life sciences– biology, molecular biology, genetics, paleontology, medicine, etc.– are abundantly healthy as disciplines in general.  Most evolutionary biologists themselves have a far more nuanced view of the processes (plural) that give rise to every reproduction of every child, larva, spore, or whatever other new creature born every day and every minute. 

But the cultural pundits who still have the chip on their shoulder inherited from Voltaire, Diderot, and the French Revolution, need to get over themselves.  The church was defeated; no one power or creed (or Ayatollah) can force all of us to believe anything, any more.  But God was not defeated; pluralism, not atheism, won.  

Belief in God is not incongruent with science, nor with empirical research into what I will simply call the history of life on earth.  But sacred cows are not the exclusive province of the religious.  Demanding that people ‘believe’ in ‘evolution’ is self-defeating.  The secular inquisition should let this sacred cow be sacrificed.  And I’m not the only one ready with a knife. 

A new, old idea…

The Jewish Talmud was really the original blog: a multi-sided, ongoing discussion of Everything. Comments weren’t just encouraged: they were the main point.  Argument wasn’t just encouraged: it was expected.  It was the world’s first truly interactive media.

Oral discussions of life, the universe, and everything, between the greatest thinkers of the Jewish world, was an ongoing process as long as there were Jews.  This wisdom was initally held orally, by memory, as a complement to the other great innovation of the Hebrew civilization, the bible.  In the wake of the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple and Jewish life in Israel, these oral discussions were gradually written down to preserve them, and then over the next several hundred years they were debated, commented on, they inspired stories and tangents and new ideas, and eventually collected and reproduced.  These discussions, eventually bound together as the Talmud, comprised the greatest compendium of wisdom the world has ever seen.

We at the New Jerusalem Talmud aspire to bring this process, this approach to knowledge, to wisdom, and to life, into discussions of today.  We firmly believe that in the meetings of great minds, in a discussion where disagreement leads to the discovery of deeper truths, is a path towards the real potential of human interaction.

Modern media often falls far short at portraying an issue fairly, whether in journalism, blogs, wikis, or googling.  Particularly with issues of the environment, where so many interacting forces and problems, so many levels of understanding, affect even defining much less solving the issue, there is a need for a new media, a new way of seeing.  This is an old way– and yet, perhaps, just the right kind of new way.

We aspire towards a form of blogging where all sides of an issue are presented on a single page.  For the first time, with modern technology, such a process can happen instantaneously, not over several hundred years as the original Talmud did.  We invite you to join and have your say!