PROTESTING ISRAEL; PROTECTING JEWS

 A personal note: I find it difficult to address the current conflict in the Middle East because it is not only extraordinarily complex and apparently intractable, but also emotionally and morally fraught.  Although unaffiliated and unobservant, I am a Jew committed to Judaism as an ethical monotheism; to its ethical principles, moral values, and historical mission; and to the survival of the Jewish people.  But I am no Zionist.  I am a Jew who empathizes equally with Israelis and Palestinians, struggles to appreciate their perspectives and positions, and tries to judge, when judgment is called for, fairly.  I do not write “as a Jew”—a phrase used by many Jews which presumes that all other Jews agree with their views.  I make no such presumption.

 

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The conflict in the Middle East has exacerbated strains in relationships between Israel and the United States, and between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian factions in America.  Many believe that the United States and Jewish Americans are friends of Israel in its current conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  These beliefs are overstated.  Despite or perhaps because of US diplomatic and military support, Israel is losing, if it has not already lost, its moral standing in the international community, and America is losing its moral standing with many Muslim Americans.  I suspect that some significant number of Jewish Americans regard Israel as a Jewish state only by virtue of its majority population of Jews, not by virtue of its adherence to Jewish standards of behavior.

 

If the United States were a friend of Israel, it would do the duty of a friend: rebuke Israel for its conduct of hostilities.  It would demand much of the Netanyahu government, which is disgracing the country and discomfiting most Jews everywhere.  It would invoke international law which requires an acceptable ratio of allowable number of civilian casualties and an allowable amount of other collateral damage to the value of a military objective.  It would insist that nothing can justify the disparity between the havoc wreaked in Gaza—over 42,000 deaths (28,000 civilian), many more wounded and orphaned, and the devastation of residential and commercial areas—and the results of an unprovoked and barbaric attack—about 1200 dead and 250 captured citizens.  No law of proportionality can justify a 23-to-1 ratio of civilian deaths alone or the displacement and suffering of nearly two million people to neutralize an enemy.

 

If it were true to itself in its belief in the rule of law in international affairs, it would no longer tolerate—it should never have tolerated, much less become complicit in—Israel’s deviance from international law.  It would stress Israel’s interest in maintaining or restoring its standing in the international community.  It would support UN resolutions demanding the return of Israeli-occupied land in the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state.  It would remove the American embassy from Jerusalem and urge international control and operation of the city.  It would invoke Jewish principles and values in demanding that Israel comply with international norms of warfare and support humanitarian efforts to relieve civilian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon.  It would not enable Israel’s offensive operations by supplying offensive weaponry (though it would still provide defensive assistance on an as-needed basis).  It would implement diverse sanctions to help enforce those UN resolutions.

 

If it were respectful of Jewish Americans, it would recognize that Jewish American opinion about current hostilities is not monolithic, and repudiate the angry, irrational view that Jewish Americans are blameworthy because of the conflict and its casualties.  It would respect that many Jewish Americans, some prominent on college campuses, are appalled by and protest Israel’s military operations and Netanyahu and his government’s policies and practices.  It would acknowledge that some are not appalled and support those operations, and that those represented by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which wields enormous political power in Washington, D.C., are, nevertheless, a minority.  It would act in accordance, not with one or the other side of this divided Jewish American populace, but in America’s interest in promoting Israel’s best interests.  However, given this divide among Jewish Americans about what it best for Israel, it would be careful about the policies which it adopts and implements.

 

If it were thus respectful of Jewish Americans on both sides of the issue, with their different opinions about the conflict, it would not intervene in support of one side or the other.  It would protect the Constitutional rights of Jewish Americans to protest Israeli conduct in these conflicts.  It would protect the institutions of higher education which protect the protesters from federal coercion by Republican threats to their accreditation or federal funding.  It would shield colleges and universities from AIPAC and its Republican and Christian fundamentalist allies, with their political or antisemitic agendas, who wish to punish colleges or universities which permit anti-war, anti-Israel, or pro-Palestinian (but not antisemitic, anti-Islamic, or anti-Muslim) protests.  It would also ensure that AIPAC’s rights are protected from those who oppose its positions.

 

America should be respectful of Jewish Americans—no more and no less than of Americans with other religious commitments—, yet aware that being respectful of this particular minority presents many dicey issues at all levels of government.  Conceptual confusions and conflicting political positions add to the difficulties.  For example, the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has been widely criticized for including anti-Israel criticism.  Difficulties with the IHRA definition complicate an understanding of antisemitism and efforts to address it.

 

In their political actions, officials understand printed signs, shouted slogans, and social media messages with antisemitic words or images as antisemitic.  But, in their administrative actions, they often deny as antisemitic less obvious evidence of antisemitism.  Examples are decisions not to investigate complaints, investigations conducted perfunctorily, and investigative conclusions ignoring the evidence or avoiding explanations.

 

A local instance is the top-to-bottom dereliction of duty in response to a formal complaint involving antisemitism when an Animal Control Officer made five false allegations.  Three LCPD police chiefs and several ranking officers ignored a request for an explanation of the falsity of the allegations.  IA undertook no investigation of the complaint for six months.  The IA’s close-out report ignored the allegations in the complaint although its investigation found that they were unsupported.  A year later, the City Attorney even claimed that the allegations were true.  The LCPD refused to remove the notice of false allegations from its files.  While this complaint was active for five years, every member of City Council ignored it except to ensure its omission from review by the independent police auditor.  Indeed, one Councilor, after reviewing relevant documents, offered a sharp denial that they suggested antisemitism, without explanation.  City officials and LCPD officers who disregard due process, ignore bias-based policing in a case of antisemitism, and show themselves antisemitic are predisposed to comply with policies or practices which would constitute a potential threat to local minorities and protesters, and lead to violations of their civil rights.

 

For the commitments of the guardians of public order are suspect.  Police departments are staffed by many conservative-minded officers who share prevalent prejudices against minorities and who dislike liberal protesters.  They are riddled by officers prone to violence or tolerant of it by others in violating the rights of minorities and protesters; the “bad apples” spoil the barrel.  A change of leadership or political climate can affect their performance for the worse.  When such an incident involving the police occurs in Las Cruces, shocked protestations of innocence, that it does not represent “who we are,” by city officials and LCPD officers will be contradicted by those who know better.

ARE YOU A PERSON? AN AMERICAN CITIZEN? AN ENFRANCHISED VOTER?

    In its day, the Declaration of Independence was a unique document, the first political document whereby a subordinate political entity declared itself coordinate.  So says its first paragraph; its second paragraph states the principles justifying the rebellion:

 

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, [1] that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—[2] That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—[3] That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

These great words are the gist of the Declaration.  However, since its day, they have been patriotically revered but politically debated or disregarded.  Most but not all citizens have regarded them as the charter of basic American rights.  Those who supported slavery and fought for its survival, and those who have continued to support and fight for doctrines of supremacy and domination“racial, religious, or sexual“over others reject the extension of these rights to all and identify themselves as unAmerican citizens of the United States.  Yet these words have never had legal standing, and only a dozen years later, the drafters of the Constitution, many of whom had signed the Declaration, ignored its assertions about the equality of "all men” and their rights.

 

    Unrecognized is the Declaration’s implication that these rights extend beyond "all men,” propertied or white, to all adults regardless of their race, religion, or sex.  The portentous words which get little attention are the concluding ones of the second clause, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  These ten words make three important points.  One, the "powers” of government must be "just” according to its laws.  Two, those "powers” are derived from—that is, justified by—the "the consent of the governed.”  Three, those "governed” are those living under the laws of the land.  The clear implication is that the Declaration implies that "the governed” are all individuals, without distinction of any kind, living under those laws.  (This language seems to permit resident non-citizens, including immigrants, to "consent” or not.)  The converse is that government "powers” are unjust with the consent of only a minority of the governed.

 

    A problem with this franchise of consent-givers is the breadth of those "governed,” who would include minors, temporary residents, and visitors from other countries.  But the problem is not a significant one.  Criteria for defining these categories are relatively easily constructed to exclude them from the political process.  Other exclusions, given the principle of equality and the rights "unalienable,” are impossible to justify.

 

    Yet the drafters of the Constitution turned their back on the inclusive democracy which this third point makes.  They did not universalize "the governed,” define individuals as persons or citizens, or describe their political entitlements.  They assumed that voting would constitute the means of expressing "consent” but did not establish standards of eligibility or election procedures.

 

    Some of these deficiencies were left to the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), particularly Section 1, which reads:

 

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

 

In the context of this post-Civil War amendment, "persons” meant Black as well as White (but not "Red”) individuals, defined them by birth or naturalization was "citizens,” and declared that states may not curtail their "privileges or immunities.”  So far, so good.

 

    But not for long.  Section 2 muddles the concepts of person and citizen, and relies on a sexist understanding of both.  It reads:

 

    Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

 

It begins by "counting the whole number of persons,” including women but excluding untaxed Indians (i.e., those living on reservations).  It retreats by restricting the electorate to males, when it specifies the penalties for any state which denies "the right to vote…to any of the male inhabitants” of the state.  States could deny women the right to vote without penalty, yet they could grant women the right to vote, as Wyoming did in 1869.  This amendment made explicit what had been implicit from the beginning, that the federal government recognized women as persons (five fifths, not three fifths, like slaves) for some but not all purposes, usually as citizens, never voters.  Its muddle was its progress from "persons” to "male inhabitants” (who might not be citizens? who might be recent immigrants?) to "male citizens” who could vote.

 

    Even so, Section 2 is not without merit.  Its penalty for restricting the franchise suggests a possibility for dealing with the various (intended, attempted, or actualized) infringements of voting rights.  States which unreasonably restrict the franchise by imposing poll taxes, requiring literacy tests, improperly purging their voting rolls, imposing unwieldy administrative requirements or other undue burdens on voters, or arbitrarily restricting access to or use of voting equipment or facilities, among other means, without cause could be penalized under this section of the amendment.  However, I doubt that its penalty has been enforced.

 

    In this regard, the asymmetry between Republicans and Democrats is becoming increasingly pronounced.  Republicans are doing everything possible to restrict the franchise of voters likely to cast votes for Democrats (and to challenge the validity of the election).  Democrats are trying to resist current or proposed restrictions.  The different approaches to the extent of the franchise by exclusion or inclusion is a measure of allegiance to democracy, specifically, the commitment to the vote as the means to establish "the consent of the governed.”

 

    The point of analyzing this aspect of Constitutional history is to note the potential threat posed by an "originalist” argument that the Founders and some government officials after them did not encode a democratic franchise in the Constitution, and only decades later added amendments extending it.  Even so, the Fourteenth Amendment protects citizens only from state infringements, not federal ones, which were not then imagined as possibilities.  The same cannot be said of the Nineteenth Amendment“"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”“, which extends the franchise to women.  Still, the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments protect the rights of male and female citizens in a way which legislation or court decisions—Roe v. Wade is the obvious example—cannot.

    The specification of persons by race or sex leaves open the possibility of denying personhood or citizenship on the basis of religion.  A belief held by many Christians in their superiority as persons can be distorted into a diminishment or denial of the personhood of believers in other faiths, like Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindi, among others“distortions which can be used to circumscribe their citizenship and restrict their voting rights.  Indeed, it remains an open question implicitly answered by assumptions about who is a person as a first qualification for citizenship.  Fundamentalist Christians believe that a human zygote is a person entitled to the rights of citizenship“an assumption with obvious implications bearing on abortion and contraception.  Without legislation or, better, an amendment defining personhood, a Supreme Court decision is likely to make a basic decision which will ignore or defy the religious convictions of millions of Americans and violate the two First Amendment provisions on religion. 

YVETTE HERRELL: WILL SHE RUN FROM HER CONGRESSIONAL RECORD?

In case you missed it or want a refresher, I post here the link to this blog, first posted on 7 June 2024: https://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/2024/06/yvette-herrell-will-she-run-from-her.html.

The materials which Herrell's campaign, the New Mexico Republican Party, and supporting PACs have distributed show that Herrell is avoiding her record and her current positions.  Instead, those materials offer vague promises, and use inflammatory language and distorted representations of Vasquez and his record.  They do not inform voters that Herrell supports restrictions on, if not the elimination, of abortion.  They do not inform voters that she was and, if re-elected, will again become a member of the Freedom Caucus, the obstructionist "conservative" faction in the House of Representatives.  She voted to overturn the 2020 election results because she believed that Trump won but was defeated by voting fraud of one kind or another in swing states.  If Trump wins, she will rubber-stamp his proposed nominees and legislation; if Harris wins, she will resist her proposed nominees and legislation.