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Thursday, December 28, 2023

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited / Benny Morris -- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004

Thirty years after the 1947-49 War in historic Palestine, the Israeli government began declassifying the archives of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli security forces.  This gave rise to a new understanding of the war.  The Israeli historians who made use of these archives became known as "the New Historians."  This review covers two books by two of them: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe.  (The review is available on this blog under both titles.)   

In reviewing the work of the New Historians, one must first understand the original narrative of the 1947-49 War.  The narrative was virtually unchallenged in Israel and in Western countries until the late 1980s.  It remains widely accepted today, but due to the work of the New Historians, serious scholars no longer accept the narrative. 

Morris and Pappe address three elements of the original narrative:  (1) 1947 Israel was a modern David surrounded by Arab Goliaths, (2) the Arab countries launched the war on May 15 after rejecting the UN Partition Plan, and (3) Palestinians left their homes of their own free will at the behest of Arab leaders.

I. Benny Morris: The Palestinian Refugee Problem 

The first edition of Morris's book was published in 1988.  He began writing it as a history of Haganah, the Jewish militia which later became the Israeli Defense Force.  Morris was given special access to Haganah's archives, but authorities later denied him access when they understood where his work was leading.  At the same time, other Israeli archives from the war period were becoming declassified.  This allowed Morris to continue his work.  

Morris's conclusions are not completely inconsistent with the original narrative.  He accepts that the Israeli leadership at first was not entirely certain of their ability to prevail in a war with the Arabs and that many factors resulted in the depopulation of Arab communities.  Most significantly, he believes the Jewish Agency had no premeditate plans to "transfer" Arabs out of areas under Jewish control. 

According to Morris, the Israeli leadership's initial concern about security was alleviated as they saw near universal success of their military operations.  At first, they sought to secure communication lines between Jewish settlements, especially between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and to provide an adequate defense of the small number of isolated Jewish settlements.  This was accomplished relatively quickly.  In all, only two Jewish settlements were lost during the war.  It quickly became clear to the Jewish Agency that the Arab population in Palestine was no match for the Jewish forces.  

One should distinguish, however, what was known by the leadership from what was believed by the general Jewish population.  Many in the Jewish community had fled, or were descendants of those who had fled, from pogroms in Eastern Europe as well as Shoah survivors.  Living in what was for most of them a foreign land among a suspicious indigenous population, including overtly hostile elements, could not have fostered a sense of security; however, the population's perception of the danger was not in line with the actual relative military capabilities of Arab and Jewish security forces.

Immediately following the UN's adoption of the Partition Plan, a low intensity conflict between Arabs and Jews began.  Arab irregular forces engaged mostly in small skirmishes and sniper attacks on passing Jewish convoys.  Some volunteers from neighboring Arab states, known as the Army of Rescue, also participated in these attacks.  In quick response, Jewish militias (Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang) attacked villages from which they believed the Arab attacks emerged.  Their responses frequently were disproportionate and not always directed against the responsible parties.  An escalating cycle of violence ensued.  This prompted a significant number of Arabs to flee their homes in fear of and in response to Jewish assaults and/or anticipated Jewish political control. 

Among the most significant observations made by the New Historians is the implementation of "Plan Dalet" or "Plan D," by Haganah.  Plan D was composed of 13 specific military operations designed to occupy and exert control over Arab populated regions, both inside and outside the UN boundaries of the prospective Jewish state.  The plan was finalized during the sectarian violence in early March 1948 and was implemented in the first week of April -- six weeks before the British Mandate would end on May 14.  

For the first time since the passage of the UN Partition Plan, significant military assets were mobilized in coordinated attacks against an enemy.  One might identify November 29, 1947 as the start of escalating sectarian violence and the first week of April as when Israel launched a coordinated war against the Palestinians.  May 15, which is considered the start of the war by the original historical narrative, would mark, instead, the date when neighboring Arab countries joined in the defense of the beleaguered Palestinian population. 

Morris's Revisited (2nd) edition was published in 2004.  It was prompted by the release of additional archival material and Morris's desire to respond to criticism that he had not adequately examined the pre-war discussion among the Jewish leadership of transferring the Arab population out of Palestine.  Morris devotes a new chapter on the discussion of transfer.  He concludes that while there was pre-war interest among the leadership in transferring the population, the connection between that interest and what actually happened is "more tenuous than Arab propagandists would allow. "  According to Morris, the flight of refugees was mainly the consequence of local decisions made by specific military commanders in their efforts to secure the territory they were occupying for the Jewish state.  Additionally, some Arab directives to flee and decisions by the Arab upper class to wait out the war abroad played a role in the departure of Palestinians.  In any case, Israel's leaders recognized that their military operations were sparking the unexpected flight of Arabs which would serve the interests of a secure Israeli state.  As in the first edition, Morris continues to argue that the depopulation of Arab communities was a complex event that involved many factors.  

Morris does accept that Israel's military operations were the primary motivating force. He estimates that 600,000-760,000 Palestinian Arabs "departed their homes" between November 1947 and October 1950.  He documents 392 Arab cities, towns, and villages that were "abandoned" by their populations and 186 Israeli settlements that were constructed in their place.  Jewish and Israeli forces variously assisted, encouraged, directed, and forcibly expelled Palestinians from their homes in the course of different military operations. Morris's detailed accounting of this massive demographic shift is perhaps what made his first edition so ground breaking.  

Morris acknowledges that numerous atrocities were committed by Haganah and especially by the dissident Jewish militias, Irgun and the Stern Gang.  These atrocities -- massacres of tens of villagers at a time and sometimes more -- had a significant impact on the decisions of Arabs to flee their homes.  In the context of the war, the Jewish leadership simply allowed the flight of Arabs to unfold as a fortuitous consequence of war.  No official "transfer" policy was needed.  Morris does, however, identify some instances in which the leadership gave explicit expulsion orders.  He also recognizes that the leadership routinely approved expulsions after the fact and directed the destruction of buildings.

According to Morris, the Israeli leadership was surprised to see the mass exodus of Arabs, but they were insistent that very few refugees be allowed to return to their villages, and they made great efforts to ensure "infiltrators" would not return to their homes.  Even reluctant members of the leadership -- members of the more dovish party, Mapam -- eventually came around to accept the "transfer" of the population and the prohibition of its return. 

With regard to the three elements of the original narrative under discussion, Morris (1) rejects the claim that Israel was a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) makes no real claim about what should be considered the start of the war, and (3) ambiguously assesses the motives for the flight of the Palestinians.  His work is noteworthy in that it broke the taboo that prevented an honest examination of Israel's origins.  Morris remains a Zionist, however, and rests his moral conclusions on the legitimacy of the foundation of Israel and the consequent need to secure the state through force, even if this involved producing hundreds of thousands of refugees and inflicting tens of thousands of casualties.

II. Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing

The primary sources used by Morris are almost exclusively drawn from the Israeli archives.  His secondary sources are overwhelmingly in Hebrew.  This has lead to criticisms that he overlooks some important perspectives on and information about what was taking place.  Morris argues that these other perspectives are based largely on interviews and oral histories conducted too long after the events to be reliable.  In contrast, Ilan Pappe's work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine makes use of these additional sources, along with many of the same archival sources used by Morris.  Pappe even makes use of both editions of Morris's work. 

Pappe's conclusions about Israeli actions and intentions are much more critical.  In his first chapter, he discusses the history and definition of the term "ethnic cleansing."  The reminder of the book is essentially an effort to show that while the expulsion of the Palestinians is a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, it has been ignored in discussions of past ethnic cleansings.  He often quotes the use of the term "cleanse" and its derivatives in Jewish documents and diaries that describe the expulsion of Palestinians.  

Pappe writes of the compilation of the "Village Files" by Jewish Arabists in the 1930s.  The files were a comprehensive registry of all the Arab villages in Palestine with details about their geography, economy, populations, leadership, and their relations with their Jewish neighbors.  The Files' main proponent in the Jewish Agency thought the creation of the registry would "greatly help the redemption of the land." As Jewish forces moved against Arab villages, the Village Files were invaluable, giving them detailed intelligence about their targets and even allowing them to identify specific individuals for assassination.

Pappe directly implicates the head of the Jewish Agency and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion as the primary directing force in planning and approving the expulsions.  A small group of advisors called the "Consultant Committee" or simply the "Consultancy" was formed in February 1947, months prior to the passage of the Partition Plan. It became Ben-Gurion's most important advisory group.  He and members of the Consultancy recognized the need to ensure a majority Jewish population of 70-80% inside the Jewish state.  Consequently, they would need to transfer Arabs out of Jewish controlled areas, including to neighboring states.  The tactics they adopted for expelling the population began with forceful "retaliation" against Arab violence, mainly against snipers shooting at Jewish convoys, but as early as in December 1947, this evolved into a more pro-active "engagement" or "violent reconnaissance" which did not require a pretext.  The aim was to intimidate the population and encourage flight.

Between the assembly and use of the Village Files and the proceedings and diaries of the Consultancy, Pappe's case for the premeditated expulsion of Palestinians is strong.  Certainly, Morris and Pappe agree that the Israeli leadership made a conscious decision to prevent displaced people from returning to their homes.  This confirms either the leadership's intentions to expel the population or its legitimation of expulsion after the fact.  In any case, Morris and Pappe together provide sufficient evidence that the flight of Palestinians from Israeli controlled areas was not mainly a function of Arab directives to leave.

By May 15, 1947, or soon after, most of the largest cities with Arab populations were occupied by Jewish forces and virtually emptied of their Arab inhabitants.  Haifa, Tiberias, Safad, and Baysan lay in regions designated for a Jewish state. Jaffa and Acre lay in regions designated for the Arabs.  West Jerusalem was to be governed by an international administration.  Pappe refers to the expulsion of inhabitants from these cities as "urbicide" to distinguish it from (on his accounting) the more than 500 Arab villages that Jewish and Israeli forces ultimately destroyed or converted into Jewish settlements.  

This demographic change began shortly after the UN adopted the Partition Plan.  The only significant disagreement between Morris and Pappe is whether the Jewish Agency consciously planned the expulsion or merely raised no meaningful objection to it and retroactively approved it.  From the point of view of the refugees, the distinction is unimportant.

Plans for the expulsion of the Arab population could be made confidently because of the known military and political weakness of the Arab population.  According to Pappe, Jewish Arabists were reporting to the Consultancy that there was virtually no interest in war among ordinary Palestinians.  Many Arab villages reached peace agreements with neighboring Jewish settlements to stay out of the impending conflict.  Furthermore, the British Mandatory Force effectively disarmed the Arab population in a crushing counter-insurgency campaign between 1936 and 1939.  The Arab leadership was exiled to the Seychelles for years after.  In any case, political authority among Palestinians historically did not extend far beyond the village leadership, making the coordination of defensive measures nearly impossible.  In general, the Arab population of Palestine was uninterested in war and extremely vulnerable.

Pappe argues that the armies of neighboring Arab states were not nearly as threating as the original narrative would have it.  The combined number of Arab forces were roughly similar to the number of the Jewish forces, but were less well-equipped and lacked an effective single command structure.  There was competition, suspicion, even animosity, between the Arab states, particularly between Egypt and Jordan and between Syria and Jordan.  

The Jordanian army was the most well-equipped and well-organized; however, Jordan's King Abdullah and David Ben-Gurion came to an agreement before May15th in which Jordan would control the West Bank (at least that part the Israelis would not conquer).  Abdullah publicly announced that his forces would not invade the region set aside for the Jewish state, but would only occupy the Arab region.  This alleviated Israel's greatest concern.  The disposition of Jerusalem, however, was not agreed upon by Abdullah and Ben-Gurion.  It was here that the most significant fighting took place between the Jordanians and the Israelis.

Egypt was potentially a significant force.  Yet according to Pappe, it mobilized only 10,000 soldiers, 5,000 of which were untrained members of the Muslim Brotherhood that were released from prison to fight in Palestine.  Initially, Egypt made progress by occupying territory populated almost exclusively by Arabs or that was virtually uninhabited.  For a time, they were able to isolate a small number of Jewish settlements in the Negev, but their advance into Palestine was halted after just one week.  Israeli forces then steadily drove them back to Egypt, leaving them to occupy only the Gaza Strip.

Syrian forces amounted to only a few thousand fighters.  They managed to capture a kibbutz just across the border, but did little more after that.  Syria's participation in the war was mostly token.  Lebanese forces operated by and large defensively in Western Galilee, a region that had been allocated for the Arab state.  By the end of the war, Israel had completely expelled Lebanese forces from historic Palestine.  Iraq provided a small number of fighters who were relatively effective in defending a number of villages in the northern region of the West Bank.

Pappe concludes -- and the outcome of the conflict confirms -- that Israel was not only well-equipped to defend itself from its Arab neighbors, its forces were simultaneously able to expel and prevent the return of the great majority of the Palestinian population from areas they captured.

With regard to the three elements of the original narrative, Pappe concludes that all of them are entirely false.  (1) Israel was not a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) the war was launched by Israeli forces and was well-underway before the Arab armies joined the fight, and (3) not only were Arab directives not responsible for the flight of the Palestinians, but the Israeli leadership had a long, well-established plan to expel as many Arabs from the prospective Jewish state as they possibly could.  Israel executed that plan diligently.  

Pappe's penultimate chapter is titled, "The Memoricide of the Nakba."  "Nakba" is the Arabic word for catastrophe, which is how the Palestinians refer to the 1947-49 War.  He argues that the memory of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine has been consciously erased.  In years just after the 1967 War, Israel's Ministry of Information was especially active in creating the narrative that helped erase the memory of the Nakba.  In a speech in 1969 to students at the Technical University in Haifa, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said, "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages.  You don't know the names of these villages,...because these geography books no longer exist....There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."  Pappe describes how the Naming Committee of the Jewish National Fund renamed places under Jewish control which explains why they are missing from the geography books.

And they are not just missing from the written record.  They are gone entirely, often covered over by new settlements or national forests planted by the Jewish National Fund.  The Fund has also been responsible for the creation of parks and resorts in place of destroyed Arab villages.  Many new Jewish developments have "green lungs," i.e., wooded areas that once were neighboring Arab villages.  The erasure of the evidence of a previous Arab population continues today.

One final point regarding the original narrative deserves attention.  The narrative also asserts that the Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Plan while the Arab leadership rejected it.  The latter is certainly true.  The Arab population had been struggling for self-determination as early as the mid-19th century.  They allied with the British in the First World War on the promise that Britain would support their independence after victory.  Much of the British controlled territory was granted independence (Iraq in 1932 and Jordan in 1946), but Palestine remained under British control.  

Through the 1920s and 1930s, Britain facilitated the colonization of Palestine by mostly European Jewish colonists.  By 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine reached roughly one third of the whole and they owned roughly only 7% of the land.  Nonetheless, the Partition Plan designated 55% of land and most of the best land to the Jewish state.  The Arabs had no formal role in ratifying the plan. In essence, the Partition Plan was the culmination of a decades-long colonial enterprise.  In this context, it's quite natural that the Arabs would not accept it.

The Jewish Agency's "acceptance" of the plan, however, was significantly qualified in that they did not accept the plan's borders.  Announcing the acceptance of the plan was a strategic decision that would provide the State of Israel international recognition.  At the same time, the Agency declared its intention to set its own borders.  Its early invasion of regions designated for the Arab state demonstrated that the Jewish Agency also rejected the plan's agreed upon borders.  Furthermore, a significant segment of the Jewish leadership of the time desired all of historic Palestine for the Jewish state, rejecting a two state solution entirely.  The 1967 War was in part motivated by this desire.  That war completed Israel's occupation of all of historic Palestine and produced hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinian refugees.  Nearly a quarter of a million people were force out of the West Bank, unable to return.  

Two years after the 1967 War, the Times of London reported Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as writing, "Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the Partition Plan.  Our generation reached the frontiers of 1949.  Now the six-day generation has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights.  That is not the end.  After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones.  They will extend beyond Jordan -- perhaps to Lebanon and perhaps to central Syria as well."  Whether there remains interest among the Israeli leadership of expanding Israel further is an open question.  There has always been talk of expanding north to the Litani River in Lebanon and the Jewish settlement of the West Bank appears to be leading to eventual annexation. 

What distinguishes Morris's and Pappe's views is their attitudes toward the goals of Zionism.  For Morris, they are fundamentally sound.  What is at issue is how those goals are to be accomplished and perhaps the final borders of Israel.  For Pappe, Zionism is a colonial-settler enterprise that has committed horrendous atrocities and denied Palestinians the fundament rights due any people.  But the facts of the stories they tell are largely the same.  It is these facts that the New Historians finally brought to light, regardless of how those facts are judged.  

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine / Ilan Pappe -- Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006.

Thirty years after the 1947-49 War in historic Palestine, the Israeli government began declassifying the archives of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli security forces.  This gave rise to a new understanding of the war.  The Israeli historians who made use of these archives became known as "the New Historians."  This review covers two books by two of them: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe.  (The review is available on this blog under both titles.)   

In reviewing the work of the New Historians, one must first understand the original narrative of the 1947-49 War.  The narrative was virtually unchallenged in Israel and in Western countries until the late 1980s.  It remains widely accepted today, but due to the work of the New Historians, serious scholars no longer accept the narrative. 

Morris and Pappe address three elements of the original narrative:  (1) 1947 Israel was a modern David surrounded by Arab Goliaths, (2) the Arab countries launched the war on May 15 after rejecting the UN Partition Plan, and (3) Palestinians left their homes of their own free will at the behest of Arab leaders.

I. Benny Morris: The Palestinian Refugee Problem 

The first edition of Morris's book was published in 1988.  He began writing it as a history of Haganah, the Jewish militia which later became the Israeli Defense Force.  Morris was given special access to Haganah's archives, but authorities later denied him access when they understood where his work was leading.  At the same time, other Israeli archives from the war period were becoming declassified.  This allowed Morris to continue his work.  

Morris's conclusions are not completely inconsistent with the original narrative.  He accepts that the Israeli leadership at first was not entirely certain of their ability to prevail in a war with the Arabs and that many factors resulted in the depopulation of Arab communities.  Most significantly, he believes the Jewish Agency had no premeditate plans to "transfer" Arabs out of areas under Jewish control. 

According to Morris, the Israeli leadership's initial concern about security was alleviated as they saw near universal success of their military operations.  At first, they sought to secure communication lines between Jewish settlements, especially between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and to provide an adequate defense of the small number of isolated Jewish settlements.  This was accomplished relatively quickly.  In all, only two Jewish settlements were lost during the war.  It quickly became clear to the Jewish Agency that the Arab population in Palestine was no match for the Jewish forces.  

One should distinguish, however, what was known by the leadership from what was believed by the general Jewish population.  Many in the Jewish community had fled, or were descendants of those who had fled, from pogroms in Eastern Europe as well as Shoah survivors.  Living in what was for most of them a foreign land among a suspicious indigenous population, including overtly hostile elements, could not have fostered a sense of security; however, the population's perception of the danger was not in line with the actual relative military capabilities of Arab and Jewish security forces.

Immediately following the UN's adoption of the Partition Plan, a low intensity conflict between Arabs and Jews began.  Arab irregular forces engaged mostly in small skirmishes and sniper attacks on passing Jewish convoys.  Some volunteers from neighboring Arab states, known as the Army of Rescue, also participated in these attacks.  In quick response, Jewish militias (Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang) attacked villages from which they believed the Arab attacks emerged.  Their responses frequently were disproportionate and not always directed against the responsible parties.  An escalating cycle of violence ensued.  This prompted a significant number of Arabs to flee their homes in fear of and in response to Jewish assaults and/or anticipated Jewish political control. 

Among the most significant observations made by the New Historians is the implementation of "Plan Dalet" or "Plan D," by Haganah.  Plan D was composed of 13 specific military operations designed to occupy and exert control over Arab populated regions, both inside and outside the UN boundaries of the prospective Jewish state.  The plan was finalized during the sectarian violence in early March 1948 and was implemented in the first week of April -- six weeks before the British Mandate would end on May 14.  

For the first time since the passage of the UN Partition Plan, significant military assets were mobilized in coordinated attacks against an enemy.  One might identify November 29, 1947 as the start of escalating sectarian violence and the first week of April as when Israel launched a coordinated war against the Palestinians.  May 15, which is considered the start of the war by the original historical narrative, would mark, instead, the date when neighboring Arab countries joined in the defense of the beleaguered Palestinian population. 

Morris's Revisited (2nd) edition was published in 2004.  It was prompted by the release of additional archival material and Morris's desire to respond to criticism that he had not adequately examined the pre-war discussion among the Jewish leadership of transferring the Arab population out of Palestine.  Morris devotes a new chapter on the discussion of transfer.  He concludes that while there was pre-war interest among the leadership in transferring the population, the connection between that interest and what actually happened is "more tenuous than Arab propagandists would allow. "  According to Morris, the flight of refugees was mainly the consequence of local decisions made by specific military commanders in their efforts to secure the territory they were occupying for the Jewish state.  Additionally, some Arab directives to flee and decisions by the Arab upper class to wait out the war abroad played a role in the departure of Palestinians.  In any case, Israel's leaders recognized that their military operations were sparking the unexpected flight of Arabs which would serve the interests of a secure Israeli state.  As in the first edition, Morris continues to argue that the depopulation of Arab communities was a complex event that involved many factors.  

Morris does accept that Israel's military operations were the primary motivating force. He estimates that 600,000-760,000 Palestinian Arabs "departed their homes" between November 1947 and October 1950.  He documents 392 Arab cities, towns, and villages that were "abandoned" by their populations and 186 Israeli settlements that were constructed in their place.  Jewish and Israeli forces variously assisted, encouraged, directed, and forcibly expelled Palestinians from their homes in the course of different military operations. Morris's detailed accounting of this massive demographic shift is perhaps what made his first edition so ground breaking.  

Morris acknowledges that numerous atrocities were committed by Haganah and especially by the dissident Jewish militias, Irgun and the Stern Gang.  These atrocities -- massacres of tens of villagers at a time and sometimes more -- had a significant impact on the decisions of Arabs to flee their homes.  In the context of the war, the Jewish leadership simply allowed the flight of Arabs to unfold as a fortuitous consequence of war.  No official "transfer" policy was needed.  Morris does, however, identify some instances in which the leadership gave explicit expulsion orders.  He also recognizes that the leadership routinely approved expulsions after the fact and directed the destruction of buildings.

According to Morris, the Israeli leadership was surprised to see the mass exodus of Arabs, but they were insistent that very few refugees be allowed to return to their villages, and they made great efforts to ensure "infiltrators" would not return to their homes.  Even reluctant members of the leadership -- members of the more dovish party, Mapam -- eventually came around to accept the "transfer" of the population and the prohibition of its return. 

With regard to the three elements of the original narrative under discussion, Morris (1) rejects the claim that Israel was a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) makes no real claim about what should be considered the start of the war, and (3) ambiguously assesses the motives for the flight of the Palestinians.  His work is noteworthy in that it broke the taboo that prevented an honest examination of Israel's origins.  Morris remains a Zionist, however, and rests his moral conclusions on the legitimacy of the foundation of Israel and the consequent need to secure the state through force, even if this involved producing hundreds of thousands of refugees and inflicting tens of thousands of casualties.

II. Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing

The primary sources used by Morris are almost exclusively drawn from the Israeli archives.  His secondary sources are overwhelmingly in Hebrew.  This has lead to criticisms that he overlooks some important perspectives on and information about what was taking place.  Morris argues that these other perspectives are based largely on interviews and oral histories conducted too long after the events to be reliable.  In contrast, Ilan Pappe's work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine makes use of these additional sources, along with many of the same archival sources used by Morris.  Pappe even makes use of both editions of Morris's work. 

Pappe's conclusions about Israeli actions and intentions are much more critical.  In his first chapter, he discusses the history and definition of the term "ethnic cleansing."  The reminder of the book is essentially an effort to show that while the expulsion of the Palestinians is a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, it has been ignored in discussions of past ethnic cleansings.  He often quotes the use of the term "cleanse" and its derivatives in Jewish documents and diaries that describe the expulsion of Palestinians.  

Pappe writes of the compilation of the "Village Files" by Jewish Arabists in the 1930s.  The files were a comprehensive registry of all the Arab villages in Palestine with details about their geography, economy, populations, leadership, and their relations with their Jewish neighbors.  The Files' main proponent in the Jewish Agency thought the creation of the registry would "greatly help the redemption of the land." As Jewish forces moved against Arab villages, the Village Files were invaluable, giving them detailed intelligence about their targets and even allowing them to identify specific individuals for assassination.

Pappe directly implicates the head of the Jewish Agency and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion as the primary directing force in planning and approving the expulsions.  A small group of advisors called the "Consultant Committee" or simply the "Consultancy" was formed in February 1947, months prior to the passage of the Partition Plan. It became Ben-Gurion's most important advisory group.  He and members of the Consultancy recognized the need to ensure a majority Jewish population of 70-80% inside the Jewish state.  Consequently, they would need to transfer Arabs out of Jewish controlled areas, including to neighboring states.  The tactics they adopted for expelling the population began with forceful "retaliation" against Arab violence, mainly against snipers shooting at Jewish convoys, but as early as in December 1947, this evolved into a more pro-active "engagement" or "violent reconnaissance" which did not require a pretext.  The aim was to intimidate the population and encourage flight.

Between the assembly and use of the Village Files and the proceedings and diaries of the Consultancy, Pappe's case for the premeditated expulsion of Palestinians is strong.  Certainly, Morris and Pappe agree that the Israeli leadership made a conscious decision to prevent displaced people from returning to their homes.  This confirms either the leadership's intentions to expel the population or its legitimation of expulsion after the fact.  In any case, Morris and Pappe together provide sufficient evidence that the flight of Palestinians from Israeli controlled areas was not mainly a function of Arab directives to leave.

By May 15, 1947, or soon after, most of the largest cities with Arab populations were occupied by Jewish forces and virtually emptied of their Arab inhabitants.  Haifa, Tiberias, Safad, and Baysan lay in regions designated for a Jewish state. Jaffa and Acre lay in regions designated for the Arabs.  West Jerusalem was to be governed by an international administration.  Pappe refers to the expulsion of inhabitants from these cities as "urbicide" to distinguish it from (on his accounting) the more than 500 Arab villages that Jewish and Israeli forces ultimately destroyed or converted into Jewish settlements.  

This demographic change began shortly after the UN adopted the Partition Plan.  The only significant disagreement between Morris and Pappe is whether the Jewish Agency consciously planned the expulsion or merely raised no meaningful objection to it and retroactively approved it.  From the point of view of the refugees, the distinction is unimportant.

Plans for the expulsion of the Arab population could be made confidently because of the known military and political weakness of the Arab population.  According to Pappe, Jewish Arabists were reporting to the Consultancy that there was virtually no interest in war among ordinary Palestinians.  Many Arab villages reached peace agreements with neighboring Jewish settlements to stay out of the impending conflict.  Furthermore, the British Mandatory Force effectively disarmed the Arab population in a crushing counter-insurgency campaign between 1936 and 1939.  The Arab leadership was exiled to the Seychelles for years after.  In any case, political authority among Palestinians historically did not extend far beyond the village leadership, making the coordination of defensive measures nearly impossible.  In general, the Arab population of Palestine was uninterested in war and extremely vulnerable.

Pappe argues that the armies of neighboring Arab states were not nearly as threating as the original narrative would have it.  The combined number of Arab forces were roughly similar to the number of the Jewish forces, but were less well-equipped and lacked an effective single command structure.  There was competition, suspicion, even animosity, between the Arab states, particularly between Egypt and Jordan and between Syria and Jordan.  

The Jordanian army was the most well-equipped and well-organized; however, Jordan's King Abdullah and David Ben-Gurion came to an agreement before May15th in which Jordan would control the West Bank (at least that part the Israelis would not conquer).  Abdullah publicly announced that his forces would not invade the region set aside for the Jewish state, but would only occupy the Arab region.  This alleviated Israel's greatest concern.  The disposition of Jerusalem, however, was not agreed upon by Abdullah and Ben-Gurion.  It was here that the most significant fighting took place between the Jordanians and the Israelis.

Egypt was potentially a significant force.  Yet according to Pappe, it mobilized only 10,000 soldiers, 5,000 of which were untrained members of the Muslim Brotherhood that were released from prison to fight in Palestine.  Initially, Egypt made progress by occupying territory populated almost exclusively by Arabs or that was virtually uninhabited.  For a time, they were able to isolate a small number of Jewish settlements in the Negev, but their advance into Palestine was halted after just one week.  Israeli forces then steadily drove them back to Egypt, leaving them to occupy only the Gaza Strip.

Syrian forces amounted to only a few thousand fighters.  They managed to capture a kibbutz just across the border, but did little more after that.  Syria's participation in the war was mostly token.  Lebanese forces operated by and large defensively in Western Galilee, a region that had been allocated for the Arab state.  By the end of the war, Israel had completely expelled Lebanese forces from historic Palestine.  Iraq provided a small number of fighters who were relatively effective in defending a number of villages in the northern region of the West Bank.

Pappe concludes -- and the outcome of the conflict confirms -- that Israel was not only well-equipped to defend itself from its Arab neighbors, its forces were simultaneously able to expel and prevent the return of the great majority of the Palestinian population from areas they captured.

With regard to the three elements of the original narrative, Pappe concludes that all of them are entirely false.  (1) Israel was not a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) the war was launched by Israeli forces and was well-underway before the Arab armies joined the fight, and (3) not only were Arab directives not responsible for the flight of the Palestinians, but the Israeli leadership had a long, well-established plan to expel as many Arabs from the prospective Jewish state as they possibly could.  Israel executed that plan diligently.  

Pappe's penultimate chapter is titled, "The Memoricide of the Nakba."  "Nakba" is the Arabic word for catastrophe, which is how the Palestinians refer to the 1947-49 War.  He argues that the memory of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine has been consciously erased.  In years just after the 1967 War, Israel's Ministry of Information was especially active in creating the narrative that helped erase the memory of the Nakba.  In a speech in 1969 to students at the Technical University in Haifa, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said, "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages.  You don't know the names of these villages,...because these geography books no longer exist....There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."  Pappe describes how the Naming Committee of the Jewish National Fund renamed places under Jewish control which explains why they are missing from the geography books.

And they are not just missing from the written record.  They are gone entirely, often covered over by new settlements or national forests planted by the Jewish National Fund.  The Fund has also been responsible for the creation of parks and resorts in place of destroyed Arab villages.  Many new Jewish developments have "green lungs," i.e., wooded areas that once were neighboring Arab villages.  The erasure of the evidence of a previous Arab population continues today.

One final point regarding the original narrative deserves attention.  The narrative also asserts that the Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Plan while the Arab leadership rejected it.  The latter is certainly true.  The Arab population had been struggling for self-determination as early as the mid-19th century.  They allied with the British in the First World War on the promise that Britain would support their independence after victory.  Much of the British controlled territory was granted independence (Iraq in 1932 and Jordan in 1946), but Palestine remained under British control.  

Through the 1920s and 1930s, Britain facilitated the colonization of Palestine by mostly European Jewish colonists.  By 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine reached roughly one third of the whole and they owned roughly only 7% of the land.  Nonetheless, the Partition Plan designated 55% of land and most of the best land to the Jewish state.  The Arabs had no formal role in ratifying the plan. In essence, the Partition Plan was the culmination of a decades-long colonial enterprise.  In this context, it's quite natural that the Arabs would not accept it.

The Jewish Agency's "acceptance" of the plan, however, was significantly qualified in that they did not accept the plan's borders.  Announcing the acceptance of the plan was a strategic decision that would provide the State of Israel international recognition.  At the same time, the Agency declared its intention to set its own borders.  Its early invasion of regions designated for the Arab state demonstrated that the Jewish Agency also rejected the plan's agreed upon borders.  Furthermore, a significant segment of the Jewish leadership of the time desired all of historic Palestine for the Jewish state, rejecting a two state solution entirely.  The 1967 War was in part motivated by this desire.  That war completed Israel's occupation of all of historic Palestine and produced hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinian refugees.  Nearly a quarter of a million people were force out of the West Bank, unable to return.  

Two years after the 1967 War, the Times of London reported Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as writing, "Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the Partition Plan.  Our generation reached the frontiers of 1949.  Now the six-day generation has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights.  That is not the end.  After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones.  They will extend beyond Jordan -- perhaps to Lebanon and perhaps to central Syria as well."  Whether there remains interest among the Israeli leadership of expanding Israel further is an open question.  There has always been talk of expanding north to the Litani River in Lebanon and the Jewish settlement of the West Bank appears to be leading to eventual annexation. 

What distinguishes Morris's and Pappe's views is their attitudes toward the goals of Zionism.  For Morris, they are fundamentally sound.  What is at issue is how those goals are to be accomplished and perhaps the final borders of Israel.  For Pappe, Zionism is a colonial-settler enterprise that has committed horrendous atrocities and denied Palestinians the fundament rights due any people.  But the facts of the stories they tell are largely the same.  It is these facts that the New Historians finally brought to light, regardless of how those facts are judged.  

Sunday, October 29, 2023

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market / Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, NY: Bloomsbury Pub., 2023

 In 2010, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway released The Merchants of Doubt, an account of the actions of the fossil fuel industry and their agents to sow doubt in the public mind about the reality and danger of climate change.  Their book had a powerful effect on how the public understands the politics of climate policy, and it set the stage for numerous legal actions to hold the "merchants of doubt" responsible for the current and accumulating harms of climate change.  Law suits are slowing making their way through state courts around the country.  If these cases succeed, the transition toward a clean and reliable energy economy will be much accelerated.

Among the questions raised by The Merchants of Doubt was how four scientists, who were the leading figures challenging climate action, could deny the scientific consensus regarding the fact and danger of climate change.  Oreskes and Conway concluded that they were entranced by the ideology of "the free market."  How did this ideology become so powerful?  The Big Myth provides a powerful case that it was the result of a decades-long public relations effort by American business and industrial associations.

The propaganda effort began in the early decades of the 20th century when the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), founded in 1895, fought progressive era regulations to restrict child labor, establish workers' compensation relief systems, and empower unionization.  They were, of course ultimately unsuccessful, but their opposition demonstrated the necessity of government regulation to protect the interests of ordinary citizens from exploitation by business and industrial elites. 

Later, in the 1920s, the nation's privately owned electrical grids were failing to bring electricity to rural areas.  This led to a drive for "rural electrification" legislation that would create a rational electrical grid system serving urban and rural regions alike.  The effort was opposed by the National Electric Light Association (NELA), an association of electric utilities founded in 1885 and which later became the Edison Electric Institute.  NELA was successful until New Deal legislation finally established the Rural Electrification Administration and imposed regulations to expand access to electricity.  Here we see government action, as opposed to unregulated market forces, being responsible for creating the conditions for expanded economic prosperity.

The danger of regulations, unionization, and government planning alleged by NAM and NELA was, of course, said to be the slippery slope leading to socialism.  They argued that once government intrudes in one sector of life, it will inevitably intrude in every sector.  Oreskes and Conway point out that this reveals the false dilemma that lay behind the propaganda: economies must either be laissez faire or entirely controlled by a central authority.  The business propagandists never acknowledged that there are countless ways to organize an economy between these two poles.  

Despite the massive market failure that produced the Great Depression, business and industry lobbyists doubled down on their commitment to unregulated capitalism and resisted New Deal efforts to restore economic stability and security.  Out of this, NAM developed what Oreskes and Conway call the "indivisibility thesis," i.e., that political, religious, and economic freedom were "indivisible."  This meant any assault on the prerogatives of the private sector was also (or ultimately) an assault on political and religious freedom.  Later, this "tripod of freedom" was boiled down simply to the inseparability of "democracy" and "free enterprise," though Billy Graham continued to promote a connection between religious freedom and "free markets."  

Business leaders created several organizations, most notably NAM's National Industrial Information Council (NIIC).  These organizations were established to propagandize in favor of unregulated capitalism.  Edward Bernays, the founder of modern public relations, was enlisted for support. The NIIC played a major role in the the campaign to shape public opinion through films, slide shows, newspaper advertisements, direct mail, billboards, posters, pamphlets, window displays, and other media.  In the late 1930s, NAM produced an extremely popular radio program, The American Family Robinson, which promoted "free market" fundamentalism.  In the 1940s and 1950s, NAM, with the assistance of Hollywood, was responsible for numerous films and news reels.

Also in the 1930s, Laura Ingalls Wilder was publishing her "little house" books, particularly Little House on the Prairie.  These books contained an intentional and not-so-well-disguised severe libertarian message.  The message was in large part due to the editorial influence of Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane.  Lane is considered among the three most important founders of the modern libertarian movement, along with Ayn Rand and Isabelle Paterson or "the three furies" as William F. Buckley dubbed them.

Oreskes and Conway also provide an interesting account of General Electric's television series General Electric Theatre, hosted by Ronald Reagan.  General Electric Theatre, airing weekly from 1953-1962, provided well-produced and engaging stories that promoted unregulated capitalism.  Reagan's involvement with the program is widely recognized as what transformed him from a supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal to the "anti-government" ideologue that he became.  

Much of the public relations efforts on behalf of unregulated capitalism came from business interests.  As this would easily be seen as self-serving, business leaders sought academic economists to give their ideology independent credibility.  Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman served this purpose.  The careers of each were made possible by financial support from libertarian business interests despite strong opposition from the profession.  It is noteworthy, though, that the economic views of each were far less austere than how they were promoted by their patrons.  For example, Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom, was republished in a dumbed-down version in Reader's Digest in 1945, where any recognition of the important role of government in economic affairs was edited out.  A similar redaction of pro-government passages in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was done by George Stigler for the University of Chicago Press in 1957.

One reoccurring theme in The Big Myth is that claims that a "free market" will better provide for economic prosperity and general social well-being are belied by the historical facts.  Instead, the unregulated capitalism has led to numerous significant market failures (especially the climate crisis), and that nearly all of the material and technological advances that make our lives safe and comfortable today have been the result of either direct government action or public-private partnerships initiated by the public sector.  Oreskes and Conway make a powerful case that the popular admiration of "free markets" is a product of special business and industrial interests working for their private gain without regard for the well-being of workers and consumers.   

The Big Myth is a massive work (565 pages, including bibliography and index).  This review provides only a slim sample of the history of the "free market" propaganda that has shaped so much of our discourse today.  It is a brilliant, extensive study that deserves anyone's attention who is interested in the controversies over the present day organization of our political and economic institutions.   



Wednesday, September 6, 2023

2024 Presidential Election Prospects

 

               It’s a little early to be handicapping the 2024 presidential election, but there are some things that we can reliably expect.  Assuming the race is between any Democrat and any Republican, California is going to vote for the Democrat and Idaho is going to vote for the Republican.  If they don’t, then – wow!  Something really unexpected will have happened.  Given the state-by-state results of the 2020 Biden-Trump race and polls showing little change in the (un)favorability of both candidates, we can narrow down the swing states to seven: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan.  These seven are the only states where the difference between the candidates’ 2020 votes are less than 3%.  On rare occasions, a state's results will change more than that in the course of four years, but it's rare, and in 2024, we're looking at a rematch of candidates.

               One might reasonably eliminate Michigan and North Carolina from the list of swing states though.  If Trump is able to win Michigan, it is likely he’ll win enough other swing states to secure a victory.  A Trump victory in Michigan probably would require a Republican wave election.  The reverse is likely to be true if Biden is able to win North Carolina.  It would mean a Democratic wave election, but more on this below. 

Realistically, the electoral math gives us only five true swing states:  Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada.  Setting aside these states, Biden can count on 241 Electoral College votes and Trump can count on 235.  Biden will need 29 more to get to 270 and win reelection.  Trump will need 34 more to get to 269 and tie the vote.  With a tied vote, the final result will be determined by a majority of state legislatures, giving Trump the victory. 

So, what are the paths to victory for Biden and Trump?  Simply put:

Biden needs: [PA & (GA v AZ v WI)] v (GA & 2 swing states).

Trump needs: (PA & GA) v (PA & 2 swing states) v (GA & AZ & WI).

The current Electoral College math is in Biden’s favor, but each of these states was extremely close in 2020.  With so much time until Election Day, anything can happen in any of those states.  Much will depend on the local politics in each swing state.  Let’s turn to that.

NEVADA

Biden’s best chance for winning a swing state is Nevada and it’s a very good chance.  Despite its vast expanse of uninhabited land, Nevada’s population is extremely urban which favors Democrats.  In 2020, 69% of the voters lived in Clark County, home of Las Vegas.  Another 8% lived in Reno and in towns near Lake Tahoe.  Biden won Clark County by 90,822 votes and won the state by 33,596 votes.  Clearly, Biden’s victory was due to his performance in the Las Vegas metro area.

Historically, Nevada looks good for the Democrats.  They have won all the statewide races since 2016, except for the Attorney General race in 2018 which they lost by a mere 0.66%, and the 2022 gubernatorial race which they lost by 1.5%.  Their record in statewide races against Republicans is 8-2.  Of course, the best news for the Democrats is that Trump lost in both 2016 and 2020 by 2.42% and 2.39% respectively.

The 2022 race should give the Democrats pause, though.  Not only did the Republicans win the gubernatorial race, but their House candidate in District 1 (essentially Las Vegas) did much better than usual.  He still lost, but he did well enough to flip the aggregate votes in the House races to the Republicans.  Republican House candidates beat Democratic House candidates by 3.49%. 

If Biden can maintain even half of his 2020 advantage in Clark County, he'll almost certainly win Nevada.  Unfortunately for Biden it will do little to reduce the paths that lead to a Trump victory.  While Nevada might come into play, because it provides only six Electoral College votes, it just isn't terribly important. 

PENNSYLVANIA

               Biden’s second-best chance is Pennsylvania.  Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a mere 0.75%, but he was defeated by Biden in 2020 by 1.17%. That tells you how close this election could be.  A couple things give Biden a slight edge in Pennsylvania. Voters soundly rejected Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022.  Mehmet Oz lost his bid for the Senate by 5.03% and Doug Mastriano lost his bid for governor by a whopping 15.4%.  Like in Nevada, Democrats have an 8-2 record in Pennsylvania statewide races since 2016 (Trump and Sen. Pat Toomey by 1.5%, both in 2016).  Unlike Nevada, Pennsylvania Republicans have a better record in voting for House candidates.  Pennsylvania seems to swing back and forth in the aggregate vote for Republican and Democratic House candidates.   

               Republicans also can take some comfort in a report in Politico that says many people in the State Party – and possibly the Biden campaign – are critical of the performance of the chair of the State Party, but thus far, I find no substantiation of the report which is based on unnamed sources.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is dead even right now.  All of the House members will be up for election in 2024.  That could make abortion access an important issue in the state and help Biden.  We’ll also get a clue about the importance of abortion access to Pennsylvania voters this November, when they vote in a special election for a Supreme Court judge.

If Biden wins Pennsylvania, Trump will need to win Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.  If Trump wins Pennsylvania, Biden will need to win Georgia and any two swing states. 

GEORGIA

               Here’s another squeaker.  Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 5.13% in 2016 and lost to Biden by only 0.24% (11,779 votes).  The Republicans out-polled the Democrats in statewide races 7-4, and none of the Democratic wins were by more than 2.81%.  The 2.81% win was against Hershel Walker, possibly the most unqualified candidate running for national office that year.  Additionally, Republican House candidates consistently out-perform Democratic House candidates statewide. 

Democrats should not let themselves become overconfident because of Biden’s success in 2020 and their recent narrow victories in Senate races by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.  What should give them some solace is that Governor Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, then-Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan, and Attorney General Christopher Carr (all popular Republicans) have testified against Trump before the grand jury in Trump’s Fulton County RICO trial.  We can expect them to be called to testify again at the trial.  A lot will depend on the RICO trial and how it’s covered in the Georgia press.

Democrats can also find comfort in that the GOP in Georgia appears to be quite divided.  Some of its past officers are actually defendants in Trump’s RICO trial.  Another is identifiable as an unindicted co-conspirator.  As a result, Trump is not likely to get coordinated support from the Georgia Republican political class, and when a substantial portion of prominent Republicans say that moderates and independents aren’t going to vote for Trump, it just might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

               If Biden wins Georgia, Trump will need to win Pennsylvania and two swing states.  If Trump wins Georgia Biden will need to win Pennsylvania and either Arizona or Wisconsin.

ARIZONA

               Arizona is a completely crazy political mess.  The statewide races are pretty evenly split, but slightly favoring Democrats 6-4-1.  (The 2022 Attorney General race was decided for the Democrat by 280 votes!  For present purposes, I consider that a tie.)  Moreover, a lot of Arizona voters often opt for third party or independent candidates.  If Sen. Krysten Sinema decides to run as an independent, there’s no telling how she will affect the presidential race.  

               A couple things might help the Democrats.  The Republican State Party is a big part of Arizona’s crazy political mess.  Earlier this year, Republican first-term State House Member Liz Harris was expelled from her seat by a 2/3 majority for knowingly arranging for the false and potentially libelous testimony of a hearing witness.  In response, the pro-Trump/Kari Lake faction of the Party censured 18 Republican House members who voted for Harris’s expulsion.  They even censured two more who voted against expulsion, but acknowledged that Harris violated the House’s ethics rules.  The pro-Trump faction also censured the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for not reinstating Harris.  There may be no Republican State party in the country so divided as in Arizona.

               Another thing that might tip the balance in favor of the Democrats is a ballot measure that pro-abortion access groups are looking to put on the ballot.  If they succeed – and I know of no reason they won’t – it will be a lot easier to get unenthusiastic Democratic voters out to vote.  It might just be what tips the balance to Biden.  Still, Arizona’s politics are complicated beyond description, so anything could happen.  

If Biden Arizona, his chances of winning are of course improved, but not by much. The same is true for Trump.  Pennsylvania and Georgia are the big players in the Electoral math.

WISCONSIN

While not completely insane like Arizona, Wisconsin is razor, razor close. Together, the last two presidential races in Wisconsin were closer than anywhere else in the country.  Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a mere 0.77%, but then Biden beat Trump by even less: 0.36%.  The Democrats do have a 7-3 record in statewide races.  Two of the Republican wins are attributable to just one politician, Sen. Ron Johnson who won his last race by just 1.01%.  That bodes well for the Democrats.  Like Pennsylvania, the aggregate vote for Republican and Democratic House candidates swings back and forth, so it’s hard to gauge just how much of an advantage anyone might have there. 

Republicans are having difficulty recruiting a candidate to challenge the popular Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024.  Their two top potential candidates have decided not to run.  Other potential candidates are relatively unknown, with the exception of former Milwaukee County Sheriff and Trump supporter David Clark.  Clark has taken no steps toward running.  Without a strong, well-funded Republican Senate candidate on the ballot, Trump will be on his own to get out the Republican vote.

As elsewhere, the abortion access issue might help Democrats in Wisconsin.  Wisconsinites came out strong in an April special election for a progressive Supreme Court candidate.  Janet Protasiewicz ran primarily on the promise to protect abortion access.  She won by 11%.  Only Sen. Baldwin in 2018 racked up a score like that.  While not a high-profile race, Protasiewicz’s victory raises the Democrat’s statewide record to 8-3 and could be a harbinger of the future.

Wisconsin was historically part of the Democrat’s “blue wall.”  Whether Trump’s 2016 victory and his near miss in 2020 have changed that remains to be seen; but like Arizona, there’s no telling what will happen in Wisconsin – at least for now. 

As with Arizona, winning Wisconsin is helpful for either Biden or Trump, but not that much.  Keep your eyes on Pennsylvania and Georgia.

 NORTH CAROLINA

               I began this review with the assumption that North Carolina is certainly enough a Republican state as to be not included in any possible Biden path to victory.  I don’t seriously doubt that, but the methods I am using to determine swing states and to assess the two candidates’ chances yields a story more favorable to Biden.  Trump beat Biden by 1.34% which on my criterion would make North Carolina a swing state.  Furthermore, the Democrats’ record for winning statewide races is 6-4, which should give Biden some hope. 

A closer look, however, reveals that all of the statewide Democratic victories are for State-level offices (Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General), and all of the victories for the Republicans are for National-level offices (Senate and President). Additionally, Republican House candidates routinely out-perform Democratic House candidates by sizeable amounts.  It seems North Carolina voters like to put Democrats in charge of the State and send Republicans off to Washington.  I’m keeping North Carolina in the Trump column – at least for now.

MICHIGAN

               Considering Michigan as a swing state is the biggest stretch of all.  It’s probably as safe for Biden as Florida is safe for Trump.  Trump eked out a win in Michigan with 0.2% in 2016 and then lost to Biden by 2.78%.  The Democrats’ winning record in statewide races is 9-1.  Trump’s 2016 super-narrow victory was the only Republican victory.  Republican House candidates did out-perform Democratic candidates by 3.56% in 2016, but they never again beat the Democratic House candidates.  Finally, in 2022, Democratic Gov. Whitmer won her race by 10.6%, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson won her race by 14%, and Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel won her race by 8.9%. 

To further aggravate matters, the Republican State Party is suffering a deep ideological division (a common theme in swing states) and a severe lack of funding.  The Party’s chair is Kristina Karamo, an outspoken Trump supporter who lost the 2022 race for Secretary of State by 14%.  Karamo defeated Matthew DePerno to become the Party’s chair.  DePerno lost his 2022 race for Attorney General by 8.9% and has been criminally charged with due possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine, and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer or computer system.  They represent two opposing wings of the Party.  At least two physical fights have broken out between Party officials.  

Republican donors have begun to give money to Michigan’s Republican House candidates through channels not under control of the State Party, which is so broke it closed its office and is operating out of a condominium unit.

The Michigan segment of the “blue wall” seems about as sturdy as ever.

CONCLUSIONS?

               Biden’s Electoral College advantage in the non-swing states gives him a head start, but for now Pennsylvania and Georgia look to be the where the race will be decided.  There’s a lot about the swing states that should give the Democrats hope.  In particular, the Republican State parties are often divided on ideological grounds and abortion access could continue to be a salient issue, but all of the swing states are extremely competitive with a lot of time left before Election Day.  Other issues could easily capture the attention of voters.  Inflation might increase again, the country might slip into a recession, the Russian war in Ukraine might disrupt geopolitics and the global economy, Trump’s legal troubles might take unexpected turns, issues related to immigration could fuel a nativist uprising, or other social issues could dominate the political discourse in ways that would change voter choices.   

What seems like an advantage now, might easily disappear overnight.  What isn’t likely to change is the importance of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada – or roughly 15% of our country’s population who will determine who our next president will be.  I guess that’s American-style democracy for you.

Monday, July 31, 2023

The Bodhicaryavatara / Santideva -- Crosby and Skilton, trans., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995

The eighth century Indian monk Santideva ranks among Buddhism's greatest writers.  His most important work is a ten-chapter poem entitled The Bodhicaravatara (Introduction to the Practice of the Bodhisattva) which concisely expresses the highest ideals and philosophy of the Mahayama tradition. 

The Four Noble Truths are rightly understood as a central -- if not the central -- concepts in Buddhism. Those truths are accepted and venerated by all Buddhists; however, for the Mahayana tradition, the concept of the bodhisattva is equally important.  The bodhisattva is a being that has vowed to forever work for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.  This amounts to a rejection of the earlier Buddhist traditions which sought to train monks to achieve their own individual enlightenment.  

The first step in following the path of the bodhisattva is "bodhicitta," i.e., taking a vow to seek the enlightenment of all sentient beings.  Santideva explores a distinction between two forms of bodhicitta: (1) making the determination to follow the path of the and (2) in fact setting out on the path of the bodhisattva.  He goes on to explain the characteristics of a bodhisattva which Buddhists have come to name "the six perfections:" generosity, obedience to the moral law, patience or forbearance, energy, meditative stability, and wisdom.  

The perfection of wisdom is the highest of these virtues.  Santideva provides a seminal treatment of wisdom in the nineth and longest chapter of the poem. Wisdom requires a bodhisattva both to exercise the other five virtues and it is necessary for the perfection of those virtues.  Most of all, gaining wisdom requires a true understanding of the world.  Crucially, this requires a deep and intuitive understanding of "sunyata," usually translated as "emptiness," and the understanding that all things are empty.  

Early Buddhist traditions do make mention of sunyata, but its first full expression appeared in the work of the second century Madhyamaka Buddhist writer Nagarjuna.  Santideva's treatment of sunyata is an excellent, concise treatment of Nagarjuna's formulation.

In the course of the work, Santideva presents a method by which one can develop compassion for others, known as "the exchange of self and others."  It is based on the idea that to achieve a sympathetic disposition toward all sentient beings, one should proceed in stages.  First, one should imagine that the well-being of someone you love, someone very close to you, is as important as your own well-being.  This should not be hard.  One should then go on to imagine the same is true for others not so close to you and then imagine the same for people for whom you have neutral feelings.  Finally, you should imagine that the well-being of people you dislike is as important as your own well-being.  By engaging in this exercise, one can develop compassion for all sentient beings and work more easily for their enlightenment. 

There are few works more important to the history of Buddhism than The Bodhicaryavatra. It is especially important to Tibetan Buddhism and is often mentioned by the Dalai Lama as the most influential work to his own thinking.