The Head Heeb

2003-08-24T20:42:00.000-04:00

I've moved

Thanks to the good offices of Matt Drachenberg at Blogmosis, I've moved to a better neighborhood. My new URL is:

http://headheeb.blogmosis.com.

Please update your links and bookmarks accordingly, and enjoy my new home!

2003-08-24T12:48:00.000-04:00

Countdown to Arrival Day, Week 5

This post continues the countdown to Arrival Day 2003. Arrival Day is a non-religious celebration of the founding of the American Jewish community, which occurred with the landing of the first Jewish immigrants in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. Every Sunday until September 7, I will post an essay on American Judaism from a historical, contemporary or personal perspective. Both Jews and non-Jews are invited to participate in the Arrival Day Blogburst on September 7; if you're interested, let me know via e-mail or in the comments.

The popular image of the American Jewish community today is that of a well-established, prosperous "model minority." What is often overlooked is that American Jews are an immigrant community to a greater extent than at any time since the 1920s. In the past thirty years, the United States has experienced a fourth wave of Jewish immigration comparable in magnitude of the great migration of 1880-1920.

Exact statistics are hard to come by, but it is probable that a plurality of the fourth-wave Jewish immigrants are from the former Soviet Union. From 1973 through 1979, and again during the late 1980s, the Soviet Union responded to American pressure by allowing up to 200,000 Jews to emigrate to the United States. This trend accelerated after 1989, when the Lautenberg Amendment allowed 50,000 Soviets to immigrate to the United States annually. Moreover, until 1992, Soviet Jews were accorded refugee status in the United States, allowing them to enter the country more easily than other persons from the former Soviet Union.

Thus, as the Soviet Union collapsed into economic ruin and semi- anarchy, hundreds of thousands of additional Soviet Jews moved to the United States. Some studies have placed the total number of Soviet Jews in the United States at 400,000, and others have pointed to even higher figures. In 1996, a study conducted by New York and New Jersey law enforcement agencies estimated that there were 350,000 Soviet Jewish immigrants living in the New York metropolitan area alone, with as many as 150,000 more living in other parts of the country.

The Israeli diaspora may account for almost as many new Americans. Many American-Israelis have one or more parents who were American citizens, and therefore hold United States citizenship from birth. Others have been able to settle in the United States due to the 1965 liberalization of American immigration law, which removed national-origin quotas and made it easier for families of immigrants to obtain permanent resident status. The Israelis living in the United States today are a diverse community, consisting not only of those having American ancestors but also the descendants of European and Mizrahi Jews.

As with Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, exact statistics are hard to come by. The Lahis Report, which was published as early as 1980, estimated that 300,000 to 500,000 Israelis lived permanently in the United States, primarily in New York and Los Angeles. A 1997 Jerusalem Post article likewise put the Israeli-American population at approximately 500,000. The United States Census Bureau places the number considerably lower, at less than 100,000 as of 1990.

Both figures are probably inaccurate. The Census Bureau figure likely undercounts Israeli immigrants with American ancestors, who may not have declared their ancestry as Israeli on their census forms. A considerable number of census respondents also declared no national origin at all. On the other hand, the Lahis Report may have erred in the opposite direction as a product of alarmism over emigration within Israeli society. The fact remains, however, that the Israeli-American population numbers at minimum in the hundreds of thousands.

About 50,000 to 80,000 Iranian Jews also reside in the United States today, most of them refugees from the 1979 revolution. There has also been some Jewish immigration from Syria and North Africa, and communities of Mizrahi Jews have grown up in New York during the past twenty to thirty years. There may thus be as many as a million Jewish immigrants living in the United States today, which means that while the American Jewish community contains proportionally fewer immigrants than it did a century ago, the absolute number is of similar magnitude.

As with the Great Migration, the fourth wave has led to social cleavages within the American Jewish community. For the first time since the mid-19th century, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews form a significant fraction of the American Jewish population, and the century-old Eastern European dominance of Jewish culture in the United States is under attack. This can be seen in everything from the Bukharan synagogues of Queens to the recent proliferation of Sephardic cookbooks - Mizrahi elements are being integrated into nearly every aspect of American Jewish culture.

Sometimes, however, integration is not so easy. As Lahav and Arian wrote in 1999, the secular outlook of many recent Jewish immigrants has led to misunderstanding:

The major arena of conflict, though rarely expressed explicitly is in the field of personal and national identity. Of those who described themselves as Jews by religion in the United States, 80 percent expressed a denominational preference for the Conservative and Reform synagogue movements, while only some 6 percent identified themselves as strictly religious, Orthodox Jews. In Israel, secular Israelis consider themselves Jewish regardless of their alienation from any form of Orthodoxy. They are usually unaware of American Jewry's attachment to Jewish religious traditions (i.e., Conservative and Reform movements) that constitute the majority of organized American Jewry, and that are often very different from those represented by Israeli Orthodoxy. This religious pluralism fits in the American mainstream culture of denominational and communal association, and is simultaneously alien to Israelis' perception of Jewish identity, which is an elementary component in the Israeli definition of citizenship and nationality. Israelis arriving to America discover the central role of the synagogue in the life of American Jews, while American Jews are stunned by the ignorance and complete withdrawal of Israelis from Jewish tradition and organizations.

The same is often true of Jews from the former Soviet Union, who had little opportunity to practice Judaism prior to immigration and whose Jewish identity is often more ethnic or national than religious. Some have become more observant and gravitated to religious institutions in the United States - as evidenced by the Bukharan synagogues down the street from me - but others have remained apart from the organized Jewish community and created their own parallel institutions.

The fourth wave of Jewish immigration has also brought an increase in problems that are common to recent immigrants, including poverty and crime. There have always been pockets of Jewish poverty - the image of American Jews as a prosperous middle-class community has never been entirely true - but Jewish organizations have placed poverty issues on a back burner for a generation or more. A visit to Brighton Beach makes clear that such a comfortable attitude toward poverty can no longer be taken.

Likewise, organizations such as the Aleph Institute, which works with Jewish prisoners, report that the crime rate among American Jews is increasing. Jews are still underrepresented in American prisons, with an incarceration rate of 1.5 to 2 per thousand compared to about 7 per thousand in the country as a whole. Nonetheless, this is a considerably higher rate than a decade ago, and Russian Jewish and Israeli immigrants have also appeared among the United States' emerging "ethnic mobs." This is a concern for the Jewish community not least because criminals tend to prey on their own; the primary victims of crime within the Jewish community are themselves Jewish. Moreover - as Rabbi Isaac Jaroslawicz of the Aleph Institute points out - Jews in prison are still Jews, and the Jewish community as a whole has a duty to assist in their rehabilitation.

For the past generation, the major focuses of Jewish organizations in the United States have been anti-Semitism, Israeli-diaspora relations and the maintenance of Jewish identity among third and fourth-generation American Jews. These issues are still important, but they are no longer enough - Jewish organizations must also return to their roots and respond to the challenges facing an immigrant community.

2003-08-24T12:46:00.000-04:00

The muse of fisking

Cinderella Bloggerfeller reveals an undiscovered Jonathan Swift poem about blog wars.

2003-08-23T09:05:00.000-04:00

Methodist militants

A small nationalist party in Fiji plans to march next month to prohibit the practice of non-Christian religions:

The New Nationalist Party is planning a march next month in Suva to traditionally request President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to stop non-Christians, particularly, the Hindus and Muslims from practising their religion publicly among other things.

Party president, Saula Telawa said among other things, they would request for the abrogation of the 1997 Constitution, to pardon the coup-makers serving jail-terms on Nukulau Island and declare Fiji a Christian State.

[...]

He said people of Fiji should live according to the teachings of the Bible.

"They should not be allowed to practice their religion publicly. If they want to hold a session of Ramayan or other religious activities, they do it inside their homes or if they are living on Freehold land, they can do it there but not on our native land. And no public holidays to mark Hindu and Muslim religious festivals, all this must stop. For all this to happen, the Constitution needs to go," he said.

This is not the first time that the extreme right in Fiji has called for the country to be declared a Christian state. Since the coup of 1987, militant Christianity has often functioned as a means of asserting the supremacy of indigenous Fijians - who are almost all Christian - over the large Indian minority. Recently, however, the call was echoed by the head of Fiji's powerful Methodist Church. As such, it is causing more than the usual amount of worry among Indo-Fijians, who fear that the movement to establish Christianity as the religion of Fiji might be gaining momentum.

It is doubtful that any such measure will be taken by the current government. Although Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase came to power on a Fijian nationalist platform, his commitment to national reconciliation and constitutional rule seems genuine, and he has refrained from precipitous measures against the Indo-Fijian population. If the more radical elements of the Taukei movement improve their position at the next election, however, establishment of Christianity may become an actual possibility.

2003-08-23T09:04:00.000-04:00

Wall of silence

Swaziland has equaled Botswana as the country with the highest HIV infection rate. The Botswana infection rate has stabilized as public health and education programs have begun to take effect, but Swaziland's rate has risen to 38.6 percent and is continuing its upward trend. Unlike Botswana, where education has begun to break through the wall of silence surrounding AIDS, HIV-positive people in Swaziland still suffer from stigmatization and denial:

As if to exemplify how unusual public disclosure remains, on Friday both the nation's daily newspapers carried front page stories about a woman who admitted she was HIV-positive status before the government's constitutional drafting committee.

"So long as we do not want to learn about HIV/AIDS, it will wipe us all out - and you are getting this from someone who has tested several times, and was proved HIV-positive," Buyile Mkhatshwa, a farmer's wife in rural Siphofaneni in the eastern Lubombo region, told the committee.

The committee was touring the region, collecting views from residents about the draft constitution proposed by King Mswati. Mkhatshwa pleaded for a constitution that would provide for children left orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. She was nearly shouted down by angry neighbours, who reportedly cried "Shame! Shame!" and demanded that she be removed from the gathering.

One public health worker commented that Swazis have become conditioned to view AIDS "as a moral failure" rather than a medical condition.

2003-08-23T09:03:00.000-04:00

More common currencies

African central bank chiefs aren't the only ones discussing the possibility of a common currency. An Australian Senate report has recently suggested a single currency for the Pacific, prompting opposition from Fiji:

Fiji would resist any attempt to introduce a single currency for Pacific Island countries, Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said during the 34th Pacific Forum meeting in Auckland.

"It is totally out of tune for Fiji. It is far-fetched and will not work at least as far as we are concerned and we will oppose any move in the direction," he said.

"The Fiji dollar has done well and will continue to remain in favour of exporters, importers and investors. I do not think the creation of a single currency will help our economy.

"The euro is still struggling and many countries appear to be having second thoughts on its effectiveness and we will not make such a mistake."

As in Africa, it is unlikely that a Pacific currency will be implemented anytime soon; the Australian prime minister has termed the idea "premature" notwithstanding the Senate report. In some ways, a Pacific currency centered on Australia would make more sense than a common African currency; many Pacific economies are oriented toward trade with Australia, and Pacific countries (with the exception of Fiji) tend to be too small for effective economies of scale in banking and currency exchange. Any move toward a single currency, however, is likely to be viewed as a power grab by Canberra, and as such will spark intense political opposition.

2003-08-22T20:40:00.000-04:00

Jewish lawmen of London

I recently wrote about Jews who were elected constable in colonial New York. It seems that New York was not the only place in which Jews were eligible for that office during the eighteenth century; the records of the Old Bailey reveal that Jews also enforced the law in contemporary London.

The advent of Jewish constables in London appears to have occurred somewhat later than in New York. The first Jew to hold that office in New York was elected in 1718, while Jewish names start cropping up in the London constables' rolls about 1760, with all but one serving in 1780 or later. The constabulary in London at that time was a minor civil office that was open to native-born homeowners; naturalized foreigners were excluded, but Jews born in Britain were apparently eligible. At least eight appear to have served between 1760 and 1800: Moses Benjamin, David Levy, Moses Barnet, Wolfe Solomon, Isaac Backrow, Jacob Lyon, Solomon Davis and Jacob Spinoza.

Benjamin and Spinoza, in particular, appear to have been substantial men in the Jewish community. Benjamin, who was a hatter by trade, held a number of other minor law enforcement posts, including headborough of Aldgate lower precinct and street-keeper of Rosemary Lane. His term as headborough coincided with the Gordon Riots of 1780, and he briefly confronted the rioting mob:

I live next door to Mr. Lebarty, in St. Catherine's-lane. I was at home on Wednesday night when the mob came; they came with a bell, a great many together; it was between ten and eleven o'clock; I would not go to bed left my house should be set on fire. I went down and took my long staff, I thought there would be other peace officers as well as myself; there were four; they went away, and then I went and put my staff in doors; I went to the house opposite Mr. Lebarty's; I saw the prisoner there, he is a neighbour. I have known him some little time; I saw him and his wife pulling the things about; he pulled down the window shutters on the outside of the house; then the mob went in and threw different things out at the window, beds and furniture; there was among the rest a shirt or shift, which the prisoner took up and put into his pocket. I said to a neighbour it was very hard to see these things taken away from a good neighbour as Lebarty was. I saw Turner take a grate out of the house; when I took him he acknowledged he had taken the grate, and his wife took me to the house where they had sold it.

During the time you saw the prisoner what were the mob doing? - There were twenty or thirty destroying every thing in the house, and throwing them out at the window. I apprehended the prisoner about four days after; there was no place to put people in, and we were afraid to take them sooner.

Spinoza, who served a decade later, also appears to have been socially prominent. He seems to have held office at a relatively early age; he was described as a "young fellow" during a 1789 episode in which he assisted in the capture of a robber after a street chase:

I live in Dunning's-alley, Bishopsgate-street. Last Saturday night, between six seven, I heard the cry of stop thief, and I ran out of the door, and faced the prisoner; he was running past my door; I stopped him, and I took the tippet from him; and I was not master enough for him: he chucked the muff into my arms, and I catched it; I kept close to him, running after him till he came into the broad way of Bishopsgate-street, and a young man faced him and caught him in his arms, and we delivered him to the patroles. I was not above half a yard off when he was caught.

His prominence is most apparent, however, from the fact that he was selected for jury service in 1794. This was an honor that was, at the time, reserved for key men in the community, and Spinoza was one of a very few Jews to be chosen during the eighteenth century.

David Levy's name appears frequently in the annals of the court, where he was well-known enough to be sworn as interpreter. His year as constable occurred in 1784, and included some hair-raising episodes:

... on the 31st of October, I being a constable, the watchmen, Thomas Bond, and Thomas Taylor, brought in the prisoner Goldsmith, into St. James's watch-house, Duke's Place, between three and four in the morning, he had a bundle under his arm, this is the bundle, I asked him what he had, he said he did not know, he said I came from Deptford, and my shipmates desired me to carry it along, I opened the bundle and saw it contained women's apparel, I bid him stand up, and in his coat pocket there were some half-pence, I put them into my hat, and asked him what half-pence he had, he said he did not know, out of his waistcoat there fell this linen waistcoat, then fell out some handkerchiefs from his bosom, then I found a silver purse in his pocket, half a guinea and three half crowns and seven shillings in silver, I opened his breeches, and there I found three pair of cotton stockings, and a pair of gloves, I opened the knees of his breeches, and behind there, in the bend of his knee, I found a watch, this watch fell out; I bid him open his mouth, and I took three guineas out of his mouth; I said then you had better tell me where your comrades are, and I will shew you some mercy, no, says he, damn my bloody eyes, I am done, and they are far enough off from me now, and you will never get them, I carried him to prison, and between six and seven, when the watchmen went off, I patrolled the parish myself, and I went round Leadenhall-street, and went into Houndsditch, and in Houndsditch I met the other three prisoners, and Aaron Levy who is another of the witnesses, and my watchman says to me, them are the three men, I followed the prisoners, and took them in the Minories, I took Jones, and I followed and knocked down Hall, I brought them all three to the watch-house, I first searched Jones, I opened his breeches and found two silk handkerchiefs, and a china snuff-box in his breeches pocket, and a crown's worth of halfpence he threw out of his pocket, they were picked up; on Hall I found four silver spoons, and two papers of half-pence; upon Smart I found a green purse, and seven shillings in silver, and six brass counters; when I took Jones to the counter, I bid him open his mouth, he would not, till he received a blow on the head, and then he did, I told him not to my fingers, when he opened his mouth I got two guineas out of his mouth, he swallowed something which had like to have checked him, I put my fingers down his throat, and pulled out the two guineas, and I gave him half a crown for not biting my fingers, here is all the property.

Levy was also something of a test case; in 1784, a non-Jewish prisoner he had arrested objected to his qualification as constable on religious grounds. The objection was unsuccessful, and the right of Jews to serve as constables was recognized by the court.

The names of the other three Jewish constables appear less frequently, although Solomon Davis held office at least three times: in 1784, 1786 and 1791. Isaac Backrow is noteworthy in that he was himself accused of theft in 1796 - apparently with respect to allegedly stolen goods that he had confiscated - and that his term in office ended when he became bankrupt. Jacob Lyon's name likewise comes up only once, but it does so in reference to a colorful encounter:

I am Constable: on the 20th of September [1791] there was a fire in Houndsditch; I met the prisoner with the bundle under his right arm, about half past ten o'clock, it was not concealed; this great coat was across the bundle when I took them, I asked him what he had there, he said I had no business with him; I collared him and took the bundles, I missed my hold of him, and took hold of his collar, he twisted round and hurt my finger, it has been lame ever since; he got away from me, I pursued him, and called stop thief, he was stopped by a young man; when he came to the watch-house he said damn your eyes you Jew b - r, I sha'nt weigh forty yet; he after that offered to give me a strike, not to swear against him; he told me a strike was a guinea.

The term "weigh forty" is apparently a reference to the forty pound reward for bringing in a robber.

It is likely that there were more Jewish constables. During the trial of Porter Ridout, which I discussed in my first Old Bailey article, one of the witnesses testified that he "went to look for some Jew constables, knowing their people could disperse them better than ours." It may have been common during the late 1700s for Jews to serve as constables in heavily Jewish neighborhoods such as Aldgate, where five of London's six synagogues were located. The great majority of the Jewish constables whose names appear in the record served in Aldgate, although Spinoza lived in the adjacent Bishopsgate ward. Indeed, the first question John Hurd was asked when he identified himself as an officer of Aldgate in 1794 was "are you a Jew?"

The experience of London's Jewish constables bespeaks a society where Jews could move fairly high up the social ladder. It was difficult for foreign-born Jews to be naturalized in eighteenth-century Britain, but those who were native-born or managed to acquire citizenship faced relatively few restrictions compared to their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. The legal profession, Parliament and the universities at Oxford and Cambridge were closed to them, and they faced considerable social prejudice, but those of middle-class status could achieve civil office and the respect of their neighbors.

2003-08-22T17:40:00.000-04:00

Making comparisons, part 4

Zachary Latif links to an International Business Center chart comparing the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions for 56 countries. The Hofstede dimensions are an attempt to statistically measure certain social indicators including inequality, individualism, gender roles and risk-averseness.

The Hofstede rankings, like most attempts to reduce cultural traits to statistics, are of doubtful utility. They were created primarily as rules of thumb for managers, and as such were based on workplace surveys, which may not represent accurate cross-sections of the population. Hofstede's original data were also collected during the 1970s, and may not account for social change during the past thirty years; there have been subsequent confirmatory studies, but these have been based on surveys of even narrower population sectors.

The data for Israel do appear somewhat dated. For instance, the Power Distance index, which purportedly measures social inequality, is at a very low level - a result more consistent with the early days of socialism and national solidarity than with present-day neo-Thatcherism and rising income disparities. Nevertheless, even an inaccurate study can be meaningful if it is inaccurate in the same way with respect to all countries - even if it is not valid as to individual countries, it provides a basis for comparison at a particular point in time.

Such a comparison indicates that Israel is essentially a Western society. The country with the Hofstede profile closest to Israel is Austria, and the Israeli indices are closest to the mean for "Christian" (i.e., non-Catholic) countries. If Israel's artificially high "uncertainty avoidance" index - which is likely a product of its ongoing state of siege - is taken into account, then it is even closer to the "Christian" norm.

The "Christian" countries studied by Hofstede are mainly in northern Europe, although they also include the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and South Africa. Of these, the European countries have profiles closest to Israel, with the non-European countries having higher levels of individualism and inequality. A similar survey taken in present-day Israel, however, would likely result in higher scores in these two areas, creating a profile closer to that of the United States.

It may be, then, that Israel is becoming more Americanized socially even as it increases its economic and institutional ties to Europe. Certainly, the Israeli indicators - even extrapolated for their probable present-day value - are closer to the West in general than to other Middle Eastern countries. It probably isn't wise to read too much into these statistics, but they seem to reflect the common wisdom.

2003-08-22T07:55:00.000-04:00

It's that time again

The Al-Ahram Chronicle discusses the legacy of two great Egyptian poets who died within weeks of each other in 1933.

2003-08-21T17:25:00.000-04:00

Chipping away?

In the Cairo Times, Charles Levinson summarizes the reform measures undertaken by several Arab countries since the invasion of Iraq, and discusses whether they are purely cosmetic or the beginning of an actual democratizing trend.

2003-08-21T15:01:00.000-04:00

From the "crime doesn't pay" department

Punishment is supposed to be a deterrent to crime - but what is a court supposed to do when the penalty is an attraction, as it was for Joseph Woolley in 1786? Woolley, a soldier in the Coldstream regiment, was caught stealing from a servant at the inn where he lived, and told his victim that he had done it deliberately in order to be transported:

I charged a constable with the prisoner, and the next day at Litchfield-street he confessed breaking open the box, and selling the things to a Jew in Westminster; no promise was made to him of any sort; there was a shirt which he owned taking the Thursday before, which I did not miss; and he told the constable where it was pawned; nothing else was recovered; he said, he did it to go to Botany Bay; for he was tired of the military law, and was determined to go there.

Woolley's boast could, of course, have been the liquor talking, because he was "much in liquor" at the time of his arrest. On the other hand, it isn't hard to imagine that someone stuck at the bottom of the eighteenth-century British class system might dream of transportation as a means of starting fresh in a new society. Nor is it impossible to imagine a soldier of the time chafing at military discipline and deciding to do something drastic in order to terminate his enlistment.

Whatever Woolley's intentions were, however, they left the sentencing court unamused:

... there is this peculiar circumstance in your case, that you have avowed the commission of this crime, with an intention of being transported to Botany Bay, prefering the ignominious punishment of being transported from your own country, to an honest life in it; the Court will indulge you in your desire of being transported, but you will be disappointed in the place, you shall not chuse your place of destination; and therefore the sentence of the Court is, that you be transported for seven years to Africa: and the Court wish it to be understood, that if there are any persons so infatuated and lost to all regard to the laws of their country, as to prefer transportation in an ignominious manner to a distant place, from whence they have no hope of returning, the Court will disappoint their expectations, by changing the place of their transportation.

The court was somewhat more accommodating in the case of Joseph Herbert the following year, who also reacted to being caught by stating that "now he was sure of going to Botany-bay." The judge did not disappoint him:

You are very well remembered here; the expressions you have used, prove you to be an old offender; you seem to have known the distinctions; you told the man who took you up, that you expected to go to Botany-bay; that expectation will certainly be fulfilled.

The moral of the story, if there is one, is that it's all right to expect to go to Botany Bay for theft, but it's a bad idea to want it too much.

2003-08-20T17:22:00.000-04:00

Emergency call

The Nigerian government is considering military action in response to the continued ethnic warfare between Ijaw and Itsekiri militias in the Warri district. The current violence, which has claimed hundreds of lives during the past week, is a continuation of the clashes that occurred in March.

2003-08-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

Affirmative action goes Israeli

A ministerial committee led by Ariel Sharon has approved an economic development plan that includes affirmative action for Israeli Arabs in civil service positions. As in the United States, affirmative action can only be a partial solution; an affirmative action plan would help reduce the high unemployment rate among Arab university graduates and expand minorities' route into the middle class, but it will not eliminate inequalities caused by social prejudice or differential access to education. Still, if this plan is implemented, it will be evidence of Israel's fitful but real good faith in addressing the concerns of its Arab citizens.

2003-08-19T18:38:00.000-04:00

A premature union

African central bank chiefs debated the possibility of a single African currency at a Uganda conference yesterday. Among the advantages cited was that a single currency "removes costs of converting money from one currency to another among African countries" - costs which, in a continent that has too many small countries, may add significantly to the price of intra-continental trade. The experience of the CFA franc, however, which is shared by 14 countries in West and Central Africa, indicates that a common currency may not help a great deal without political stability, debt relief, reduced corruption and relaxation of tariff barriers.

Moreover, a single currency would unite the monetary policies of countries which have different business cycles and are at varying levels of economic development. An African currency governing board would most likely be dominated by South African and Nigerian interests, which are not necessarily good for the rest of the continent. If the African monetary unit is pegged to the euro like the CFA franc, control over monetary policy will move even further away, leading to the possibility of forced devaluations such as occurred in West Africa in 1993. A common currency would also require a degree of fiscal discipline that few African governments exercise at present. It might be a desirable long-term project, but its viability now is highly questionable, and other economic reforms are more urgent.

2003-08-19T16:31:00.000-04:00

Not again

At least 20 people have been blown up in Jerusalem, apparently by Islamic Jihad. This is already one of the largest suicide bombings ever, and the final tally may be even higher.

Abu Mazen, who was "meeting with Islamic Jihad representatives at the time of the blast," has of course issued a condemnation of the attack. That doesn't matter. What matters is what he said to those Islamic Jihad representatives, and what he plans to say and do to them tomorrow. If the Palestinian Authority takes a "who, us?" attitude toward this attack, then the Quartet might as well hang a big "detour" sign on the road map. The only way to save this now is for the PA to start acting like a sovereign state in waiting.

Damn, I'm depressed. May the victims rest in peace.

2003-08-19T15:30:00.000-04:00

Another milestone

Congratulations to Zachary Latif for posting the 3000th comment.

2003-08-19T12:08:00.000-04:00

All you need is a shilling and a dream

When eighteenth-century British criminals got up to no good, they often committed surprisingly modern crimes. Consider, for instance, the trial of Thomas Day for lottery fraud on April 27, 1720.

Government-sponsored gambling is nothing new under the sun. Lotteries with cash prizes go back at least to the sixteenth century, and their history in England begins during the Elizabethan era. Beginning in 1694, the national lottery was a regular event in Britain with tickets sold through registered agents; then, as now, lotteries were considered a more palatable alternative to taxation.

With rich prizes to be won, the temptation to fraud was too much for some criminally minded Englishmen. Day, who was the first lottery forger to be immortalized in the archives of the Old Bailey, was accused of "feloniously altering the Numbers of two Lottery Tickets that were drawn Blanks, to the Numbers of two that were drawn Prize s. viz. No. 64590, to 61960, a Prize of 500l. and 64592 to 68073. a Prize of 100l. on the 30th of December last, with an Intention to defraud our Sovereign Lord the King." At a time when working-class wages sometimes amounted to less than ten pounds a year, the prospect of winning 600 pounds was more than enough for some people to risk the penalties of the Bloody Code.

Day was luckier than many; he was unsuccessful in redeeming the tickets, but was acquitted of the criminal charges. The jury found it "very plain" that "the Numbers of the Tickets were alter'd," but apparently believed Day's protestations that he did not alter them himself.

The risk of fraud was countered by elaborate security measures, as this 1746 trial reveals:

Gentlemen, the Method in which I propose to lay this Evidence before you, will be in the first Place to shew you, that the Ticket is in Fact an alter'd, counterfeit, not a true Ticket. In order to shew that, it may be necessary to observe to you the Manner of making out these Lottery Tickets. 'Tis directed, that there shall be a Book made, and that in that Book there shall be three Columns. I shall first mention to you the Columns, then the Reason. The Act of Parliament directs, that the Book shall be divided into three Columns, the middle Column is to be the Ticket, which is to be sold and dispos'd off to the Proprietor of the Lottery. The outside is to be given to the Adventurer. The Ticket next to that goes into the Wheel, but between them there are Flourishes, and those Flourishes must exactly agree. Further, at the End of the other Ticket there is another Flourish, which, when the Party comes to the Government to receive the Prize, supposing it to be a Prize, 'tis check'd with a Flourish remaining upon the Back; and if it does not agree with it, 'tis clear 'tis a Forgery. I don't think the Wisdom of Man could have invented a greater Method of certain Security, than having these particular Flourishes, so divided by a Pair of Scissars.

The 17-year-old defendant in that trial, John Peter Mayaffree, attempted to defraud the lottery by changing ticket 19165 to 19105, which carried a prize of 20 pounds. This choice of numbers, according to the King's counsel, was deliberate:

This Ticket he bought at Wilson's Lottery-Office ; when he came there he enquir'd for some Lottery Tickets to buy, and enquir'd for Numbers where there were either 6 or 9 in these Numbers: The People with regard to Chances might be superstitious; a plausible Reason he gives why he desir'd Numbers of 6 and 9, was that they were fortunate and lucky Numbers: Gentlemen, I am afraid it will be the Reverse to himself. Gentlemen, if you consider it, it is an easy Thing to take off 6 and make it an 0.

Unfortunately for Mayaffree, the King could not so easily be defrauded, and he was convicted upon proof that "the Flourish on this Ticket and the Flourish in the Lottery-Office Book do exactly tally with Number 19165." He received the death sentence, although "the Jury on Account of his excellent Character and tender Years, recommended him to his Majesty's Mercy."

The trial records reveal many variations on the theme of lottery fraud, including altering the date rather than the ticket number and even selling tickets for nonexistent lotteries. Others sought to avoid government security measures by selling tickets to third parties and demanding a partial deposit in a manner prefiguring the modern-day lottery scam. Indeed, the lottery scam in its 1777 incarnation was almost the same as it is today - the perpetrator claimed to be a foreigner who had drawn a prize-winning ticket and needed to dispose of it to an eligible winner. Some things, it seems, never change.

2003-08-18T18:12:00.000-04:00

Rebuilding municipal government

Ilene Prusher discusses the possibility of Palestinian local elections later this year. If held, they would be the first since 1976; sporadic municipal elections were held during the early years of the occupation, but were subsequently discontinued by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

2003-08-18T13:35:00.000-04:00

The Two-State Solution 2a: Ethnic federalism and its discontents

Swarthmore College has a fascinating online exhibit about the Jewish "autonomous region" created by Stalin in Birobidzhan, Siberia. Stalin's vision for the Jews was, naturally, highly anti-religious; although he spoke the language of national self-determination, his goal was to fit Jews into the scheme of Soviet territorial minorities rather than to promote or protect Jewish culture.

Birobidzhan was actually Stalin's second choice; the initial plan to resettle Soviet Jews in agricultural colonies began in Ukraine, the Crimea and Belarus, where more than 200,000 Jews established collective farms during the 1920s. Resistance from local populations, however, forced Stalin to redirect the Jewish settlement project to a more isolated area. Birobidzhan was chosen for its sparse population, its location near the Chinese border and the availability of exploitable natural resources.

Of course, the very isolation and inhospitability of Birobidzhan - combined with Stalin's failure to provide adequate support - ensured that relatively few settlers would come. Nonetheless, about 30,000 did so, including more than 1000 foreign Jews. These received the standard Soviet national minority package, which offered little in the way of real self-determination but did permit education and cultural activities in Yiddish. Stalin's tolerance of Jewish culture did not extend to religious rights; there was no synagogue in Birobidzhan until 1947. The Yiddish language was favored over Hebrew in order to promote national over religious identity - ironically, the same reason that Hebrew was favored by many Zionists.

Nor did the isolation of Birobidzhan protect its Jews from Stalin's depredations. During the great purges of the late 1930s, many of the leaders of the Birobidzhan project were imprisoned or executed, and Jewish cultural institutions were closed down. Although there was some revival of cultural rights after the war and even a minor influx of Jewish settlement, this ended in 1948 with Stalin's renewed assault on Soviet Jews, which featured book-burnings reminiscent of the Middle Ages. By that time, Israel had also taken on the role of the Jewish national home. The Jewish Autonomous Region still exists - the only specifically Jewish political entity other than Israel to be established in modern times - but Jews are a small fraction of the remaining population.

The Birobidzhan project, however, may still have relevance today as an example of how "ethnic federalism" can succumb to excessive centralism and authoritarian rule. As such, it is a cautionary warning against the increasingly common suggestion that Israel and Palestine form a binational federal state. The argument commonly made in favor of such a solution is that the separation of powers and local autonomy inherent in a federal system will prevent the Jewish character of Israel from being overwhelmed by a Palestinian demographic majority. I've previously argued, however, that a federal system - like any other constitutional system existing within the borders of a single nation-state - is only viable as long as the central government retains the commitment to enforce it.

Birobidzhan, I believe, is a case in point. The 1918 constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, of which Birobidzhan was part, was on its face a progressive document that guaranteed national self-determination to its constituent regions. Regional and local councils were, in theory, provided with broad power to "decide all questions of purely local importance." Under Stalin, however, this constitution was worth exactly as much as the paper on which it was written. Jews are zero for one with respect to the capacity of ethnic federalism to protect their self-determination.

Would an Israeli-Palestinian federation be like the Soviet Union? Very likely not, if only for lack of a Stalin-like figure with absolute political authority. Nevertheless, the experience of ethnic federalism even under less totalitarian central rule is not encouraging. The Forum of Federations lists 25 countries with federal political systems. Of these, seven - Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Spain and the United Kingdom - have federal structures that are, at least in part, based explicitly on ethnic boundaries. Pakistan, with its federally administered tribal areas, might qualify as an eighth.

Spain can be counted out as an example for an Israeli-Palestinian federation, because the self-determination granted to the Basque and Catalan autonomies exists within the confines of a specifically Castilian national hegemony. The record of the other seven is hardly inspiring. In Ethiopia, ethnic federalism has been widely criticized as a figleaf for one-party rule, enabling the ruling party to co-opt restive minorities by expanding its patronage base. The Pakistani tribes owe their autonomy more to the ruggedness of their homeland and the number of AK-47s per capita than any commitment to constitutionalism on the part of the Pakistani government. Nobody can be sure how long the tripartite Bosnian federation will last after the peacekeepers leave, and the record of Serbia in protecting its minority populations is, to say the least, not a model that Israelis or Palestinians would want to follow.

Modern Russia is possibly the most intriguing analogy, because ethnic federalism there has been at least a partial success. During the post-Soviet era, there has been some real devolution of power to the regions, and this has been accompanied by an increase in cultural rights for certain national minorities. In other cases, however, Soviet-era Russian irredentism has prevented minorities from realizing their right to self-determination even within their own republics. The legacy of Russification has been most controversial in Latvia, where more than a third of the population was ethnically Russian at the time of independence, but its effects have been even more profound in many of the Russian Federation's autonomous republics. In some of them, ethnic Russians are now a majority or a plurality, and - particularly where the Russian and indigenous populations are near parity - this has led to active repression of local cultures. In the Republic of Mari, for instance, the Mari - a Finnic ethnic group - make up 43 percent of the population, while ethnic Russians are 47 percent. The Russians, who make up a majority of the urban population and dominate the republic's economy, have solidified their political control during the post-Soviet era, defunded many Mari educational and cultural institutions and systematically purged ethnic Mari from the provincial government.

It may not be too alarmist to envision similar developments taking place in an Israeli-Palestinian federation. Most initial proposals for such a federation call for one of the constituent units to be almost entirely Jewish and the other to be almost entirely Arab. However, these proposals also call for an unlimited right of return to the Palestinian areas of the federation. Given the comparative population density of Israel and the Palestinian territories, combined with the guarantee of internal freedom of residence, it is inevitable that the Arab population will spill over into the Jewish canton. Unless freedom of movement within the federation is restricted - a measure that would make federalism essentially pointless - this irredentism will ultimately affect the balance of power in the Israeli canton and consequently in the federal state as a whole.

But what about Belgium and the United Kingdom? Irredentism doesn't seem to be much of a concern there, and ethnic federalism has proven more viable than in Russia. Both countries, however, have important characteristics that distinguish them from others in which ethnic federalism has been attempted. The UK and Belgium both have strong and well-established traditions of democracy and rule of law, ethnic tensions have been subdued to the point where separatist violence is no longer common and the constituent nationalities have had well over a century to get used to being part of one country. Moreover, federalism in these countries was the result of a devolution of power, and was thus viewed as a partial concession to national self-determination rather than a forced marriage. And even with these favorable conditions, many remain discontented with a federal solution, as shown by the continuing Flemish separatism in Belgium.

An Israeli-Palestinian federation is, I think, more likely to go the way of Russia than of Belgium or the UK. Several aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship practically guarantee instability - the recent history of violent conflict, the inherent tension between Jewish economic dominance and Arab demographic dominance, weak rule of law among Palestinians, authoritarian political traditions on the Palestinian side (and arguably, to some extent, on the Israeli side) and irredentism among Palestinians and the Israeli right. It is difficult to imagine a constitutional structure that would reliably preserve the self-determination of both peoples within the context of a single nation-state, even with a strong federal system.

To be sure, this outcome is not certain. However, before taking any step as drastic as unifying two warring nations, a thorough risk assessment is necessary. Specifically, it is necessary to ask (1) what's the worst that could happen, (2) how likely is it that the worst will happen, and (3) how easy will it be to undo the damage if the worst does happen. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, the worst that could result from a federation is large-scale repression or civil warfare, and - if the above examples are any guide - the likelihood is at least moderate. Moreover, an Israeli-Palestinian federation will create such an entanglement of territory and institutions that it will be practically impossible to undo - which means that even moderate risks must be undertaken with extreme care.

In the end, the risks of binationalism aren't worth the rewards, particularly since many of the same rewards can be obtained through an EU-style arrangement where Israel and Palestine share institutions but have the protection of Westphalian sovereignty. As long as the nation-state remains the basic geopolitical unit, the two-state solution is the only arrangement that can be relied upon to protect both parties' national interests, both through internationally guaranteed sovereignty and by providing a state to which Palestinian refugees could repatriate without raising irredentist fears. If Israeli and Palestinian self-determination are worth preserving - and I believe that they are - then the only viable solution, at least in the short to medium term, involves separate states. A two-state solution will be messy and in some ways unjust, but any other plan will be more so.

2003-08-17T14:38:00.000-04:00

Countdown to Arrival Day: Week 4

This post continues the countdown to Arrival Day 2003. Arrival Day is a non-religious celebration of the founding of the American Jewish community, which occurred with the landing of the first Jewish immigrants in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. Every Sunday until September 7, I will post an essay on American Judaism from a historical, contemporary or personal perspective. Both Jews and non-Jews are invited to participate in the Arrival Day Blogburst on September 7; if you're interested, let me know via e-mail or in the comments. Those of you who are impatient can also read Randy McDonald's excellent early entry, to which I will also link in September.

A number of places other than Israel have been proposed as Jewish homelands - Uganda, Birobidzhan, Madagascar and Northern Rhodesia are only four. The majority of these proposals involved the African continent or isolated parts of Asia, but to two nineteenth-century Jewish utopians, the promised land was the United States.

The first of these was an eccentric New York editor, playwright and Tammany Hall politician named Mordecai Manuel Noah. Despite his name, Noah's ancestry was primarily Ashkenazic; he was born in Philadelphia in 1785 to a German Jewish father who had fought in the Revolutionary War. As a young man, he moved to New York and held a number of political offices, serving as sheriff, city judge and surveyor of the port. He also served briefly as consul to Tunis - an episode that may have galvanized his plan to establish a Jewish colony in upstate New York.

In 1825, Noah persuaded a wealthy acquaintance to Grand Island, located north of Buffalo, as a Jewish refuge. Amid high ceremony, he put out a call for settlers:

As an American and as a Jew, Noah was constantly looking for points where American and Jewish interests might intersect. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, America's greatest need was for immigrants. In his travels in Europe and Africa, Noah learned that Jews in the Old World desperately needed a haven for themselves and their children. To bring such Jews to a welcoming America would be a signal service to both.

The drama Noah staged in Buffalo on September 15, 1825, in dedicating Ararat as "A City of Refuge for the Jews," with men marching, band playing, and "Judge" Noah in regal vestments orating, was for both America and world Jewry. The pageant, the proclamation, and Noah's speech were intended to grab the attention of newspaper editors to whom description and text were sent. Accounts of the Ararat drama appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and in England, France, and Germany as well. The drama presented the Jews as the most desirable citizens a nation could want-able, ambitious, productive, and loyal; to the Jews of the Old World, it portrayed what kind of country America was for the Jews. Political dignitaries, leaders of society, and the general populace joined to celebrate the establishment of a city for Jews, while America's most prominent Jew proclaimed a Jewish state on American soil and welcomed his brethren to settle it.

His efforts, however, met with failure due to lack of interest, poor planning and inadequate financing. Within a few years, Noah abandoned his American colonization plan and became an early advocate of Jewish settlement in Palestine.

It is one of history's unexplored coincidences that the revelation of Joseph Smith, which led to the founding of the Mormon church, occurred in virtually the same place less than two years later. It is unlikely that the two men ever met, but some of Noah's articles were published in the newspaper of Smith's hometown of Palmyra, and the Noah plan was the subject of much discussion in upstate New York at the time. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Smith knew of Noah's proposals, and it is fascinating to imagine the effect Noah's messianism might have had on Smith's. At least one historian has characterized the Ararat plan as a "blueprint for the Mormon Zion."

It's also interesting to compare Noah's career to that of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the other sponsor of Jewish agricultural settlement in the New World. Baron de Hirsch was born in Germany in 1831, a few years after the failure of Noah's colony. He came from one of the first Jewish noble families in Germany, but made his fortune in a time- honored way - by marrying his boss's daughter. By the time he was forty, he was a railroad tycoon, a major commodities trader and a noted philanthropist.

Unlike Noah, Baron de Hirsch never embraced Zionism; on one occasion, he refused a request for aid from Theodor Herzl on the ground that the concept of a Jewish state was a dangerous fantasy. He did, however, share Noah and Herzl's belief that life for Jews in Europe - at least Eastern Europe - was a dead end. He proposed, instead, that colonies of Jewish yeomen be established in the United States, Canada and Argentina:

Hirsch envisioned the transformation of Eastern European Jewry into a class of independent farmers and handicraftsmen in the New World. He established the New York based Baron de Hirsch Fund in 1891 facilitate this goal. Hirsch recruited Mayer Sulzberger, William B. Hackenburg, Jacob H. Schiff, Myer S. Isaacs, Oscar S. Straus and other American Jewish leaders to serve as officers and trustees. Later that same year, Hirsch created the Jewish Colonization Association to facilitate mass emigration of Jews from Russia to agricultural colonies particularly in Argentina and Brazil.

The desire of Hirsch and his Fund's leadership to recast Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the image of "biblical farmers" was shaped by a mix of attitudes. The trustees wanted to reverse the historic discrimination that banned their Eastern European brethren from farming. At the same time, they shared a negative Western European stereotype of Eastern European Jews as unskilled workers, beggars and peddlers. Therefore the goal of the Fund's leadership was to improve the lot of Eastern European Jews and transform them into a socio-economic class acceptable to the tastes of the 19th century Jewish elite.

Baron de Hirsch's colonies were far better financed and coordinated than Noah's, and a number of settlements such as Woodbine, New Jersey actually got off the ground. In the end, however, these colonies also failed. Most of the settlers drifted to cities with established Jewish communities, and the Hirsch fund ironically ended up financing colonies in Israel. Some of the charities established by Baron de Hirsch still exist, but his farming colonies and trade schools closed up shop by the 1930s.

By that time, however, there was no need for utopians to sponsor Jewish settlement in America. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 1.8 million Jews entered the United States in one of the greatest mass migrations in Jewish history. The failure of sponsored Jewish colonization in the New World no longer mattered, because the modern American Jewish community had created itself. The United States may not have been the promised land, but for millions of Jews it was the goldeneh medina.

2003-08-16T12:01:00.001-04:00

The good die young

Idi Amin is dead at 80.

2003-08-16T12:01:00.000-04:00

Fine dining goes Zambian

One of Lusaka's new restaurants, Chile's, is a traditional Zambian place - a relatively recent development in Africa, where most upscale restaurants still prefer European to local cuisines. The featured ingredient at Chile's is of course nshima, a cereal staple similar to West African fufu that is served with a variety of meats and vegetables.

2003-08-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

More nativism in Botswana

As a follow-up to my earlier discussion of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants in Botswana, an article in this week's Mmegi points to increasing anti-immigrant sentiment.

2003-08-15T17:15:00.000-04:00

Chronicle time

The Oriental Music Conference - the Middle East was evidently still considered "oriental" at the time - took place in Cairo from March 28 to April 3, 1932. As with everything else in Egypt at that time, the discussion of music was tinged with nationalism and calls to purge foreign influences as well as serious academic debate. Naturally, Oum Kolsoum was there for the finale.

2003-08-15T15:56:00.000-04:00

Feelin' groovy

Well, what can I say? I was in the office when the blackout hit; I made my way down ten flights of stairs, milled around outside until I got some idea of what was going on, and walked home. I live about nine miles from the office, so it was no big deal; a few of the people I met on the road had to walk all the way to Nassau County.

My first thought, like everyone else's, was that it was a terrorist attack; I never thought I'd be relieved to hear that the East Coast had been fried by an ordinary power plant failure, but I was. Once it became clear that terrorism wasn't involved, I actually began enjoying the trip, and I was far from the only one. I resisted the temptation to start belting out Simon and Garfunkel while crossing the 59th Street bridge, but the mood was more a party than a disaster area. Kids outside apartment buildings in Queens handed out water for free; people joked with strangers met on the road and cheered the pickup trucks that passed by full of passengers. It was New York all over; we piss and moan about ordinary things, but when it hits the fan, we show the world how it's done.

As I write this, the lights have been on in my neighborhood for about half an hour, and a spot check of friends around the city indicates that most of them are also back up. I suspect that the last of the blackout won't end for another day or two, but the worst is over. Should be fun to watch the finger-pointing.

UPDATE: According to Mapquest, my commute is exactly 10 miles. Evidently, the Queens Boulevard stretch was longer than I thought.

2003-08-14T15:19:00.000-04:00

Timely flight

Chris Uba, the political godfather who was allegedly behind the Anambra State coup, has reportedly fled to the United States to avoid prosecution. The sudden flight of Uba, who is well-connected and no doubt has many back-channel sources of information about planned government activities, may be a sign that the call for judicial inquiry is about to bear fruit.

2003-08-14T11:12:00.000-04:00

The festival of love

Imshin points out that today is Tu b'Av, a holiday of which I was not previously aware. Tu b'Av, which falls on the fifteenth day of the month of Av, has been described as "Jewish Valentine's Day," because one of its attributes is the festival of love:

The Mishna (Ta'anit 4:8), surprisingly enough, proclaims, "There were no greater holidays (yamim tovim) for Israel than Tu B'av and Yom Kippur, for on them the girls of Jerusalem used to go out in borrowed white dresses ... and dance in the vineyards. What would they say? 'Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself ...' "

In earlier times Tu B'av was a festival dedicated to young Jewish men and women finding their mates. Even today, the wall posters of Jerusalem announce special Tu B'av prayers for finding a match.

Tu b'Av also occurs six days after the major fast of Tisha b'Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple and other calamities. Tisha b'Av, moreover, is the culmination of a three-week period of mourning beginning with the Fast of Tammuz. Tu b'Av, which comes soon after the completion of this period, is thus a holiday of release - an acknowledgment that "the worst is behind us."

For me, naturally, a festival of love calls to mind one person only. The worst was behind me the day I met Naomi, and the years of friendship and marriage that followed are cause for celebration not only today but every day. Today may be Tu b'Av in Jerusalem, but I will call it Naomi's day.

2003-08-13T16:46:00.002-04:00

Swazi strike

Two months after a general strike failed to bring down Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe, a similar protest is taking place in Swaziland against the autocratic rule of King Mswati III. Unfortunately, Mswati seems to be responding in much the same way Mugabe did; a 5000-person demonstration in the capital was broken up by security forces, and at least one person was reportedly killed by the police. The three-day strike is supported by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which has shut down the Swazi border crossings in solidarity.

2003-08-13T16:46:00.001-04:00

Cooperation across boundaries

Via Israel21c: Israeli scientists have cooperated with Saudi and Kuwaiti researchers in identifying the gene that causes HRD, a rare and often fatal genetic disease that affects Arab children. The research was coordinated by American scientist George Diaz, thus allowing the Israeli and Arab scientists to maintain technically separate projects while pooling their research data:

Knowing that scientists from the Arab countries were not permitted to be in contact with Israelis, even by e-mail, Diaz volunteered as coordinator of the project that found the exact location of the gene. Putting all of the findings together was crucial, since the larger number of individuals who took part in the genetic study increased the accuracy of finding the exact section of the chromosome where the gene is located.

It is hoped that the project will eventually lead to a cure for HRD, which affects at least 35 Israeli Arab families.

2003-08-13T16:46:00.000-04:00

Closer to a schism?

The Primate of the Anglican Communion in Nigeria has indicated that the Nigerian church might break its ties with the Episcopal Church in the United States of America over the latter's ordination of its first openly gay bishop.

2003-08-13T13:32:00.000-04:00

Justice at the bar

A few years ago, paleoconservative columnist George Szamuely became a minor cause celebre when he was arrested for hoarding 570 overdue books belonging to the New York University library. Szamuely, a former NYU graduate student, eventually copped to a misdemeanor and received a $4000 fine and 200 hours' community service - a punishment about which he complained in his New York Press column.

Szamuely's fate, however, pales in comparison to the punishment meted out to Henry Justice at the Old Bailey in 1736. Justice was tried for simple grand larceny - possibly the most common offense charged in British courts at that time - but he was far from the ordinary thief. He was an attorney and a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge, and his crime, like Szamuely's, was theft of "divers Books" from the university library.

Justice was obviously a lover of learning; the indictment against him listed almost 70 books in English, French and Latin, concerning subjects ranging from history and law to the works of Virgil. Even before the indictment was read, Justice made clear that his concern was for his books, stating that "there have been many Books seized at my Chambers, which can be proved not to belong to Trinity College, I hope your Lordship will order them to be restored me."

Unlike most defendants, Justice was represented by counsel, and he made a vigorous defense. He admitted to possessing the books, but argued that, as a Fellow Commoner and a member of the Trinity corporation, he had the right to borrow them:

I acknowledge, as I always did, and have now done, that I had the Books. I apprehend, I had Authority to take them. First, a General Authority to take what Books I wanted, out of the Library. Secondly, An Authority in my own Right, as a Scholar of the College; and if this appears, this Matter will be so far from being Felony, that it can't be a Trespass. I intended to return them, and this may appear from my declaring that I had them, delivering up my Keys, and packing them up before the Warrant for the College-Books was granted.

His attorney wrung from the librarian an admission that "any of the Fellows have Liberty to borrow a Book," but that worthy later explained that this privilege did not apply to Fellow Commoners:

Justice. What are the Privileges of Fellow Commoners?

Wilson. They sit at the Fellows Table, and take the other Advantages that Fellows have; they have no Right to take Books ad libitum. You have a Right to take a Book if your Tutor gives leave, and 'tis placed to his Account. Fellow-Commoners we look on as Boarders; they are no part of the Corporation, and have no Right to take Books without this Licence.

[...]

Justice. In relation to a Fellow Commoner, I would ask whether they have not more Privileges than other Graduates.

Wilson. We allow you to go into the Library to study there, not on any other account.

Justice. Are not Fellow Commoners looked upon as superior to Scholars?

Wilson. Yes. -

Justice. What do you mean by a Fellow Commoner?

Wilson. One who sits at the same Table with Fellows, and enjoys their Conversation.

Justice chipped away at this testimony by pointing out that the rule against Fellow Commoners borrowing books was often neglected in practice, and that other students had kept library books for as long as 30 years. He called his tutor, Professor Taylor, to testify that he had leave to borrow books at will - a privilege that was "not very common; but as Mr. Justice was a Gentleman, I indulged him" - and blamed the young assistant library keeper for not recording the books he had taken. This argument, however, was unavailing; the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and Justice was sentenced to seven years' transportation to America. He begged for leave "to transport himself, or that a worthy Gentleman of the City of York might contract for him," but the judge's class solidarity would not go so far, and "the Court would not grant him such Liberty."

On May 17, 1736, Justice - who had spent six months in jail awaiting trial - was ushered out of Newgate prison to begin his life abroad:

A hundred felons-convict walked from Newgate to Black-fryars, and thence went in a close lighter on board a ship at Blackwall. But Weathercock the attorney, Messrs. Ruffhead, Vaughn, and Bird went to Blackwall in two hackney coaches, and Henry Justice, Esq., Barrister at law, in another, two hours after the walking felons, attended by Jonathan Forward, Esq. These five gentlemen of distinction were accommodated with the captain’s cabin, which they stored with provisions, etc., for their voyage and travels.

He disappears from history after this point, although he is believed to have settled in Maryland and James Davie Butler specifies that he might have been bought as a tutor for George Washington. If anything is clear from Justice's fate, however, it's that George Szamuely got off easy.

2003-08-12T18:07:00.000-04:00

Closer to statehood

Jean-Jacques Cornish reports on a memorandum from the South African Department of Foreign Affairs supporting Somaliland's case for independence:

"It is undeniable that Somaliland does indeed qualify for statehood, and it is incumbent upon the international community to recognise it," read the report that was recently commissioned by Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma.

The government’s lawyers agree that "any efforts to deny or delay would not only put the international community at the risk of ignoring the most stable region in the Horn [of Africa], it would impose untold hardship upon the people of Somaliland due to the denial of foreign assistance that recognition entails."

[...]

"The interest of world peace and stability require that, where possible, the division or fragmentation of existing states should be managed peacefully and by negotiation. But where this is not possible, as is the case with Somalia, international law accepts that the interests of justice may prevail over the principle of territorial integrity."

The South African memorandum follows a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group recommending that Somaliland be granted observer status on the UN and African Union pending a final determination as to recognition. In addition, other signs of cooperation between South Africa and Somaliland have emerged recently, including a visit to Hargeisa by South African businessmen and an exchange of senior officials.

Cornish theorizes that these moves might ripen into recognition in the near future now that South Africa has "vacated the chair of the African Union... [and is] freer to step out of line on controversial issues on the continent." If South Africa recognizes Somaliland, then it is likely to be followed quickly by Ethiopia, which already has extensive unofficial relations with the breakaway republic but is unwilling to be the first to grant it formal recognition. This might, in turn, result in a domino effect, particularly in light of South Africa's leading role in African politics and diplomacy; recognition by South Africa will carry credibility that other nations will find difficult to resist.

2003-08-12T18:05:00.000-04:00

Turning tide?

Richard Calland discusses the growing anti-Mugabe groundswell on the South African left, even as the government continues to equivocate.

2003-08-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

Managing traditional medicine

Mmegi has an interesting article about the Botswana government's proposals to regulate traditional medicine and bring it into the national health care system. Most attempts to regularize traditional medical practice, as recorded by the WHO, have been made in Asia or countries with large Asian communities; there have been relatively few such attempts in Africa despite the fact that up to 80 percent of the population makes use of traditional medicine.

The Botswana proposals may be the beginning of a regional trend; South Africa is also working in cooperation with China to develop regulations for traditional healing. The government of Botswana is formulating its regulatory plan in cooperation with an umbrella association of traditional medical practitioners - a strategy that has led to some success in British Columbia, where a traditional Chinese medical association has been authorized by statute to license herbalists and acupuncturists. Botswana is also receiving technical assistance from international health organizations, many of which no doubt hope that its regulatory framework will be a model for the rest of the continent.

2003-08-12T11:55:00.000-04:00

The failure of co-option

Two Israelis were killed today in suicide bombings in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a wing of Fatah, have reportedly claimed responsibility for the Rosh Ha'ayin attack, and Hamas says that "one of its activists" committed the bombing in Ariel. The Palestinian organizations are, of course, blaming the Israelis while reiterating their commitment to the cease-fire - in other words, doing exactly what they have done after previous attacks. I've had more patience than most with respect to allowing the Palestinians time to work the kinks out of the cease-fire, but this excuse is wearing very thin.

Today's attacks, like the others that have occurred since June 29, point up the flaws in the Palestinian Authority's strategy of co-opting militant groups. As long as fringe groups or "rogue cells" are able to reject the cease-fire with impunity, then organizations such as al-Aqsa or Hamas can carry out attacks while maintaining plausible deniability. This deniability is growing less plausible by the day, but it's likely to continue as long as it works.

Co-option isn't necessarily a bad strategy. I've seen comparisons between the PA's tactics and Ben Gurion's co-option of the Irgun (and no, I'm not saying that the Irgun and Hamas are morally equivalent, only that the strategic considerations are similar). Groups like Hamas are too strong to ignore; they will inevitably have some say in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whether as parties in a coalition government or terrorist groups outside it. Indeed, subjecting Hamas to the constraints of political participation might be the first step in defanging it.

The problem is that co-option must begin with an assertion of authority by the state, and the PA has not done this. Not only has the PA not acted to discipline Hamas, Islamic Jihad or al-Aqsa, but it has not even demanded that they discipline themselves. The central organizations have not been held responsible for attacks by "rogue cells," and the PA has not demanded that such cells be reined in. In effect, the Palestinian factions have gained most of the benefits of co-option but few of the responsibilities - a situation that practically guarantees that attacks will continue.

Those who blame today's bombings on the recent IDF raid in Nablus are, I think, missing the point. For one thing, the amount of time and logistical planning required to carry out a suicide bombing makes it likely that the attacks were planned before the Nablus raid. More importantly, however, the activities of the "rogue cells" are the reason the raids are occurring in the first place. Although violence has decreased since June 29, there are still 15 to 20 terror alerts each day, and the IDF has thwarted ten attempted suicide bombings. If there were no "rogue cells" planning attacks, there would be no raids and the withdrawal from other West Bank cities could proceed on schedule.

No amount of security cooperation between the PA and Israel can substitute for imposing some form of discipline on the armed factions. I've frequently criticized Israeli policies on this blog, so it's only fair to point out that Israel has little incentive to act as long as "rogue cells" can carry out attacks without consequences. If the PA is serious about being a partner in peace negotiations, then it will have to stop playing this double game and meet Israel halfway.

2003-08-11T19:47:00.000-04:00

A catalyst for change?

A magistrate's court in Botswana has ruled that there is no such thing as marital rape:

The magistrate... dismissed the case because "a husband can never rape his wife. Not under our laws." According to the reports, the magistrate also questioned how the police prosecutor decided to charge the husband with rape because consent for sex is given at the time of the marriage contract.

In making this ruling, the Botswana court used almost the same reasoning as Sir Matthew Hale in his History of the Pleas of the Crown, written in 1736 - "the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto the husband which she cannot retract." This common law approach was the rule in most British and American jurisdictions until recently, and was evidently exported to southern Africa during the colonial period.

In recent years, the southern African countries have begun to follow Britain and the United States in criminalizing marital rape. South Africa was the first to do so, soon after the end of the apartheid era; since then, Namibia and Zimbabwe have also eliminated the marital exemption. This magistrate's ruling may be the catalyst that leads Botswana to do the same.

2003-08-11T16:01:00.000-04:00

Further exploration of the Old Bailey

Yesterday, my journey through the records of the Old Bailey Online turned up the trial of Moses Moravia, a Sephardic Jew who was accused of perjury in 1744. In modern terms, the Moravia trial was a "swearing contest" - i.e., it was his oath against the accuser's, without physical or documentary evidence to support the charge. The record shows a closely fought and acrimonious contest, but the most remarkable thing about the trial is not the testimony but the jury.

Moravia is one of the few British defendants during the eighteenth century, and quite possibly the only Jew, to request a jury de medietate linguae - that is, a jury of six Englishmen and six foreigners. This is all the more ironic since the jury de medietate linguae was a right originally given to Jews only, in a charter granted by King John. This charter allowed all Jews - who were considered resident foreigners rather than British subjects - to be tried before a half-Jewish jury when charged with crimes or sued civilly. The reason for this measure is uncertain, but it was likely intended to prevent all-Christian juries from finding against Jewish litigants due to religious prejudice and thereby impairing the Jews' ability to pay heavy taxes to the king.

In 1303, the jury de medietate linguae was extended to all foreigners, but by that time, Jews had been expelled from England. In 1656, Cromwell permitted Jews to return, and a community of thousands existed by the opening of the Old Bailey database in 1714, but only Moravia availed himself of the ancient right to a mixed jury.

The reason for this might lie, in part, in the declining popularity of juries de medietate linguae in general; only two others besides Moravia, both Frenchmen, are recorded as requesting one. It would be more than a century before mixed juries were formally abolished by the Aliens Act of 1870, but they were clearly on their way out by the eighteenth century. In addition, not all Jews were eligible for mixed juries at that time; it was still very difficult for foreign-born Jews to become naturalized in 1744, but native-born Jews were considered British subjects.

Another clue lies in the composition of Moravia's jury - specifically, in the fact that the six non-English members were Dutch rather than Jewish. Like most Sephardic Jews living in London at the time, Moravia no doubt arrived by way of Amsterdam, and when he requested a jury de medietate linguae, he was treated as a Dutchman. In a way, this represents a more enlightened view of Jews than prevailed in King John's time - rather than being considered members of a stateless and debased nation, they were regarded as subjects of the countries in which they were born. From Moravia's point of view, however, a jury of six Englishmen and six gentile Dutchmen held little advantage over an all-English jury in terms of alleviating religious prejudice.

Moravia himself apparently learned this lesson after 1744. He walked on the perjury charge due to a technicality, but was charged with insurance fraud eight years later. This time, he went to trial before an all-English jury, was convicted and sentenced to a year in Newgate.

2003-08-11T12:46:00.000-04:00

End of the line

Charles Taylor has kept his promise to step down, and the main LURD rebel faction has pledged to cease hostilities if he leaves Liberia. Now all that remains is rebuilding the country.

2003-08-10T14:18:00.000-04:00

Countdown to Arrival Day, Week 3

This post continues the countdown to Arrival Day 2003. Arrival Day is a non-religious celebration of the founding of the American Jewish community, which occurred with the landing of the first Jewish immigrants in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. Every Sunday until September 7, I will post an essay on American Judaism from a historical, contemporary or personal perspective. Both Jews and non-Jews are invited to participate in the Arrival Day Blogburst on September 7; if you're interested, let me know via e-mail or in the comments.

Once colonial Jews obtained burghers' rights, it was not long before they became involved in politics. Just as Asser Levy of New Amsterdam [1, 2] was the first American Jewish soldier, the first Jewish elected official was also from New York and was also named Levy. The minutes of the New York Common Council, as reported in Morris Schappes' Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, record that on October 14, 1718, Samuel Levy was sworn in as constable for the North Ward of New York City. On the same day, Nathan Simson, who was also Jewish, took office as constable for the South Ward.

The annals of colonial New York contain numerous references to Jewish constables, with two or more often serving at the same time. There is evidence, however, that this office may not entirely have been an honor. The position of constable was much more labor-intensive than other elected offices and, as such, was unattractive to many of those who satisfied the property qualifications for office-holding. One Jewish merchant, Moses Levy, is recorded as having declined the position of constable - a decision that resulted in his being held liable for a fine of 15 pounds - because a constable's yearly salary was less than he earned from his trade in a day. Still, the willingness of colonial New York voters to elect Jews to office was a token of some esteem; their reputation as a sober and law-abiding community convinced many of their neighbors that they were suitable for the job of enforcing the law.

Jewish office-holders were unique to New York during colonial times. There were few other colonies where Jews had political rights; many specifically restricted voting and office-holding to Christians, and often to Protestants only. It is likely that Jews could vote in colonial New Jersey and South Carolina, but there is no record of a Jew being elected to office in either place prior to the 1770s.

Even in New York, the political rights of Jews were not always secure. This was demonstrated most dramatically in 1737, when Jewish voters provided Adolph Philipse with the margin of victory in a close Assembly election. His opponent, Cornelius Van Horne, challenged the election results on that basis and, after an argument by Van Horne's counsel in which the Jews' alleged responsibility for the Crucifixion was emphasized, the assembly (including some of Philipse's partisans) passed a resolution nullifying the Jewish votes. The resolution was evidently not permanent, because Jews voted in subsequent New York elections, but it underscores the vulnerability of colonial Jews' social position in the absence of constitutional protection.

Things began to change for the better in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as the currents of revolution began to flow throughout the American colonies. 1774 saw the election of revolutionary firebrand Francis Salvador, who had emigrated from London only the year before, to the South Carolina General Assembly. He was also a member of South Carolina's Provincial Congresses of 1774 and 1775, in which he chaired the ways and means committee and played a part in drafting the state's bill of rights. Had Salvador survived the revolution, America might have had a Jewish Founding Father, but his career was tragically cut short by his death in battle on July 1, 1776.

No account of Jews in eighteenth-century American politics would be complete without mentioning Benjamin Nones. Nones, who was born in Bordeaux in 1757, enlisted under Pulaski at the age of 20 and fought in the Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of major and distinguishing himself at the battles of Savannah and Camden. After the war, he became a naturalized American citizen and was appointed an interpreter of French and Spanish for the United States government. He became active in Philadelphia politics as a supporter of Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party, and was the subject of a mocking editorial published in the Gazette of the United States by a "Mr. Wayne." His response, which was published in the Philadelphia Aurora on August 11, 1800, remains a classic defense of Jewish equality and democratic ideals:

I am accused of being a Jew, of being a Republican, and of being Poor.

I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion, which even its opponents, whether Christian, or Mahomedan, allow to be of divine origin - of that persuasion upon which Christianity itself was originally founded, and must ultimately rest - which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled, for near three thousand years [...] To be of such a persuasion, is to me no disgrace; though I well understand the human language of bigotted contempt, in which your reporter by attempting to make me ridiculous, as a Jew, has made himself detestable, whatever religious persuasion may be dishonored by his adherence.

But I am a Jew. I am so - and so were Abraham, and Isaac, and Moses and the prophets, and so too were Christ and his apostles, I feel no disgrace in ranking with such society, however it may be subject to the illiberal buffoonery of such men as your correspondents.

I am a Republican! [...] I am a Jew, and if for no other reason, for that reason I am a republican. Among the pious priesthood of church establishments, we are compassionately ranked with Turks, Infidels and Heretics. In the monarchies of Europe, we are hunted from society - stigmatized as unworthy of common civility, thrust out as it were from the converse of men; objects of mockery and insult to froward children, the butts of vulgar wit, and low buffoonery, such as your correspondent Mr. Wayne is not ashamed to set us an example of. Among the nations of Europe we are inhabitants every where - but Citizens no where unless in Republics. Here, in France, and in the Batavian Republic alone, we are treated as men and as brethren. In republics we have rights, in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs [...]

But I am poor. I am so, my family is also large, but soberly and decently brought up. They have not been taught to revile a Christian, because his religion is not so old as theirs. They have not been taught to mock even the errors of good intention, and conscientious belief. I hope they will always leave this to men as unlike themselves, as I hope I am to your scurrilous correspondent...

Nones died in Philadelphia in 1826 and was survived by 14 children, the founders of a distinguished family of diplomats, merchants and military officers.

2003-08-10T12:40:00.000-04:00

Tsvangirai still on the hook

From Zimbabwe comes the news that High Court Judge Paddington Garwe has dismissed treason charges against Welshman Ncube and Renson Gasela, both high-ranking figures in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The judge declined to dismiss the charges against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, however, and ruled that he would have to present his defense. The ruling in Tsvangirai's case concerned a motion to dismiss and it is still possible for him to be acquitted at the close of the trial, but the judge couched his opinion in ominous terms: "I am satisfied that there is no basis upon which accused number one can be acquitted." Those words can hardly seem comforting to Tsvangirai, who also faces treason charges as a result of the failed general strike in June.

2003-08-09T10:19:00.000-04:00

More reflections on return

About a month ago, I discussed [1, 2] the results of a poll, taken by the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research, indicating that only 10 percent of Palestinian refugees would return to Israel if given the option and that only 1 percent would do so if required to accept Israeli citizenship. Danny Rabinowitz now writes that the lessons of the poll may be sinking in on the Palestinian side:

The paradox is that under certain conditions, recognizing the Palestinians' right of return could promote a solution in which each side feels that it has gained. Among the Palestinians, the growing realization that very few would want to go back to Israel allows for the traditional demand, calling for a universal and sweeping return, to be toned down and replaced by a limited quota.

Speaking off the record, there are Palestinians who would accept a quota of 200,000 returnees - double the number that Israel said it would consider at the Taba talks in January 2001, but still demographically insignificant compared to the Israeli fear of an influx of millions.

Rabinowitz suggests a plan under which Israel could implement this quota with minimal demographic risk:

In a symbolic gesture, Israel could declare right now, prior to reaching a permanent accord, that it is prepared to grant Israeli citizenship to any Palestinian refugee born within the Green Line before 1948. There are about 200,000 people who fit that description, all of them over the age of 55, most of whom will not be having more children.

[...]

Such an arrangement will calm Israel's demographic fears somewhat, and allow for a larger returnee quota that comes closer to the minimum acceptable to the Palestinians. The Palestinians will enjoy the moral and symbolic benefit of having the fundamental right of persons born in Israel recognized, and those whose lives are most symbolic of the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people will be given true priority.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the question of return, which is one of the two Israeli-Palestinian issues previously thought to be intractable, is susceptible to a creative solution. There are also no shortage of such proposals for the other intractable issue; the most promising would place the Dome of the Rock under Palestinian sovereignty while leaving the underlying Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Israeli hands. The outline of a viable two-state solution is becoming conceptually clearer by the day; the only question is how many more people will die before the level of mutual trust and courage becomes sufficient to implement that solution.

2003-08-09T10:08:00.000-04:00

Triangle politics

Joseph Algazy reports on the race for mayor of Umm al Fahm. The October election may be a test of a secular progressive coalition's strength against the incumbent Islamic Movement - assuming that such a coalition can be formed.

2003-08-08T14:51:00.000-04:00

Our Crowd revisited

Al-Ahram has an interesting article on the opening of the Grand Mosque of Granada, the first mosque in Spain since King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Moors and Jews in 1492. Among other details of the legal and social position of Muslims in Spain, the article quotes Muslim student Abdel-Hakim Vasquez:

Vasquez believes that there is a two-tier Islam developing in Spain.

"There is the traditional mainstream Islam of the poor immigrant masses which -- on the whole -- is the same Islam one finds in the local mosques in Rabat, Algiers or Cairo. On the other hand, there is a very elitist, white European middle-class Islam which is attracted to Sufism because of its inherent elitism (the select few who achieve gnosis) and whose adherents feel that they are better than the poor immigrants."

This description puts me in mind of the way that established Jewish communities in the United States reacted to immigrant Jews during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first two waves of Jewish immigration to America - Sephardim during colonial times and German Jews during the 1830s through 1860s - were small and primarily middle-class, and assimilated rapidly into American society. After 1880, however, the American Jewish community, which probably numbered no more than 250,000 at the time, was overwhelmed by the Eastern European and Russian immigrants who are the primary ancestors of today's American Jews. Many of the established Sephardic and German Jews looked down on these immigrants for their poverty, traditional religious practices and lack of education.

It appears that something similar may now be taking place among Spanish Muslims, pitting the prosperous, well-established and quasi-New Age "white" Muslims against the poorer and more traditional North African immigrant workers. What remains to be seen is whether the North Africans will eventually assimilate on the model of Eastern European Jews in the United States. This will depend in part on whether their leadership encourages them to pursue or reject assimilation - but also on whether the elite Muslims, and Spain as a whole, invites them to join the club.

UPDATE: I've been reminded that the Grand Mosque is only the first in Granada since 1492, and that others have been built in Spain during the past decade.

2003-08-08T12:47:00.000-04:00

The Saints of Eritrea

From Teresa Nielsen Hayden comes the fascinating news that an Eritrean prophet, Embaye Melekin, has reworked the Book of Mormon. Melekin, who is also the leader of an Eritrean political party, claims that the original Book of Mormon was written in Sabaean and that the "true owners" of the book are Africans:

The Book of Mormon or the Abyssinian Book, was translated from its original Sabean scripts by a white prophet named, Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon Church or, as it is called today, Church of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS). As I unravel the true version of the book, it shall be seen later, that the Prophet Joseph Smith was not expected to know the true meaning of the records of our forefathers he translated. As a result, the records of our forefathers prophesied that he, Joseph Smith, and his church, shall follow the doctrines and distortions of the “Abominable Church” and shall fail to realize the true meaning of the book he was prophesied to interpret. Instead, I, Embaye Melekin, was chosen to do so, and possess the true knowledge and spirit, and to bring the book to its authentic owners, the Eritrean and African people in general.

Some of the consequences of Melekin's revelation are apparent, as Teresa points out, in his revised edition of the Book of Ether. For those not familiar with Mormon scripture, the Book of Ether tells the story of the Jaredites, who sail to North America after the fall of the Tower of Babel, receive the prophecies of God, establish a kingdom and ultimately annihilate themselves in a fierce civil war. In the original Book of Mormon, the Jaredites were Jews; in Melekin's scripture, they were Ethiopians.

Melekin's Book of Ether contains a number of editorial notes that he regards as proof of the Jaredites' African origin. In both versions of Ether 1:35, for instance, the brother of Jared cries out unto the Lord, and the Jaredites' language is not confounded upon the destruction of the Tower of Babel. To Melekin, this is a reference to the Ethiopian holy language of Ge'ez, which he claims to be "the root of all languages." Melekin also points out at Ether 2:3 that the word "desret" means "honeycomb" in the Tigrean language - an obvious reference to both the Mormons' beehive symbol and the name "Deseret" that was given to Utah by Brigham Young. Chapter 13, in Melekin's scripture, is a prophecy that a "New Jerusalem" will one day be built on the Buri Peninsula in Eritrea.

Melekin's interpretation of the Book of Mormon may be somewhat ironic in light of the fact that, prior to 1978, the LDS church did not admit black people into the priesthood. It may, however, be quite a bit more than that. Melekin's church may represent, not only a radical offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but the first of a new family of African Independent Churches.

The African Independent Churches, or the AICs, are the product of encounters between Africans and Christian missionaries, often from Pentecostal or marginal Protestant denominations, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each church has its own unique history, but most took a generation or less to slip out of missionary hands:

These missionaries generally tried to set up local congregations and church organisations along the lines of those they were familiar with in their home countries, but by the end of the 19th century many African Christians had formed independent denominations. Some, the so-called Ethiopians, tended to follow the pattern of church organisation bequeathed to them by the missionaries, and their desire for independence of control by foreign missionaries was a reaction against the racism that came to the fore in the age of the new imperialism - roughly between 1870 and the beginning of the First World War.

Today, the AICs collectively have approximately 85 million followers. The "Ethiopian churches," most of which are not located in Ethiopia, are actually the least radical of the AICs; their establishment was largely a transfer of political control rather than a change in liturgy or theology. The West African prophetic churches and the Zionist churches (of which I have previously written) are much more thoroughly syncretized, with many accepting polygamy in addition to Pentecostal traits such as faith healing, white regalia and river baptism.

The Zionist churches, which are strong in southern Africa, have been characterized as "fitting in to the structures of African traditional religions in terms of spirit-possession, faith-healing, manifestations of spiritual power." The prophetic churches also share many of these characteristics, although both remain firmly Christian and regard traditional African gods as evil spirits. The syncretism of the AICs is a different variety from that of the Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean religions, which incorporate both traditional gods and Christian saints as intermediaries under a supreme power. This is a difference that is natural given the purposes of the two families of religions; the New World African religions were attempts to maintain traditional practices under conditions of slavery, while the AICs were adaptations made within the context of willing acceptance of Christianity.

Be that as it may, Christianity has rarely passed through African hands untouched, and it is unlikely that the LDS Church will fare any better than other missionary denominations. Indeed, many aspects of Mormonism seem ready-made for Africa - missionary zeal, strong prophetic tradition, support for family and hierarchy, conservative social values, syncretic tendencies and a touch of the secret society. The Mormons have been conducting active missionary work in Africa for 25 years, which is about the right amount of time for African visionaries to start reinterpreting LDS scripture - and they have been doing so in many of the same countries where AICs originated, particularly in southern and western Africa. As the LDS presence in Africa becomes better established - LDS missions in many African countries began only in the last 10 to 15 years - more African adaptations are likely to emerge. Some of these, particularly in southern Africa where polygamy continues to be a fiercely contested religious issue, will be even more radical than Melekin's.

And these churches will eventually return to the home soil of Mormonism. Since the beginning of large-scale African immigration to the United States in 1965, many AICs have come full circle and established American congregations. To take just one example, a major Nigerian prophetic church, the Celestial Church of Christ, now has more than 80 congregations in the United States and Africa. In other words, Melekin's LDS reinterpretation may be the first in a new wave of African church formation, which will ultimately influence religion in the United States. The first African Independent Mormon congregation in America may be less than a generation away, and the reaction of the LDS leadership in Salt Lake City remains to be seen.

2003-08-08T12:46:00.000-04:00

Chronicle time

Find out how an Egyptian ambassador's headgear caused an international incident between Egypt and Turkey in 1932.

2003-08-07T13:46:00.001-04:00

Laundry list

Odobea sounds off about Ghanaian men.

2003-08-07T13:46:00.000-04:00

Dueling lawsuits

A Nigerian Senate commission's call for a judicial inquiry into the Anambra coup has not yet been acted upon, but the Anambra state government has inaugurated its own panel to investigate the coup and try the impeachment proceedings against Deputy Governor Okey Udeh. The commission, which is headed by a former federal attorney general, has been empaneled under Article 188 of the Nigerian constitution, which provides procedures for removing governors and deputy governors from office. The panel, whose jurisdiction will be limited to Udeh's conduct, will have three months to conduct hearings and report back to the state assembly.

In the meantime, another court case filed by the former Anambra Assembly speaker Eucharia Azodo and political godfather Chris Uba is pending in Abuja. This lawsuit seeks to enforce the resignation letter obtained under duress from Anambra Governor Chris Ngige, to replace him with Udeh and to bar prosecution of Uba for his role in the coup. With the federal and state lawsuits at cross-purposes, it appears that the Anambra standoff will continue a while longer.

2003-08-07T13:45:00.000-04:00

The malling of Palestine

The first Palestinian mall is now open in Ramallah, and its manager, Sam Bahour, is running it with a decidedly American business ethic:

Bahour, a Palestinian born in the U.S., who moved to the Ramallah area in 1995, is trying to teach the city the values of the marketing culture on which he was raised: The cashiers will offer the customers membership cards (he calls them "loyalty cards"), and the store's
staff, in green uniforms, is bagging purchases and accompanying anyone who asks to the parking lot.

[...]

Bahour says he is not only an American businessman, he is also a Palestinian who is committed to his people's struggle. He hopes to combine these two motivations in the supermarket and the mall.

"I don't agree with the demand of some of the residents here not to sell Israeli products," says Bahour. "I just make sure not to sell products from the settlements. But if customers are looking for a product that I can get in Israel, I'll supply it. There's a large variety of Tnuva products here, for example. Nevertheless, it's important to me to encourage local industry, and that's why every local product will bear a colorful, attractive label saying `Made in Palestine.' I am also trying to convince local manufacturers to add a bar code to their products, so it will be easy to move them through the cash registers. Even the Coca-Cola bottling plant in the territories hasn't added bar codes to its cans up to now."

In addition to a supermarket, shops and food court, the mall contains a play center for children sponsored by Palestinian cell phone company Jawwal:

At the entrance, colorful fish swim peacefully in two large aquariums. The children can choose among racing cars, a bowling machine, a train, swings and other game machines operated with tokens. Each game cost one shekel, except for the cars and the bowling, which cost two. There is also a room for animated films on DVD and a small theater corner for reading stories and for children's plays and a coffee corner, where residents can organize private birthday parties.

Bahour is proud of his decision to choose only nonviolent games; there is only one somewhat aggressive game machine: You put in a shekel, a black pillow comes out, you hit it and the machine measures your arm strength.

Construction of the mall began in 1999, before the beginning of the second intifada. Since then, the intifada and the ensuing reoccupation of the West Bank, as well as more conventional labor and cash-flow problems, delayed its completion. As Israel continues to reopen West Bank roads in preparation for an ultimate withdrawal, however, the mall is likely to draw customers from throughout the area and add hundreds of jobs to the depressed Palestinian economy.

The mall may, however, create long-term political issues of the type that have surrounded shopping center construction in the United States. Vegetable stalls in the neighborhood of the mall are already losing business, and Ramallah Main Street may not be able to survive the establishment of discount, high-volume shopping centers. Mall construction - particularly once it spreads beyond the comparatively wealthy environs of Ramallah - could become a point of contention in Palestinian society. It will be a normal problem, though, and Palestinians could use a few more of those.

2003-08-07T08:15:00.000-04:00

Jews at the Old Bailey

Diane's post on the first Jews of Australia, to which I linked the other day, led me to a fascinating legal and historical resource called Old Bailey Online. This database, created by the University of Sheffield, includes a searchable archive of the published proceedings of the Old Bailey in London from 1714 to 1799. In addition to more than 45,000 archived trials, the site contains explanatory articles and tips on how to search for members of particular communities including 18th-century London's Jewish, black and Irish populations.

Jewish lawyers do not feature in the Old Bailey trials; British Jews of the time faced few restrictions compared to their counterparts in many other countries, but the legal profession was still closed to them. Jews occasionally served on juries, though, and feature quite often as defendants and victims - a circumstance that is due in part to the large Jewish community of 18th-century London and in part to the nature of the published reports. In contrast to modern court reports, the Old Bailey proceedings were published in broadsheet form and sold to the public. As such, they naturally gave the most space to sensational trials. These tended either toward the lurid, such as the trials of jailer William Bird for the murder of four women and Jane Sibson for allegedly poisoning her husband, or toward details that an 18th-century Londoner would consider exotic, such as those that cast a sidelight on Jewish life.

One case that combines both elements is the 1784 trial of Porter Ridout, a distiller in Duke's Place, for the murder of a 13-year-old Jewish child. As presented by the prosecuting attorney, the child's death was an unfortunate consequence of holiday high spirits:

The Jews have an annual festivity religiously observed on their part, some time in the month of October; the prisoner lives in the neighbourhood, where that festivity creates necessarily some little disorder, he has lived there I believe twenty years, and has been constantly a witness of the return of it. In this festivity some persons unquestionably had exceeded the strict bounds of propriety, squibs and crackers had been thrown, and it seems Mr. Ridout in this last month on the last return of that festivity endeavoured to apprehend some persons who had fired those squibs, in doing so a little scuffle ensued, several fell, and among others Mr. Ridout, they arose however from the ground seemingly without injury, and Mr. Ridout returned to his house and shut the door; some few minutes afterwards he appeared at the window of the room on the first floor, and from thence discharged a gun loaded with shot among the crowd, several were wounded and some fell; and one unfortunate youth of the age of thirteen instantly expired.

The "annual festivity," as made clear in the testimony of Saul Mordecai, is Simchat Torah:

I happened to go into Mr. Ridout's house for some liquors, the discorse fell out about some holliday, he asked me in Hebrew, what I meant to make Skoke yonck of, that is, we always preserve fruit, a fruit which we never eat till that time comes, it being the new year, to make a blessing off; I told him, your time is coming on, that you think so troublesome, that is, Simka sacra we call it in Hebrew, it is the Rejoicing of the Lord, in English.

The trial was a relatively lengthy one for the time, and featured the testimony of more than a dozen witnesses. The circumstances of the killing were uncertain and several witnesses - including Jews - vouched for Ridout's good character, so he was ultimately acquitted.

Several synagogue robberies also came before the court, including the 1748 trial of Jeremiah Levi. The archived proceedings include the testimony of Adolphus Cohen, the clerk of the synagogue:

Q. Do you know of any thing that was lost from the Synagogue?

Cohen. On the 29th of February, when I opened the Synagogue, I found the key of a closet in which we put several things, and when I opened the door, I found that the poor's box was broke open, and the money taken out; I sent for a smith to open the door of the altar, and there is a cupboard under the altar, and there were some particular things in that, which we only use on particular days, which were taken away; there was the covering of the law, the altar vails, and five pair of bells, which we put on to our laws at particular times.

Q. Explain yourself what you mean by the laws.

Cohen. The five books of Moses, which are wrote on parchment, and rolled up on two sticks. I went to Mr. Symons our elder, and he ordered me to call our vestry together between four and five in the afternoon. I had a suspicion of Jeremiah Levi , because the goods that were stole were carried out of a window which looks into his yard, and there was a cane found, which there is great reason to suspect was the Prisoner's. Our vestry sent for me, we got a search-warrant, and I went and searched his house, but found nothing; they sent me to fetch those things belonging to the Synagogue, and there was a board of the floor broke open, and when the board was taken up I saw all my things there, and I carried them to our elder of the Synagogue; they were in the Prisoner's house up one pair of stairs.

The five pair of bells, the altar vails, and the covering of the law, were produced in Court.

Several other officials of the synagogue also testified, one of whom, Benjamin Levi, had searched the defendant's house upon obtaining a warrant from the Lord Mayor. In those days, before the creation of the London metropolitan police, it was evidently common for crime victims or private citizens to obtain search or arrest warrants and prosecute cases on their own account. It was rare, in fact, for counsel to be involved at all; trials were often completed in a few minutes, and even capital cases were sometimes decided in an hour.

The Old Bailey database may also provide a clue to the background of Moses Susman, who - as readers of Morris Schappes' Documentary History of the Jews in the United States will know - was the first Jew to face the death penalty in British North America. On June 12, 1727, he was arrested for stealing "gold, silver, money, [a] bag, [and] rings" from one Moses Levy, president of the influential Congregation Shearith Israel. He was arraigned the same day before a New York City magistrate's court, and, "having nothing to alleage against it," was bound over for trial on the morrow.

The next day, the outraged witnesses against Susman had their day in court. In addition to the victim and his son, the witness list included the mayor, Colonel Robert Lurting, who was apparently a social acquaintance of Levy. Faced with such eminent testimony, the jury pronounced its verdict without leaving the bench - guilty as charged. When asked if he had anything to say before the court imposed sentence, Susman - who could not speak English - stood mute, and the judge sentenced him to hang. There was no penalty phase, no appeal, no writ of habeas corpus. On July 12, 1727 - a month to the day after his arrest - Susman became the first Jew in the future United States to suffer the ultimate penalty. Other than the price of his month's lodging in prison, the only cost to the city was the sum of two pounds sterling paid to the carpenter who built the gallows.

The fragmentary court records cited by Schappes reveal little about Susman's background or how he arrived in New York. The Old Bailey database, however, contains an intriguing record relating to Moses Ouseman alias Souseman, who was tried for theft in London in October 1724. The complaining witness at Souseman's trial testified that "the Prisoner was a Relation to a Jew Family that lodg'd in his House, and had liv'd there before for about seven Months, but did not lodge there at the Time when the Fact was committed." Souseman "call'd several Jews to his Reputation, who gave him a good Character," but was convicted upon the complainant's evidence.

Were Moses Susman and "Moses Ouseman alias Souseman" the same person? The fact that Souseman was sentenced to death would suggest that they are not - but on the other hand, more than half the death sentences passed by British courts in the 18th century were commuted. The usual punishment for a reprieved prisoner was transportation, and in 1724, transportation meant the American colonies. It's entirely possible - maybe even probable - that Souseman cheated the gallows and was transported to New York, there to become a servant to a Jewish family.

The Old Bailey records also refer to Souseman as "a German." This may be consistent with the observation in the record of Susman's New York trial that he could not speak English. (Yes, I realize that's a weak case given the number of Ashkenazic Jews in Britain at that time who were recent immigrants with German names, but the coincidence of time and criminal propensity might make it... well, somewhat less weak.) I'll never be able to prove anything, at least not without searching through dusty London records, but I suspect that the two may be the same. If so, then Moses Susman's life story becomes somewhat more apparent. He was a young, itinerant German Jew who found his way to London, drifted from home to home within its large and poverty-stricken Ashkenazic Jewish community, and turned - whether through circumstances or bad inclination - to crime. Once in America, he found theft a hard habit to break despite his narrow escape at the Old Bailey, and ultimately paid the penalty in New York that he had managed to avoid in London.

UPDATE: Al-Muhajabah discusses two cases involving Muslims.

2003-08-06T19:35:00.000-04:00

A plan for Kibera

The Kenyan government may soon begin to clean up Kibera, a notorious Nairobi neighborhood that is home to a million people and one of Africa's largest slums. Yesterday, the Minister for Public Works ordered Kibera slumlords - most of whom have built on land leased from the government - to surrender their leases within six months. Following the expiration of this deadline, the government intends to construct housing as well as "public amenities such as dispensaries, schools, markets and playgrounds for the residents" in cooperation with the United Nations.

It's hard to argue with the idea of improving Kibera, which by all accounts is squalid and a breeding ground for disease. The problem is that the residents will have to be temporarily relocated - and Nairobi, which is already a crowded city, lacks the housing to accommodate so many displaced persons. It is likely that the residents of Kibera will have to live in refugee camp conditions for the time being - and, if the renewal project becomes bogged down in corruption and bureaucratic delay like many similar projects have, they may be stuck in the camps for a long time. The plan outlined by the Ministry of Public Works, which includes not only housing and infrastructure improvements but civic education and tenant protection legislation, has a great deal of potential, but only if the government has the will to see it through.

2003-08-06T14:34:00.000-04:00

Asser Levy revisited

Among the issues raised in response to my essay on Asser Levy was the question of whether he owned slaves. I was able to visit the New York Public Library today - it's one of the perks of working two blocks away - and it appears that, yes, he did.

Volume 80 of the quarterly journal American Jewish History contains a fascinating article by Professor Leo Hershkowitz entitled Asser Levy and the Inventories of Early New York Jews, which includes a complete inventory of Levy's estate. The estate was appraised at 553 pounds 15 shillings, which was enough to make Levy a man of substance albeit not one of the colony's elite.

The inventory is unusually detailed in comparison to many other probate records of the time, possibly because it was the subject of a fierce will contest between Levy's relatives. It includes not only real estate and major items but a complete list of personal property, including two pistols, a sword, a "Silver Spice box" used for ritual purposes - and, on folio 18, "one Negro boy" valued at 20 pounds. It thus appears that, in common with most other substantial merchants of the time, Levy was a slaveowner. He also employed indentured servants; on at least one occasion, he went to court to compel such a servant to finish her term.

Whether this tarnishes his status as "the first American Jewish hero," as I named him in Sunday's essay, is for the reader to determine. I have mixed emotions about it myself; slaveowning is clearly a flaw in Levy's character, but it was far from unusual among people of that time and social class. I would classify him as a flawed hero in the same way that George Washington or Thomas Jefferson was flawed.

Professor Hershkowitz' article also reveals other details, including the source of his belief that Levy was in fact born in Lithuania:

Two documents in the Gemeente Archief, Amsterdam, reveal that on April 26, 1660, he was in Amsterdam seeking money owed him and that on May 24 of that year, he announced he was going to Germany, possibly to Schwelm. In these two documents, he is referred to as Asser Levy Wilde and Asser Levi alias Aster Wilde, an intriguing reference especially as he signs the May document in Hebrew as Asser, "son of Judah Leib of blessed memory, Vilna." Surely a Dutch clerk copied "Wilde" when he heard Levy say "Vilna" or "Wilna." Wilde as a family name is hard to explain. A Vilna relationship seems more possible. Given the Cossack pogroms of 1648-1658, Levy's Eastern European connection seems even more certain.

The signature "son of Judah Leib" also indicates that, contrary to some reports, Levy's father was not Benjamin Levy, the cantor of the Recife synagogue. It is more likely that Levy, who practiced the butcher trade in New Amsterdam in addition to his merchant activities, came from a family of butchers. As the 1904 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia indicates, however, his fame came from something more than that:

It is as a litigant, however, that Levy figures most prominently in the Dutch records, his name frequently appearing for days in succession. He invariably argued his own case and was almost invariably successful... No other Jew seems to have had so many dealings with Christians, or to have been on more intimate terms with them... Levy's trading relations extended to New England, and he frequently appeared as attorney for merchants in Holland. In 1671 he lent the money for building the first Lutheran church in New York. About 1678 he built a slaughterhouse in the east end of what is now known as Wall Street, where he appears to have been the owner of a famous tavern.

Instead of being unpopular on account of his many lawsuits, the contrary seems to have been the case. The confidence reposed in his honesty by his Christian fellow citizens appears frequently from the court records. Property in litigation was put into his custody; he is named as executor in the wills of Christian merchants, and figures as both administrator and trustee in colonial records.

Levy's legacy also included a grandson or great-grandson of the same name who was an officer in a New Jersey regiment during the American Revolution. There are other colonial records and secondary sources at the library that I didn't have time to check today; I'll let you know what they reveal.

2003-08-06T09:51:00.000-04:00

Another reason to learn a second language

Allison discovers that the tooth fairy is bilingual.

2003-08-05T18:09:00.000-04:00

Arrival Day odds and ends

Diane links to my Arrival Day post with some fascinating information about the first Jews to settle in Australia. The first Australian Jews landed with the other convicts on the First Fleet to Botany Bay, and there were quite a few of them:

Jewish convicts are clearly identified when they gave evidence after swearing on the Old Testament. Never again did the population have such a high percentage of Jews, as in those first few years when the convicts came mainly from London.

In fact, the first white woman in Australia was a Jewish petty thief named Esther Abrahams, who became the first lady of New South Wales.

I've also been informed that my plans to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the American Jewish community next year have been pre-empted by an organization called Celebrate 350, whose website is still under construction but promises a nationwide calendar of events. The only celebration of the 349th Arrival Day, however, is still right here on The Head Heeb, and this is still the only place where Arrival Day is an annual event. Thanks to everyone who's linked or promised to participate so far, and everyone else is still more than welcome.

2003-08-05T14:43:00.000-04:00

The 1002nd night

One of the things I like most about Al-Ahram is its cultural criticism. Here, Nehad Selaiha writes about the various portrayals of Sheherazade on the Egyptian stage and their relation to Egyptian politics and the position of women in Arab society. The most recent, and most intriguing, of these portrayals occurred last month when the play Once Upon a Time - which involves an meeting between Sheherazade and Antigone in the afterlife - was performed in Cairo. Seiaiha's take on the performance, which avoids any cliches about the intersection of Islamic and Hellenistic civilization and focuses on the similarities between the two women, is an interesting read.

2003-08-05T09:52:00.000-04:00

Be careful what you wish for

Is it just me, or does Daniel Pipes really seem to want a military coup in Turkey?

2003-08-04T14:21:00.000-04:00

Finding examples

A group of First Nations delegates from Canada are currently in Israel to study nation-building strategies:

"What most impressed us about Israel was the Israelis' success in preserving their ancient language, their culture and the memory of their Holocaust," [delegate Sharon McKay] said. "Those are things that unfortunately don't exist among us, and I hope to learn from you how to improve the situation."

I'd expect the First Nations, as aboriginal peoples, to identify more with the Palestinians, and the article indeed mentions that "the underdog resonates greatly with the aboriginals ." With the formation of Nunavut and Nunavik, however, at least some of the First Nations now face the challenge of maintaining their culture within the framework of an autonomous political entity. For them, and for other First Nations who aspire to the same status, Israel may provide a valuable example.

2003-08-04T14:20:00.001-04:00

Moment of truth

The first ECOWAS peacekeepers have arrived in Liberia, and the main rebel faction has promised to withdraw from the capital when they complete their deployment. In the meantime, Charles Taylor has pledged to resign on August 11 - something I'll believe when I see in light of his past vacillation.

It's also not immediately clear what ECOWAS' timetable is for securing the rest of the country, or whether its long-term goals will go beyond enforcing the cease-fire to nation-building. ECOWAS interventions in the past have often been unsuccessful and have been prone to mission creep and human rights violations. Unless the United States does not augment the peacekeeping force - a possibility that seems less likely now than it did a week ago - ECOWAS will have to decide whether to actively facilitate elections and civil society infrastructure or to simply keep the peace while the Liberian factions negotiate among themselves. Both courses might work if pursued effectively, but both are potentially dangerous.

2003-08-04T14:20:00.000-04:00

Corrupt enrichment

Robert Mugabe has tacitly admitted that Zimbabwe's land reform program has turned into a land grab for ZANU apparatchiks by issuing an order limiting government and party officials to one farm each. Among the recipients of land reform largesse are Mugabe's wife and two of his sisters, who each have interests in more than one seized property.

2003-08-03T19:55:00.000-04:00

Arrival Day, Week 2 Bonus

Another American Jewish historical anecdote, courtesy of Solomonia: John Adams' support for an amendment granting equal rights to Jews at a Massachusetts state constitutional convention he attended in 1820.

2003-08-03T18:47:00.000-04:00

Countdown to Arrival Day, Week 2

This post continues the countdown to Arrival Day 2003. Arrival Day is a non-religious celebration of the founding of the American Jewish community, which occurred with the landing of the first Jewish immigrants in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. Every Sunday until September 7, I will post an essay on American Judaism from a historical, contemporary or personal perspective. Both Jews and non-Jews are invited to participate in the Arrival Day Blogburst on September 7; if you're interested, let me know via e-mail or in the comments.

This week's topic is the first American Jewish hero. One of the great achievements of the United States is that American Jews are accepted, not as a tolerated minority, but as people like anyone else, and that this acceptance is not only political but social. Getting to that point, however, required a long struggle, and that struggle began with Asser Levy.

Levy was one of the Jews who arrived on Arrival Day; he was a passenger on the St. Catherine when it landed in New Amsterdam in 1654. Before emigrating to North America, he was a butcher in Recife, but the circumstances of his birth are uncertain. He is referred to in some documents as Asser Levy van Swellem, which suggests that his family came from the city of Schwelm in Westphalia, but Levy himself could just as easily have been born in Holland or Brazil. For that matter, he might have come from outside the Sephardic world entirely; Leo Hershkowitz, a history professor at Queens College, believes based on Dutch court records that Levy was born in Lithuania and that his family may have migrated through Schwelm to Holland and Brazil.

In any event, as described in Jacob Rader Marcus' treatise on The Colonial American Jew, 1492-1776, Levy soon found himself at the center of a political controversy. Thanks to the insularity of its established merchants and the prejudices of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam was not hospitable to Jews. Stuyvesant, in fact, attempted to deport the Jewish settlers, only to be vetoed by the directors of the Dutch West India Company. Failing in that, he contented himself with subjecting the Jews to indignities, and it was one of these that turned Levy into a leader of the Jewish community.

Under the law of New Amsterdam, every freeman between the ages of 16 and 60 was required to serve in the militia. Stuyvesant forbade the Jews this duty, and ordered instead that Jewish men of military age pay a tax of 65 stuivers per month in its stead. Most of the Jews complied, but Levy was both an able-bodied man and a poor one, and he much preferred to stand guard rather than pay this onerous tax. In November 1655, he and another Jewish settler, Jacob Barsimson, petitioned the New Amsterdam council for the right to "keep guard with other burghers, or be free from the tax which others of their nation pay, as they must earn their living with manual labor." According to public records collected by Morris Schappes in A Documentary History of Jews in the United States, 1654-1875, the council denied their petition, remarking snidely that if they were aggrieved by the tax, they were free "to depart whenever and whither it pleases them."

Levy and Barsimson refused to depart, or to acknowledge the decision. Instead, day after day, they appeared for military training with their muskets, and stood guard on the city walls. After two years, the council finally relented and enrolled them in the militia. Through unceasing pressure and the patronage of the Company, the Jews of New Amsterdam won other rights as well - the right to sell at retail, to practice trades, to engage in commerce with the Indians. By the end of 1657, the Company granted the Jews the status of second-class burghers - a rank that did not confer political rights, but permitted Jews to exercise the other privileges of freemen.

Through all this, Asser Levy prospered. In 1660, he was licensed to practice the butcher's trade in New Amsterdam, and he became a landowner the following year. He became a trusted agent of Dutch merchants and then a merchant in his own right, traveling as far as Albany and Holland on trading expeditions. Even as the British encroached on New Netherland and an increasing number of Jews deserted the colony, Levy stayed and expanded his business; when the British took New Amsterdam in 1664, his was one of the three Jewish households remaining in the city.

Under British rule, the Jews of New York retained their privileges. In some ways, in fact, their position improved; the Jewish inhabitants, along with other Dutch burghers, were granted the rights of English freemen, including the right to vote. Levy exercised this right, and others as well; in 1671, he became the first Jew to sit on an American jury. In one case, he was quite literally called upon to administer poetic justice; Peter Stuyvesant, the man who once tried to deport him, was the defendant in one of the civil cases that came before the court during his term. Levy gave Stuyvesant more justice than the Dutch governor would have given him, though; he found for the defense.

By the time of his death in 1681 or 1682, Levy had become the first self-made American Jewish businessman. He was far from the stereotype of the insular Talmudic scholar; instead, he was a man of the world who took a gentile partner at his butcher shop, was called upon by non-Jews to administer their estates and lent New York's struggling Lutheran congregation money to build its first church. His name was a byword for honesty throughout the American colonies and he may well have played a significant part in promoting social acceptance of other Jews; Marcus relates that a New England court once remitted a Jewish peddler's fine "as a token of respect to Mr. Assur Levy."

Asser Levy was many things - businessman, soldier, citizen, civic leader and a man fully at home among his non-Jewish neighbors. He was the prototype of the modern American Jew, and the man who made his modern counterparts possible.

2003-08-03T15:56:00.000-04:00

Damascus spring?

Ha'aretz reports that the Syrian government has revoked the license of the country's only privately owned satirical newspaper, Al-Domary. That doesn't seem very surprising - nor does the fact that the newspaper hasn't been published since May because of official harassment.

On the other hand, several things about this episode are surprising, starting with the response of the newspaper's lawyer, Anwar al-Buni:

"This decision was outrageous and contrary to the law and constitution," al-Buni said. "It also runs counter to all that which has been said about media freedom, democracy and slogans of reforms and development."

In the days of Assad the elder, anyone who said something like that might as well start making burial arrangements. Now, though, it seems that Syrian lawyers are willing to be quoted by name when they make scathing criticisms of the government.

Al-Buni, who is a member of the Human Rights Association in Syria - another organization that would have been stillborn under the old regime - has also promised to take legal action on behalf of Al-Domary. Even if this legal action proves unsuccessful, the fact that al-Buni has even threatened it is a significant fact. Taking legal action against the government presupposes a court system that is independent enough to overturn government rulings; there is no point in instituting legal action against a dictator if the courts are firmly in his pocket. That an outspoken human- rights attorney like al-Buni is taking the Syrian courts seriously might indicate that, even though political democratization has stalled under Bashar al-Assad, the rule of law has been quietly advancing. At the very least, it seems that some things in Syria aren't quite like they used to be.

UPDATE: Abdullah (added to the blogroll) comments from Syria:

Al Domari was the first (if I'm not wrong) privately owned newspaper that was completely edited and published in Syria, the newspaper is owned by Ali Farzat a well known cartoonist in the Arab World. The revocation of the license is sad news especially in Syria's new age where the people are looking for more freedom of speech, modernized new laws and more economic progress.

[...]

I think that this kind of newspapers needs other than this soil to flourish, it needs an open society that values the freedom of speech, accepts the criticism and welcomes it. So the distribution figures of the newspaper has fallen and also (and that's based on my personal opinion after reading four or five issues) the value of its contents.

The kind of newspapers that I wish to see in my country is a political newspaper like the Guardian with its in depth analysis and genuine reports, but I think we need more time to see something like this.

He's probably right about a Guardian-type paper being years away in the present climate, but I wonder if a semiofficial but high-quality daily like Al-Ahram might be possible in somewhat less time.

2003-08-02T18:52:00.000-04:00

Sidebar notes

I've added Silipups, a weblog from East Jerusalem, to the blogroll. The author, Anees, seems to be either an architect or an architectural student, and the signs point to his being gay. It isn't clear whether he is an Israeli citizen; at one point, he mentions that his sister has an East Jerusalem ID, so my guess is that he isn't. In any event, he certainly doesn't identify himself as an Israeli, so I've put him in the "Palestinian Blogs" category.

He's fond of Counterpunch and Znet citations, so I naturally have many points of disagreement with him. For instance, one thing that caught my attention, among many, is his use of the catchphrase "historic Palestine." Given that the Mandate of Palestine existed for exactly thirty years, I would be as justified in referring to the area as "historic Judea." Use of a phrase like that to describe a colonial entity with no pre- twentieth-century historicity is, in essence, a claim that its history belongs only to the Palestinians and a denial of Jewish heritage in the land.

I've said before that Jews and Israelis need to recognize that the Israeli war of independence was also the Nakba. But Palestinians also have some distance to travel in recognizing that Jews are not foreign transplants in the Holy Land and that places like the Temple Mount and Rachel's Tomb are part of a Jewish heritage thousands of years old. Peace, fairness and the Palestinians' right to self-determination require that some of the land be given up, but it is not a country to which Jews are alien.

In any event, though, Anees is intelligent and articulate and has some interesting things to say. In between the political stuff, there's also architectural and artistic criticism and introspective essays about growing up. And then there's the firsthand account of his aunt's backyard being partially demolished to make room for a bypass road. People who are pro-Israeli should read stories like that, just as people on the Palestinian side should read about things like this and this. Maximalism has its costs.

2003-08-02T11:03:00.000-04:00

A delegate's view

Robert Wistrich, who participated in the recent conference on anti-Semitism sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, provides a firsthand account and discusses possible areas of concern. I think he conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism more than he should, but he makes a good point in saying that "[w]hen it comes to the Jewish State, there is little recognition of the difference between criticism and defamation."

2003-08-02T11:02:00.000-04:00

Another family portrait

Avner Avrahami profiles the the Moshes of Kibbutz Ein Gedi.

2003-08-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

You know what time it is

This week's Chronicle goes back in the Al-Ahram files for a firsthand look at Egyptian peasant life during the Depression:

Another reporter went to the livestock market where he learned that many of the animals on display had been confiscated in debt foreclosures. He relates, "People were just standing around and watching. I turned to the person next to me and asked why nobody was buying these animals which were being sold off for next to nothing. 'Certainly, you need animals like these in your farm,' I observed. The man turned to me, his eyes filled with tears, and said, 'Sir, those are my animals, which I'm being forced to sell off in order to pay my taxes. And as you can see nobody is even making an offer.'"

In addition to these accounts, there's an interesting discussion of the factors that accentuated rural poverty - particularly population growth and partitioning of landholdings - and the government's abortive attempts to establish agricultural cooperatives. There's a lesson for Zimbabwe in there somewhere.

2003-08-01T18:51:00.000-04:00

Anambra report

The Nigerian Senate commission empaneled to investigate the Anambra State coup has reported back with a recommendation for a full judicial inquiry. The commission censured several prominent political figures and police officials, including two members of the national assembly, for their roles in the coup. Left unanswered, however, is the extent - if any - to which the president and the national PDP apparatus knew of the coup beforehand. The party's pursuit of a political solution to the coup has raised suspicions among many Nigerian commentators that it has something to hide, and pressure is growing for a judicial inquiry to confirm these fears or lay them to rest. Now that a Senate committee with a majority of its members from the ruling party has joined the call, it will be difficult to resist.

2003-08-01T08:07:00.000-04:00

From Keren to Cairo

Gamal Nkrumah profiles Abdullah Said, an Eritrean musician living in Cairo. The article casts an interesting sidelight on the Eritrean community of Egypt, most of whom arrived as refugees during Eritrea's generation-long war of independence.

2003-07-31T16:31:00.000-04:00

One that won't be missed

Foday Sankoh, the former leader of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front and the perpetrator of some of the worst atrocities ever committed in Africa, died today in prison while awaiting trial for war crimes.

2003-07-31T16:08:00.000-04:00

Peace hotline

Via Israel21c: Hello Shalom, Hello Salaam is a telephone system that allows ordinary Israelis and Palestinians to meet and talk to each other. The idea for the system began when Israeli Natalia Wieseltier dialed a wrong number and ended up having a long conversation with a Palestinian living in the occupied territories. Since the hotline was established, more than 200,000 others have done the same thing:

The project officially premiered last October, when "Hello Peace, Hello Shalom, Hello Salaam" was inaugurated as an utterly original attempt to facilitate dialogue between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. The stated purpose of the project is to encourage large numbers of Israelis and Palestinians to begin conversations about peace and reconciliation in order to increase pressure on their leaders to follow suit, and to demonstrate to their leaders and the world that there is a "hunger for dialogue" on both sides.

[...]

The project has proved itself. In eight months, more than 210,000 calls have been made and conversations held. And if its organizers hopes have been realized, that means that thousands of Israelis became aware of what Palestinians are going through and thousands of Palestinians shared the Israeli experience.

[...]

The process is simple. Those who call the hotline first hear a voice message: "Hello, you have reached Hello, Shalom, Hello Salaam. If you wish to talk to an Israeli about reconciliation, tolerance and peace, dial 1; if you wish to talk to a Palestinian about reconciliation, tolerance and peace, dial 2."

If the caller wishes to begin talking to someone on the spot, the computer automatically connects them to someone on "the other side" who has expressed a willingness to talk. They may speak for up to 30 minutes, free of charge.

Also in Israel21c today is the news that Israeli scientists have joined those from 12 other countries in coordinating stem-cell research.

2003-07-31T12:09:00.000-04:00

A bad law

The Knesset today approved a controversial bill denying citizenship or residency to Palestinians who marry Israelis. Residents of the West Bank and Gaza who married Israeli citizens - usually Israeli Arabs - could previously apply for temporary residency, and ultimately naturalization, under a "family unification" program.

The new law was enacted in a watered-down form. The original draft bill precluded Palestinians from applying for family unification unless they "identif[ied] with Israel and its goals and have acted to defend Israeli security," but after objections were raised, it was amended to allow the Interior Minister to "grant citizenship or a six-month residency permit in special cases." Even in this form, however, it's a bad law.

The ostensible purpose of the law is to prevent terrorism, and the government has cited six instances in which Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs have committed terrorist acts. These six cases, however, are exceptions to the more than 16,000 Palestinians who have been granted residency under the family unification program. The goal of preventing terrorism could also be accomplished by means more narrowly tailored than a blanket ban on family unification - for instance, by requiring applicants for residency to submit to background checks. Indeed, a Ha'aretz editorial, with which I entirely agree, explains that security checks are already part of the unification process:

On the assumption that the bill is indeed for security purposes, as the government claims, the bill appears to be both an unnecessarily vehement and unbalanced reaction to the security situation. In any case the existing law does not grant automatic citizenship in case of a marriage by an Israeli citizen to a non-Israeli. The naturalization process or the process of granting permanent residency to a foreign spouse is gradual and complex, and gives the interior minister broad leeway, control and supervision over granting the citizenship. The existing law also enables dealing with security problems, if they indeed exist. There is no essential need that justifies such a problematic rule being written into Israeli law and becoming part of it.

It could, in fact, be argued that the law will undermine Israeli security by forcing Arab families underground. Instead of being registered and accounted for, Palestinians who marry Israeli Arabs will live in the interstices of Israeli society, making it much harder for the government to keep track of them. Palestinians who want to infiltrate Israel illegally are already able to do so; according to some estimates, there are 250,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza currently residing illegally in Israel. Those Palestinians who are sufficiently motivated to go through the Israeli residency and naturalization process are the least likely to engage in terrorism, and forcing them underground will certainly not make them any less so.

If there is any consolation, it is that this law will probably be struck down quickly by the Israeli Supreme Court. Indeed, the law was at least in part a response to a pending court challenge by the civil rights organization Adalah (full petition here) to a year-old freeze on family unification applications. Now that the informal freeze has been enacted into law, the petitioners will have to start over with a challenge to the new legislation.

Given the inclinations of the Barak Court, such a challenge is likely to succeed. As Adalah attorney Orna Kohn testified before the Knesset earlier this month, the bill is contrary to the 1999 Supreme Court decision in Stamka v. Minister of the Interior:

This bill is being presented in the wake of and to bypass the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Stamka. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that anyone who marries an Israeli citizen is entitled to equal treatment in the processing of his/her application for citizenship in Israel, provided that there is no criminal or security risk proven against the individual.

The Stamka decision, which challenged a Cabinet policy, rested in part on the fact that the policy was not authorized by the Citizenship Law, and the Sharon administration apparently hopes that a policy with explicit legal sanction will pass judicial scrutiny. However, the ruling in Stamka was also predicated on Article 3 of the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women, to which Israel is a party, the Basic Law for Human Dignity and Liberty, the principle of proportionality and the fundamental right to family life:

The State of Israel recognizes the right of the citizen to choose a spouse according to his desire and to establish a family in Israel with that person. Israel is committed to protecting the family unit… Israel recognized and recognizes its duty to protect the family unit also by granting permits for family unification. In doing so, Israel joined the enlightened states, those states that recognize - subject to restrictions regarding state security, public peace, and public welfare - the right of family members to live all together in the territory they choose.

In light of this, it is likely that the new law will simply give the Supreme Court a more specific target, and that the family unification program will ultimately be restored. Even so, this will reinforce the perception among many Israeli Arabs that they are, in the words of journalist Suhil Kiwan, "supreme status citizens" - in other words, citizens who must rely on the courts to defend their rights against the political branches of their own government. The legislation passed today will probably not last long, but it should never have been enacted in the first place.

UPDATE: Diane, Andrew Sullivan, Mark Shea, Narwen, NeoFlux, Micah Holmquist, and Lisa Rein comment. Some of these people are more reliable supporters of the Israeli government than I am, and they don't like this either.

At this point, slightly more than a day after my initial post, I'm still simmering about this law. It hits me on a more personal level than most other things that go on in the Middle East - I'm married, and I know what I'd do if someone told me I couldn't live with Naomi. Every one of the thousands of families affected by this law share the same bond Naomi and I do, and many also have children. When I think of what the Knesset did yesterday, I see Naomi being taken away and sent, alone, to another country.

Mark Shea puts it in terms somewhat more theological than I would use, but he has the right idea:

The relationship of husband and wife and the bond of the familial unit is of fundamentally greater importance than that of the state. That's from Genesis. Caesar exists to facilitate the family, not the family at the whim of Caesar.

I say again: breaking up thousands of families is not a proportionate response to a few acts of terrorism. Israel would be justified in freezing the family unification program for a few months, analyzing the cases in which Palestinians committed terror attacks after obtaining residency and figuring out how to improve its security checks. Consigning innocent families to permanent life underground, however, is not justified and never will be.

UPDATE 2: Bound in a Nutshell, Kris Lofgren, Jimm, Jake, Anees (in East Jerusalem), Polemicist , The Outside World (second entry of July 31), Douglas Rushkoff (who gets his facts wrong as usual), and Thinking Aloud comment. Once again, these aren't just the usual suspects (although those suspects, of course, are having a field day). Several of them identify themselves, like I do, as supporters of Israel. I think it's clear that the government has gone too far.

In any event, several Jewish legislators have announced that they will join the court challenge to the marriage law. There are many Israelis on the right side of this fight - a fact that will probably be lost on those who are using this incident as an excuse for gratuitous Israel-bashing, but one that is important to acknowledge. The Knesset has passed a bad law that is not representative of the citizens of Israel, and Israel is a country where the rule of law is strong enough to correct this error.

UPDATE 3: Anti-Colonial Agitator (sixth entry of July 31), Gabriel, Damian Penny, Ibyx, Protocols, Jeff Jarvis and Setting the World to Rights comment.

2003-07-31T10:07:00.000-04:00

Another heartwarming story

Al-Muhajabah has called my attention to this story about a Palestinian child whose organ donations helped save the lives of three Israeli children. The Palestinian child, who was not named, was treated at an Israeli hospital after falling from the roof of his West Bank house, but died of his injuries.

Among other encouraging aspects of this story is the reaction of Islamic authorities. Before agreeing to donate the child's organs, "the family asked the Mufti of Jerusalem for permission... who in turn asked the Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who replied in a fax to the family that it was an important good deed." There's at least one prominent Saudi holy man, then, who believes that it is an "important good deed" to save the lives of Israeli children.

UPDATE: Solomonia responds with an entirely appropriate comment:

Of course, "good" is the overall picture here. The sad thing is that a child had to die to save others, so I guess we could say it's the "best of a bad situation."

I hope the family will have at least some consolation from the fact that their tragedy has prevented other families from suffering similar loss.

2003-07-30T20:50:00.000-04:00

The constitutionality of the F-word

Via Ampersand, the winner of the 2003 Legal Document of the Year Award. A sample passage:

The question presented by the case at bar is not whether Fuck is a desirable or attractive word, or whether a juvenile should be calling his principal a fucker or a fucking fag. Rather, the question is one of constitutionality and whether the state can criminalize the speech in question by application of the statute at issue. The prosecution is attempting to hold a juvenile criminally responsible for the age-old tradition of name-calling. Although [the defendant] could have selected a more desirable choice in prose such as "I respectfully dissent" or "I am disappointed with your attitude, sir, and politely ask you to cease and desist," the use of the words fucker and fucking nonetheless do not amount to criminal conduct...

For the linguistically minded, this brief also traces the history of the word "fuck" from a 15th-century poem, and students of anthropology may be interested in its discussion of the F-word in modern American society. (An example of the latter that the public defender could have cited but didn't is the growing acceptance of "fuck" in spell check software. This acceptance, however, is still incomplete; my spell checker paradoxically recognizes "fucking" but not the root word "fuck" itself.)

2003-07-30T19:29:00.000-04:00

An ambiguous poll

Kesher Talk links to a poll of West Bank and Gaza settlers that's been getting a good deal of media play, including the English-language Palestine Chronicle. The salient numbers, if accurate, suggest that support for Palestinian independence is not as high among settlers as among the general Israeli electorate, but has reached significant proportions:

About 44 percent of settlers said that Palestinians deserve their own state while 47 percent believe this Palestinian state would eventually be established on parts of the West Bank.

[...]

When asked whether they would oppose the evacuation of settlements, 90 percent of respondents said they would not break the law in response to an order to evacuate settlements, 54 percent responded that they would oppose the decision within the legal framework.

There are, however, at least two obvious problems with these figures. First, the settlers are by no means a monolithic group; they include not only the hilltop youth and the inhabitants of the Gaza and Hebron enclaves but the residents of the development towns just east of the Green Line. The poll results do not include a geographic breakdown, but I'd hazard a guess that support for a Palestinian state among the seam line settlers is considerably higher than in Hebron. This is significant in that the seam line settlements will probably remain in Israel as part of a land swap, and the settlers who will be most affected by Palestinian statehood are precisely those who are most opposed to it. Similarly, although an encouraging 90 percent of settlers answered that they would not break the law to oppose settlement evacuations, the poll results did not indicate whether this figure was lower in Hebron or Gaza.

In addition, the wording of the question about Palestinian statehood "on parts of the West Bank" leaves a great deal of wiggle room. "Parts of the West Bank" could mean a Taba-style arrangement with the Palestinians receiving 97 percent of the West Bank plus a land swap from within the Green Line, or it could mean a non-contiguous state on 42 percent of the West Bank as was once suggested by Sharon. While the settlers' growing acceptance of a Palestinian state on "parts of the West Bank" may indicate a conceptual readiness for peace, it says little about whether the settlers are ready to accept a viable two-state solution. If the settlers had been questioned about specific statehood plans such as the Camp David, Clinton and Taba proposals, the results would have been much more meaningful.

The clue to the poll's ambiguity may lie in the fact that it was conducted by Peace Now, which might see a potential advantage in poll numbers indicating that the settlers' resolve is weakening. This may indeed be the case, but without more detailed numbers, it's impossible to tell whether the settlers' attitude is one of support or resignation.

2003-07-30T13:26:00.000-04:00

Jewish refugees in Africa

While researching a completely different topic, I came across an archived Nazi document describing a semi-serious proposal for a Jewish state in what was then Northern Rhodesia:

The initiative to settle Jews in Rhodesia was raised a few years ago. There was even talk about the creation of a Jewish territory in this land during the Evian Conference. A commission of experts is presently at work to investigate the possibility of settling Jewish emigrants in Rhodesia. The commission's expert, Campbell, proposes the development of a separate Jewish state in the Mwilunga territory, at the north-eastern tip of northern Rhodesia between Belgian Congo and Portuguese West Africa. The territory is twice the size of Palestine…and is rich in water. At this time there are only two white farmers in that region. However North Rhodesia wants to grant residence only to a select group of immigrants who have sufficient capital.

About 250 Jews did make it to Northern Rhodesia in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, but there was no mass immigration and the current Jewish population of Zambia is about 35.

2003-07-29T17:27:00.000-04:00

Blogger issues

If you followed a permalink in and ended up here, just go to the homepage and look for the entry of July 27 - for some reason, the links for this Sunday (and only this Sunday) aren't working. In the meantime, I've moved my planned Blogger exodus up to urgent status, and I hope to have the move completed within a day or two.

UPDATE: The problem seems to have resolved itself for the time being - permalinks for Sunday are working again. I'm still moving.

2003-07-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

Augmented force

The UN has authorized 2100 more peacekeeping troops for the Congo, bringing the total strength to 10,800.

2003-07-29T16:47:00.000-04:00

The view from Lusaka

Zambian critic David Simpson analyzes the popularity of reality television in Africa. While, like many critics, he views reality television as "intolerably boring," he concedes that it may have some value in presenting a picture of middle-class Africa that is rarely seen in foreign media.

2003-07-29T16:43:00.000-04:00

A challenge goes forward

The opposition All Nigeria People's Party's petition to annul the results of the Nigerian presidential election passed its first legal hurdle yesterday as an electoral tribunal denied the president's motion to dismiss. This does not necessarily mean that the opposition will win a final judgment, but the case will now be decided on the merits rather than being dismissed due to technical objections. At the same time, the national electoral commission admitted during a seminar that the April elections were infected with "fundamental flaws." It's probably too late to save this election, but the courts and electoral tribunals might still chart a course for reform by conducting thorough fact-finding and giving maximum public exposure to the fraud that occurred in April.

2003-07-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

The Logan Act

Steven Weiss of Protocols raises the interesting question [1, 2] of whether Tom DeLay's trip to the Middle East violates the Logan Act. This act, which is much discussed but little enforced, prohibits American citizens from engaging in private diplomacy against American interests:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

The Logan Act has been the law of the United States since 1799 and derives its name from Dr. George Logan, a Pennsylvania legislator who undertook an unofficial diplomatic mission to resolve a dispute between the United States and France. Kevin Kearney, writing in the Emory Law Journal, describes his adventures thus:

Upon his arrival in Paris, he met with various French officials, including Talleyrand. During these meetings he identified himself as a private citizen, discussed matters of general interest to the French, and told his audience that anti-French sentiment was prevalent in the United States. [Some things never change - ed.] Logan's conversation with Merlin de Douai, who occupied the highest political office in the French republic, was typical. Logan stated that he did not intend to explain the American government's position, nor to criticize that of France. Instead, he suggested ways in which France could improve relations with the United States, to the benefit of both countries. He also told Merlin that pro-British propagandists in the United States were portraying the French as corrupt and anxious for war, and were stating that any friend of French principles necessarily was an enemy of the United States. Within days of Logan's last meeting, the French took steps to relieve the tensions between the two nations; they lifted the trade embargo then in place, and released American seamen held captive in French jails. Even so, it seems that Logan's actions were not the primary cause of the Directory's actions; instead, Logan had merely provided convenient timing for the implementation of a decision that had already been made.

Despite the success of Logan's mission, his activities aroused the opposition of the Federalist faction, who were resentful of the praise showered on Logan by Republican newspapers. The Secretary of State responded by suggesting that Congress "act to curb the temerity and impudence of individuals affecting to interfere in public affairs between France and the United States." The result was the Logan Act, which was rammed through by the Federalist majority with relatively little debate.

The first indictment under the act was brought four years later, against "a Kentucky farmer [who] wrote a newspaper article advocating that the western part of the country form a new nation allied to France." Most scholarly discussions of the Logan Act claim that this was the only indictment, but there has been at least one other - John D. Martin, a prisoner of war in North Korea, was brought before a court-martial for collaborating with North Korean authorities and conducting "re-education" classes in the prison camp where he was held. Neither case ever came to trial; the charges against the Kentucky farmer were quietly dropped, and those against Martin were dismissed because the court-martial had no jurisdiction over acts he committed after the expiration of his enlistment.

There have been, to date, no actual convictions under the Logan Act. This does not mean, however, that it has had no practical effect. Americans who have met with foreign governments to engage in advocacy have frequently been threatened with prosecution, particularly if they were opposed to the policies of the United States; indictments were seriously considered against Stokely Carmichael for his 1967 visit to Hanoi and Jesse Jackson for his 1984 trip to Cuba and Nicaragua. Brad Roth, writing in the Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review in 1993, argued that the Logan Act had a chilling effect on American advocacy abroad, and that "the lack of a judicial test has, paradoxically, preserved the Act as a latent weapon for use in chilling, or at least impugning, displays of dissent."

It would seem that DeLay's Mideast mission is potential Logan Act fodder. DeLay, an outspoken opponent of Palestinian statehood, plans to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to garner support for a proposed "Palestinian Marshall Plan" which is at odds with the road map. His mission would thus appear to be a contact with a foreign government - two of them, in fact - in support of a foreign policy initiative that is opposed by the administration. It is at least arguable that his intent is to "defeat the measures of the United States."

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that he will be prosecuted under the Logan Act, and it is doubtful whether the act would even be constitutional as applied to his activities. The broad scope of the Logan Act calls into question the point at which free speech ends and foreign policy begins. If I were to write an article urging a foreign government to act in a certain way - as I do nearly every day - would I be engaging in foreign policy or exercising the free speech that is my birthright as an American citizen? If interpreted broadly - as it was in the case of the Kentucky farmer - the Logan Act could prohibit Americans from expressing their views to foreign officials and criminalize the activities of nearly every NGO that works with foreign governments. Such an interpretation would hardly seem desirable.

Not surprisingly, there has been little judicial discussion of the constitutionality of the Logan Act. The Southern District of New York in Waldron v. British Petroleum Co., 231 F. Supp. 72 (S.D.N.Y. 1964), mentioned in passing that the act was likely unconstitutional due to the vagueness of the terms "defeat" and "measures," but did not rule on the question. Of the two authors who have written serious academic treatments of the act, one - Kearney - believes that it is unconstitutional both on vagueness and First Amendment grounds, with the exception of activities that constitute a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. Roth, however, argues that a court might find it constitutional, at least as applied to activities conducted abroad, because the First Amendment may not protect American citizens outside the boundaries of the United States.

There has been surprisingly little discussion of the extraterritorial reach of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court considered the question in Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280 (1981), but saw no need to decide the issue because the petitioner's conduct - revealing the identities of American intelligence personnel - was not protected by the First Amendment in any event. In Lamont v. Woods, 948 F.2d 825 (2d Cir. 1991), the Second Circuit applied the Establishment Clause to Federal funding of programs abroad, but this holding rested on the language in the clause that specifically restrained the Federal government and is not necessarily relevant to free speech cases.

The extraterritorial reach of the free speech clause has been directly addressed in three lower-court decisions, which have reached varying results. The case most relevant to an analysis of the Logan Act is Bullfrog Films, Inc. v. Wick, 646 F. Supp. 492 (C.D. Cal. 1986). The petitioners in Bullfrog Films challenged a decision of the United States Information Agency refusing to declare certain films "educational" - a designation that, if granted, would facilitate their distribution to foreign audiences. The films in question were critical of American foreign and environmental policies, and the USIA denied them certification under a regulation stating that "any material which may lend itself to misinterpretation, or misrepresentation of the United States or other countries, their peoples or institutions" was not educational. The court determined that this regulation was unconstitutional, and rejected a government argument very much like those that have been advanced in support of the Logan Act:

The government has conceded, as it must, that the Bill of Rights applies abroad, but argues that "the exercise of free speech within foreign nations by Americans is subordinate to significant foreign policy considerations and, as such, subject to reasonable regulation." Essentially, the government contends that when United States citizens direct their speech to foreign audiences, the government may regulate such speech on the basis of content; further, that the traditional standards for determining if a law is unconstitutionally vague should be relaxed when foreign audiences are involved, since the government must be permitted to fashion foreign affairs-related regulations in a broad manner. The Court must reject these overly broad propositions, which are fraught with the most serious constitutional implications and which would open the door to unprecedented and intolerable governmental interference with freedom of expression.

The Bullfrog Films court thus found that "in the absence of some overriding governmental interest such as national security, the First Amendment protects communications with foreign audiences to the same extent as communications within our borders." Significantly, the court also stated that foreign policy considerations, standing alone, "are not sufficiently strong to justify content regulation" of speech.

The other two cases that have confronted the extraterritoriality of the First Amendment head-on both involve defamation. One, De Roburt v. Gannett Co., 83 F.R.D. 574 (D. Hawaii 1979) involved a libel suit under Nauru law by the then- president of Nauru. The suit charged that an article in the newspaper Voice of the Pacific, which was published in Guam and regularly shipped to Nauru, had libeled the president by accusing him of crimes and malfeasance in office. The sale of the newspaper in Nauru constituted a "publication" within the meaning of defamation law, but the court decided that Nauru law could only be applied against an American citizen subject to the limitations of the First Amendment. In other words, the court determined that the First Amendment protected an extraterritorial publication by an American company.

Another lower court in Desai v. Hersh, 719 F. Supp. 670 (N.D. Ill. 1989), however, reached a somewhat different result. In contrast to DeRoburt, the Desai court held that the First Amendment did not automatically protect American speech abroad. Instead, the court proposed a sliding scale in which "the greater the 'public concern value' of [foreign] speech, the more it is deserving of first amendment protection." Thus, "only where speech published in a foreign country is about a matter of public concern in the United States can first amendment protections 'spill over' our borders."

Even assuming that a court interpreting the Logan Act were to adopt the Desai formula, however, it is difficult to imagine a subject with greater "public concern value" than the foreign relations of the United States, or even the interactions of other nations. Indeed, the Desai court itself stated as much:

The very subject of the Book - the conduct of United States foreign policy by the President of the United States and his senior foreign policy advisor - presents a compelling illustration of great "public concern value." As the first amendment protects the American public's need for "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" debate necessary to insure the free flow of information to the American people about matters concerning the United States, the court can envision no expression more deserving of first amendment protections than the Book.

Contrast the subject of the allegedly defamatory article in DeRoburt: the president of Nauru's conduct in the internal affairs of Nauru and its relation with the Marshall Islands. At first glance, this is hardly a matter of great public concern in the U.S. and portends merit to the "public concern value" approach. However, it is difficult to predict the use to which information contained in speech may be put. Upon further review, what might appear to be purely a matter of the internal affairs of a foreign nation, may be newsworthy and of public concern in the United States. As an example, under the facts in DeRoburt, the internal affairs of Nauru might be a matter of public concern regarding a decision by the United States to grant foreign aid to Nauru. Indeed, almost any account of the affairs of foreign countries can, through the use of a reason or imagination, touch upon the affairs of the United States.

Thus, unless a court takes an even stricter course and finds that the First Amendment has no extraterritorial application at all - a course that is unlikely in view of the importance of the First Amendment to the American constitutional scheme - it is probable that foreign policy advocacy abroad is protected under the First Amendment. This is even more true if the speech that allegedly violates the Logan Act is uttered in the United States, as was the case with the unfortunate Kentucky farmer. At least one court in Yahoo v La Ligue Contre le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme, 169 F. Supp. 2d 1181 (N.D. Cal. 2001) has differentiated DeRoburt and Desai by finding that speech made in an American forum, even if directed at foreign audiences, is entitled to First Amendment protection.

Foreign policy advocacy can therefore not be punished unless it falls within a recognized exception to the First Amendment. Such a case might occur, for instance, if an American citizen falsely represents that he is an official of the United States, or if his speech poses a clear and present danger by revealing classified information. It might also be permissible for the United States to restrict freelance diplomacy by serving members of the military on the ground that speech by military personnel implicates particularly acute issues of civilian-military relations - a ground that led a divided District of Columbia Circuit in Culver v. Secretary of the Air Force, 559 F.2d 622 (D.C. Cir. 1976) to uphold restrictions on servicemembers taking part in foreign political demonstrations. Tom DeLay is not a member of the military, however, and whatever may be said of the wisdom of his Middle East proposals, they are neither advanced under false pretenses nor a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.

Moreover, the DeLay case is complicated hy the fact that he is a high-ranking member of Congress. The Supreme Court has held time and again that Congress shares foreign relations authority with the executive. Although the executive branch is responsible for conducting foreign policy, Congress retains oversight authority. It is arguable, therefore, that DeLay is entirely within his rights to meet with foreign officials and sound out their support for an alternate foreign policy initiative in order to fulfill his oversight function and make recommendations to the executive. DeLay's mission might be annoying to the Bush administration, but it is almost certainly not illegal.

UPDATE: Will Baude comments, and raises the interesting question of "whether the power to engage in foreign policy also includes the power to enforce a foreign policy monopoly."

2003-07-28T20:10:00.000-04:00

As if Liberia didn't have enough problems already...

Charles Taylor may or may not be leaving, but Prince Johnson, the warlord who executed Samuel Doe in 1990, is definitely planning a comeback.

2003-07-28T13:49:00.000-04:00

Laying down the law

Noah Leavitt lays out a legal analysis of the United States' obligations toward Liberia. His analysis is a bit law-school - for one thing, the common law principles of reliance on which he focuses don't really apply in the international context - but his discussion of the historical relationship between the United States and Liberia is interesting.

2003-07-27T12:45:00.000-04:00

Countdown to Arrival Day: Week 1

This post begins the countdown to the first annual Arrival Day, a Jewish holiday that is uniquely American and an American holiday that is uniquely Jewish.

As I've explained before, Arrival Day commemorates the landing of the first Jewish settlers in New Amsterdam on September 7, 1654. This September 7 - which is six weeks away - will be the 349th anniversary of the American Jewish community.

Arrival Day is different from other Jewish holidays in that it is a purely secular occasion - a celebration of the Jewish ethnic group rather than the Jewish religion. As such, non-Jews are allowed, and indeed encouraged, to participate. Just as everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day, on Arrival Day everyone is Jewish.

On each of the Sundays between now and September 7, I will continue the countdown to Arrival Day by writing about American Jewish history, the American Jewish community today or my own experience as a Jew and an American. September 7 itself will be the date of the Arrival Day Blogburst. (Yes, I realize how presumptuous it is for a C-list blogger like me to call for a blogburst, but I have to start somewhere.)

Everyone, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, is welcome to take part in the blogburst. Those who want to participate can post on any topic having to do with Jews and Judaism, and need not do so from a Jewish point of view; gentile readers are welcome to write about their encounters with Jews or Jewish culture, or any other relevant Jewish-related subject. I will link to all Arrival Day posts.

I will also host an offline celebration of Arrival Day to which my family, friends and all readers in the NYC area are invited. I will post more details on this as the date gets closer.

Those who want to participate in Arrival Day can do so in two ways:

Link to this post, in order to spread the idea to people outside my small-to-moderate readership; and

Take part in the blogburst on September 7.

If you want to participate in the blogburst, let me know via e- mail or in the comments so that I can look for your articles. Please don't be shy; I'd like to do something spectacular for the 350th anniversary in 2004, and good participation this year will help lay the groundwork.

UPDATE: Permalink fixed.

2003-07-27T12:44:00.000-04:00

A startling statistic

According to recently released statistics, the city of Francistown in Botswana has the highest HIV infection rate in the country, at 51 percent.

That's fifty-one percent. As in more than half. Those are high numbers even when compared to the infection rate for Botswana as a whole, which is on the order of 35 percent.

In recent years, Botswana has implemented intensive public health and education measures and, as a result, has stabilized its HIV infection rate. Nevertheless, statistics like those released for Francistown demonstrate how far Botswana has to go in reducing infection. These statistics also underscore the fact that, no matter how successful its HIV education programs, Botswana will need to provide anti-retroviral drugs to a large percentage of its population for decades to come. If this necessity is taxing the resources of even a comparatively wealthy and well-run country like Botswana, it isn't difficult to imagine the effect of similar infection rates on Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Even if the $15 billion in HIV funding promised by the Bush administration materializes, it will only be the tip of the iceberg.

2003-07-26T08:01:00.000-04:00

On the nature of terrorism, part 3

I previously wrote that, given the influence that Augustinian just-war theory continues to have over the modern law and ethics of war, any analysis of the morality of terrorism must begin with Augustine. It cannot, however, end there. Even if terrorism is shown to be an unjust form of war - and I believe I have so shown - this does not establish whether it is more so than other forms of warfare. There is also the possibility that the measure itself is flawed - that Augustinian theory is not an adequate means of judging the morality of modern war, and that some other framework is necessary.

Two arguments are commonly made in favor of recognizing terrorism, under at least some circumstances, as an acceptable form of warfare. The first is a comparative argument, suggesting that terrorism is less wasteful of civilian lives than many forms of conventional war. The second is addressed to the adequacy of the measure - specifically, that traditional conceptions of law and ethics are designed to perpetuate an inequitable political order. These arguments are separate but related, and they have related answers.

In his article of June 21, Conrad discusses the argument that terrorism is an extrapolation of the tactics of conventional warfare:

i) Walzer does concede that all wars can strategically draw upon the usefulness of generating terror within a populace, albeit with different methods. The differences in method are presumably marked by the degree of specific and random targeting of people that is involved. If generating terror within a populace at large becomes a military strategy in a conventional or guerrilla war situation, it might well become the strategy of an army systematically to kill some civilians in a brutal fashion or systematically make all civilians suffer by the threat of say, cutting food supplies or displacing them from their homesteads, or simply by the uncertainty of being inadvertently affected by the targeted attack of certain combatant forces (carpet bombing). One would need to ask whether the mass terror that is generated by such targeted warfare is different from that which is generated by the random attack warfare of terrorism.

ii) As an addendum to (i) one must ask whether it is possible to conceive of any warfare where mass terror is not generated and where some random casualties (however unwillingly this comes about) are not expected? In realistic terms this seems unlikely.

iii) If one does accept that some civilians will be randomly killed in a war situation, the moral distinction from Walzer's description of terrorism might have to rest on interpretation of intent; whether casualties occur inevitably; despite the best efforts being made to keep them to a minimum or whether they occur because exactly this result was deliberately engineered. One would need to establish how we could distinguish between consequences that are similar even though the intentions that are claimed as causing those consequences might be quite different – even diametrically opposed.

Taken to extremes, this is a variation on the common argument that "all war is crime." Instead of crime, however, all war is terrorism in that its ultimate goal is to break the enemy's will to fight and that civilian casualties are either an intended means or a necessary by-product of that goal.

Such an argument, however, ignores the fact that intentions play a part in determining results. A conventional war might result in a greater absolute number of civilian casualties than a terrorist attack, but these casualties are inflicted over a longer period of time and in the context of a much greater expenditure of military resources. If conventional wars were fought with the tactics of terrorism, then many more civilians would die. A more useful ethical measure than absolute number of civilian casualties might be the ratio of actual casualties caused by an armed force to the maximum that the force is capable of inflicting.

It is possible to imagine an ethical continuum of warfare based on attitude toward civilian casualties. At one end of this continuum is the chivalric ideal, in which war is envisioned as a contest between armies with civilians absolutely immune. On the other end is "total war" or terrorism, in which the entire enemy population is considered a legitimate target. Most warfare, and indeed most modern ethical conceptions of war, fall somewhere in between. It is generally recognized that strict adherence to the chivalric ideal is impossible in practice, and both the modern law of war and the ethical conceptions upon which it is founded have substituted the rule of "proportionality." This is an Augustine-derived rule mandating that civilian casualties be kept to the minimum necessary to achieve the military objective.

In fact, even the rule of proportionality is often violated in practice. However, the influence of both the chivalric ideal and the legal standard of proportionality have acted as a deterrent, reducing the number and seriousness of violations among lawful nations. If terrorism is accepted as a legitimate tactic and the ideal of civilian immunity is definitively abandoned, then this deterrent will inevitably be removed and the reality of warfare will become even more harsh than it is now.

It is important to remember that terrorism is a method of warfare, and as such may be used by actors other than those now regarded as terrorists. If terrorism is accepted as a legitimate tactic for "national liberation movements" with just causes, then it will likewise be an ethical option for states with just causes, particularly if they are weaker in conventional military terms than their enemy. The phrase "all war is terrorism" will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is still possible to imagine situations under which terrorist tactics might be an ethical option - specifically, where a single terror attack or short series of attacks would prevent a protracted conflict. In such a situation, a terrorist act, although more brutal and wasteful of civilian life than any single battle, might be less so than the entire war that would otherwise occur. It could be argued, in fact, that the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples of moral terrorist acts - by killing tens of thousands of Japanese civilians and frightening the country into surrender, they prevented the death of hundreds of thousands or even millions more.

Such situations, however, are historically rare. The reason that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks worked was precisely because they were carried out by a power with superior military strength against a target that had already been brought to the edge of surrender. A terror attack against a comparatively stronger enemy - which is the usual situation where such attacks occur - has the effect of intensifying and prolonging the conflict rather than ending it. I am unaware of any instance in which a militarily weak terrorist group has succeeded in achieving its goals even partially without a sustained campaign that has been more destructive of civilian life than a conventional war fought with the same resources.

Which brings us to the second argument - that terrorism is the only practical method of warfare available to groups with limited resources, and that current legal and ethical conceptions of war are designed to preserve the supremacy of nation-states over non-state movements. There is some justice to the argument that the rules of war - which were, after all, written by representatives of nation-states - are designed to protect the existing political order, and that this political order is not perfectly just. Acceptance of terrorism, however, will do nothing to make global politics or warfare more just - indeed, quite the opposite.

Acceptance of terrorism will not empower the powerless. Instead, it will remove all remaining restraints against the powerful, by freeing state actors to engage in terror tactics. Ironically, terrorism is an effective form of asymmetric warfare today precisely because it is regarded as illegal and unethical - military groups who are willing to place themselves beyond the law can engage in terrorism against lawful states with the reasonable expectation that their enemy will not respond in kind. If terrorism were to be accepted as a conventional and ethical method of warfare, it would rapidly lose its effectiveness as an equalizer. In that case, governments would respond to terror with terror, and they would be quite a bit better at it. Much like drug traffickers who would cease to profit if the narcotics trade were legalized, the terrorists and their constituents are the ones who would suffer most from legalization of terror.

Indeed, even in the current ethical environment, terrorist conflicts have generally led to a coarsening of tactics used by the terrorists' state opponents - Chechnya, Peru during the Shining Path conflict, Israel and post-September 11 America are all examples. The increasing use of terrorism has, in other words, moved the world progressively closer to the law of the jungle - and the law of the jungle always favors the powerful.

There is only one structure devised by human beings - law - that can reliably provide justice to those with fewer guns or votes. It is true that the courts sometimes serve the interests of the powerful. Unlike warfare, however, law is at least partially a contest of morality rather than raw power, and it has become more so with the legalization of concepts such as universal human rights. The powerless can win in court on a much more regular basis than on the battlefield - even the unconventional battlefield.

It follows, then, that the most effective cure for any injustice that may infect the current political order is to superimpose the rule of law over the structure of nation-states. Terrorism, whether by state or non-state actors, undermines the rule of law and induces formerly law-abiding nations to become lawless, and therefore promotes injustice rather than justice. It is for this reason that political terror is fundamentally unethical. If there is to be any lasting relief for disenfranchised groups, it lies with the law rather than with terrorism.

Next: Summing up.

2003-07-25T13:08:00.000-04:00

Worthy causes

Blogathon 2003 begins at 6 a.m. tomorrow and continues for the next 24 hours. I won't be participating - beautiful Saturday afternoons best spent outside, and Naomi and I have plans - but I'm sponsoring six of the people who are:

Meryl Yourish, A Small Victory and Amish Tech Support, who are supporting Magen David Adom;

Eszter, who is supporting Planned Parenthood;

Wampum, who is supporting Cure Autism Now; and

Julie Neidlinger, who is supporting Doctors Without Borders.

All of these are worth supporting, and there's still time for any of you to do so. Meryl has gone so far as to issue a plea to those "who are bloggers and who have ever been linked by me" to ask our readers to come and pledge. Meryl's never linked to me, but go pledge anyway.

2003-07-25T12:05:00.000-04:00

Moving along

The Israeli-Palestinian situation is starting to move forward again with Israel's announcement that it will withdraw from two more West Bank cities, remove checkpoints on West Bank roads and issue 8500 work permits to Palestinians. Israel will also transfer about $16.4 million in tax money to the Palestinian Authority and relax restrictions on importation of Palestinan produce - measures which may prove almost as important on a day-to-day basis as the checkpoint removals because they will help revive the Palestinian economy.

All this is being announced on the same day that Abu Mazen is meeting with George Bush. Coincidence? I have my doubts.

I also doubt that there's any coincidence in the announcement that a final decision on prisoner releases has been postponed until after Sharon's meeting with Bush. The prisoner release list has reportedly swelled to 600 names including some Hamas and Islamic Jihad members; I suspect the final list will number thousands rather than hundreds, and that Sharon will seek to deflect criticism by portraying the releases as a concession to Bush. I also suspect that the final list will include Bargouti, who is arguably more valuable backing up Abu Mazen on the street than in jail.

As I've said before, this is a hands-on ceasefire and it will be a hands-on peace. I doubt this will be the last time that Bush has to jump-start the process, and it's still possible for a bomber to bring the whole thing down; I hope that Bush will have a few words to say to Abu Mazen in private about the need to co-opt or crack down on the remaining rejectionist groups. Nevertheless, I'm starting to wonder whether this might not be the real thing. It seems that the status quo prior to the al-Aqsa intifada will be restored within a few weeks, and the more the Palestinians get used to normalcy - like the soccer tournament that began in Gaza yesterday - the more they will demand that the ceasefire continue. There are already signs that this is happening, and if the ceasefire holds until the September 2000 status quo can be restored, this may be enough to create an environment where substantive negotiations can resume.

UPDATE: Brian Ulrich is less optimistic. I should clarify the reasons for my cautious optimism; I'm very much aware that the rejectionists are strong, and I agree with Brian that a return to the September 2000 status quo won't end the conflict in itself. This could still be a repeat of Oslo on a smaller time scale, and end up falling apart in the same way. On the other hand, there are signs of a profound war-weariness on both sides that may result in compromise being seen as more desirable than maximalism.

Oslo was in many ways the right idea at the wrong time. The central formula of Oslo - a two-state solution with territorial compromises - remains the only viable solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, but it was presented before either party was ready. This time around, there may just be enough water and blood under the bridge for compromise to work.

2003-07-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

Diplomatic departure

Charlotte Halle analyzes the career of Sherard Cowper-Coles, the outgoing British ambassador to Israel and the first Arabist from the British Foreign Office to be appointed to that post. Cowper-Coles will be posted to Riyadh as the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and plans to "pack his Hebrew books."

2003-07-24T14:08:00.000-04:00

Chronicle time

Egypt's problem with large-scale drug trafficking began in the mid-1920s.

2003-07-24T11:02:00.000-04:00

What were they thinking?

More details of the Sao Tome accord are starting to come out:

Besides an amnesty and de Menezes's return as president, the deal provides for the creation of a new government of national unity.

It also pledges "the scrupulous respect of the principle of separation of powers", a "national forum to listen to political parties and civil society" and "the transparent management of public resources and the respect of financial rules".

The oil industry is to be placed under the authority of the National Assembly, which is to pass a law on oil resources.

A few days ago, I suggested that the Sao Tome junta was crazy like a fox - that the coup plotters knew the takeover would fail, but were using their temporary possession of the country as leverage to deal themselves into the oil revenue. The accord provision calling for a "government of national unity" may bear this prediction out. On the other hand, it is not immediately clear whether the coup leaders will be part of this government. There are, in fact, conflicting reports as to whether such a government will be created at all, with some sources indicating only that the parties had agreed to "analyze" forming a national unity cabinet. Maybe I was too cynical in underestimating the junta's sincerity in calling for reform.

On the other hand, maybe I wasn't cynical enough. The coup leaders' willingness to give up power in return for financial and political reforms might be an exercise in political theater - a demonstration of their ability to force change in a corrupt government where other political groups could not. According to some reports, there is considerable sympathy for the coup among ordinary Sao Tomeans, which may translate into votes at the next general election. I may have been wrong about the coup being a kidnapping for ransom - instead, it may have been part of the Democratic Christian Front's electoral campaign.

UPDATE: An annex to the agreement gives the military a role in "overseeing" oil transactions. Do I smell a quid pro quo after all?

2003-07-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

More quiet cooperation

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have signed an agreement under which they will link their power grids, establish a joint power station on the Gaza border and "draw up a list of energy projects of interest to both parties." The agreement also guarantees the Palestinians the use of a pipeline that Israel is planning to build to exploit its offshore natural gas resources. It is anticipated that financing for these joint projects - which have been in the works for several months - will come from Israeli and Palestinian businessmen as well as the European investment bank.

2003-07-23T22:14:00.000-04:00

Romanian reflections

I'm pleased to welcome Halfway Down the Danube to the blogroll. One of the co-authors, Doug Muir, is a casual acquaintance of some years' standing who has been, among other things, chief counsel to the governor of the Northern Mariana Islands and an international aid worker in Belgrade. He's currently living in Bucharest with his wife, toddler and newborn, and writes about things like Ceausescu's taste in architecture in his spare time.

2003-07-23T14:41:00.000-04:00

Coup over

The president of Sao Tome e Principe is back in the country after signing an accord to end the military takeover. The full details of the accord are not immediately forthcoming, although it will reportedly involve a parliamentary grant of amnesty. It is not clear whether any of the junta leaders will hold positions in the new government, although it has been unofficially reported that elections will be held.

2003-07-23T08:53:00.000-04:00

Another untold story

Snorri Bergsson has written a fascinating and scholarly thesis on the Jews of Iceland, particularly with respect to the Nazi influence in Icelandic politics between 1932 and 1939. An updated version of the chapters dealing with the beginning of the Icelandic Jewish community is here.

2003-07-22T19:18:00.000-04:00

Building democracy from the ground up

Yvette provides a moving account of her work with SONYO, Somaliland's youth federation:

Working with the first national youth federation (or umbrella as they call it here in Somaliland) with a structure that represents various regions of Somaliland, a structure that requires collective decision making and follows the majority rule policy is new to the youth leaders and to Somaliland. There is no other structure that gathers representatives of various regions coming from different organizations and allows a bottom up flow of decision-making process. This in itself proves to be a great challenge to the umbrella and its leaders.

[...]

My office was full of youth leaders tonight, we started the meeting at 7pm, I was surrounded with mainly young men and a few women. They debated, discussed, threw accusations at each other, raised the clan issue, raised issues such as manipulation and domination among others. I was in the company of SONYO leaders from Galbeed region attended by almost 20 leaders. Mostly with strong personalities, loud voices some have perfected the art of throwing sarcastic remarks. It is not easy when you are caught in the middle and you act as the facilitator.

[...]

"Democracy is new, this is democracy at work" those words served as my mantra all throughout the meeting. In a short discussion with my boss prior to the meeting, I told him, democracy is not only taught in lecture halls, this is democracy in action, one has to experience it. True enough, after 4 gruelling hours they agreed, we summarized the decision points and left the room with everyone satisfied.

“We killed 2 last National Council meeting, and another 2 last National Executive meeting and now the Galbeed Regional committee meeting, so how many lives did we kill tonight?” asked Mohamed. I just smiled and retorted “No you didn’t kill me tonight.”

What they do not know however, is that every time the group resolves a conflict and end up peacefully I become energized. My tired body is comforted with the thought that however hard it is, we are making progress, change do not happen overnight.

I hope that other African leaders - not to mention the American occupation authorities in Iraq - are taking notes. Somaliland has already accomplished an enormous amount by building a functioning state from nothing, but it is youth leaders trained in democratic decision-making who will ensure the country's future. Read more about it on Yvette's blog, which also features Ming Sing, Hargeisa's only Chinese restaurant, and some street scenes including one of the capital's new Internet cafes.

2003-07-22T18:59:00.000-04:00

Admission of defeat

Just in case you thought that any of the rumors of Mugabe's impending exit might be true, the MDC's attendance at his address to Parliament should convince you otherwise. Although the MDC claims that the reversal of its parliamentary boycott is "a first step to facilitate Mr. Mugabe's dignified exit from power," it is really a recognition that both mass action and international intervention have failed. If the MDC ascends to power in the short or medium term, it will be through mutual agreement with ZANU and not by force, and their attempt to mend fences proclaims their realization of this louder than any words.

2003-07-22T18:19:00.000-04:00

Federalism in question

Morenike Taire analyzes the effect of the Anambra State coup on the ongoing Nigerian state police debate. The question of whether there should be state police in Nigeria is one of the most persistent issues in Nigerian federalism, and has existed for as long as Nigeria has been an independent state. Between 1960 and 1966, regional and local governments in Nigeria had police forces, but the police were federalized with the 1966 military takeover and have remained under exclusive federal control ever since. Most recently, Article 214 of the 1999 constitution provided that Nigeria shall have a federal police force and that "no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof."

During the period of military rule, the national police became associated with official repression, and recent incidents of police brutality have reignited the debate over whether control of the police force should be decentralized. The Anambra coup - which presented the spectacle of federal police attempting to remove a state governor from office on the orders of a political boss in another state - is seen by many as a particularly egregious abuse of the national police power.

Decentralization of the police, however, may only substitute abuse of power at the state level for corruption on a national scale. If the Anambra affair has shown anything, it is that gangsterism in Nigerian politics is pervasive at the state as well as the federal level, raising the specter of corrupt governors using state police forces as private enforcers. It was for this reason that the recent report of the Nigerian constitutional review commission recommended against state police agencies:

Representations against State Police bordered on the fear of abuses to which State Governors may subject their Police. These fears included those of intimidation and harassment of political opponents and perpetuation of electoral frauds. References were made to the experiences in the Country during the former Regional Governments when the authorities put the Regional and Local Authority Police to abuse - a development which led to occasional breakdown of law and order. The fall of the first Republic was partly blamed on the ignoble use of the Regional and local Police. It was, therefore, feared that it was too soon in the life of Nigeria’s nascent democracy for the idea of State Police to be entertained.

Nigeria's real problem is not with excessive centralization, but with corruption at all levels of government. Unless the increasing criminalization of Nigerian politics is reversed, neither state nor federal police will be immune from abuses of power.

2003-07-22T09:22:00.000-04:00

Security gone amok

Via Daudi, a firsthand account of what Bush's visit to Ile Goree meant to ordinary Senegalese:

As you probably know, this week George Bush is visiting Africa. Starting with Senegal, he arrived this morning at 7.20 PM and left at 1.30 PM. Let me share with you what we have been through since last week: More than 1,500 persons have been arrested and put in jail between Thursday and Monday. Hopefully they will be released now that the Big Man is gone; The US Army's planes flying day and night over Dakar; The noise they make is so loud that one hardly sleeps at night; About 700 security people from the US for Bush's security in Senegal, with their dogs, and their cars. Senegalese security forces were not allowed to come near the US president; All trees in places where Bush will pass have been cut. Some of them have been there for more than 100 years; All roads going down town (were hospitals, businesses, schools are located) were closed from Monday night to Tuesday at 3 PM. This means that we could not go to our offices or schools. Sick people were also obliged to stay at home; National exams for high schools that started on Monday are postponed until Wednesday.

Bush's visit to the Goree Island is another story. As you may know Goree is a small island facing Dakar where from the 15th to the 19th century, the African slaves to be shipped to America were parked in special houses called slave houses. One of these houses has become a Museum to remind humanity about this dark period and has been visited by kings, queens and presidents. Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and before them, Nelson Mandela, the Pope, and many other distinguished guests or ordinary tourists visited it without bothering the islanders. But for "security reasons" this time, the local population was chased out of their houses from 5 to 12 AM. They were forced by American security to leave their houses and leave everything open, including their wardrobes, to be searched by special dogs brought from the US. The ferry that links the island to Dakar was stopped and offices and businesses closed for the day.

According to an economist who was interviewed by a private radio, Senegal is a very poor country that has lost huge amounts of money in this visit, because workers have been prevented from walking out of their homes.

In addition to us being prevented from going out, other humiliating things happened also. Bush brought his own arm-chairs, and of course his own cars, and meals and drinks. He came with his own journalists and ours were forbidden inside the airport and in places he was visiting.

Well, if that doesn't make the Senegalese love us, I don't know what will.

2003-07-21T18:46:00.000-04:00

The unknown camp

Today's New York Times tells the untold story of a World War II displaced-persons camp in upstate New York:

Only 134 people survive from the group of nearly 1,000 who were shipped from Italy to an Army camp in Oswego by the United States government in the summer of 1944, and many of them were gathered here today at the home of Judy Goldsmith, daughter of a deceased camp survivor, to reconnect and reminisce.

[...]

Compared with living one step ahead of the SS it was heaven, the survivors said. Each family had its own barracks, plenty of food and eventually access to education. After a one-month quarantine, Mr. Greenberg and the other children were allowed to attend classes at Oswego's elementary and high schools. Social workers came to teach their parents English. And the people of Oswego were endlessly generous.

Nevertheless, the experience of being rounded up and enclosed behind a fence topped with barbed wire left its mark.

According to shipping records, 983 refugees - including 108 non-Jews - were interned at the camp until seven months after the war ended, when they were allowed to apply for American citizenship. The ship's manifest listed them as "U.S. Army casual baggage."

2003-07-21T15:55:00.000-04:00

Um, Mahathir, ever hear of Anwar Ibrahim?

The Malaysian prime minister has threatened to expel Burman from ASEAN "if democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is not released."

2003-07-21T10:14:00.000-04:00

Fals(i)e prosecution

New Zealand correspondent Errol Cavit informs me that the Pitcairn sex crimes prosecution is becoming positively surreal:

Opponents of the prosecution of Pitcairn Islanders for alleged sex offences are selling goods on the Internet emblazoned with images of a lawyer wearing a red wig and fake breasts.

Auckland prosecutor Simon Moore, along with his assistant Christine Gordon and barrister Gray Cameron, were photographed wearing the wig and fake breasts on a boat that took them from the island after they laid charges against nine men in April.

Mr Moore said last week that the trio agreed to don the costume briefly after the boat's captain told them it was a ritual with charter parties.

Now a United States-based website, authorised by a group calling itself Pitcairn Justice, is selling images of Mr Moore embossed on T-shirts, singlets, cups, mugs and teddy bears.

Defense lawyers are reportedly deciding whether to ask the judge to make a clean breast of the matter.