You have to be as old as I am to remember this line from Walt Kelly's "Pogo."
If you remember Brad Kern, who was one of the BP adjunct police officers, I saw him this morning. He's my chiropractor.
While I was in the car, I was listening to the news, and they had a story about Qatar. Qatar occupies a unique position in the middle east, because they seem to get along with everyone. They get along with the Arabic countries and with Israel. One part of the story said that Israel actually supported Hamas, like with money. If you just fell off your chair, I'll wait for you to get back on it. This, of course, ended abruptly on October 7 this year, when Hamas attacked Israel. The story was about Qatar, so they didn't get into why Hamas, which was supported by Israel, would have attacked Israel. Like, what was their beef with Israel? But they did talk about Palestinians who had worked for Israeli companies, until October 7, and how they had to be careful at work not to talk about anything political. And how many of them got fired after October 7 for displaying banners pleading for a cease fire. One person even talked about getting fired for not talking about this crisis, as if not talking about it signaled inner hostile feelings, or even collusion. So, Qatar managed itself to get along with everyone, but everyone else didn't necessarily get along so well with each other. Although well enough that Palestinians could get good jobs working for Israeli companies.
All of this raises a question. If Qatar could get along with everyone, and even possibly effect some countries' getting along, at least somewhat, with each other, why couldn't the commonly classified greatest country on earth get along with everyone? To be a bit harsher about it, what's our failing?
As best I can evaluate it, we have two. One is our tendency, under some US governments more than under others, to be belligerent. We seem to like hostility. (And I'm setting aside that hostility is very good business for military contractors, who pay off electeds to keep the Pentagon budget as inflated as possible, and who might very well suggest that conflicts in other countries are a great way for us to supply, and try out, weaponry.) But even setting that aside, we just like hostility. We like fighting. In our own country, we like shooting each other up with guns. The rich like impoverishing the less rich, until they're poor. We just have a very bad attitude, and it prevents us from striving for peace. Anywhere. Yeah, OK, Jimmy Carter was an exception. And once we found out he liked peace, and solar panels on the White House, we voted him out. Jimmy Carter was simply unAmerican. We replaced him with Ronald Reagan, who lied, didn't make any sense, handed us a large deficit, and got us mixed up in Iran Contra. That's what we like. And now, the worst, stupidest, most dishonest president we've ever had is running to try to get elected again, and he's reportedly polling ahead of the incumbent, who is notably imperfect, but vastly better. Poll reports like that are unbelievable, but I do keep seeing them. How bad, and destructive to ourselves and everyone else, are we?
Our other failing is quirky. Despite all the antiSemitism in this country, it turns out that the public, including the antiSemites, accuse anyone who doesn't blindly and automatically take Israel's side in anything, of being antiSemitic. That sentence was no easier to write than it is to read. The public wouldn't permit the US government to get along with, let's say, the Palestinians. If our government tried to do that, Netanyahu would protest, and our government would be accused, including by antiSemites, of being antiSemitic. (I simply can't make these sentences make any sense. Because we don't.) Imagine the opportunities for negotiating and peace-making if the supposedly great US of A was like Qatar. Alas, we're not.
I also listened to a story about AI, and how maybe the most powerful AI creators and purveyors would come to rule the world. I suppose if it's just all about money and capitalism, that might be true. But if it's about decency and ability, and will, to find peace, maybe Qatar will rule the world. The United States has given up on that kind of good will and peace-making. But bring us a fight we can have with someone...
A WEEK AFTER Hamas’s October 7 massacre, by which time Israel’s all-out assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had killed thousands of civilians, the online editors of the prestigious Harvard Law Review reached out to Rabea Eghbariah.
ReplyDeleteThe two online chairs, as they are called, had decided to solicit an essay from a Palestinian scholar for the journal’s website. Eghbariah was an obvious choice: A Palestinian doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School and human rights lawyer, he has tried landmark Palestinian civil rights cases before the Israeli Supreme Court.
Eghbariah submitted a draft of a 2,000-word essay by early November. He argued that Israel’s assault on Gaza should be evaluated within and beyond the “legal framework” of “genocide.”
In line with the Law Review’s standard procedures, the piece was solicited, commissioned, contracted, submitted, edited, fact checked, copy edited, and approved by the relevant editors. Yet it will never be published with the Harvard Law Review.
Following an intervention to delay the publication of Eghbariah’s article by the Harvard Law Review president, the piece went through several committee processes before it was finally killed by an emergency meeting of editors. The essay, “The Ongoing Nakba,” would have been the first from a Palestinian scholar published by the journal.
In an email to Eghbariah and Harvard Law Review President Apsara Iyer, shared with The Intercept, online chair Tascha Shahriari-Parsa, one of the editors who commissioned the essay, called the move an “unprecedented decision.”
“Let’s not dance around it — this is also outright censorship. It is dangerous and alarming.”
“As Online Chairs, we have always had full discretion to solicit pieces for publication,” Shahriari-Parsa wrote, informing Eghbariah that his piece would not be published despite following the agreed upon procedure for blog essays. Shahriari-Parsa wrote that concerns had arisen about staffers being offended or harassed, but “a deliberate decision to censor your voice out of fear of backlash would be contrary to the values of academic freedom and uplifting marginalized voices in legal academia that our institution stands for.”
Both Shahriari-Parsa and the other top online editor, Sabrina Ochoa, told The Intercept that they had never seen a piece face this level of scrutiny at the Law Review. Shahriari-Parsa could find no previous examples of other pieces pulled from publication after going through the standard editorial process. Another editor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, echoed the view that Eghbariah’s treatment is unprecedented.
The anonymous editor said that, based on their research, Israeli scholars had been well represented in the pages of the magazine, but not Palestinians. The editor also said that they could find no previous examples, based on their research, of a publication-ready article being pulled.
In one of his responses to the editors, Eghbariah wrote, “This is discrimination. Let’s not dance around it — this is also outright censorship. It is dangerous and alarming.”
To be continued:
Both Shahriari-Parsa and the other top online editor, Sabrina Ochoa, told The Intercept that they had never seen a piece face this level of scrutiny at the Law Review. Shahriari-Parsa could find no previous examples of other pieces pulled from publication after going through the standard editorial process. Another editor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, echoed the view that Eghbariah’s treatment is unprecedented.
ReplyDeleteThe anonymous editor said that, based on their research, Israeli scholars had been well represented in the pages of the magazine, but not Palestinians. The editor also said that they could find no previous examples, based on their research, of a publication-ready article being pulled.
In one of his responses to the editors, Eghbariah wrote, “This is discrimination. Let’s not dance around it — this is also outright censorship. It is dangerous and alarming.”
According to emails shared with The Intercept, as well as Shahriari-Parsa and Eghbariah’s accounts, Iyer at first delayed the essay’s publication over what she said were safety concerns and the desire to deliberate with editors. According to an email from Shahriari-Parsa to the author, however, Iyer also said in meetings that “she was personally unwilling to allow the piece to be published.” (Iyer responded in the email chain with Eghbariah that there were “numerous inaccuracies” in the rejection email, claiming the story had gone through the normal process and that the piece had been rejected based on the requested publication timeline.)
Following requests from over 30 editors, an emergency meeting of the entire journal body was called. After nearly six hours, the more than 100 editors voted anonymously on running the piece or not, with a strong majority voting against publication.
“Like every academic journal, the Harvard Law Review has editorial processes governing how it solicits, evaluates, and determines when and whether to publish a piece,” the Harvard Law Review said in a statement. “An intrinsic feature of these internal processes is the confidentiality of our 104 editors’ perspectives and deliberations. After a full body meeting and vote of the entire membership last week, a substantial majority voted not to proceed with publication.”
To be continued:
Entirely run by students — Iyer and Shahriari-Parsa, like Eghbariah, attend Harvard Law School — Harvard Law Review is a well-known launch pad for estimable legal and political careers. Barack Obama was the journal president during his time at the law school, and graduates regularly go on to clerkships with Supreme Court justices and jobs at top-tier law firms. With careers potentially on the line, the Harvard Law Review’s decision on Eghbariah’s essay came amid a crackdown in academia, in Ivy League schools and elsewhere, against pro-Palestinian speech following the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent onslaught against the Gaza Strip.
ReplyDelete“I can only speculate about the reasons of individual editors,” said Ryan Doerfler, a law professor at Harvard who attended a meeting with Law Review staff about the Palestine article. “What I can observe, though, is that the vote took place amidst a climate of suppression of pro-Palestinian advocacy.”
A second editor who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the process said that fear of backlash played a key role in their personal decision to vote “no” on Eghbariah’s piece. The editor said they found “substantive flaws” in the piece that were exacerbated by a fear among editors that they would have their names and faces plastered on billboard trucks around campus accusing them of being Hamas supporters — something that happened to pro-Palestine Harvard students who signed a controversial open letter.
The editor said substantive flaws are generally removed from pieces prior to publication, but they did not feel such edits would have been possible in this case because of the lack of agreement on underlying facts. “Reasonable scholarly debate couldn’t happen in that context,” they said. “Partly because we’re not at a point in time where that debate can happen without your face being put on a truck.”
Doerfler praised Eghbariah’s draft amid that climate of fear. “It is a forceful piece of legal scholarship,” he said, “and it articulates a position that takes real courage to put forward.”
Eghbariah’s article was published Tuesday night at The Nation, under the headline “The Harvard Law Review Refused to Run This Piece About Genocide in Gaza.”
To be continued:
For some of the more than 100 editors at the Harvard Law Review, the delay and subsequent killing of Eghbariah’s piece did not hew to the usual process. In a forthcoming public statement viewed by The Intercept, 25 Harvard Law Review editors objected to the move to squash the essay.
ReplyDelete“We are unaware of any other solicited piece that has been revoked by the Law Review in this way,” the editors wrote. “This unprecedented decision threatens academic freedom and perpetuates the suppression of Palestinian voices. We dissent.”
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Public Defenders Get Restraining Order to Block Their Own Union From Voting on Gaza Statement
In an interview, the first anonymous Law Review editor told me that they have evaluated “hundreds of submissions” for the journal and that Eghbariah’s essay is “more than just ‘good enough.’” Both this editor and Shahriari-Parsa said that they believe the primary reason for the “no” votes was fear.
“Editors expressed that they supported the piece and wanted to uplift marginalized voices,” the second editor said, “but were voting against publishing it because they were afraid of the consequences and had worked too hard to now risk their futures. Some also expressed concerns that the blowback to the piece would discriminatorily target editors of color more than others.”
Students, writers, and artists speaking out for Palestinian liberation are facing extreme levels of censorship and censure — especially in academia. Columbia University and Brandeis University have suspended the campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace on spurious grounds of violating campus protest policy and risks to campus safety. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered public universities to shut down chapters of the groups. Harvard, too, has faced pressure from major donors to crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech. Students have been doxxed and harassed for writing a letter in the aftermath of October 7 saying Israel’s longtime oppression of Palestinians was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
To be continued:
“The Law Review specifically had just gone through an incident in which one of its members was doxxed after participating as a safety marshal at a ‘die in’ at the Harvard Business School campus organized by student activists,” said Doerfler, the professor. Doerfler, who had been brought into a meeting with Iyer, Eghbariah, and two Review editors on November 14 to discuss Eghbariah’s essay, said the editor who participated in the “die in” protest has been publicly criticized by a major university donor “as part of his broader criticism of the University’s handling of the crisis.”
ReplyDelete“This is exactly the kind of work that good international legal scholarship should do.”
In the essay, Eghbariah argues that the atrocities in Gaza amount to genocide; he considers the frames used to name Israeli policies in Palestine more broadly and calls for a distinctive legal framework for Palestine. According to Eghbariah, just as “the South African experience brought ‘Apartheid’ into the global and legal lexicon,” the distinctive nature of the domination Palestinians have faced should demand a new category of crime: “Nakba,” the word Palestinians use to describe their dispossession and expulsion at the founding of the state of Israel.
Yale Law School professor Aslı Bâli, an international and human rights law expert who said she has never met or worked with Eghbariah but was sent his essay and aware of the Harvard Law Review situation, said in an interview that the article constituted an “excellent piece of legal scholarship.” She noted that the essay’s arguments are no doubt contested, as is the nature of legal argumentation. “This is exactly the kind of work that good international legal scholarship should do,” she said.
To be continued:
Bâli told The Intercept that in her “quarter century” of experience in legal scholarship, she has never heard of a contracted article, which has gone through the editorial process, being pulled before publication. She said, “I’ve never heard of anything of this sort.”
ReplyDeleteThe Harvard Law Review requested this article from an expert, fact checked it, and was still too afraid simply to be open and honest. We really are our own worst enemies.
Many of the 22 Democrats who voted to censure Tlaib, including Frankel, have received major contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
ReplyDeleteAMERICA’S UNWAVERING SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL FUELS IRAN-BACKED “AXIS OF RESISTANCE”
ReplyDeleteBarcelona City Council Suspends Ties With Israel Over Gaza Slaughter
ReplyDelete"It's not a war, it's a genocide," said Councilmember Ada Colau. "We not only need to denounce it, we must act and not stay on the sidelines." From Spain.
Newborns in Gaza Dying From Preventable Causes Due to Israeli Siege: Oxfam
"Oxfam is urgently calling for a full cease-fire and unimpeded humanitarian access," said the group, explaining that a four-day pause in fighting is not sufficient.