Old Post on the loss of professions

Where did all the jobs go? July 8th, 2008 Seth J. Frantzman In 1714 the following jobs were the occupations of the residents of Bradford, England. Three percent were owners of land. 14 percent were 'landless labour'. Three percent were involved in coal mining. 23 percent were involved in textiles. 19 percent made their daily bread in 'clothing and footwear'. Five percent worked in 'food and drink'. 9 percent were employed in building. 12 percent worked in 'minor trades and industries'. Seven percent worked in 'services'. Three percent were in the professions. 1 percent were 'gentry' and 1 percent were in the militia. In nearby villages the main occupations were coalmining, landless labour and work in the textile industry. In nearby Scotland a list of 'old occupations' contains many interesting, and forgotten, jobs. There was the 'beadman' (Bedeswoman and Beildsman as well) or licensed beggars. There was the 'Alewife' or woman who ran a pub. There were 'Berlin Blackers' who applied black varnish to iron tools. There was the Chapman who dealt goods from his donkey cart by traveling from village to village. There were Byremen who looked after cows. There were Cork Cutters who cut cork imported from Portugal. There was the Cowan (and Dyker) who built dry stone walls. There was a Fethelar or town fiddler. There was the Ghillie or 'highland guard of wild game'. There was a Moneyer, the man who made coins. There was the Rope spinner or maker of rope and the Rove Carrier who moved fibres and flax before spinning. There was the Sprigger who made fine linen. There was the Thong Maker who made leather whips and other leather goods. There was a Walkser whose job was to wet cloth and step on it in order to thicken and clean it. There was also the Wadsetter or holder of a mortgage. Today's human looks with disdain on these jobs and celebrates the fact that either they no longer exist, machines do them or 'other people' do them. In the Western countries and other wealthy states these jobs have been exported overseas or they have been usurped by machines. Such were the results of industrialization, globalization and the increasing abilities of assembly line robots to do intricate work. There was a time when most people did labour with their hands. But there have been at least two generations, if not three or four, that have separated us from our forbears. Such mundane textile jobs and farm labour is something so remote that most could not imagine it. But society increases daily with more and more people as populations grow (except in Europe). So as these 'old' occupations have disappeared new occupations have had to replace them. Most people, even in this technologically advanced society, must work in order to survive. But given the flaccid nature of people and the fact that so few of them are capable of doing work with their hands any longer society has had to increase the number of jobs that do not require much work. In order to do this we have created a generation of people employed in what was then called 'services'. One example of these new kind of jobs that have come to replace the 'Walkser' and the 'Dyker' are jobs described as "Community and External Affairs and Business diversity." This was the description of Michelle Obama's job at a hospital for which she was paid $275,000 a year. Michelle Obama might be the posterchild of a generation for whome work is an abstract theoretical concept. Michelle may have grown up in a modest home but she aspired to higher things. She got into Princeton and spent her time there complaining about how racist it was (although the fact that she was allowed to go there seems to belie this claim). She became wealthy through working a variety of non-jobs, non-occupations, for which no work was required and no results could be provided. After all, how does someone measure 'community outreach' for a hospital? People are dying everyday, they must go to the hospital. Does one need to outreach to them? In the end Michelle became a bandleader of the movement against occupation. She has publicly stated to college students that they should not "go into corporate America." Yet at the same time she claims that "Barack Obama will require you to work." But what will this 'work' look like? This work is entirely predicated on the idea that things that are not real occupations can be subsumed under the idea of what 'work' is and then meaningless labels can be dished out to this years college students so that they will all work as 'grant writers' or 'community representatives' or 'organizers' or some other noncupation. In fact that is what these jobs are, they are the opposite of an occupation, they are noncupations. It was inevitable that technology would produce this. Movies about the future made between the 1950s and the present have always shown a future where no one works. People are always portrayed walking around in similar track suits but they never seem to have jobs. If they have occupations it is as some sort of officer or deckhand on a star cruiser. In Aliens the movie the directors created a universe that involved futuristic soldiers, but no one had an occupation outside of the military. What jobs were there in Star Wars. There were all the imperial soldiers of Darth Vader and the people who drove his star ships around. Luke Skywalker's uncle was a farmer. But those were basically the only occupations shown in the film. People can't imagine occupations in the future because we have witnessed to many honest occupations fall by the wayside. We imagine a future in which no one works. The present state of society, in which people hold jobs that are not real occupations and in which few if any people use their hands during work (except to type), has created all the need for 'meaning' in life. People even volunteer to do old occupations so as to find themselves. They believe that through a few weeks of 'work' they will suddenly have an awakening. The need for all this meaning in life may stem from a lack of actual skills in life but the remedy, psychologists, psychiatrists and 'meditation' does not seem to bring people any closer to knowing what work once was. People in movies speak of owning farms and living off the land but most are ill-equipped to do so. The stories of people like Chris Mcandlis in Into the Wild appeal to people because they wish they too could abandon all to live in a pre-modern state of being. The romanticism of the late 19th and early 20th century, both among the Communists and Fascists, saw nations of people working together to build themselves up. These mass ideologies or 'Sacred Causes' tried to re-envision a nation of romantic workers and peasants, all happily working as cogs in the machine. Both the Germans and the Soviets romanticized the countryside and each had their ideologies of 'returning to the soil'. In Russia it was the peasant commune and in Germany it was 'blood and soil'. Either way it was a reaction to modernity which saw ever more people crammed into cities and the land turning fallow as the agricultural people left it to find work in factories. This was a harbinger of doom for folk tradition. But the solution found in Nazism and Communism was mass industrialization. There was to be no true return to the land. Attempts were made to colonize vast swaths of hitherto useless land as shown in David Blackbourn's excellent study Conquest of Nature. In essence, however, this was the irony of these mass movements based on a romantic notion of nature: there was no return, merely a conquest of nature and a slow destruction of it. In the Democratic west the conquest of nature proceeded apace with a conquest of the soul that was the result of a lack of occupations being open to the youth. There simply are no more jobs. They have all disappeared. The fact that the best and brightest in the West abhor the 'corporation' and blame all of societies ills on it merely shows the degree to which the wool has been pulled over our eyes. Corporate life holds some of the last actual occupations that are left over from the ancient world. It still has some attachment to the idea of work as a way of life and as an ethos. While small businesses are rightly celebrated as a wonderful part of society few people aspire to work in small businesses. People aspire to the nameless occupations where the real money is. Since people can pull down huge salaries such as $275,000 a year for working as a 'community relations consultant' there is no reason to aspire to having a real occupation. Everyday there are fewer and fewer occupations. There are fewer and fewer skills. Everyday people become more and more separated from any sense of their surrounding environment. Karl Marx spoke of factory workers being alienated from their labour but today’s people are alienated from humanity. They are alienated from the environment. They are alienated from nature. They are mindless automatons who have no real skills and cannot even explain what it is they actually do for a 'living'.

Terra Incognita The Global Economy 2012

Terra Incognita: Rethinking the global economy in 2012
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
01/03/2012 21:56

The economic forecast for this year isn’t all bad, but there are definitely changes in the air.

For some reason financial “experts” are predicting a good year in 2012. Wall Street strategist Brian Belski and Standard and Poor’s analyst Howard Silverblatt predict that stocks will rise about 10 percent. Everywhere are headlines like “pros see stocks rising in 2012” and “analysts see stocks climbing in 2012.”

That is all well and good except, as Bernard Condon at the Associated Press notes, the “experts” also predicted gains in 2011. It is worthwhile looking back over the past year to get an idea of what may be in store for next year’s global economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a gauge of the US financial market, is ending the year almost precisely where it started, at around 12,000 points. European and Asian markets generally had a worse year than New York’s stock exchange. US financial markets have recovered since the disaster they suffered in 2008, which was a long-term result of a sub-prime mortgage crises.

It turns out 2011 was a relatively good year for US home sales, which were up 7% in November. That means more people are buying homes, but the price of real estate has not changed, and has actually continued to decline, albeit slightly. The spike in home sales has been fueled by record-low interest rates: Wells Fargo, a major bank, estimates that a 30-year fixed-rate loan, which is a typical type of home loan, will come with a rate as low as 3.875%.

IF THE US economy seems to have weathered the storm in 2011 and recovered from many of its problems, it is no secret that the world’s real economic problems are in Europe. All of 2011 was overshadowed by discussions about Greece defaulting on her debts or leaving the Euro, plunging markets into chaos again and again.

The EU response has been tepid, as Germany and France, the largest economies, wrestle with possible solutions. Some fears have been allayed with news that Italy’s borrowing costs declined to 3.2% when it raised $11.8 billion in late December. Borrowing costs are a measure of volatility, so the fact that Italy is paying less interest is a sign that investors feel there is less risk of an Italian default.

In November, an auction of Italian bonds had forced the country to pay upwards of 6% to raise money. It was because of this that Italy was said to be the “next Greece” with fears that financial contagion would spread from Italy to Spain and Portugal and from there to the gates of Paris and Berlin.

However, Europe’s economy still suffers from other issues. The first is that the European Union has become more ham-handed in its regulatory behavior. In one instance it denied the right of mineral water makers to claim their products guarded against dehydration. In slapping record fines on Intel and Microsoft several years ago, it proved itself to be wary of foreign innovation and fearful of penetration of its markets.

In another case the EU continues to provide subsidies to Airbus, against a decision by the World Trade Organization. In that dispute the US has asked the WTO to impose trade sanctions of up to $7b. annually on the Europeans. Over-regulation and protectionist trade policies will hamper the continent’s long-term prospects, rather than protecting European consumers.

More worrying was Germany’s decision to to scrap its nuclear power stations. Nuclear power is the clean innovation of the future, a 20th-century technology that is perfect for the 21st century’s interest in clean energy. But the tsunami in Japan led to widespread irrational fears, and nuclear power is being rolled back. In the end this will be a long-term disaster for Europe and other places, as economies continue to rely on fossil fuels.

In thinking about fossil fuels it is important to recall that oil prices increased due to the Arab Spring, falling back to the $90 a barrel price range in the fall before climbing again to $99 a barrel in December following Iranian threats to close the Straits of Hormuz if sanctions are imposed. It should be recalled that the Iranians attempted something similar in 1984, with limited success, during the Iran-Iraq war.

Because of turmoil in the Arab world the oil fields in Iraq and Libya remain threatened and the Iranian problem casts a shadow over the future price of oil. At the same time the West’s dreams of electric car technology are not being realized. Only 6,142 Chevy Volts were sold in 2011 and only 8,720 Nissan Leefs. By contrast 11,375 Ford Focuses were sold in just November 2011.



This year is going to see several continuing trends. The “occupy” movement and various populist anti-capitalist protests will remain. At the same time the “second world” will continue to outpace the first, with the rise of the Chinese Yuan to record levels and reports that the Brazilian economy has overtaken that of the UK. Interest rates will remain high in Europe and the US dollar will remain pressured by the fact that US has no good plan to repay its deficit or balance its budget.

The good news from 2011 is that despite economic jitters related to the Euro the world economy continued to improve. The bad news, however, is that the long-term structural problems associated with European monetary integration and US debt issues have not been resolved.

The writer has a PhD from the Hebrew University and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies

Terra Incognita UnOriginal Shooting

Terra Incognita: Un-original shooting
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
12/27/2011 23:27

Photographer Fredric Brenner promised to portray Israel beyond the stereotypes in his latest project, but the artists have predictably created an orgy of clichés.

An attempt to create a traveling photographic exhibition of Israel has yielded predicable results; an orgy of clichés. Perhaps this is not surprising given the traditional mix of idealism, Jewish donors, fear of politicization, Israeli intellectuals as guides and requests that the project move beyond black and white stereotypes.

The project, called “Israel: Portrait of a Work in Progress,” was the brainchild of Frederic Brenner. A French photographer, he is best known for his book Diaspora: Homelands in Exile which was billed as “the most extensive visual record of Jewish life ever recorded.” He decided that he wanted to bring world renowned photographers to Israel in order to present a more diverse image of the country.

“[I was] very sad to see how Israel was being portrayed...We were in a binary paradigm – for and against, victim and perpetrator. There was such a lack of complexity in describing this place,” he said.

According to The New York Times participants were supposed to “spend six months exploring the country’s deep and many fault lines to create a body of work that might reframe the conversation about Israel.” To fund the project Brenner raised $3.5 million from Jewish donors in the US and Europe. Donors included the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which aims (according to the website) to support projects that deal with “Jewish life,” foster tolerance and an “open an exchange of ideas that goes beyond politics and stereotypes to a place of rich complexity and understanding that is essential to shaping the future of Israel.”

The photographers were afraid of being “instrumentalized” so it was important that no money came from an Israeli government source. Nevertheless the project received support from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Mishkenot Sha’ananim.

SO THE artists came and, according to reports, Mr. Brenner decided that it would be important to hook them up with local Israeli “experts” who would operate as handlers and help them understand Israeli culture. Brenner choose people like philosophy researcher Moshe Halbertal, Beduin expert Clinton Bailey and Gilat Aloni of Bezalel. The project is scheduled to be finished in 2012, after which a travelling exhibition will display the work. Individual photographers taking part in the project will also publish their work separately.

But early reports indicate the outcome of all this work is 100 percent predictable. Suffice it to say, it will primarily be about Palestinians, Beduin, separation barriers, Palestinian Beduin, east Jerusalem Palestinians, the desert and Jenin. So much for the project about “Israel” that was not about “victims and perpetrators” and was supposed to be “complex.”

Fazal Sheikh, a 46-year-old photographer from New York City who has exhibited at the Tate Gallery, has produced work that deals with “displaced and marginalized communities around the world.” Apparently Sheikh felt his name might make his work in Israel problematic and he didn’t want to be viewed as an “apologist... I wanted to know who was backing the project and be sure we would be getting complete freedom.”

In the end he choose to photograph Beduin in the Negev, in order to illustrate the idea of “erasure.” Similarly, his project will focus on Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, probably to show how Israel has “erased” their villages.

Josef Koudelka, a Czech photographer, will explore the separation barrier. He began his work in the Jerusalem area. He describes the fence as a “crime against the landscape, in the most holy landscape for humanity.” Born in Czechoslovakia and having witnessed the Soviet invasion of 1968, he has said that his experiences under Soviet suppression “inform his view of the conflict in the region.”

Even though the project was supposed to be about “Israel,” Rosalind Solomon decided to focus her work on Jenin. Supposedly she ended up being “a few minutes away” when famed Israeli-Arab director Juliano Mer Khamis was gunned down in April, 2011 in front of the Jenin theater his mother had founded.

Gilles Peress, a French photographer, is photographing in Silwan, an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem that has been a flashpoint for violence between Jews who moved there and the local Arabs.

Nick Waplington, an English photographer who was born in Aden in the former British colony of Yemen, is reported to be shooting photos of settlers in the West Bank. He has done some work in Gush Etzion, but his webpage shows a giant photo of an Arab village and another of “the West Bank Separation Wall with Water Heaters.”

The group also includes Martin Kollar of Slovakia, Stephen Shore, a famous American photographer who seems to be focusing on archeological themes, Thomas Struth from Germany, who claimed he partly wanted to come to terms with his father’s Nazi past, and Jeff Wall, who is taking photos of the Ramon crater. Jungjin Lee, a Korean photographer, has been photographing diverse vistas, from the Golan Heights to the Negev and West Bank Beduin.



There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a project like this, just as there is nothing wrong with the themes the photographers choose to focus on. Where the project fails is in its claim to go beyond stereotypes. Is this because the artists cannot think in an original way? Is it because the Israeli experts chosen to Sherpa the artists around choose to only talk about Beduin and separation barriers? Is it because any project handsomely paid for by well-meaning Jewish donors and hosted at the Bezalel Academy inevitably gravitates towards Silwan, the “barrier” and Beduin? Is it because the organizer of the project said, “I did not bring people here to see the land of milk and honey. I brought them here to see the land that devours its inhabitants?”

We will never know, but we do know that this project has already failed.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

Terra Incognita: Disingenous Taxation

Terra Incognita: Disingenuous taxation
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
10/04/2011 22:53

The ultra-wealthy in many countries are claiming that they want to be taxed more, but are they being serious?

Talkbacks (1)
The social protesters that took to the streets in Israel this summer often spoke about increasing taxation on the wealthy, particularly the mega-wealthy who control large parts of Israel’s economy. With the economic crisis that has swept the world this has become a common theme in many countries. Either out of self interest, to deflect criticism, or due to sincere belief that they are under-taxed, some wealthy tycoons have come forward in France and the US, demanding to be taxed more. It is worth examining a few cases of the “tax me more” crowd in order to understand why their claims are partly disingenuous.

American billionaire Warren Buffet in particular has gotten a lot of attention for his call for a new tax on the wealthy. It is his latest ploy to keep himself a media darling and add to his fame as the “Oracle of Omaha.” In a New York Times op-ed entitled “Stop Coddling the Super Rich,” he claimed that he and his “mega-rich” friends were left “untouched” by the latest pain being felt by the American taxpayer. He explained that last year “what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income – and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office.

Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent” (New York Times, August 14) Buffet went on to detail how those earning salaries on a payroll tended to pay much a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than the super-rich.

He noted that 88 of the top 400 income earners in the US reported no wages at all and thus paid no payroll taxes. The Oracle suggested raising taxes on the 236,000 Americans who earn more than $1 million a year in income.

THE BUFFET analysis of the tax system’s inequality has an allure. It doesn’t make sense that someone who earns a good salary, such as $100,000 a year, pays a higher percentage of their income than someone whose income was $1 million from their investments.

But there Buffet’s claim that he pays less tax is extremely disingenuousness. He pays less tax primarily because he has always structured his income to pay less tax. If he wanted to pay his fair share of taxes, like his employees, he could simply pay himself his income as a salary, and thus contribute upwards of 25% of it in taxes. He has always chosen, like most of the mega-wealthy, to retain his income in investment vehicles, such as his own holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.

John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential candidate, was another disingenuous tax promoter. He spoke often of the “two Americas... with two sets of books: one for those at the top who get all the breaks, and one for the rest who do all the work.”

He argued that “First, we must write a firm principle into the tax code: the wealth of the wealthiest can never be taxed less than the work of the rest of America. Today, wealthy Americans can shelter unlimited amounts of unearned (investment) income from being taxed at the rate working Americans pay...That’s wrong.” But it turns out Edwards was the king of the tax shelters. In one year he took a salary of only $360,000 from his law practice, but received $26 million in income from special distributions.

Now several wealthy Frenchman have stepped forward to argue for a Buffet tax of their own. Maurice Levy, chairman of the advertising firm Publicis, declared that it is “only fair that the most privileged members of our society take up a heavier share of this national burden... I do not love taxes, but right now this is important and just.”

The billionaire heiress of L’Oreal also chimed in, encouraging the government to tax her more.

It all sounds very nice, but the reality is that it will always be hard for the government to tax the very wealthy. Most wealthy people either inherited their money or they are owners of major businesses. Their wealth is therefore either in a bank account earning interest, or in assets and investments. Enacting a “wealth tax” is difficult. This is always the irony of wealthy people like Mr. Buffet encouraging higher taxes, they want higher taxes and they know that those taxes will never reach them, because the government can’t simply order Mr. Buffet to turn over 10% of his shares in Berkshire Hathaway every year.

The higher taxes debate will always falter on this problem. The government wants to tax people that it can find; going after vague investment accounts, structured partnerships, trusts and overseas numbered accounts is not something tax authorities excel at.

Since, in the case of each mega-wealthy person the way their wealth is structured is unique, it is hard to levy a flat tax on them. However, raising the taxes levied on salaried employees, say people making over NIS 10,000 a month or NIS 80,000 a month, is easy because the taxes are generally collected or withheld at their source, before the wage earner even receives the income. The Warren Buffet Tax and the French wealthy calling on the government to tax them is primarily a ploy to make them look like better people and to encourage the public to continue believing in the empty slogan; “tax the fat cats.”

The writer has a Ph.D from Hebrew University and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies

Terra Incognita: Acceptance Committees

Terra Incognita: The acceptance committee conundrum
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
10/22/2011 21:37

It should not be legal for kibbutzim founded many years ago to be allowed to uphold an institution that is considered illegal in other communities that were founded more recently.

Talkbacks (2)
In March 2011 the Knesset passed a law allowing small rural communities of up to 400 households in the north or south of the country to establish acceptance committees, or to maintain existing ones.. The final version of the law declared that “the acceptance committee will not refuse to accept a candidate for reasons of race, religion, sex, nationality, disability, personal status, age, parenthood, sexual proclivity, country of origin, opinions or political affiliation.”

But since the passage of this legislation, many groups, particularly those involved with the human rights lobby in Israel, have made a commotion. They threaten to petition the Supreme Court, claiming that the law is indirectly, or directly, aimed at discriminating against Arabs.

The Gush Shalom (“Peace Bloc”) organization posted on their website that “the purpose of this piece of legislation is manifestly clear: to provide a legal basis for the establishment of exclusively Jewish communal villages from which Arabs would be excluded, thus bypassing the court rulings prohibiting discrimination against Arabs.”

Writing in Haaretz, Dmitry Shumsky claimed: “There is no choice but to see the Acceptance Committee Law for communities as an expression of the anachronistic return to the open and callous ethno-centric nationalist racism of the old Europe of the previous century.”

Shlomo Molla, the lone Ethiopian MK, claimed the law’s wording, which permits rejecting applicants who do not meet certain social and cultural criteria, would result in discrimination against Ethiopians as well. Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, has argued that the law is “neither Jewish nor democratic.”

In the months following the passing of the law, several other news items have appeared that may have a bearing on the case.

In September, Ahmed and Fatina Zabeidat were finally allowed to take over a plot of land in the community of Rakefet in the Galilee. Five years ago they were rejected by the community’s admissions committee; Fatina was found to be “too individualistic” and Ahmed was said to “lack personal sophistication.” They were deemed “socially incompatible” with the community.

After years of their case wandering its way through the Israeli court system with the support of a number of human rights organizations supported by the New Israel Fund, they won their case.

In September, Kibbutz Ein Gedi, near the Dead Sea, announced that it was accepting its first new members in 15 years. The kibbutz had declined so many applications over the years that only 176 members remained, and their average age was 62. For the new members to be accepted a total of two-thirds of the existing members had to vote for their acceptance. The situation in Ein Gedi is similar to that of most kibbutzim in Israel, which have seen their populations age and their numbers decline since the 1980s.

WHAT IS interesting about the stories of Kibbutz Ein Gedi and Rakefet is that both communities maintain longstanding acceptance committees. Rakefet’s has apparently been in place since its founding in 1981, and Ein Gedi’s since 1956.

In fact, it turns out that all the 500-odd kibbutzim in Israel have acceptance committees, as do many other communities, such as moshavim.

It might be fair to estimate that approximately 1,000 communities around the country currently use acceptance committees. Yet the law defining the legality of such committees was only passed in 2011. Why the contradiction? Why the sudden outrage about this law? In reality, the very foundation of Israel is, for better or worse, grounded in the notion of the acceptance committee.

From the very beginning, all communal settlements in Israel were heavily “socialized,” with all sorts of committees and rhetoric about the “social compatibility” of residents.

Acceptance committees have long been part of the social fabric of this country. From tiny settlements in the West Bank established after 1967 to new communities in the Misgav regional council in the Galilee to the oldest kibbutz in the country, the institution has always existed in Israel.

The acceptance committee has also been one barrier preventing the integration of many Jewish (not to mention Arab) groups into the rural environment. It isn’t the main barrier, though.

Many Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews live in urban areas because the government settled them there; they never even thought of how they might like to live on a kibbutz.

The Arab population of Israel, much of which lives in semi-rural villages, has never wanted to move to nearby Jewish communities, preferring to simply expand their existing villages.

The hypocrisy that exists in certain sectors of Israeli society raises a fake outrage about a “segregation” law, a law that merely enshrines what has always existed. The notion of the acceptance committee and all its pseudosociological findings of “social unsuitability” smacks of elitism and in many cases may hide racism behind “cultural” excuses. But this is not the main problem.

The central issue is that when the Supreme Court considers this law it should consider whether the committees currently used by 1,000 communities in Israel are also valid. It should not be legal for kibbutzim founded many years ago to be allowed to uphold an institution that is considered illegal in other communities that were founded more recently. Either all be allowed to have acceptance committees or none should. It shouldn’t be considered “racist” for some and not for others.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

Terra Incognita: Robert Ford's Heroic Diplomacy

Terra Incognita: Robert Ford’s heroic diplomacy
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
10/25/2011 23:09

US envoy to Syria's personal investigation of abuses and his shows of support for protestors is a welcome sign.

The American decision to withdraw Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford from Syria should raise eyebrows, not only because it represents a fundamental fear for his safety, but also because of what he has come to represent.

Through Ford’s courageous use of personal diplomacy, travelling to the most dangerous areas of Syria to show support for the protestors, he has carved out a niche for himself in the region, defying stereotypes about what diplomats can and should do.

On the face of it the ambassador’s position and biography don’t necessarily lend themselves to this type of action. A career diplomat , Mr. Ford, born in Denver, Colorado in 1958, is considered one of the foremost Arabists in the State Department.

He served in the Peace Corps and obtained a BA and MA from Johns Hopkins University before entering the US foreign service in 1985.

Since 1985 he has been posted throughout the Middle East, most notably in Iraq after the American invasion and in Algeria from 2006 to 2008.

His posting to Syria in late 2010 was considered important because the US had withdrawn its ambassador to Syria in 2005 after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister.

Ford’s work in Syria has almost all taken place against the backdrop of the “Arab Spring.” During his confirmation hearings with the US Senate, before being posted to Damascus, Ford had promised that “unfiltered straight talk with the Syrian government will be my mission priority.”

It is interesting that through June of 2011 he was in fact criticized for doing little to show support for the protestors that Bashar Assad’s regime was gunning down in the streets. Richard Grenell, writing at the Huffingtonpost.com, asked, “Shouldn’t Ford be calling attention to and showing the violence coming from Assad’s government?” He also thought the US should withdraw its ambassador to protest the crackdown.

In early July, however, Ford made an important and visible statement against the actions of the Syrian regime when he visited Hama with the French ambassador, Eric Chevallier. After his factfinding trip, which brought temporary respite to the besieged protestors in the city, he told media that “the violence that the Syrian government is inflicting on Syrian protesters, from our point of view, is grotesque. It’s abhorrent.”

He also articulated a new type of “muscular” diplomacy: “I don’t particularly care [if Syria is angry], because we have to show our solidarity with peaceful protesters. I’d do it again tomorrow if I had to... I’m going keep moving around the country. I can’t stop.”

Since July, Ford has been active in articulating opposition to the Syrian regime’s methods and showing support for those who oppose Assad. In September he travelled to meet with Hasan Abdel-Azim, an opposition figure. Pro-Assad protestors surrounded the ambassador’s vehicle, pelted him with tomatoes and eggs and temporarily interdicted his motorcade.

Stephen Ford is not the first US diplomat to find himself in harm’s way. One hundred and eleven US diplomats have been murdered or come to a bad end since 1780. Many died in Pakistan as a result of terrorism and most were not of ambassadorial rank.


One of the most famous cases of an American diplomat being murdered while at his post was that of Vice-Consul Robert Imbrie. Imbrie was beaten to death by a mob in Teheran in 1924 after being mistaken for a member of the Bahai faith. Local Islamists had whipped themselves into a rage, convinced that Bahais had poisoned a well .

Cleo Noel, US ambassador to the Sudan, was killed by Palestinian members of Black September in 1973. The US ambassador to Beirut, Frances Meloy, was murdered in 1977. Adolph Dubs, the US ambassador to Afghanistan was killed in 1979 when terrorists tried to kidnap him.

Ford’s departure from Syria is apparently based on credible intelligence that certain elements wanted him to meet a similar end.

The kind of blunt, heroic diplomacy that Ford has come to represent is a departure from the long-standing practice of US State Department functionaries, especially those considered Arabists, of toeing the line when it comes to dictators and human rights abuses.

Especially in the Middle East, US diplomats have been stricken with what is often termed “clientitis”; staying in a country too long and becoming too attached to it, rather than representing US interests.

US ambassadors in Saudi Arabia have been loathe to condemn killings in the Qatif region, in the Gulf states the US representatives do little to speak out on the mass human rights abuses, which amount to slavery, against foreign workers.

In Iraq, where it has just been announced that Iran and Turkey are both cooperating to suppress the Kurds, including incursions into Iraq, the US has remained silent.

There is obviously a question as to what constitutes going beyond the diplomatic mission’s purview, such as meeting with illegal opposition figures. But Mr. Ford’s personal investigation of abuses and his shows of support for protestors is a welcome sign, one that the US State Department might consider repeating in the future.

The writer received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute of Market Studies.

Terra Incognita: Disgraceful Behavior

Terra Incognita: Disgraceful behavior
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
11/01/2011 22:53

The desecration of Sammy Ofer’s grave is but the latest in a shameful wave of hate directed at an Israeli success story.

Last week, shipping tycoon Sammy Ofer’s grave in Tel Aviv’s Trumpeldor Cemetery was vandalized. It could have been worse, to be sure. The vandal – no, the savage – drew only a small “price tag” on the grave. But the act was merely the latest in a series of disgraceful behavior directed at the Ofer family over the past six months.

By most accounts the Ofer brothers, quiet and unassuming but massively wealthy, were decent men. Sammy and his brother Yuli were born in Rumania in the early 1920s. Their family came to Mandatory Palestine in 1924 and resided in Haifa. Both men served in the Israeli army, Sammy in the nascent Navy because he had been in the Royal Navy, and his brother in the army. Sammy bought his first ship in 1950 and after his brother left the army, mustering out as a Major, the two men founded a shipping company which would become the basis for the Ofer Brothers Group.

As Nehemia Shtrasler of Haaretz tells it, Sammy Ofer made his bones abroad.

“The truth is that Ofer made his fortune abroad, and only afterward returned to Israel in order to invest the profits here....He left Israel in the late 1960s and went to live in London, where he founded a shipping company that was very successful. He took great risks, took out huge loans and purchased ships during times of crisis, when everyone was afraidli success story.�㛲���ᦗ�Last wl prepared in times of prosperity.”

With his brother Yuli, he acquired other assets besides shipping, including Bank Mizrahi, several chemical and oil businesses and dabbled in real estate. The Ofer brothers became Israel’s wealthiest people and grew their shipping business into one of the biggest in the world. They also gave handsomely to charity.

BUT SOME Israelis, it seems, hated them and felt suspicious of their wealth. They were the rich tycoons, the ones the protestors blame for the high rents and cottage cheese prices. They were the evil capitalists.

In May, the US State Department slapped sanctions on seven companies, the Ofer brothers’ among them, for dealing with Iran and barred them from receiving US export licenses and receiving loans of over $10 million from US financial institutions.

This revelation was accepted without question by the Israeli public, media and politicians, all of whom brandished their knives to strike down the company that could now be accused of putting profits above patriotism.

Israel’s politicians and media experts didn’t bother to digest what the Ofer brothers were accused of – the State Department claimed they didn’t do due diligence when they sold a tanker they owned jointly with another company to a straw company that was in fact acting on behalf of Iran.

Yossi Melman at Haaretz wrote that “the Ofer Brothers Group may be scurrying into damage control in Israel, Singapore, London and Washington, after the United States blacklisted it for trading with Iran, but Israel seems to be doing nothing to enforce international sanctions on Iran.”

Israel’s politicians across the political spectrum demanded an immediate investigation by the attorney-general and Knesset. Shelly Yacimovich of Labor claimed “the prime minister must protect Israel’s economy against such an occurrence and pursue justice against the companies’ owners.” A special Knesset panel was convened to investigate the supposed wrongdoing.

But then the knives were sheathed. The Knesset committee disappeared. The attorney- general did nothing.

Sammy Ofer died in early June. One Obituary read: “Israeli billionaire involved in Iran dealings dies in Tel Aviv.” At his funeral, his son Idan said, “for him, Zionism wasn’t merely an ideal, but a commandment to action.” Sammy’s brother Yuli died in September. Conveniently, the next day the press reported: “US drops Ofer brothers company from Iran Sanctions List” (Haaretz, Sept. 13).

Even though they were in their late 80s, the controversy may have driven the poor men to an early grave.

One thing that’s clear regarding the ordeal the Ofers were forced to go through is that, as far as I can tell, not one politician or media personality has apologized. Why should Shelly Yacimovich, Aryeh Eldad or Nachman Shai, among the accusers, say “we were wrong, it turns out that we jumped to conclusions”?

No, it is easier to have a savage outburst, to accuse men who gave their entire lives to Israel, who devoted themselves not only to the defense of the country but also to making it a world financial power, of wanting some piddling profit from the sale of one rusty tanker to an Iranian straw company.

One wonders, if the Ofers had simply left Israel in 1960 and not returned, building their fortune abroad, where all their money was made anyway, would not their lives have ended differently?

Sammy’s grave would probably not have been vandalized, at least not by his own people. Furthermore he wouldn’t have been hounded to his dying day.

Mr. Ofer couldn’t even donate money in Israel without people castigating him for it.

In 2006 when he had given money to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art he was slandered and libeled so much he withdrew the donation, writing, “Sorry for wanting to contribute, an open letter to the art lovers in Tel Aviv and Israel.”

That is a sad testament to the place the Ofers called home. Why is that? Why can’t Israelis look up to men like the Ofers, see success and feel proud? The Ofers represented one of the best success stories in the region. The country should have produced ten thousand more Ofers rather than producing ten thousand more critics capable of unfounded hateful accusations.

There should be outrage over the desecration at Trumpeldor Cemetery, just as there is outrage at all these heinous “price tag” attacks.

The writer has a Ph.D from Hebrew University and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.
Download JPost's iPhone application

Terra Incognita Misbehaving Sciences

Terra incognita: Misbehaving sciences?
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN, Jerusalem Post
11/08/2011 23:42

In light of recent incitement by lecturers, it' s important to examine the freedom of expression and the “right” of academics to engage in extremist speech.

Two weeks ago it was reported that State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan had asked police to investigate Ben-Gurion University chemistry lecturer Eyal Nir for incitement because of a call he made to “break the necks” of a right-wing fringe group. The same week, Kent State University Professor Julio Pino yelled “death to Israel” during a lecture by Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi. It is important to examine not only the merits of these cases but also the wider context of freedom of expression and the “right” of academics to engage in extremist speech while at the same time enjoying the presumption that their work with students remains unbiased and uninformed by their sometimes radical views.

The Nir incident took place in June, 2011, after Israelis marched through Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day. Some of the fringe part of the march included a group that chanted anti- Arab slogans and whose comments were posted on YouTube. Nir saw the YouTube video and linked to it on his Facebook page, with a comment in Hebrew that “gangs of bandits are swarming our country. I call on the world to come and help break these scoundrels’ necks.”

The comment drew criticism and numerous comments on Facebook but Nir stood by what he said. He wrote that the gang in question consisted of a few bullies and that they must be prevented from carrying out their threats.

“I believe my cry to stop them is reasonable,” said Nir.

It is worth noting that Eyal Nir is no stranger to radical politics in Israel. In 2010 he was photographed being arrested by the IDF during a protest at Nabi Salah in the West Bank. Blogger Alison Ramer wrote that “Nir was taken into an army jeep for insulting a soldier with a racial slur.”

Ben-Gurion University has seemingly stood by Nir, noting in a statement: “Dr. Nir published his comments as a private individual, on his personal Facebook page. The university does not take a side in the matter, and therefore justice should be sought in appropriate legal forum.”

Others took issue with the comments immediately, establishing an online petition to have him fired.

THE PROBLEM with Nir’s comments is not whether they constitute incitement under Israeli law, since the incitement law is, in my opinion, flawed. The issue that should be raised about Nir’s diatribe is how it impacts the university environment he teaches in. A review of cases abroad shows that most faculty members who have been fired for things they said had their jobs terminated only in connection to comments made in class or which were directly related to campus activities.

For instance, a Leeds University lecturer was suspended and took early retirement when he gave an interview to a student newspaper suggesting that Africans were less intelligent than Europeans. There do not seem to be any incidents of faculty members having been fired for statements made outside of the university setting.

However, Peter Van Onselen, writing in The Australian, recalled that a colleague once complained to his university about a column he had written. He took the “view that it brought the university [a previous employer] into disrepute, and requested that I be reprimanded for doing the university’s reputation damage,” wrote Onselen.

Do Nir’s comments bring Ben-Gurion University into disrepute? Considering the fact that the university has no shortage of radical leftists who do not hesitate to offer their opinion that Israel is a colonizing, racist country, it would seem that the university’s reputation could not be tangibly changed by these newest comments.

The story of the “death to Israel” comment by Julio Pino, a tenured professor at Kent State, is more nuanced. Pino is a native of Cuba and a convert to Islam. There is some irony in the fact that the visiting Israeli diplomat who drew Pino’s ire is himself a Muslim (Mr. Khaldi is Israel’s first Beduin deputy consul). His outburst took place on campus. Kent State President Lester Lefton condemned Pino’s outburst, however according to the American Association of University Professors, “Calling out a political slogan during a question period falls well within the speech rights of any member of a university community.”


Most respected academics know the value of having their students believe classes are not biased against certain individuals due to race, creed or gender. Since national-religious students in Israel clearly constitute a creed it is certainly possible that these students might feel that Nir’s “break their necks” comment was directed at them and would feel uncomfortable attending his classes. How can one study in such a hostile environment? Could a black student feel comfortable in a class where she knew that the lecturer had written in an op-ed that black activists should have their necks broken? Furthermore, why do academics enjoy a special type of free speech that no other occupation enjoys? Those defending these “outbursts” seem to misconstrue the notion of academic freedom, which means a freedom to research, with the idea that academics have the right to behave in the lowest manner possible, using outbursts that befit the village drunk more than they do a holder of a doctorate. When an academic’s behavior is as savage, unrestrained and brutish as that of someone leaving a pub sloshed at three in the morning, one wonders where our notion of what constitutes acceptable behavior, and speech, went wrong.

Terra Incognita the Pakistan Two Step

Terra Incognita: The Pakistan two-step
By TERRA INCOGNITA
09/27/2011 07:14

It is time for the US to downgrade ties with this dangerous "ally."

‘Never before has a US official so publicly linked Pakistan to attacks on Americans. It is a sickening accusation given the fact that the US has been giving Pakistan nearly $2 billion a year, money to fight terrorism, not support it.”

Those were the words Martha Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent at ABC news, on September 22. The man whose name has headlined these revelations is Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he declared: “In continuing to use violent extremism, as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, army and ISI jeopardizes our strategic partnership.”



Sitting beside the four-star admiral was US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who explained that “a very clear message [must be sent] to them and to others that they must take steps to prevent the safe havens that [terrorists] are using [in Pakistan].”

That Mullen made his blunt statement just days before he is due to retire suggests that he was asked to provide the stronger testimony before Congress whereas Panetta, who will remain secretary of defense, would set a softer tone.

The events at the heart of the recent allegations were an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a September 13 attack on the US embassy there. The story that Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, was behind the attacks, through the use of Islamist proxies, was headline news in many newspapers in the West.

The Pakistani press has also reported about Mullen’s comments. This has triggered a series of stories detailing meetings among Pakistani army officers aimed at “meeting amid tensions” with the US. The latest talking point being put forward by Pakistani commentators, such as Interior Minister Rehman Malik, is that the CIA was behind the creation of the Haqqani network.

The Haqqani network is actually a sort of family business that originated in the mountainous southern Afghan region of Paktia, which borders Pakistan’s North Waziristan province. It was founded by Jalaludin Haqqani (born about 1950) and is now run in cooperation with his son. During the 1980s Haqqani initially allied himself with the hardcore Islamist Afghani Gulbeddin Hekmatyar. Later, he found his way not only to Pakistan’s ISI but also to the CIA and US Congressman Charlie Wilson. He received arms and tens of thousands of dollars in US and Saudi aid to fight the Soviets, with much of the money and weapons being channeled through the ISI. This ISI-CIA campaign to throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan was the subject of the famous 2003 book Charlie Wilson’s War, which was later made into a movie.

THE “REVELATIONS” about the role of the ISI in Pakistan and the double game it plays have been common knowledge to anyone reporting about the conflict in the region for more than a decade. The story of the ISA-Taliban relationship has been told in several books and numerous articles by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. In an interview with Harpers, Rashid said, “This lack of US interest [after 2001] coincided with the interests of the Pakistani army: to go after al Qaida, but to allow the Taliban to resettle in Pakistan. Quite soon the Taliban was once again patronized by the ISI.”

Indian intelligence experts have long warned the US and the world that the ISI has been funding terrorist networks in Kashmir and Central Asia since the 1980s. Most recently, however, the US has come face to face with Pakistani complicity to an extent that is hard to ignore. The fact that Osama Bin Laden was found living in a town dominated by the Pakistani military clearly illustrated either the incompetence of Pakistan or it complicity in hiding him.

Some commentators have painted a picture of an ISI that is so autonomous that the Pakistani government cannot be held responsible for its actions. David Rohde at Reuters argues that “instead of blaming all Pakistanis for the action of the ISI, the United States must help moderate Pakistanis reform an out-of-step, out-of-control agency.”

This is a convenient story for those that like to imagine that intelligence organizations such as the CIA are engaged in so many “black” operations that they are a law unto themselves. But to judge from their statements, at least some of Pakistan’s politicians don’t subscribe to this notion, and make no distinction between the ISI and the government.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar responded to Mullen’s allegations by threatening the US: “You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people. If you are choosing to do so and if they are choosing to do so it will be at their own cost.”

This is the Pakistani quagmire; politicians either blaming the CIA, claiming they are helpless against the power of the ISI, or daring the US to severe ties with them. They accuse the US of “losing an ally” in Pakistan or “alienating” the Pakistani people.

The US government must respond to the reality. The Pakistani people cannot be “alienated,” and the US cannot “lose an ally” it doesn’t have. The US faced the same duplicity when it worked with the South Vietnamese government in the 1960s.

Some argue that the ISI and Pakistan do, from time to time, turn in Taliban commanders.

But the reality is that this should be viewed much like a mafia family that turns in other mafiosi just so that it can get stronger. Pakistan’s government has perfected the two-step, a dance routine where you step in one direction and then end up going the other way. Pakistan hands over the Taliban it doesn’t like, to weaken those factions it can’t control, while holding close to those like Haqqani who have been allies with the ISI since the 1980s. Pakistan paints a picture of a Mexican stand-off with the US, where the US can’t ditch its useless “ally,” but Mike Mullen’s statements may finally point the way to a realistic severing or downgrading of ties with this dangerous, unstable country.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

Terra Incognita: Angela Merkel, Stand Strong Against Euro-Bonds

Angela Merkel, stand strong against Euro-bonds!
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Jerusalem Post
08/23/2011 22:56

Europe’s stronger economies must keep the financial barbarians at bay.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

The financial barbarians are at the gates of the Euro. Ironically, today it is Germany – home of the barbarians who destroyed Europe’s first common market, Rome – that is standing against the new debt-indulging savages.

In recent days European Union bureaucrats and other commentators have been arguing that a long term solution to the debt problems haunting certain European countries could be found in Euro bonds.

Olli Rehn, EU Economics and Monetary Affairs commissioner, has explained that “These euro securities would aim to strengthen fiscal discipline and increase stability in the euro area through the markets.”

President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso has been arguing for months that a common Euro Zone bond might be a good idea. He said in December: “Let us not kill the euro bonds idea for the future, but let us concentrate now on what we can do quickly.”


A 2011 paper by Prof. Nicholas Economides and Prof. Roy Smith at NYU suggested a similar type of bond for Europe called a Trichet bond, after European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet. In this scenario, the EU would issue bonds that could be exchanged for the rotting debt of certain EU nations.

“Present holders of sovereign debt will be exchanging low-quality bonds with limited liquidity for higher-quality bonds with greater liquidity.” They also argued that “without a workable EU remedy for the sovereign-debt problems, countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy are being treated by the market, (which so far has ignored the European rescue fund and related efforts to calm the crisis) as potential defaulters.”

The idea being presented is that the EU should issue a form of debt in order that junk bonds can be traded in for higher-quality bonds.

This is sort of like the collateralized debt obligations that allowed supprime mortgages to be resold as “safe” investments – the shenanigan that created the American financial meltdown of 2008. The idea for the Euro bond is only slightly different than the Trichet bond; it supposes that the EU create bonds that the 17-nation EU would be responsible for repaying in order to refinance the debt of countries that can’t keep themselves off the hooch.

GERMAN CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have both rejected the idea of Euro bonds. Commentators have pointed out that issuing such bonds might go against the constitutions of member states. It would also increase the power of the EU, and diminish the budgetary independence of the member states.

Goldman Sachs economist Dirk Schumacher noted that it would mean “further change of the institutional setup of the euro zone, with more oversight and control from Brussels.”

Those promoting Euro bonds are trying to push them through the door when European countries are at their weakest. They claim they are the only way to save the Euro.

In essence they are using the crises to forever weaken the rights of hardworking, financially responsible Europeans, pushing through a new financial instrument that would compel the Germans and French to work forever in a form of indentured servitude so that Greek, Italian and Spanish governments can continue to rack up debts. It is a twisted form of Karl Marx’s 1875 creed “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The Germans and French have the ability, the others have the need.

The problem is that the Germans and French (and other responsible European nations) are already being forced to pay for the mistakes of weaker economies. In May 2010, as part of a rescue package to save European debtor nations, the European Central Bank (ECB) began purchasing the sovereign debt of those countries. So far it has bought 110 billion Euros worth of Spanish and Italian debt. The reason is to keep the borrowing costs of these nations lower, keeping their interest rates lower so they don’t get themselves even deeper in debt. This is a short-term solution of course; the ECB can’t buy debt forever. In fact, the cap on this latest bailout fund is 450 billion euros. But the ECB has been right to try to stem the flow, because some of the rise in interest rates on these nation’s bonds have been caused by speculators.

THE PROBLEM with the EU-bond scenario is that it would make Germany responsible for the actions of others. Greece has managed to rack up debt to a tune of 160% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while Italy’s is at 120%. By contrast, Germany owes just 80% – still a high figure. Germany is Europe’s most productive nation, and the anchor of the Euro, yet it is being pushed into a corner. There is a belief that if Greece or Italy is allowed to default on its debt that the debt contagion would spread to France and then to Germany. To save Germany, therefore, the financial barbarians must be kept at bay.

But the problem is that the barbarians are already inside the gates, and are being allowed, every day, to eat away at the sound policies of other countries. The solution shouldn’t be to give the barbarians a blank check called Euro bonds that allows them to make other nations keep paying for their mistakes.

Terra Incognita The Boring Jewish State?

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=234051
The Jerusalem Post
Terra Incognita: The boring Jewish state?
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
08/17/2011 00:00

Why is there such a fear of taking Jews to see minorities of Israel? Why fear of them meeting Russians, Yemenites, Moroccans, Ethiopians?

‘I’m Japanese, but every time I go back to the home country, it’s just boring, the whole story of the mythical samurai past. Finally I got an opportunity to visit Japan via a Japanese cultural association with the goal of studying and interacting with the ‘other.’ We met North Korean refugees seeking asylum, Chinese minorities, an American working in a corporate firm, a member of an indigenous minority from Okinawa and gay activists. Only through meeting all these people could I finally appreciate Japan. Japanese-Americans are tired of hearing just Japan’s Japanese history; to relate to their ancient land, they must learn about the ‘other.’”

Of course, these words were never spoken by a Japanese person. How many Japanese-Americans, if they care about Japan, can only relate to it if they relate to the Chinese minorities there? How many Indian-Americans can only relate to mother India by relating to the Parsi minority in Mumbai? How many Iranian-Americans find they can care about Iran only through learning about its Azeri and Baluchi communities? Yet some portion of the world’s Jewish community finds that the only thing interesting in Israel is stories of Beduin, Israeli-Arabs, African refugees and Palestinians.

Israel is just downright boring, so long as it involves stories about the Jews.


Sarah Schonberg echoed these sentiments in an oped in The Forward: “American youth are indifferent to hearing just one story and being told to accept it without question.” She tells how she had little interest in Israel until she attended a Hebrew College trip aimed at introducing American Jews to the “other” there, namely Israeli Arabs. “To overlook a population of this size is akin to ignoring the entire black, Asian, Native-American and multi-racial populations in the US,” she wrote.

Her story is similar to many other stories of Jews who find Israel mundane, unless they can view the country through the prism of social justice and activism for minority rights.

Through generations of living as minorities in the Diaspora, Jews have been at the forefront of fighting for minority rights. It’s no surprise that it was a Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, who came up with the concept of the “other.” So when Jews come to Israel, they immediately want to find the minorities, accustomed as they are to the concept that only minorities are interesting. Because Jews tend to view the concept of what constitutes a Jew through the prism with which they grew up, they also tend to homogenize the Jewish community in Israel. Thus, while Schonberg pays passing heed to the “cultural diversity that makes up the Jewish community in Israel,” she doesn’t mention any Jewish minorities.

The type of fact-finding trip that Hebrew College ran has become increasingly common. The New Israel Fund has been organizing them for a while, bringing Jews from the US to Israel to see the “other” on study tours. A standard trip consists of visits with Beduin, Israeli Arabs, African refugees, more Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, Palestinians in Hebron, and maybe, if people are lucky, more Beduin and, as an aside, an Ethiopian Jew.

In transit, the tour leaders point out the “Jews”: hotels in Tel Aviv, wineries in Zichron Ya’acov, everything to present Jews as the wealthiest, “whitest” elite in the country, in contrast to the poverty-stricken, discriminated- against “black” minorities. This plays well to American Jewish sentiments. As veterans in the civil rights struggle, American Jews are used to the dichotomy of white and black, and as fighters for immigrant rights, they are used to the Manichean absolutes of the wealthy and the poor.

The types of trips now being sold, primarily to American Jews, seek to “connect” them with Israel the only way the trip leaders know how: through the “others” with whom Jews feel naturally comfortable.

Contrast this with the Zionistic tours that give Jews “one story.”

But why is there no happy medium? Why is there such a fear of taking Jews to see the Jewish minorities of Israel? Why is there a fear of letting them meet Russians, Yemenites, Moroccans, Ethiopians and haredim, to name a few? The fear on the part of the birthright trips, and those like them, is that Jews might be shocked to see poverty and not think the country a success. The fear on the part of those like the New Israel Fund or Hebrew College is that they might not be able to push their agenda of the “other.”

It isn’t all the fault of the educators; people like Schonberg travel all over the world, and find most countries fascinating without spending all their time among the “other.” In Iran they don’t look for Baluchis, in Japan they don’t look for Koreans, in South Africa they don’t need Afrikaners, in Egypt they don’t want to meet Nubians. They are fine with majority narratives for every country except Israel and America. The cultural milieu from which they come ascribes boring traits to Jews.

There is nothing wrong with introducing people to the “other” in Israel, but it is essential that they see all the others, not just a cookie-cutter image from the West into which Israel is forced to be subsumed so it can be understood.

Terra Incognita: Baseless Hatred of the Haredim

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=233169
Terra Incognita: Baseless hatred of the haredim
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
08/10/2011 06:22

It is essential that people search their souls and ask why they acquiesce so easily to canards about the ultra-orthodox community and statements made against it.

One of the central messages of Tisha Be’av, which took place yesterday, is the consequences of Sinat Hinam or baseless hatred. During the period of the Second Temple Jews quarreled so much among themselves that it brought ruin upon the Jewish people.

Today, with the housing protests that have swept the country, it is worthwhile to pause and ponder one type of baseless hatred that is often not acknowledged: hatred of the Ultra-Orthodox or haredi community.

T

he savage hatred of haredim comes in many forms. It begins with the things people say; how the haredim are “parasites” who don’t pay taxes and don’t go to the army, that they beat their wives and create a “mini- Tehran” in their communities, that they are dirty, smelly “dosim” and that they “infiltrate” the wonderful utopian secular neighborhoods. Oh, and of course, they are ignorant donkeys who hate Zionism and are intolerant of homosexuals, Arabs and blacks.

This hate is on display everywhere in symbolic acts.

Swastikas sprayed on a synagogue in Kfar Yona, where the secular residents fear a haredi “takeover”. The Eruv (wire surrounding a religious community that allows them to carry items on Shabbat) is cut in Kiryat Yovel by self-proclaimed secular resistance fighters. The huge signs erected by Meretz during its campaign for Jerusalem city council in 2008 that read “End the Haredization of Jerusalem.” A student at Hebrew University does doctoral work analyzing how the haredim invaded Kiryat Yovel, as if anyone can imagine an open minded university sponsoring the work of someone wanting to analyze how Arabs “took over” the Wolfson neighborhood in Acre.

THE HATRED of the haredi population is greatest among those who preach tolerance. Meretz, a far left political party, campaigns to end the haredi infiltration of Jerusalem’s secular bastions, but at the same time it complains of racism when Jews don’t want Arabs moving into Pisgat Zeev. Righteous people denounce the “acceptance committee law” that allows small communities to reject applicants, but the same people don’t seem to mind if a secular community opposes haredim moving to the area simply because they might change the character of the neighborhood. There was an outcry in the country when Rabbis signed a letter asking people not to rent apartments to Arabs in Safed, but there is no outcry among the ‘civil rights’ lobby when Ram Fruman created the Forum for Secular Communities, whose sole goal is to prevent haredi people from moving to “secular” areas. Fruman says “Our association works on two levels – at the local level, in sharing experience, knowledge and resources; and at the national level, in creating a political lobby that can take the lead with public action.” One imagines if the haredim just disguised themselves as Arabs they would be welcomed by the “open minded” secular elites and their rights to move where they want would be defended at the highest levels.

The hatred of the haredi population transcends all political and ethnic groups in Israel; Arabs, leftists, the national religious, free market liberals, even Ethiopians, all have a generally visceral dislike for the black hat.

Nechamia Stressler, the usually level headed columnist at Haaretz says they offer only “rotten goods, rife with ignorance, superstition.” Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv, described them as “aloof and ignorant people who are growing at an alarming rate.” Yuval Tumarkin, artist and winner of the Israel Prize, once said “when one sees the haredim one understands why there was a Holocaust.”

HAREDIM KNOW they are hated. Aharon Yakter, who lives in Bnei Brak, recalls that “I grew up near Sheinkin street in Tel Aviv until the age of 18. They never yelled 'dos' back then.” But nowadays if a hated haredi shows his face on the trendy street the secular community would feel no qualms about banding together to oppose the “infiltration.” Every Israeli should be ashamed that they speak of the haredim the way they do. There is nothing honorable in denying religious Jews the ability to live where they want.

The myths used to justify baseless hatred of the haredim are legion. One accuses them of not going to the army, but there are an equal number of secular draft dodgers as there are haredi ones, and the secular draft dodgers aren’t forced to attend Yeshiva in lieu of army service. Yet we don’t call the secular population “parasites.”

The student unions and other social organizations rail against funding for Yeshiva students, but that funding, about NIS 135 million for 13,000 students in 2010, provides less than $250 a month to the religious students, similar or less than most secular student scholarships.

The student union complains about equality, but the reality is that the secular public drains the state’s coffers and drinks at the same trough as the haredi public.

And what about hatred of the state, do certain haredi groups (i.e Neturei Karta) hate the state at a greater rate than, say, university lecturers in the Cohn Institute of History and Philosophy at Tel Aviv University? At least the haredi public is not at the forefront of all the ‘human rights’ organizations that support boycotts and accuse the country of apartheid.

BASELESS HATRED didn’t disappear this Tisha Be’av, but it is essential that, at least every once in a while, people search their souls and ask why they acquiesce so easily to canards about the ultra-orthodox community and statements made against it. The haredim aren’t angels, and their community is not a utopia, but then again, neither are any of the communities in Israel. Recognizing that as a starting point will increase tolerance, for the better.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

Terra Incognita: The Foreign Worker Catch 22 in Israel

The foreign workers’ ‘Catch-22'
In the Jerusalem Post
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=229060
07/12/2011 23:21

Rights and Responsibility: The migrant workers who choose to come to Israel are adults. It is time we started treating them as such.

Israel is increasingly living in a catch-22 regarding foreign workers and their rights. First of all, it is considered unacceptable to bind foreign workers to their employers. Second, the courts have determined that foreign workers who get pregnant may not be deported under the previous law that voided their work permits if they gave birth. Third, the courts have determined that it is also illegal to deport foreign workers who have just given birth.

The catch-22 is that the foreign workers are, by default, encouraged to have children in order to stay in the country. Once they have children, it becomes impossible to deport them because of all the petitions against deporting their children. For instance, in March 2011 the Interior Ministry postponed deporting foreign workers and their children because it didn’t want to “disrupt the studies of children enrolled in school.” It appears that once a female foreign worker enters the country, it is almost assured that she will not leave, and that ipso facto she and her children will receive unlimited rights to remain.

DISCUSSION ABOUT the foreign workers, of whom there are thought to be more than 300,000, always revolves around their “rights.” When Supreme Court Justice Ayala Procaccia overturned the policy of deporting those that were pregnant or had just had children, she said “it affects [the worker’s] right to be a parent, to have a family and to support herself. The policy is incongruent with Israeli labor laws that safeguard the rights of the woman both during and after birth.” But why does the supposed “right” to a family transcend the laws of a country where one has chosen to come as a worker? Let’s say, for arguments sake, that the foreign workers didn’t look so “foreign” and didn’t come across in photos as “victims.” If they looked like educated Europeans (still foreign, but not that foreign), would their case be as compelling? Do we have much compassion for a European couple that moves to Israel, for whatever reason, has a child here, and which the state subsequently orders deported for overstaying a visa? Would there be an outcry that the child might be yanked out of school? Be honest with yourself. If it was 300,000 Europeans in Tel Aviv and we read about them being deported, wouldn’t we shrug and say “well, they should have obeyed the law.”

So the reality of the foreign round-about is the feeling that somehow they are not educated enough and don’t look responsible enough to read the law and make responsible choices. This is a very real paternalistic, nay racist, reality. I have had American and European non-Jewish friends who got pregnant here or moved here with their children. They understand the strain they are putting the child under by raising it in a temporary foreign environment. Similarly, Americans and Europeans living in the Gulf Arab states, Japan, Mexico or wherever are not considered victims if they are deported, with their children, for overstaying a visa or violating the conditions of their employment contract.

By deporting foreign workers, their “rights” to a family are not being harmed; they are merely being asked to be responsible adults, responsible toward the law and their children. By always passing the buck and keeping them from being deported when pregnant, and then after giving birth, and then once the children are in kindergarten, the courts are merely belittling them and treating them as irresponsibles who can’t make choices about reproduction.

IN THE face of a wave of foreign workers, sense and responsibility has been checked at the border and incoherent paternalism has become the law of the land. We must look at foreign workers as people like us, and demand that they receive not only certain rights but also bear certain responsibilities. Once responsibility is part of the equation, the catch-22 that has become the norm will begin to correct itself.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

Terra Incognita: A Palestinian DInar

A question of the Palestinian dinar
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=225997
06/21/2011 23:54

Terra Incognita: What currency will the Palestinians use in the wake of their quest to seek recognition for a state in September?

Talkbacks (9)
There is a Facebook page circulating that purports to show an unofficial Palestinian passport stamp designed by an artist named Kahled Jarrar. But Jarrar’s homemade stamp is less important than another pressing issue: What currency will the Palestinians use in the wake of their quest to seek recognition for their state in September?

It isn’t a simple matter, as history will show. After the US declared independence in 1776, it was 10 years before Congress actually approved the use of the dollar as the official currency. And it wasn’t until 1792 that the first US mint, sanctioned by the government to print money, was inaugurated in Philadelphia (then the American capital).

By the time of the Civil War, the question of currency had gained more urgency. Only a month after the Confederate States of America had been formed, it began to issue its own currency in April 1861. As is well known, the Confederate dollar quickly depreciated, since it was not backed by assets, and became virtually worthless by 1864.

To examine the successes and failures of new national currencies, it is worth looking at several examples.

East Timor seems to be a prime case. Slightly smaller than Israel, East Timor is at the end of the Indonesia archipelago. In 1975 its colonial occupier, Portugal, decided to withdraw, and the Timorese declared independence in November of that year. However, only a month later, it was invaded by Indonesia in a campaign of massacre that began 25 years of brutal rule. The UN never recognized Indonesian sovereignty, and declared the country a “non-self governing territory under Portuguese administration.”

In 1999, after Indonesian human rights violations became widely known, a UN-sponsored referendum resulted in the territory becoming independent.

The Timorese got rid of the hated Indonesian rupiah, but instead of adopting their own currency, they began using the US dollar. The imposition of the dollar on the Timorese was completely a product of the UN’s semi-colonial administration that ran the country in 2000, and whose tentacles have never been completely removed. For a brief period, the UN National Consultative Council favored using the Portuguese escudo, but that idea was scratched when it became clear that the Portuguese were embracing the euro. The rupiah couldn’t be retained, not only because it was disliked, but because it was an unstable currency, and it meant East Timor’s future would be tied to the Indonesian economy.

Luis Valdivieso, head of the IMF office in East Timor, said: “I think the main consideration has been one of pragmatic consideration given the fact that t is urgent now [in 2000] to receive the payments on execution of the budget.” Yet the local people wanted their own currency. A coalition of former resistance leaders noted: “We believe the national currency should be an affirmation of independence and sovereignty.”

To no avail; the East Timorese continue to be honorary Americans, in the economic sense.

Kosovo is another case in point. Kosovo became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century, when the Turkish sultan overran what was then part of the Kingdom of Serbia. While it was once part of Serbia or Yugoslavia, a 1999 rebellion by Kosovo Albanians resulted in a bombing campaign by NATO and the occupation of the province by the UN. That year, the UN adopted the German mark as a replacement for the Serbian dinar. Use of the mark led directly to the imposition of the euro when the country declared independence in 2008. Yet, like East Timor, Kosovo remains in many ways a colony of the UN and various NGOs and international organizations. Because Kosovo hopes to join the EU one day, it has been using the euro rather than adopting the Albanian lek, the currency of its ethnically related neighbor.

Somaliland presents a more unique story. A large and sparsely populated country on the horn of Africa, Somaliland was initially colonized by the British. In 1960, after a few days of independence, it joined with Italian Somaliland to form modern-day Somalia. After years of misgovernment and a long running civil war, the territory decided to seek independence, which it declared in 1991. In 1994, Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal inaugurated a new currency, called the Somaliland shilling. The currency was briefly minted in England at the Pobjoy Mint, which prints money for 37 small countries and overseas territories. It doesn’t seem that the currency has been very successful, and it isn’t currently being minted.

Another breakaway republic, Western Sahara, was governed by its colonizer, Spain, until decolonization in 1975, when Morocco and Mauritania occupied the country.

The local independence movement briefly attempted to create its own currency called the Sahwari paseta, pegged to the old Spanish paseta.

Other countries have successfully established currencies. The post-Soviet states that gained independence in 1990 have mostly created their own currencies. Latvia, for instance, re-instituted the lats – once used in 1922 – to replace the ruble.

Perhaps it is interesting to look at Israeli history to see how a new currency can be created. The British invaded Palestine in 1917, but continued to use the Ottoman lira alongside the Egyptian pound until 1927.

In that year the Palestinian pound was introduced, and was pegged to the British pound. After independence, it took Israel four years to fully adopt the Israeli lira. By contrast, the Jordanians adopted the dinar in 1949. The Palestinian pound continued to circulate in the West Bank until 1950, when it was replaced by the Jordanian dinar, and in Gaza until 1951, when it was replaced by the Egyptian pound.

What do the Palestinians think they will use as a currency? On May 31, The Washington Post reported that there was some discussion about replacing the shekel, which is used in Gaza and the West Bank.

Jihad al-Wazir, governor of the Palestinian monetary authority, has noted that “all options are open.”

Some argue for bringing back the Palestinian pound. Others prefer a closer connection to the Jordanian dinar. One Palestinian woman with whom I spoke dismissed my confusion: “Won’t it be a Palestinian lira?”

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

Interview with Alvin Rosenfled

http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?ID=225867&R=R1
An interview with Alvin Rosenfeld,

Can we preserve the history, integrity of the Holocaust?
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
06/21/2011 00:07

The Holocaust is “exploited for political or commercial gain,” engineered to “suit popular tastes and made into award-winning entertainments.”

Talkbacks (7)
The Holocaust is under siege. It is “exploited for political or commercial gain.” It is engineered to “suit popular tastes and made into award-winning entertainments,” and it is “embattled in ugly disputes about comparative victimization” – vulgarized, trivialized, contextualized. While some want to compare it to the plight of unborn children (abortion), others want to compare it to what has befallen the Palestinians.

Prof. Alvin H. Rosenfeld has placed himself astride the path of this out-of-control destructive tendency, attempting – as he writes in his book The End of the Holocaust – to articulate the “changing perception of the Holocaust within contemporary culture,” Rosenfeld is well-placed, as chair of Jewish Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington and director of the Indiana University Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, to set the record straight.

RELATED:
'Last Folio' exhibit is artists' act of remembrance
Holocaust exhibit vanishes again from Romanian subway

In an interview, he describes how this publication is a product of a lifetime of engagement with the subject.

“This book came from 40 years of reading Holocaust literature,” he says. “I’ve been writing on the subject for many years, but the deeper I go, the more I come to see a huge gap between how the Holocaust has been represented to the public in pop culture and other mass forms of dissemination, and what our best writers have said about it.”

Rosenfeld argues that many of these great writers, such as Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel and Jean Amery, “came to a sense of futility about their own work and a sense of despair. What was at the feet of that desolate feeling? I became convinced that it had to do with their perception that the Holocaust was being misrepresented and misunderstood. I set out to analyze this discrepancy.”

Levi died in 1987, and Amery died in the 1970s.

A good portion of the distortions of the Holocaust came after their deaths, so in fact they were concerned about a different distortion, one they saw in their own lifetimes.

“In both of their cases, what troubled them most of all was the response in Germany and the return of anti-Semitism, especially on the political Left,” says Rosenfeld. “Both of them identified with the Left, and they were surprised by [anti-Semitism’s] return.”

Emblematic of how the Holocaust can be distorted was the Bitburg affair. President Ronald Reagan planned to visit Germany in 1985, and he decided to visit a military cemetery in Bitburg that commemorated German war dead. This brought to the fore what Rosenfeld describes as “an extraordinary tension in historical awareness [and] moral evaluation” in America. Why should a US president pay respects to German war dead and ignore the Holocaust on a visit to Germany? But was this just a phenomenon of 1985? After all, a consciousness of the Holocaust has not diminished, and belief that the German soldiers were victims of the war has not grown.

Rosenfeld feels strongly that this is not the case: “Within Germany itself, the sense of victimhood has been developing very strongly over the last decades. While Germans in the main do acknowledge the crimes of the period, more and more, there has been a tendency to see themselves as victims, both of Hitler and of the firebombing campaign [by the Allies]. Some have gone so far as to call that a bombing holocaust. Reagan, in characteristic American fashion, wanted to put the past behind, to ‘move forward’ as Americans say. Reagan saw Holocaust memory as interfering with that relationship.”

The End of the Holocaust critiques “the steady domestication of the Holocaust [that] will blunt the horrors of this history and, over time, render them less outrageous, and ultimately less knowable.”

Is there a way to both communicate the history of the Holocaust to a mass audience and preserve its integrity? The author agrees that it is a tough question.

“My suggestion is for people to read the very best writers and see the very best films,” he says in the interview. “Pop culture gives us versions of the Holocaust, but the versions are often not as strong as the better accounts we have. We need to reconnect the Holocaust to history; it becomes disconnected in mass media and mass entertainment. I set out to describe and analyze the problem, but I’m not wise enough to come up with a solution.”

The problem of mass culture and the Holocaust inevitably brings up the controversy of Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds, which presents a fictionalized account of Jewish avengers who kill Hitler. Rosenfeld doesn’t object to this extreme fictionalization, noting that “it’s entertainment.”

One of the quintessential books dealing with the Holocaust is the diary of Anne Frank. But few are aware that Frank’s legacy was altered, partly by her own father, Otto, as Rosenfeld writes, “to place a preponderant emphasis on hope, peace and the advancement of tolerance.”

Pop culture consumers seem to prefer hope-driven narratives, but perhaps a greater dose of reality is necessary.

“Americans are ready to face up, to a certain degree, to crimes of the past, but they don’t want to feel that they can’t get beyond them. But we are talking about genocidal crimes of mass murder. It is difficult to look at that and come out with messages that are hopeful,” he says. “Americans require hopeful endings. Those who create Holocaust productions know that and do what is necessary to end on an up note, rather than a down note.

Schindler’s List is a very powerful film that has done a great deal to educate about the Holocaust, and it ends in a Catholic cemetery with the sun shining.”

Another of Rosenfeld’s themes is that “for most people, a sense [of] the Nazi crimes against the Jews is formed less by the record of events established by professional historians than by individual stories and images.” However, at the same time, he recounts all the abuses to which the Holocaust has been subjected by certain revisionist scholars, such as Norman Finkelstein. There is thus a paradox-driven tension: While mass media do not convey the perfect image of the Holocaust, they may sometimes convey a much better message than the distortions it has undergone at the hands of Hannah Arendt, Finkelstein, Ward Churchill and a long list of intellectuals.

The author thinks the central problem is that “Holocaust studies has become embattled. There is the notion that those of us who teach courses on the Holocaust are too parochial, as if there is something illegitimate even to treat the Holocaust by itself. They argue that it should be seen in the wider framework of genocide studies and racism. I deal with some of that in the book in the chapter called ‘The End of the Holocaust’... There are scholars who are saying the Holocaust must be relativized, contextualized, universalized. If we can do that correctly, it is for the good, but we certainly have the right to understand it in its own terms.”

Where the book most excels is in recalling certain cases that are indicative of larger trends. One of the most egregious of these is the way Frank’s Jewishness was removed from certain productions of her diary “to the point of deracinating her.” Furthermore, in a German translation, all references to her German-Jewish origins and the Germans as persecutors were removed. Rosenfeld explains that these changes are “known among some scholars, but it is not widely known... The diary that this young girl wrote is an important document.”

How the Holocaust is transmitted to future generations is important. Rosenfeld notes that “one of the issues I dealt with [in my research was] Holocaust memory, and how it is distorted and vulgarized. I am keenly aware that we are living in a time of resurgent anti-Semitism. One of the writers covered in the book who I knew personally was Primo Levi. In his last book, in the conclusion, he wrote[that] ‘it happened, therefore it can happen again.’ I found those words haunting – not that I expect a second Holocaust to occur tomorrow, but one must be aware that it can happen again, and one way to have that happen is to undo its original happening.”

Terra Incognita Europe Re-discovers its borders

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=221027
Terra Incognita: Europe rediscovers its borders
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
05/17/2011 22:47

The mass of people making their way to EU countries as a result of the Arab Spring has tested the wisdom of the EU’s Schengen Agreement.

Every once in a while, people rediscover something they previously knew. The greatest symbol of this phenomenon was Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens, completed in 1511, which showcased how Renaissance Europe was breathing new life into Greek philosophy. But one might also look to Columbus’s “discovery” of America. Not only had it obviously already been discovered by people crossing a land-bridge from Asia, but there is compelling evidence that the Vikings even had a colony at Newfoundland in the 11th century.

Now it seems Europe is rediscovering its borders after 25 years. In 1985, on the Moselle riverboat Princess Marie-Astrid, five European countries signed the Schengen Agreement. Under its conditions, West Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands would abolish passport checks in favor of visual surveillance at border crossings. The Schengen Area was incorporated into the main body of European Union laws, known as the acquis communautaire, in 1997. This meant that all EU member states would be bound by these conventions, which basically abolished many functions associated with borders. New EU member states must implement the convention, that calls for free movement of goods and people.

There are several exceptions. Norway and Iceland are not part of the EU, but are signatories to the Schengen agreement. England and Ireland, both of which are part of the EU, have an opt-out right under the Schengen agreement, which means they maintain the right to determine who enters their countries from other EU states. By 2008, 25 states had eliminated their internal borders. Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007, are still in the process of implementing the Schengen agreement. All countries have the right, under Article 2.2 of the treaty, to temporarily suspend the agreement, usually for less than 30 days, if they feel their national security is threatened. France re-imposed some restrictions in the wake of the 2005 bombing attacks in London. Several countries have imposed border checks due to large sporting events like the World Cup, apparently to interdict soccer hooligans.


Problems with Schengen have begun to wear on those states that have embraced it. The UK and Ireland have complained that workers from Eastern European EU countries have exploited the agreement to move in, take over jobs and get benefits. In one comment on a travel website named vegabondjourney.com in 2010, a man wrote: “come in to uk thay [sic] let every polish person in even if thay carnt [sic] speak english, any one can claim benifits [sic] so why not everyone.”

The problem with Schengen is that it applies to all members of the EU, but each country still has the ability to grant residency, citizenship and refugee/asylum status to individuals without consulting the other countries. This means that a person obtaining asylum in one country may end up as a burden on another. Many of those wishing to immigrate or work in Europe come from Africa and the Middle East, and usually attempt to cross into Europe via Greece or Italy. Their intention is to get through the border controls that these “front line” states have in place and, once in Europe, exploit the open borders to move where they want. This means that all the internal European countries must rely on the efficiency and zealousness of Italians and Greeks – qualities for which neither country is particularly known – to safeguard their immigration laws.

The flood of refugees from North Africa in the aftermath of the revolution in Tunisia and the rebellion in Libya has put huge strains on the agreement. In February, the Hungarian president of the EU summoned the interior ministers of several member countries to “look at ways of preventing Arab refugees from flooding Europe. They acknowledged that this is not only a problem for member states in Southern Europe, but also for the entire EU,” according to a report on europa-nu.nl.

In April, Italy granted around 20,000 Tunisians temporary residency permits. Prior to this, the 20,000, almost all men, had been the responsibility of Italy’s border police, who were forced to house them on Italian islands to which they had fled. But the day after the men received EU permits, they began moving to Tunisia’s former colonial ruler, France, where some had family ties.

In response, French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office declared that “the governance of Schengen is failing. It seems there is a need to reflect on a mechanism that will allow a temporary suspension of the agreement, in case of a systemic failure of an external (EU) border..., to intervene through a provisional suspension, until such time as the weakness is corrected.”

France saw itself being invaded by unemployed men, some of whom began living in parks in Paris and elsewhere. Sarkozy initially attempted to close the Italian border to the Tunisians, but under pressure from human rights groups and warnings from the EU, he opened it again. Now Denmark has gone further than France, re-imposing checkpoints and customs at its land border with Germany and the bridge that links it to Sweden. Fifteen other EU member states support curtailing the most liberal policies of Schengen.

Andrei Fedyashin of the newspaper RIA Novosti commented that “it appears that Europe has succumbed to good old xenophobia.”

A May 14 headline at the Independent screamed, “Europe is in danger of eroding one of its greatest achievements,” and the editorial claimed that “making it easier for EU member states to close their borders is the worst possible response.”

Yet the Schengen agreement itself was, in a sense, xenophobic. It was initially signed by countries with a common history (Rome, Charlemagne), political system (democracy), economic status (wealthy) and religion (Christianity) – before the advent of mass African and Middle Eastern immigration. Right-wing and Euroskeptic parties such as Finland’s True Finns and the Freedom Party in The Netherlands are demanding that illegal immigrants and legal asylum-seekers not be allowed to overrun their countries. They are right; large numbers of immigrants place a disproportionate burden on small countries, eroding their cultural norms.

Europe is rediscovering its borders, and in doing so, it is realizing that common sense demands that a country not rely on its neighbors to guarantee its security or culture.

The writer has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.