As For The Political Situation

We’re a little more than a week past the election. Over 153M votes have been counted, and there's a decent chunk left. The electoral decision is final, though the minimum viable coup President Trump and his supporters are a/b testing has dragged out the anxiety of the last few days/weeks/months/years. We will never be free of that anxiety, but the election provided both a step forward and an opportunity for a reckoning. There are many details and nuances yet to be fleshed out about voting patterns and the people’s preferences, but I think we’re far enough along to pull together some thoughts, as I tried to do almost four years ago.

Before proceeding, here are my limited credentials and priors: I have a liberal arts background – History/Econ undergrad, Diplomacy/Conflict Resolution Master’s program – and have mostly lived in liberal communities, whether in Massachusetts growing up, in college in North Carolina's Research Triangle, or in expat communities in Europe and Israel. I’ve always voted Democrat, and am pretty far left socially. With respect to markets and finances, I was closer to the Obama/Clinton viewpoint, e.g. free trade is good, budgets should at least bend towards balancing. That stance has shifted left in part as a reaction to Trump’s 2016 victory and how I interpreted it. I voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primary and was very excited to do so. I donated more than I ever have to campaigns this year, and I phone banked for an unsuccessful House campaign once, my first time doing so. The last two relevant background points: I don’t use social media to talk about politics much, and my mindset as a person is to find compromise and something that works so we can move forward.

The Politicians 

So, how to react to this election? I start with the President. Donald Trump deserves none of our empathy. He began his original presidential run with ugly rhetoric, building on a rise in politics that seized on racist rumors about his predecessor and that was littered with non-stop insults, a rise that itself was built on a lifetime of masquerading as a successful businessman. Even someone who had granted him the benefit of the doubt four years ago, buying that he might grow into the role of being President of the United States, was met with his first week in office – an inauguration speech decrying American Carnage, lies from his administration about how many people were there, and a travel ban of people from predominantly Muslim countries – a week proving that benefit of the doubt was wasted. He had previously discarded the respect owed to a president in his barrages against President Obama, and the idea that he would be entitled to a better reception after the way he behaved, well, I get that we all hold our views but that one is wrong.

Elected Republican officials deserve no more of our empathy. Their behavior during our slow-moving farce of a constitutional crisis fits in line with the behavioral pattern of the last 4-5 years. Condoning, looking past, not hearing, or outright supporting the President’s behavior, for whatever the reason; I expect partisanship in the US, I’m not surprised by the behavior, but it’s still irredeemable. The few timid exceptions prove the rule and are hardly worth mentioning. Principles and norms no longer belong in our political discourse, it seems.

The most obvious examples of two-faced behavior are budget deficits – which Republicans forgot about for the last four years after hammering on about them the six years prior, and which they have already begun to rediscover – and the Supreme Court and the Garland v. Barrett antics. The takeaway should be that Democrats will have to play just as tough in Congress and elsewhere, but without the Senate I’m not sure how much that matters. There are asymmetries that weaken the Democrat position, none bigger than the core incentives: Republicans are invested in less governance, Democrats in good governance. And as Leon Neyfakh put it, Republicans are not afraid of being hypocrites, just of losing. 

The political tactics are among the less interesting implications of this election. They were going to be the same in any Biden victory, and the dictatorial tractor pull may have the positive effect of causing any remaining scales to fall from the Democrats’ eyes about whether a traditional bonhomie can be achieved. The Spanish term for polarization is crispación, and things are going to remain pretty crisp for the years to come.

The People

But what of the 72M+ Americans who voted for President Trump? The failed repudiation of Trumpism, of the past four years, the fact that even though President-Elect Biden won what in these days might amount to a landslide, it was still an election decided by five-digit numbers, by several tense days?

I start with the premise that we can’t write off the 47% the way Mitt Romney did. This was a high-turnout election, and while I understand that the on the ground work in Georgia, in Arizona, in Midwestern cities was exceptional, and should not have been exceptional, I still don’t know how many more votes there are out there from people who didn’t vote. It also seems wrong fundamentally to write off so many people; you start at a disadvantage if you never think about the other side. Again, I like to find compromises.

That’s not to ignore that tons of voters hold views that are antithetical to what I believe in, and that they are never going to be won nor worth the time. There are people who not only identified with President Trump, and not only disliked the Democrat platform, but identified with the full explicit and implied MAGA agenda. I don’t know what the playbook is there.

My dad is at least partly in this category. He voted for Trump both times. He likes that Trump talks shit to reporters. He has always voted Republican, and still views the Democrats as more aberrational than anything Trump is. I remember pleading with him to vote for Gary Johnson in 2016, and not getting anywhere. He probably enjoyed voting for Trump more than for Romney or McCain or either Bush. It’s one of the reasons I think the ‘there will be more competent authoritarians’ line is not quite right; Trump forged a connection with his voters, a real one that a Mike Pence or a Tom Cotton seems unlikely to do. It’s a connection that I believe is built on a bullshit marketing image, but it’s a real connection nevertheless.

There are people, I believe, who voted for President Trump or the Republican party who do not endorse his worst views and who do not explicitly identify with him. They may dislike the Democrats more, they may have focused on the economy at the expense of everything else – and mind you, the idea that Trump was the better pick for the economy to me because he ran a deficit-fueled 2-3% GDP growing economy with relatively low interest rates is, to me, nuts, but the perception is what it is. In any case, there is a part of the populace that enjoys spiting the left and 'political correctness' or, these days, wokeness to the point that they can overlook whatever it is they might dislike about the right.

How to reach them? I’m not sure. What I see from people who are in the middle and who did vote for Biden but with their nose held or picking Republicans down ballot, is 1) economic self-interest and 2) fatigue with the piety they see from the left. I don’t mean to use piety as an accusation. But there is a sense that you have to be for the entire platform or you’re no good, and a sense that if you make a false step, you’ll get hounded. A lot of this is the online conversation, and I don't know how much this feeling of fatigue and spite resonates at large, but I think it's one of the bigger opportunities. (After writing this, I listened to Kara Swisher's podcast with John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor, and he used the word 'nuance' to make what a similar argument).

The message of the Democrat’s platform resonates when the associations are removed, as seen in public opinion polls about individual issues, or in things like the Florida referendum on minimum wage. There are also arguments to address economic self-interest – I would make the case that higher taxes to help fund programs that will address inequality will pay huge dividends for the rich as well as the rest of the country over the next 50 years, e.g. Just as there are ways to open up to people who only agree with part of the game plan.

The challenge is that there are so many deal-breaking issues. You can't compromise on climate change given the Earth isn’t really part of the negotiations. We can't ask people to continue to neglect our ongoing scars of foundational racial injustice. Our dumb (in all senses) approach towards immigration destroys the one exceptional competitive advantage America has had over the decades, and I’m not really sure what compromise can be struck there.

And yet, there needs to be work done with some of those 72M+, to build a more durable constituency (at least until the electoral college is overturned, the Senate made more representative, the courts reformed, and all redistricting done by nonpartisan commissions; all of which, good luck, President Biden). The flipping of Georgia and Arizona is inspiring precisely because they support that ground can be won, both in persuading median voters and turning out more voters. Educating, taking policies out of identification and into common ground, making the case for how things can be better, those seem to me still feasible, even if they’re the stuff of old-school, door-to-door politicking.

All of this is not to say that Democrats should play to the middle. I think the last four years have shown identity and emotion overtake rational assessments of policy and competency when we are voting or aligning ourselves politically. Tapping into that emotion includes solving real problems, not developing incremental ideas to placate sensibilities. Certainly not in a climate where neither side is predisposed to compromise. 

It’s hard for me to watch someone like Katie Porter or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez speak in Congressional hearings and not be impressed, and not think they’re the future of the left. They are unabashedly progressive, but they do the work and they translate their policies into real human concerns. As far as I recall, Stacey Abrams is more centrist than those two women but she is similarly inspiring. I was in Athens, GA for a wedding in May 2018, and other wedding guests spoke about her as a hero. (There is some irony in the bounty of well-deserved praise she is getting now after the weird and negative response some people had to her openly wanting to be VP this summer).  

The Legacy

There have been some positive outcomes from the past four years, and I believe those outcomes prepare us for the next four. The first is increased political engagement. I’m more engaged than ever before, as I mentioned, and am setting a personal goal to contribute in some way to the ground-level politicking in the next 2-4 years. I’m hardly alone, and both the % of eligible voters and what you see on the web and in the real world is a testament to that. That’s a good thing – democracy should reflect an engaged society. I hope the intensity of our engagement goes down in the Biden era – and again, this snowball of a coup effort makes it hard to take one’s foot of the gas – but consistent engagement should be a hallmark of our society, the same way it was in De Tocqueville’s famed observation of (a significantly less democratic) America in the 19th century.

The flipside, of course, is that the other side is engaged. In a neutral sense, good, politics are better as a reflection of the country they take place in. But the politics that were reflected in this election were not good – and I’m sure Trump’s voters would agree, just from the opposite stance. The positive element out of all this? Any last illusions of American exceptionalism should have faded. This tension is an enduring fact of life in America, a core point of our history. I can argue that 2020 is actually a more just, more positive climate for the U.S. than almost any time in our history – the increasingly unlivable climate itself notwithstanding, of course – but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. My point is not to sell you a bill of goods about today, but to echo what Anna Lind-Guzik has been saying for the last 4+ years, what Monica Hesse wrote here, what Jelani Cobb wrote here, what Maria Hinojosa wrote here. America is not an exception, and it never really has been, it’s just been more powerful. A clear-eyed understanding will allow us to fight towards that ever greater union.

(My three points in favor of American exceptionalism would be that we have integrated immigrants better than any large country, that we have oceans to protect us from serious economic/military rivals, and that capitalism has provided a framework, however rapacious, to exploit our natural and human resources over time to economic growth. These do not add up to a ‘better’ model, and our current policies towards climate change and immigration have eroded two of those pillars). 

2016's Echoes

I’m reminded of the feeling four years ago, when Trump won. Of hearing how my wife’s colleagues were sleepwalking in the school hallway, furious and groggy at the same time. Of going out with friends that Friday to commiserate, and finding out Leonard Cohen died too. Of having dinner with a good friend that Saturday, and hearing she was going to leave Bulgaria that year, which meant almost everyone we cared about was leaving, so we were going to be too. There were a lot of feelings that week. Elections, like Olympic Games and the World Cup, provide a global landmark, a snapshot that captures our state of mind more than normal weeks do.

I remember most of all meeting with my friend and Bulgarian teacher, Silva, at a café a day or two after the election. We had a lesson, but at this point our lessons were mostly just us talking. We started by rehashing how could this have happened – I believed the polls, I believed 538, and I put more weight on 70% than 30%. “How did this happen?” Silva asked me, and I didn’t know how to answer.

But then, she said, “now you know what the rest of the world is like.” 

Well, here we are. What are we going to do about it?

Leftover Notes

1) One trend I do not like on Twitter is tweeting to express your disapproval for other people tweeting about things. Specifically, people who tweet to say ‘stop tweeting about politics’ or ‘why do people keep tweeting about politics?’ These people seem to tweet more about politics than the people who actually tweet about it, and to express their disapproval for other people’s interests.

Now, I don’t tweet about politics much. I find Twitter and social media bad places to talk about complicated or identity driven things. But I also don’t give a shit about college football, or even people talking about their stocks going up or down day after day without adding analysis. The thing is, the internet is wonderful for choosing what you consume. It’s not like being in the US and running into cable news everywhere you go (one of the true blessings of living abroad). Muting works. Just don’t engage!

This sticks in my craw because the implication is that politics isn’t important enough to be talked about on Twitter. Which, if politics aren’t important for you, I mean, congratulations. But it’s worth acknowledging that for a lot of people, national politics actually matter, whether they be refugees and immigrants or people still fighting for rights or just people who actually need federal government support to get by. You don’t have to even agree with them that it matters. You can just let them tweet or whatever they do in peace.

2) I don’t have a strong take on the polling miss. I think Zeynep Tufnecki got it more or less right, which is that the polling-based models provide such a wide range of possible outcomes that they don’t actually provide real answers, and so their utility for every-other year events is limited. I will be taking less stock of them in the future, having given them my full attention this year even after 2016 (after all, 2018 played out pretty well). 

I respect how transparent Nate Silver/538 and a lot of the other polling aggregators/modelers are. They are public and they walk through their thought process regularly. Silver is overly defensive of his ‘mistakes’, and his last post read to me a little bit like ‘don’t listen to us so much’, which is right but also presumably against his self-interest. But whatever his Twitter persona, I find the criticism a little unfair; they do their work openly, it’s interesting, and the quantitative approach has value. For example, the quants’ analysis of the likely votes once the election ended and we were waiting for ballots to be counted was fairly accurate and informative. This went double once the various axes emerged for individual locations, Jon Ralston in Nevada being the top of mind example.

3) On the flipside, I should confess that I viewed the Trafalgars of the world, whether pollsters or people on twitter who picked the sort of red map where Minnesota would flip, a little unfairly. I viewed the incentives as slanted – people on the left, still scarred by 2016, would be in the mood to hedge every prediction, while those on the right, emboldened by a fluke event, would misunderstand why they were right in 2016. I don’t know why this matters, but it riled me up. I considered them bad faith actors.

The election was a good reminder that nobody knows everything, and that the range of outcomes should keep us all humble. They are just as likely to be trying to figure out what will happen in the election as anybody else. The stock market too is full of people trying to figure things out, and some of them are full of it and others or not. The market gives more regular feedback on whether you're right or wrong, but predictions about the future are hard no matter what.

That said, at least one or two of those self-styled pundits have blamed their getting it wrong on fraud, so maybe I was right after all about their bad faith.

4) Lastly, I think this election was a good reminder that Twitter isn’t real life. The people who talk about politics on Twitter are hyper engaged, and while they may be expanding the Overton window or foreshadowing where a given party is headed, they also might just be extremely online people. Twitter is an addicting and often informative service, and it’s a way for people to connect with others in their field. But expecting the conversation on Twitter to map to the offline world is a stretch, and perhaps an even bigger stretch when the President migrates to Parler (whether before Twitter bans him or after, tbd). My conclusions from my piece four years ago still hold up, even if a pandemic makes it ever harder to live offline.

After the Great Fall

 This is a somewhat rambling post on the political situation in Rwanda. Outside of the usual scope, I guess, but this is my main (only?) writing outlet these days. And it's still about Rwanda.

Driving around Kigali, it is possible to forget the genocide, to forget the civil war of 16 years ago. The city is relatively prosperous and growing. People smile and volunteer friendly conversations more than a shell-shocked or closed populace would. While there are many organizations, governmental or otherwise, who are headquartered in the center of the city and whose focus is on preventing genocide, aiding survivors, or other related issues, there is not a noticeable survivor presence in the city.

In some ways, the government and the people would like the genocide to be put past them. The country is seeking to gain a reputation as a tourist destination, and they are seeking to grow a modern service economy, and they are seeking to do both these things in part by shedding the main word association publics in the west have with Rwanda, genocide. It is not that the country seeks to forget, of course; many argue that the continuing legitimacy for the Kagame regime is tied as much to the fact that he led the forces that ended the genocide as to the fact that he has rebuilt the country thoroughly since that time. Many in Rwanda would like to remind others that there's more to the country than genocide history, is all.

The memorialization of the genocide is in an interesting transitional period. Many of the sites we visited were preserved monuments to brutality as much as anything else; skulls, bones, clothes, and even in one place full skeletons remained intact and on display as a testament to what happened. This on the one hand is an effort to display the very real effect of the 1994 genocide and to ensure its memory endures; on the other hand, there is not a great amount of respect for the bodies of those who died.

So the memorialization is changing, in part. Our guides hinted to us that sites such as Murambi, Ntarama, and Nyamata (I'll go more into them in the next post) may be radically different in 4-5 years, with the bones finally buried and the focus of the exhibit shifted in some way. The Kigali Memorial Center, whose exhibit was furnished by a company that also organized our tour of the country, is a model for what's to come in many ways: a very informative museum-exhibit combined with mass graves, a wall of names, several symbolic gardens or statues, and a heavy dose of witness testimony. It's a very fine exhibit, as far as that goes, and if the genocide sites can be shifted from bare bones evidence of the genocide, literally, to informative and testimonial based sites that still capture some of the experience of the history, that would be a good thing for the memorialization process. Then again, if they do indeed follow through on their plans to do things like transform the former President Juvenal Habyarimana's (his plane was shot down on 6 April, 1994, triggering the genocide which would start the next day; he had long been aligned with genocidal forces, though his signing of a peace accord may have been the final straw in leading him to sacrifical lamb status) house into a national museum and party site - our visit came during preparations for a wedding later that day - perhaps the memory will not be as well preserved.

But let's go back to the history itself, and the impact it has on the country to this day. Without giving a footnoted, academically cited, and overly detailed summary of Rwanda's history, I hope to not reduce it too much. I also hope not to mess up too much.

In essence, Rwanda was part of a kingdom with Burundi before the arrival of German and, after World War I, Belgian colonizers. The colonizers solidified the vague racial categories of Tutsi and Hutu by formalizing people's identity via identity cards, backing up the categories with pseudo scientific (eugenic) theories on the differences between the two groups, and placing the smaller Tutsi group in power, leading to newly emphasized tensions between the two groups. Towards the end of their colonial reign, the Belgian leaders decided to give up on the Tutsis and backed Hutus for power. Hutu leaders, sensing the opportunity to take advantage of their people's anger over being subservient to Tutsi interests, built their power on racial grounds, and when the Belgians left, they initiated several cycles of violence against Tutsis.

These cycles continued until 1990, when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a largely Tutsi-exile army, and the Rwandan national army fought a civil war. The RPF, co-led by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was a better organized army and gained ground and leverage. The Rwandan government was also constrained by economic struggles (there was a great drop in coffee prices, an export crop Rwanda relied on) and donor nations eager to see Rwanda make peace, leading to a peace accords. The Arusha Peace Accords didn't include all necessary powers and provided for a shaky power-sharing government, but at least was sensed to be a path forward.

Instead, the President Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down on April 6th, 1994. It is still a hot topic of dispute as to who killed the president; Rwanda and its allies, as well as more experts, believe that the Hutu Power movement surrounding the president (who was a Hutu and a hard-liner, at least before conceding to the peace process) killed him as a way to launch a genocidal campaign and consolidate power - they felt that using a scapegoat of the minority Tutsi group (15% of the country's population) would rally the majority behind the government and keep them in control. Many in France (a strong supporter of the genocidal regime) and a few others believe the RPF was behind the assassination. Most circumstantial evidence points to the Hutu Power group being responsible, and I have a hard time seeing why the RPF would have done it, for what it's worth.

Either way, the genocide began the next day, April 7th, 1994. For 100 days, Hutu militias and government military forces killed between 500,000 and 1.2. million (the most common estimate is 800,000) Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, though also moderate Hutu political figures and Hutus who stood in the way. The genocidaires had studied their history well, and used tricks from the Holocaust to Somalia to carry out their genocide and disengage the international community. This was a classic case of the world standing by and watching, at times even doing less than helping - when the UN finally "sent" in a mission, it was a French led army in the Southwest that did nothing more than provide an escape route for the genocidaires fleeing from the RPF forces who had relaunched their fighting in response to the genocide. The genocide only stopped when the RPF won the war and assumed control and power of the country.

The Rwandan genocide was renowned for its brutality. Rwanda is a small country (population between 8 and 11 million over the last fifteen years), and to carry out such a genocide required participation from many people in the country, including ordinary people, neighbors hunting or snitching on their Tutsi neighbors. Families with mixed marriages were torn apart. Major tools for carrying out the genocide included machetes and a local weapon that was basically a wooden stick with a nail on it.

The only other thing I'll say about the genocide before moving to firsthand observations is that it is still unclear how true and how constructed the racial identities are. One popular belief was that Tutsis came from Ethiopia, and so many Hutus "sent them back" to Ethiopia via rivers. Common stereotypes say that Tutsis are taller and more beautiful, while Hutus shorter, stockier, and thinner. Others say that there is, or was, no real distinction between the two groups, and that the term Tutsi was affixed to anybody who had ten or more cattle; as such, Tutsi/Hutu was a class distinction. At this point, or at least at the genocide's point, the distinctions became hardnosed facts, but it should be remembered that there was no primordial, inherent reason for the population in Rwanda to bifurcate into two major groups (there is a third, the Twa, which makes up 1% of the population and is usually considered incidental to the racial politics of the country).

This history also has to be remembered when considering the current political condition of Rwanda. President Kagame has strong control of Rwanda, having recently won re-election with a 93% vote, a number most people consider not to be doctored. But there were a few numerous high-profile disqualifications of opposition politicians from the race, and so 93% isn't a wholly safe number to throw out either; in general, whenever somebody is elected with 93%, there is cause for suspicion.

It is hard to find people who will dispute the notion that Kagame and his team have a strong grasp on the political space in Rwanda. The dispute begins in assessing the implications of that control. On the one hand, Kagame is undoubtedly popular, especially in Kigali - you can't go far without seeing Kagame t-shirts sold or worn, and signs of his campaign hung ubiquitously even a month after the election. Rwanda has grown, Kigali is booming for an African city, and the country appears to be much safer and stabler than most societies would be 16 years after a wrenching social trauma on any scale, never mind one that wipes out an eighth of the population.

At the same time, as my German friend on the trip pointed out, one should get uneasy whenever one man has so much power. Even if the government's intentions are good, it is not healthy in the long term to have such focused control. For example, the government has led a very positive idea of reeducating the people to believe in "banyarwanda", or the people of Rwanda. As in, "we are all Rwandans, not Tutsis or Hutus." A great idea that hopefully will set in to eradicate any racial reasons for Rwandans to discriminate against each other (or for outsiders to encourage dissension and divide and conquer, as was the source of all these problems). But if most people still know who's a member of which group, as we were often told, or if most people perceive the political beneficiaries of the current system, i.e. the people in power currently, to be Tutsis, this system and concept of a new Rwanda hits a blurry border with older systems of privileged people and groups.

For all this, I would like to return to the history and to the bias of Americans and the West. It's easy for us, feeling ourselves to be in an open, democratic society where the political space is far wider (whatever our problems), to criticize a country like Rwanda (similar issues affect westerners' views on Israel, but this is not the space for that). We did not have a tortuous genocide rip asunder our nation within the past two decades; World War II tore apart Europe and led to change, but the main perpetrators were convicted and the general population (i.e. Germans) atoned for their grievous faults, while many of the victims left (Jews, most obviously). America's genocide happened hundreds of years before and was swept under the rug; the country has survived just fine despite the treatment of Native Americans, thanks.

We should consider, then, what would happen had there not been a strong control of the political space. Everything I heard suggested that there are still people in Rwanda who are eager to stir up racial divisiveness. Without getting on the slippery slope too quickly, we can see that racial divisiveness is the foundation for genocidal ideology. This is the government's justification for the disqualifications from the previous election and other political crackdowns that strike us as overmuch. We could be right in thinking this, but can only reach a fair conclusion if we consider the full context.

Two more points about that context, and here I will draw parallels to the situation in Israel. Interestingly enough, there are many parallels between the two countries, if not quite as much as Rwandans especially would like there to be. But the history, the international position, the internal development, the emphasis on security and independence, the controversial issues hovering around, the kindness and defensiveness of the people, and the beauty of the land are just a few of the similarities that these two countries share. What follows could be said about either.

Rwanda has achieved a lot since the genocide of 1994. Undoubtedly aid has helped, and similarly undoubtedly I haven't actually been to any other African countries to compare Rwanda to. But from all I heard and saw, Kigali especially and Rwanda as a whole has grown substantially in the past 15 years and has surpassed its neighbors in many ways. I never really felt in danger in Rwanda (well, not counting the drive through the mountains of west Rwanda in thundering rain at dusk; I felt fairly in danger then), though the presence of armed personnel around the city and the country was a little alarming. All to say that while it is not unambiguously so, Rwanda is a growing country that has done well, and that has ambitions to do better - Kagame has gone on the record in many places about his desire to outgrow the need for aid. This is commendable, and should at least be weighed against the costs of certain political limits, for the time being. In Israel, this growth is at a far more advanced level, but also should be considered when looking at the country as part of the Middle East and as part of its political issues.

The other point is that when external pressures encourage Kagame and Rwanda to open up, or Israel to achieve peace and make sacrifices towards achieving that peace, for example, they are not just doing it to waste their breath or punish the nation in question. In Rwanda's case, true political freedom and a sense of real unity forged under the label of "banyarwanda", where neither former racial group is benefiting more than the other, would be the true sign of recovery from the genocide and emergence as a modern and rising African nation-state. That is not as easy as it sounds in the sentence above, of course, and outsiders need to be cognizant of the challenges facing Rwanda. That doesn't mean they can't help and prod Rwanda to keep moving forward.

We were in Rwanda for the release of the UN Congo report, a report detailing the many abuses that occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo over a decade of fighting. Rwanda was implicated in this report, and the wording suggested that Rwanda could be accused of genocide against Hutu forces in the east Congo.

This naturally infuriated just about everybody we met in Rwanda. The report has been accused, justifiably, of poor sourcing and lack of context, and generally appears to be a shoddy effort, for the UN or otherwise. Rwanda's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a sharp 30-page document refuting the UN report (which ran 566 pages), and they had every right and justification to refute it (we actually befriended one of the authors of the report during our time there). It should also be noted that just about every other African nation implicated in this report also refuted the findings, and that only Rwanda's role in the report and their reaction has been covered to a significant degree in the international media.

But even in this clearly flawed report and justified response, there are gray shades to consider. Rwanda's ire emerges most from the term "genocide" - the report accuses them of killing tens of thousands of people, whereas the Rwandan genocide saw, as I said, 500,000-1.2 million die. Any equivalency of this even on the report's terms would be foolish, and Rwandans fear that were the term genocide to be slapped on the Congo, the international community's opinion would slide back to a "cycle of violence, they are all bad" mode, which would tarnish the Rwandan government's legitimacy and more significantly the nature of the trauma Rwanda suffered. Then when you consider the limited validity of the report, or the many missing contextual factors - for example, the Rwandan report (which I would link, but their site is struggling right now) points out how many Hutus the Rwandans repatriated to their country, and their goal of bringing all Rwandans back to Rwanda, which doesn't easily fit in with genocide. Accusing Rwanda of supporting genocide on any grounds is a wholly dangerous and arguably existential threat to the country and its safety, as Rwandans see it. They are wholly right on this.

At the same time, I have a hard time doubting that atrocities were committed in the Congo, and that Rwanda's troops just like so many others had a hand in committing them. Some transparency is needed in dealing with this problem. As with many situations in Israel (the Goldstone report being the most obvious recent one), just because the report itself was wholly flawed and shoddy doesn't mean it didn't reveal serious issues that need to be dealt with. Israel has dealt with it to some degree; Rwanda needs to figure out if they are ready to as well.

Rwanda has done tremendously in recovering from their genocide, growing their country, and dealing with their internal issues over the past 16 years. Our thrilling and successful visit showed me nothing less. That said, the government still needs to open up and solidify its emerging democracy as a truly free and open place. That doesn't happen in a day; it will be very interesting to see how far along the country gets in the next 7 years before Kagame's term ends and, under constitutional law, he has to step down from the presidency. It will be an important test for the country, to say the least. And progress will go a long way towards breaking any last remnants of the cycle of violence that did lead to the genocide.

"Peace isn't Breaking Out"

I usually try to keep my writing focii separate, so that the music writing stays on 30music, the political on global or arab comment, and the self-indulgent travel-tinted sprawling pieces on this here blog. But, as in the past, sometimes the separate worlds overlap, like the sweetest of venn diagrams.
As such, here is the full transcript of an interview I took with Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman on the events going on here in the recent past and near future. If you're curious about what's going on here beyond the newspapers, this is a pretty good behind the scenes sort of read. If long.
And I have a couple actual, normal blog posts coming soon. So there's that.

The edited, shorter version of this interview can be found here.

Me: What are the general big issues you take out of the conflict, and also the first week of the aftermath – the ceasefire has held so far – and what are the big themes or big issues to draw from?


Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman: Look, to put it in some perspective, this was the 4th major confrontation, violent confrontation we’ll call it, between Israel and Palestinian groups or forces over the last quarter-century, beginning with the 1st Lebanon War, really a war against the PLO, then to the 1st Intifada, the 2nd Intifada, and now this. In between that, of course, you had considerable spasms or incidents of violence as well. The suicide bombings of the 1990s come to mind in particular.


Which means this confrontation, the dynamics change, the personalities change, even the political orientations of the groups change, but we are still in this seemingly intractable conflict. Which is obviously quite discouraging.


This latest round is over. I think that the chances are pretty good that the ceasefire will hold indefinitely, that it will be translated into certain kinds of arrangements which will stabilize the situation, for now. I can’t say how long that will last. I think, just the way the (2nd) Lebanon War ended in summer of 2006, and since then basically the ceasefire has held almost perfectly, so too in this case I think that it’s fairly likely that we won’t see another round like we just saw any time soon.


What did each side achieve from this? Israel went into this determined not only to end the rocket fire, but to also change the “rules of the game”. That, “Hamas shoots rockets, we shoot back,” and this kind of tit-for-tat doesn’t really change Hamas’s behavior.


Beyond that, I think there was also a general desire for Israel to strengthen its deterrent posture. This was clearly on everyone’s mind, and has been for some time. There was a feeling here that Israel’s deterrent posture over the last years has weakened.


Now, “deterrence,” it’s a very watery concept. What does it mean to deter? How do we know it’s working, and how do we know that it’s declining? In this regard, I think the Lebanon War was seen as…the goal of the Lebanon operation as well was to strengthen Israel’s deterrent posture, because there was a feeling that Israel was weaker. This was the metaphor of Nasrallah with a spider web. He described Israel as a spider web that was very intricate, but one big sweep of the hand and it would collapse, very vulnerable in that regard.


Me: And the tipping point for that was the kidnapping of two soldiers?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: The cross border attack which actually was probably the killing, probably the soldiers died in that attack.


The response at that time was also with very much in mind the deterrent, “we can’t allow these kinds of things to continue on.” And the message wasn’t just being directed at the non-state actors on our borders, but at their patrons. Even more so at their patrons, particularly Iran.


And Iran’s penetrated into the Arab-Israeli arena in ways that have never been seen before. And frankly, I for one didn’t see it coming, not to that extent. So a key element of the Lebanon war was the immediate attack on the Iranian medium-range missile emplacements, which were mostly taken out at the very first day of the war. That was a message.


Ironically, Hezbollah got the message. I think its behavior has been moderated since then, and we can see that even in its behavior now, that it refused to open a second front.


Now, Hamas didn’t get the message, the previous message. Hamas interpreted the whole Hezbollah experience as something to be emulated: that Israel could be pushed, that Israel was weak. They looked at the shortcomings of the Lebanon war too: Israel’s conduct of the war, the military conduct, the confusion, the lack of preparedness, which was all laid out in the Winograd Commission report, the self-criticism, the hand-wringing, the head-holding. Hezbollah claimed this was a defeat for Israel, and so did a lot of other people.


Hamas, I think, looked at matters that way, and so did Iran, to an extent. One of the goals, I think a central goal of this operation, was not just to teach Hamas a lesson and to press home the point that Israel has the capacity and willingness to strike back “disproportionately”, what they would consider to be disproportionate, against Hamas, but also to send a clear message to the rest of the region and the world that it wasn’t going to allow an Iranian client-state to develop on its borders.


In that regard, I think it’s clear, we can say Hamas was not Hezbollah. They certainly hadn’t achieved the level of weaponry, of military sophistication, of capacity to do to Israel what Hezbollah was able to do. And a lot of the Hamas slogans – we’re going to make the Gaza a hellhole, a graveyard for the Israeli soldiers – obviously turned out not to be the case. Hamas turned out to be far weaker than we had anticipated, and in that regard, I think Israel has significantly improved its deterrent posture.


It’s not just the fact that they hit them hard, and showed everybody that if you mess with us, we’re going to hit you back, but it’s also the incorporation of the diplomatic elements into the picture. At least on paper, the support for a change in the strategic alignment, the strategic parameters governing the Gaza area, the support for Israel’s desires is considerable. The French are patrolling off the shores of Gaza, the Americans signed a memorandum of understanding, they’re training Egyptian troops dealing with smuggling, they’re talking about interdicting Iranian ships in the Gulf of Aden.


Hamas’s alignment with Iran did not play well in Western capitals. It gave Israel room for time, and room for action, in a way similar to the way Hezbollah’s alignment with Iran did as well.


What you see also is the Arab world dividing on this matter. Especially Egypt, which was very unhappy Hamas’s behavior, very unhappy with Hamas’s provocation of Israel, very unhappy with its cozying up to Iran at the expense of the relationship with Egypt. Egypt is losing influence with Hamas vis-à-vis Iran. Hamas being the daughter organization of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.


All of these things led the Egyptian leadership to feel that enough is enough, that Hamas is going too far, and they need to be taught a lesson. They need to be cut down to size. Especially since this is taking place on Egypt’s borders, and Egypt is looking like it can’t control its own borders, and is being blamed by Hamas for Palestinian plight and all that. And that didn’t sit well with the Egyptians at all.


The Egyptian participation in this sort of Western framework is a gain for Israel as well. It remains to be seen whether this framework will have real teeth and do what it’s supposed to do. People point to a similar type of framework that was established after the Lebanon War under resolution 1701, which was supposed to interdict smuggling. And it hasn’t; Hezbollah has more weapons now than it had then. Obviously, one needs to monitor the real commitment to implementing these kinds of things.


But, unlike Hezbollah, Hamas doesn’t have the kind of strategic depth that Hezbollah had. Hezbollah had Syria for strategic depth, with Iran further back. Whereas Hamas has the sea and Egypt. It’s not the same kind of setup.


So from that regard, one can say that Israel’s achievements in this operation were considerable. Now, they came at costs, obviously. Israel’s image has been damaged to a considerable extent among public opinion. In the West, pictures of wholesale destruction of civilian areas are disturbing. All the more so in the Arab world, and among Palestinians as well. There’s no question that more hate towards Israel will have been generated by this operation, which doesn’t bode well if you talk about the need for a long-term reconciliation or a modus vivendi.


You can even suggest the possibility that radical forces might become even stronger, particularly among Palestinians. If Palestinians can’t achieve a newly-reconstituted national unity government, if opinion continues to fragment, there’s a possibility of splintering off from Hamas to represent even more Islamist, jihadi, Bin Laden-type radical views, which would make Hamas look like a positively moderate force in comparison.


You’re going to have to watch that very closely. It’s very likely that you will find at least small groups of Palestinians going in that direction.


Me: How does Hamas come out of this? Obviously they’re claiming victory, which is not surprising. A lot of people talked about how now they’re going to be the representative (for the Palestinian people). Israel doesn’t want to speak with them and dignify them. Has Hamas achieved that? Is there a chance that they become moderate in the sense of Hezbollah, where they have responsibility now, or is that unlikely? Is it a bigger fear that we’ll go extreme?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Hamas has always had a number of different viewpoints within it. Not in ideological terms. On that they’re united: the creation of an Islamic state in Palestine to replace the state of Israel, in all of Palestine. In terms of how one achieves that, there have been different trends. One can point to pragmatic kinds of thinking, and I don’t say moderate, I say pragmatic, adapting to particular circumstances.


It’s clear that there were sharp differences of opinion within Hamas over the decision to tear up the ceasefire and goad Israel into an attack, which Hamas believed was going to be beneficial for it, that an improved set of arrangements would be established. Clearly, that wasn’t the case; they paid a horrific price for that thinking.


Hamas is likely to demonstrate a greater degree of pragmatism, to seek accommodations, both within the Palestinian camp – again, not giving up their hegemony over Gaza, but seeking to present some kind of common front, so that the Palestinians, with Mahmoud Abbas, so that they can then move on and say, “this is how we’re going to deal with the opening of the crossing points, the passages to ease the siege.” This is an immediate issue for them, so they can engage in reconstruction, and get legitimized as an interlocutor by the international community.


It is possible that they will achieve that over time, that more and more we’ll hear voices in the West: “You need to engage in dialogue. They’re an important force. You can’t just ignore them. You have to find ways.” And that’s a double-edged sword. By Hamas engaging, they may have to modify their behavior in ways which eventually threaten to clash with their principles. On the other hand, it means that they may be getting legitimized in a way that’s to their benefit, without them giving things up.

I think that one’s likely to see more and more efforts by various parties to get that kind of indirect dialogue with Hamas, trying to nudge Hamas. Israel has difficult choices to make on this, because there’s more pressure now to negotiate a deal to return Gilad Shalit, so the question is, what price do we pay? Same thing to do with the opening of the crossings, well who’s in charge of the crossings? Who’s in charge of the reconstruction aid? Can Israel and the international community achieve a kind of arrangement where Hamas isn’t the main beneficiary for getting the credit for the reconstruction, or not?

Hamas clearly will want to maintain its hegemony over this matter, and all the parties are going to be maneuvering in the weeks ahead to see how much benefit they can gain in this next round of picking up the pieces.


Me: In the whole region, I feel like a lot of interesting things came up; like you said, the split of the two axes. To me the three most interesting things were Egypt on the one side becoming very strong for Israel, but then Syria, with whom we were negotiating, and it almost seemed like there would be a thaw, or an opportunity. I’m curious what the significance is to Syria’s statements.


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Yes, I’m thinking about that too. On the face of it, a Syrian-Israeli agreement is much easier to achieve than a Palestinian-Israeli agreement. It’s straightforward, it’s between states, you deal with territory, you deal with sovereign countries, with authorities, you make arrangements; it’s not an existential matter, per se. It’s not an inter-communal conflict on core ideological matters.


But Bashar Assad, I think, is going to be reluctant to pay the price that he has to pay for a peace treaty, which is shifting his alliance orientation. Moving out of the Iranian radical camp – supporting the radical groups and getting support from Iran – and moving into the Western camp. I don’t think he wants to do that, I think he wants to have both. I think he wants to maintain his connections with Palestinian and Lebanese forces, he wants to maintain his connections with Iran, [i]and[/i] he wants to have better ties with the West, and he was trying to work through Turkey to get that.


But his militancy on these matters is very off-putting. I think it’s probably less likely also that the new Israeli government will want to pick up where the Olmert government left off. So I think we’ll probably again see a hiatus in the Israeli-Syrian track. Especially since the Turkish President has gone and alienated the Israeli political class with his behavior.


Me: And that’s the other country that was interesting was Turkey all of a sudden. Do you view that as a serious blow to the relationship?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: It’s problematic. The Israeli-Turkish relationship is based on common strategic interests. The forces in Turkey that are the guardians of those strategic interests are still there, and still appreciate those values, the value of that relationship.


Politically, of course, the elected leadership is an Islamist party and an Islamist government, which has a different set of considerations. And certainly a significant segment of public opinion in Turkey identified strongly with the Palestinians and is very hostile towards Israel, and we saw that during the war. This is a cause for concern, and for worry. Turkey’s stance is going to be watched very, very closely.


But in any case, it’s not at all clear that the new Israeli government will give the Syrian-Israeli track a priority. Especially since everybody knows that that means accepting the idea of withdrawing from the Golan. Assuming that it’s a Netanyahu-led government, he would be unlikely to want to send that message early on in his term of office.


I’m not so sure the Americans are going to be so keen on renewing that track either, even though there’s been a lot of advice in Washington that’s said, “go for the Syrian-Israeli track right away, because it’s more doable.” Well, I’m not sure it is.


Me: Are you not sure it is now mostly because of the Gaza conflict and the issues that were raised during the conflict? Or do you think it was the same before?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I was skeptical before. I’m more skeptical now. And I think because the Israeli government is about to change, that also is going to play a role here.


Now, if the Americans do get clear signals from the Syrians that they want to play, that they want this to go forward, which is very possible…everybody’s waiting for Obama. Bashar Assad’s going to want to find out where does Obama stand on this. And if he does send the appropriate signals, that will get America’s attention. And that in turn will get Israel’s attention.


But again, getting attention and talking doesn’t automatically lead you to an agreement. A bunch of water has to flow first, under the drain, under the bridges, in the Jordan River. And there’s not much water there. Maybe that tells us what the prospects are.


Me: I think most people don’t expect much in terms of these tracks from the Netanyahu government, which is all but sure to happen. What’s the significance on a broader scale that Israel, even before the war, was leaning towards Netanyahu, and just that the population is in a more right wing, security-based view – or maybe it’s the economics – but what does it say about the broader future prospects of Israel and peace if they’re swinging to the right?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I don’t think the economics are playing any role in any of this. Israelis usually vote on security issues, and not on economics. And they also vote on tribal orientation. People don’t change their orientations. They may shift between parties, but they don’t shift between blocs.

You’re right about Israeli public opinion becoming more right wing, and it’s something that’s been true over the last eight years. It’s a result of the ongoing violence and the failure of politics to produce a lasting peace; it’s a failure of the diplomacy.


And yet, when you ask people how they outline a settlement, you’ll find a solid majority of public opinion is in favor of a two-state solution, in favor of a centrist kind of solution, not a right wing solution. There is a consensus on that.


There’s probably less consensus in Israel about the kind of hard steps that Israel would have to take to help the dynamics of a diplomatic effort, particularly on settlement matters. It’s a divisive issue, and the lack of leadership on it has just made it that much more difficult to move forward on the idea of dismantling even illegal outposts, let alone settlements. It’s clear that in any final peace agreement, that some settlements will have to be dismantled. But that day is not even around the corner, so it may not seem very relevant to most people at this point.


Israelis underestimate the symbolic effect that settlement expansion on public opinion in the other side, and also on the opinion of leadership on the other side. Continuous settlement building is seen as an example of massive Israeli bad faith. And Israelis don’t appreciate that to a sufficient degree.


With regard to the Netanyahu government, the likely Netanyahu government; I mean, maybe, you never know, but one could suspect that most likely he will be the next prime minister, well that also depends on the nature of his coalition. It seems very likely to me that Ehud Barak will be his Defense Minister, which means the Labor party is in the coalition.


Which means you’re talking about a center-right government, but not a right wing government. And that’s a big difference. It means you have a government that can engage and will engage with Washington, that will try to avoid confrontation with Washington. You can see already in Livni’s campaign, that she’s trying to campaign on the basis that Netanyahu will result in a confrontation with Washington, and we don’t want that. Netanyahu clearly will not want to be in open confrontation with Washington. He will try to balance off the competing domestic political forces and the need to be a statesman. And that’s why Barak will be very important for him to have.


If he went even farther, let’s say, and had a broad three-party (Labor, Likud, Kadima) coalition, that would be welcome by a lot of people, because it would mean a government less beholden to smaller religious or right wing parties. But it remains to be seen whether that’s going to happen or not. That’s more of a long shot, I think.


But it’s very possible. Don’t forget, who is Kadima? Most of it is ex-Likud members…


Me: It’s not such a leap for them to join…


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: No, no, it’s more to do with the personalities. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.


The Middle East is a dangerous place. The question of Iran’s nuclear program is something that’s going to be high on everyone’s agenda in the next year or two, and we’re going to need wise heads.


Me: What do you view as the likely shifts on that case? Iran almost seems unrelated to what just happened, but obviously it’s the elephant in the room.


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: It’s very related. I don’t know. Clearly, the U.S. administration is going to see if it can critically, and constructively, and robustly engage Iran on this matter. I think the fact that Dennis Ross has been appointed to be the point man on that, I think that’s an interesting choice, actually.


I know that Ross is a proponent of this sort of approach, robust engagement. Which means, find out what the Iranians are thinking, see what you can do, but also make sure that you have sticks as well as carrots. I think the fact that he knows the Israelis well, and the Israeli thinking well, will be an asset perhaps, to make sure the Americans understand where the Israelis are, and the Israelis understand where the Americans are.


But I don’t know where it’s going to go, and a lot of it depends on internal Iranian things, which I don’t have a good enough sense of.


Me: Their election is soon.


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Yes, their election is soon. There’s always been a broad consensus in Iran that Iran should be a nuclear power. But that doesn’t mean that everybody’s in agreement on the path to get there, the timing, and how to respond to particular international pressures or incentives. It remains to be seen.


Me: Would you say the same thing about the new U.S. administration? We’ve talked about it, obviously, but a new Obama administration’s effect on the region, is that still sort of an unclear thing? Do we need to just see what his line is on Israel-Syria, Israel-Palestine?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I think everybody expects the Americans to take a higher profile on the Israeli-Palestinian, or Arab-Israeli tracks. Nobody doubted that they would be intimately involved with the Iranian matter, and how much continuity and how much change there will be remains to be seen. After all, the American positions have already changed to some degree. And the continuity is there with (Secretary of Defense Robert) Gates, for example. Even though Obama will be the one to set the tone.


There’s a lot of expectation out there for Obama. And undoubtedly it’s exaggerated, which can lead to disappointment. But it seems to me that a lot of people in this region understand that, and want America to play a positive role here.


Me: On both sides.


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Yes, absolutely. The trick for the Administration will be translating that desire and good will into something that makes sense for the regional actors, and makes sense for America’s interests. Big concepts, but then you have to have incremental steps. This is how things are done.


Then maybe you can look around in 2-3 years and say, “Wow, things have really moved.” As opposed to this tremendous breakthrough, a sudden breakthrough on these issues, which are close to being intractable, but they need attention. And one hopes that they’ll receive the right kind of attention.


Me: What do you think the trends are, because there are a few different things – between Obama, between the war, between Netanyahu – what do you see as the trend? Is it a positive one, will we be making incremental steps? Or will it be mostly disappointment?


Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I think there’s room for some progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, for some incremental improvements after the war. Which ideally should be accompanied by proactive measures in the West Bank. Showing some improvement in the daily lives of people.


I think that there are some opportunities there for incremental improvement. As I said, I think that Hamas has been humbled by what happened, and that’s to the good. They’ve been taken off their high horse, even if they haven’t been crushed. If anybody thought that was going to happen, they weren’t being realistic.


Obviously, peace isn’t around the corner. I’m not overly optimistic on that regard. The Palestinian state-building project of the 1990s was a failure, and that’s one of the reasons why the peace process failed. What we have now are two de facto Palestinian entities, and they’re going to have to work mightily to bring a semblance of unity to their own camp. It’s essential if there’s going to be any progress on the big political issues.


I can’t say that I’m overly optimistic about that, but maybe Hamas’s weakening does provide the possibility for a return of an increasing strength of the Palestinian Authority, of Fatah, with Arab help, with Egyptian help, with international help. But they’re not going to be just replaced. There’s a lot of work to be done on their side. And on our side, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions too.

Peace isn’t breaking out, that’s for sure. Let’s hope that we can start taking some positive steps, some incremental steps, and start repairing the damage that’s been caused over the last eight years.

What do you mean, we're not moving and it has to do with Russia?

Last night I joined a few other teachers to celebrate someone's birthday. They got me at 7 or so, and in a two car caravan we drove to Neve Tzedek, a hip artsy neighborhood in Tel Aviv. We had left late and anticipated Thursday night traffic, and so were nervous about the 12-person reservation at the restaurant. Still, we figured the 20 minutes of typical driving would maybe double.
Well it took us 20 minutes...to get through a set of lights on the border of the city. And another 20 minutes or so before that. And a few more sets of 20. In sum, it took us an hour and a half. (Don't check my math, since it's only implied and math tutoring starts Monday).
That's all well and good, but there was an unusual disturbance: as we drove down the beach road in Tel Aviv, deciding that would be the most direct route to Neve Tzedek (and scenic, taking us by the Old port area that is newly revitalized, and near Jaffa, the original settlement in the area), we continued to drag ass. Not our fault, of course, as there were hordes of cars dragging ass in front of us. Well, maybe partly our fault, because our driver, the kindly Kevin, would allow cars from side streets to go in front of us, a grand gesture completely foreign to Israeli driving mores, where you as soon let a guy go in front of you as you slow down entering a roundabout, or never. But the few cars we let go in front of us slowed us down minimally, so really, it wasn't our fault.
As we neared the U.S. Embassy, situated across from the beach and next to Mike's Place, an American sports bar, we saw a bunch of people on the side of the road. They were making noise and carrying signs and flags, the flags white with a red cross, and then four smaller crosses in the corners. As the people passed by us and we by the people, we started reading the signs.
In English, Russian, and Georgian, they were signs protesting the war. Specifically, they were Georgians (or Georgian Jews, I suppose, or even Georgian Israelis) demanding that the Russians leave, that the Americans intervene, that Medvedev become president (alluding to the likelihood that Putin is still behind everything), and that we acknowledge that Putin=Hitler (or Gitler; Russian and probably Georgian turn H sounds to G). Of course, listening to the radio station Reka ("The River", a Russian station in Israel), I heard that the same comparisons were being made in Moscow, about Saakshivilii. Seems to me that, using the ol' transitivity rule, that Saakshivilii=Putin, and that we might be dealing with a huge case of schizophrenia, and somebody get Borges on the phone.

On a serious tangent, this war is atrocious if not surprising. I am no better informed than anybody about this (Friday night, when my internet was still balky about certain websites, I got a gchat request from a friend for perspective on the war between Russia and Georgia. "Oh, there's a war now?" I said). I harbor distrust for both governments involved, as well as for the U.S. administration as they heavyhandedly try to make their impact. Also, the behavior here from Russia and the U.S. over the general principle is somewhat contrary to their stances over Kosovo (in that case the U.S. supported the autonomy of a breakaway ethnicity, Russia opposed; here it's the reverse, roughly speaking), suggesting that realpolitik > principles.
I have talked to someone in Moscow who, when not disgusted with politics and people in general, reports great anger at Saakshivilii, and the U.S. for supporting him, which suggests that Russia is getting one side of the story. Seeing that Condoleeza Rice isn't meeting with Russia and that McCain is making bold remarks about Georgia on his mind suggests that another side is playing there. Israel holds an interesting place in this as many immigrants here are from Russia and Georgia. For example, when talking about the Israeli wrestling team, people often point out that they're all Georgians or Russians.
Which brings me to the other personal touch I have with this. When I wrestled at CSKA, I became friendly with a few Ossetians, both South and North I believe, and some Georgians. I remember an owl-eyed kid named Bekah, who left because he had to serve in the Georgian army, and Ossetski Lev, a wide-grinning fellow whose full name was Ludwig. There was a Muslim kid from Georgia who insisted he wasn't Georgian. That area, the Caucauses, is a mix of a ton of nationalities (and a pair of religions: Islam and Russian Orthodox), and at times their differences erupt - Dagestan isn't the safest place, Chechnya had its war day, etc.
As was pointed out to me in a lecture by an American professor at Tel Aviv University when talking about the Middle East, the decline of empires and rise of self-rule makes it difficult to assess who deserves rule, and everybody wants a piece. That is to say, during the Soviet Union, Georgia and Ossetia and all these other nations and nationalities were subsumed in part of the larger country. They were equal in their misery, so to speak. Now, with unclear national boundaries and the supposed freedom to choose where they stand, these countries and peoples are obviously struggling. So while I don't have enough knowledge or facts on this situation, and I think that both sides are in the wrong here and assessments are hard to make, the war is inevitable. And inevitably crappy.

Just like Tel Aviv traffic, which finally receded after we passed the protest. We finally made it to the restaurant, where our table was still reserved, and had a jolly evening. Though the puff pastry stuffed with liver, onions, and pear sauce was a bad choice. Seriously, I blame the pear sauce.

The traffic's abatement was temporary, however: the ride home took about 40 minutes. That, at least, was the double time period.

So the nature of traffic is pretty bad here, though of course it's pretty bad in New York, or Sao Paolo, or Moscow. What about inevitable things particular to Israel?

Security
Everybody wonders about whether it's safe here. "Don't get blown up" I heard not a few times, or "Don't blow us up!" which was a bit of a confused sentiment. The news says bad things happen all the time, that ceasefires are temporary, illusory agreements, and that the whole country is in danger.
Which it is, probably, to some degree. But day to day life is pretty safe, beyond the threat of Israeli drivers. Arab minorities and Jewish majorities live together in peace, from what I've noticed to date, and the existential threat felt on the geopolitical level doesn't really enter into your thoughts. Especially when lounging on the beach is involved.

There are a couple notable exceptions, though. Security becomes a natural part of life, to a higher degree than it would be in the U.S. or Europe.

When we drive to school, we have to pass through a gate to enter and to leave. A security sticker affixed to our car allows us in. Nothing too fancy, but an added check.

There's a different check when you go to park at the mall. As you descend into the underground parking lot, a queue forms at the entrance. One car at a time enters the parking lot, after a security guard gives the ok. The guard gives the ok only after checking your trunk to "make sure" nothing fishy is going on. I'm told there's very little that they do to check, just a quick eyeball. Also, sometimes they'll ask you if you're carrying a gun on you. Your word is bond there, unless you're visibly packing.

Related to these security concerns is the national predilection to overreact. For example, in between Herziliya Pituach (the beach part of the city Herziliya that I more or less live in) and Herziliya proper is a set of train tracks. Since I have consciously tried to go into Herziliya, starting last weekend on foot, I have not once crossed these train tracks without having to stop and wait for a train to go by.

A high frequency of trains going through Herziliya? Maybe. But more significant is that the gates come down at least a full 90 seconds before the train is in sight. Apparently, once in recent times a car waiting for the train to pass got rear ended straight onto the tracks, and those in the car were subsequently killed by the oncoming train. So now, the 90 seconds of wait time is a mandatory facet, with an attendant who sits in a booth with a cell phone, ready to call the train if there's any sort of problem. And once the train at last passes, they raise the gates and the traffic flushes through the tracks.

This same sort of reactionary philosophy (and really, with a country full of Jewish parents, what would you expect?) is apparently why they're so restrictive about swimming space these days at the beach; a few weeks ago, a couple people drowned due to storms deep in the Mediterranean or something. So now we get to know our neighbors and their tighty-whitey "swim suits" a little too well. (As an addendum, I was told yesterday that there are people who water the grass in their tighty-whiteys around here, or even ride a bike around. Mmm.)


Weekends
Today is Friday, which is of course the start of the Shabbat, at sundown. In Israel, it's the weekend. A little inconvenient when we work on an American work week, except that Sunday, a work day in this country, is a free day for us. Empty beach, public transportation, and I assume less crowded streets in Tel Aviv.
So, this is my weekend to explore Tel Aviv. Pictures, stories, and amusement will be here soon, I hope. Oh, and school starts Monday. Hmm...


But before you go, some pictures from the beach I live five minutes from! Yeah.

The old mosque next to our beach, known as Sidnya Ali. Once a place where the Phoenician raiders would store their loot. History is everywhere here, eh?

Walking down to the sunset and the water. It was very nice to swim at this time. What else would it be?

No questions, no words.