Taking Stock of Donald Trump

This is my "taking stock" of Trump piece that I wrote on the eve of his inauguration.

Some books I read in 2016 and can recommend as worth your time...

“Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief” by Lawrence Wright,

“It Can’t Happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis

The Tragedy if Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 by Frank Dikotter

Jabotinsky by Hillel Halkin

Final Solution by David Cesarani

Coming Apart: The State of White America by Charles Murray 

The Misunderstood Op-ed

In the beginning there was the op-ed. The op-ed begot the blog. And the blog begot the talkback.

The first op-eds, as we know them, ran on September 21, 1970 in The New York Times. The editors were frank in telling readers that their purpose was not to “counterbalance” the newspaper’s views, nor to provide a platform opposite the editorial page for those who disagreed with the editorial line.

The idea, the paper explained, was for outsiders to diversify the paper’s own stable of columnists. 

The raison d'etre was diversity not balance.

That first batch of op-eds saw economist W.W. Rostow writing about the military budget; Gerald Johnson of The New Republic poking fun at the Nixon White House, and China-expert Han Suyin (Elizabeth Comber) writing from “Peking.” All this alongside Anthony Lewis’s regular column.

For 46 years now, those of us in a love-hate relationship with the Times have been kvetching that its op-ed pages are unbalanced. Truth is, though, they were never meant to be otherwise. Indeed, most days you would be hard pressed to find even a single viewpoint that is categorically opposed by the newspaper. 

Take the four op-eds running on November 28, 2016. In-house columnist Paul Krugman warns that Donald Trump is positioning himself to use the power of the presidency to expand his personal wealth. Contributor Achy Obejas, a Cuban-American, writes about how ambivalent he feels over the death of Fidel Castro. Policy wonk Christopher Daggett addresses the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to auction public airwaves. And Douglas Harris, an economist, decries the appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

The Times editorial page has historically been antagonistic toward Israeli policies. This outlook is echoed by columnists Roger Cohen and Tom Friedman – with outside contributors sometimes piling on.

In 2016, Israel’s ambassador, Ron Dermer appeared on the op-ed pages once — in a letter to the editor. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon got three letters published.

The Times, as the flagship of the liberal media, is an easy target. My hunch is that any analysis of The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages would turn up a similar policy, only in the conservative direction.

Since the late 1990s, the Internet has fostered a deluge of voices though not a torrent of counterbalancing opinion. 

Of course some platforms abjure being pigeonholed, but in the main right-wing writers and readers seek out right-wing sites; left-wing writers and readers seek out left-wing sites.

The real purpose of the blog and talk-back is not to counterbalance but to drive Internet traffic. Not only do bloggers write for free — they use their own so

cial media channels to promote the sites that run them thus generating more page views and unique visitors.

In 1921, Manchester Guardian editor C.P. Scott (pictured left) coined the phrase “comment is free,” adding that “the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard.”

Maybe that’s a credo belatedly worth resurrecting.

For Everything You Wanted to Know About the Balfour Declaration

I'd like to call your attention to the Balfour 100 website.

In addition to the 100^th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, 2017 is the 120^th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress, the 70^th anniversary of the UN General Assembly Partition Resolution, the 50^th anniversary of the Six-Day War, the 40^th anniversary of Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, and the 30^th anniversary of the first intifada.

Perhaps you have heard that the moderate Palestinian Arab camp wants to sue the British government for issuing the Declaration. 

That suggests that the Arab-Israel conflict is not about boundaries, settlements, or about this or that Israeli policy, but reflects unrelenting Arab refusal to accept the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland in any part of Palestine.

This is what the extremist Hamas Charter says about the Balfour Declaration:

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They [the Jews] were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

Whereas this is what the Palestine Liberation Organization still says in the Palestinian National Charter:

Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation. The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

This Balfour 100 site http://www.balfour100.com/ simply puts the Balfour Declaration in factual context.

Where would Ze'ev Jabotinsky fit into today's Israeli political spectrum?