A Danish Jew in Denmark

A Danish Jew experiments by walking through a Copenhagen neighborhood while wearing a kippah.

Krasnik set out to walk two kilometers down Nørrebrogade, through a neighborhood he used to call home, in the city in which he was born and raised, wearing a yarmulke. The discomfort began quickly. “The first Arab guys I talked to happened to be in a very infamous, violent gang” that controls a large chunk of the drug trade in Nørrebro. Krasnik asked them what they thought would happen to him if he were to continue walking through the neighborhood wearing a kippah. “I mean, you’re Jewish,” one said to him. “But how can we know that you’re not Israeli?” If you’re an Israeli, Krasnik was told, “we have a right to kick your ass.”

Not being an Israeli—Krasnik specified that he was, in fact, a Danish Jew—he escaped without a beating. It was an inauspicious start, but he forged ahead and was soon confronted by another group of young immigrants. “Some young people, boys, started to shout ‘are you Jewish?’ and were giving me the finger,” he recalled. “One of the younger guys, a Somali, came over and asked me, ‘Are you Jewish?’ I said, ‘Yes of course.’ And he ran back to the group and said, ‘Go to hell, Jew.’” No one tried to hit Krasnik—it was early afternoon, and the street was bustling—but the journalist had the feeling that physical violence loomed.

“I started to feel … unpleasant,” he told me. “I thought: If I keep doing this for an hour or two, something will happen. And if I did this everyday, I would get my ass kicked around.”

On the final leg of his 2-kilometer walk, he approached a small grocery store, where five or six young men—“probably 25 years old, of Pakistani or Palestinian background”—were loitering outside. They too quickly spotted his yarmulke. “They stopped me immediately and asked, ‘Are you Jewish?’ And when I said yes, they said ‘Take that [kippah] off.’ One was shouting from behind, ‘You’re from Israel!’ I said, ‘No, I’m from Denmark and I live just down the road.’ ”

The remainder of the story is equally harrowing: principals advising Jews not to enroll in their schools, anti-Semitic incidents doubling, Jewish groups forbidden from displaying Israeli flags at a multicultural festival (which contemplated excluding Jews entirely), and protesters hurling rocks at the Israeli embassy. This all has been met with ambivalence, at best, from the Danish government.

In Fits and Starts

I'm happy that CPAC is having sessions on appealing to Black voters. I really am. And the "Frederick Douglass Republicans" line strikes me as a better approach than most. Sure, "Democrats are the party of the KKK" is not actually going to persuade anyone, but baby steps, right?

Still, I find it hilarious that this session dissolved into chaos after a group of white supremacists came in shouting about how appealing to Black voters constituted oppression of White Southerners.

Amazingly, the panel host tried to defuse the situation by saying that Douglass "forgave" his slavemaster. That only prompted the belligerent Whites to reply "For giving him food? And shelter?" And then we were off to the races (so to speak).

And this, in a nutshell, is why Republicans can't appeal to Black voters. It's not that there aren't people genuinely interested in trying. And it's not that there aren't people who are thinking hard and critically about how conservative policy priorities might benefit, or be made harmonious with, the priorities of the Black community. It's that there is a significant cadre of conservatives who are so attached to White racial resentment that they find this whole project offensive, and the conservative movement has proven unable to keep that element out of the fore.

Whistlin' in the Wind

Israel brought one of its most prominent pop stars, the Persian-born Rita, to perform before the UN General Assembly and deliver a message of peace between the Israeli and Iranian peoples.

‎"I am proud of being Jewish and Israeli. I am about to reveal a piece of the ancient, rich and beautiful culture of Persia. The concert combined both languages intertwined simply and beautifully, just like the prayer in my heart that we, the common people, will be able to make an impact eventually.

"There is a story about a boy who walked into a synagogue and didn't know how to pray like everyone else, so he just whistled with all his might. I have no knowledge of the language of politics, but I will be there, whistle my prayer and hope that it reaches as far as Iran."

In the story she refers to, incidentally, the learned Rebbe of the synagogue declares that the boy's whistle (in my recollection, he blew a note on his flute, but same principle) is what allowed their prayers to ascend and be heard in heaven. May it be the case here, too, that the voices of regular people with a passion for engagement and desire to hear each others songs also heal rifts and create peace where politicians and ideologues have failed.

Hell, What's One More?

Indiana Right to Life Director Sue Swayze defends mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds:

“I got pregnant vaginally. Something else could come in my vagina for a medical test that wouldn’t be that intrusive to me. So I find that argument a little ridiculous.”

H/T.

Memmi on "What is a Zionist?"

I'm finally sitting down to try and make some progress on my pile of books. Reading Professor Zasloff inspired me, what can I say. And the book that I've actually been making some real progress in is Albert Memmi's Jews and Arabs (Eleanor Levieux, trans., Chicago: J. Philip O'Hara 1975). Memmi, of course, is a Tunisian Jewish writer whose work I've praised before. But the chapter I'm reading now ("What is a Zionist?") makes some particular important and erudite points.

[O]ne cannot propose any effective liberation if the specificity of each condition has not been grasped. That is why I protested so strongly when attempts were made to reduce the colonial problem first, then the Jewish problem, to a matter of class struggle . . . . It is reductions such as those which have made the ideology of the political left in Europe impotent.
[...]
What, then is the meaning of the oppression of the Jew? I have demonstrated [in prior work] that the Jews are not oppressed only in the practice of their religion, or only as a religious group; they are not oppressed only as a cultural group; nor only in the exercise of their political rights, nor only in their economic activities, etc. The Jews are oppressed in every one of their collective dimensions. In other words, they are oppressed as a people.
[...]
[W]hether we like it or not, we are looked upon as a special category of foreigners and we are treated as such. Unlike our universalists, the Jewish masses know this and take it into account. The Jewish masses never have more than a limited amount of confidence in their fellow citizens. That is why they constantly confirm their unity, for they know that when a catastrophe occurs, the only help they can hope for will come from other Jewish communities that have been temporarily spared. People ought to stop stupidly repeating that such solidarity cannot be allowed! That it is a reverse form of racism and other such nonsense. It is a perfectly natural self-defense reaction on the part of an endangered group. Let people stop persecuting the Jews, first, and then we ill see what they can be reproached with.

Thus, the Jews are oppressed as a people. If we accept the idea that liberation should be achieved on the basis of the specificity of each case of oppression, then we are now in a position to take another step forward: oppressed as a people, it is only as a people that the Jews will be genuinely liberated. Today, however, the liberation of peoples still retains a national physiognomy.
[...]
. . . . I have not been more sparing in my criticisms of that young state [of Israel], of its political errors or its theocratic self-satisfaction. . . . All this, however, is merely a matter of criticizing details. The essential and undeniable fact is that from now on, the State of Israel is part of the destiny of every Jew anywhere in the world who continues to acknowledge himself as a Jew. No matter what doubts or even reproofs certain of Israel's actions may arouse, no Jew anywhere in the world can call its existence in question without doing himself grave harm. And the nonJews, especially the liberals, must understand that Israel represents the still-precarious result of the liberation of the Jew, just as decolonization represents the liberation of the Arab or black peoples of Asia and Africa.
[...]
. . . . I did not hide the fact that these new ties, this sentimental solidarity with the new state, were likely to intensify the climate of suspicion in which Jews everywhere have always lived. But we have always been in danger. I do not believe that we can be in greater danger. Let us at least face danger with dignity. Above all, and once again, the perspective of accusation must be reversed. If the Jews had not been so accused, threatened, and periodically prevented from living, they would not have tried to secure a possible refuge. It is really too presumptions of the people who have persecuted us for centuries, who have made us second-class citizens, often despite their own laws, to dare to reproach us with this ambiguity that they have cultivated in us regardless of our protests, our efforts, and the sometimes shameful pledges we gave them. What they call our double allegiance was forced upon us. We would have liked nothing better than not to need it!

What exactly is a Zionist?

A Zionist is anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who, having found that the Jewish situation is a situation of oppression, looks upon the reconstruction of a Jewish state as legitimate: so as to put an end to that oppression and so that Jews, like other peoples, may retrieve their dimensions as free men.

Or again, anyone who considers the liberation of the Jews as a Jew desirable.

Albert Memmi, Jews and Arabs 92-97 (Eleanor Levieux, trans., 1975) (emphasis original).

Today's Reading Assingment

Jonathan Zasloff, Left and Right in the Middle East: Notes on the Social Construction of Race, 47 Va. J. Int'l L. 201 (2006). It is one of the first academic examples I've seen which compares Israel and its identity as a "Jewish state" to the American affirmative action debate, and accurately notes that there is an inversion of the normal left/right split on the question. He also makes an intriguing parallel between the Palestinian "right of return" and the American debate over property rights and "takings", again noting that the rightward position would seem to favor Palestinians and the leftward one Israel.

On the one hand, my tenure-o-meter always winces whenever I see one of my ideas has already been taken. On the other hand, if I ever get around to organizing the "New Perspectives on the New Anti-Semitism" symposium I keep on running in my mind, an additional candidate for participation has just emerged.

A Not So New Dawn

Digby looks on with alarm as the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party continues to swell in strength. "These," she tells us "are the wages of austerity."

Well ... look. I'm not fan of austerity politics. But let's not be too quick to cast Golden Dawn or the Greeks who voted for them as victims. There's nothing inherent in austerity politics that makes people think "you know who I hate? Jews! And everyone else who isn't me!" That comes from a pre-existing cultural frame wherein hostility to Jews and other others is already built in. Deprivation brought on by austerity politics may bring that to the surface, but it was always present and remains a problem even when not living in austere times. The moral of the rise of Golden Dawn isn't "if you enact austerity politics, anti-Semitism will return in Europe." It's "anti-Semitism still is a serious problem in Europe, and the right trigger can bring back to the surface with all the violence and fury that attached to it in the mid-20th century."

Brooklyn BDS Megapost!

It wouldn't do to pass on this controversy without giving my thoughts (more than I already have, anyway). You know, for posterity.

On free speech and academic freedom

1) College departments have the right to sponsor events featuring speakers with controversial, even arguably racist or anti-Semitic, views. That's part of academic freedom. There's also no general rule that controversial speakers must be "balanced" with the "other side", though this might be prudent in certain cases.

2) Academic freedom means that such decisions cannot come with material repercussions (such as slashing funding).

3) However, academic freedom does not immunize such decisions from criticism. Indeed, we should be quite disconcerted if a college department decides to sponsor or promote such events, and it is legitimate to say so.

4) Sponsoring an event does not imply endorsement of its views. But it does imply endorsement of a certain kind -- that the event is "in bounds," that it is within the pantheon of legitimate and valid thoughts that it is worthwhile to consider. This is why I'm fine with the Economics department sponsoring a talk by Richard Epstein but would be less thrilled if they brought in some gold standard nut.

5) Academic departments have the right to decide whether a given viewpoint is "in bounds". Similar to the above, this decision is also subject to criticism.

6) If an academic department is going to sponsor an event, it should be open to all students. If pro-Israel students were systematically excluded from attending the BDS event, that is as problematic as forcing Brooklyn to cancel the event would have been.

7) Eric Alterman wins the "best overall" award for his column on this subject.

On BDS and the event itself

1) Yair Rosenberg is right to call out the media for whitewashing what BDS is actually about. It is not just generic "criticism of Israel", and opposing it in no way implies that one opposes all criticism of Israel.

2) This NYT report on the controversy is pretty terrible on that front.

3) Referring to protesters outside, Butler remarked that "as you can hear, unconditional supporters of Israel.” Apparently, she's been reading LGM's comments.

4) Butler also apparently made the following argument: Criticism of Israel can only be anti-Semitic if all Jews supported Israel, and "Honestly, what can really be said about the Jewish people as a whole?" It is difficult to think of a criterion for anti-Semitism more calculated to neuter the term (it's not racist if Herman Cain agrees with me!) -- which, one suspects, is the point.

The Only Winning Move is to STFU

There's another BDS brouhaha, with Brooklyn College hosting Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti at a college forum on the topic. Such things are always touchy -- college faculty members should be free to host or even promote racist or anti-Semitic speakers or ideologies, and other people should be severely disconcerted at the fact that college faculty members want to host or even promote racist or anti-semitic speakers or ideologies. Straddling that position is rather delicate. After all, if one says something like "Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler are promoting an anti-Semitic ideology", why, one is silencing debate!

And what if one doesn't say that, but instead tries to step back a bit and call the event one "that will verge on anti-Semitism"? Lawyers, Guns and Money with the call:

Seriously, talk about yer classic moments in passive-aggressive weasel wording ... "We won’t actually call the speakers anti-Semitic. But they might do something other than criticize the Likud platform for being insufficiently dismissive of Palestinian rights, so close enough."

Seriously, talk about yer classic moments in moving the goalposts. After constantly howling about Jews call everything and its mother anti-Semitic, we discover that it doesn't actually matter if we agree to dial it back. Just as the "criticizing Israel isn't anti-Semitic" debate doesn't change a whit when someone says the quiet part out loud, it doesn't actually matter how the objection is raised -- objecting is still objectionable.

Meanwhile, the post comes with the bonus revelation that the BDS movement comprises the entirety of the political spectrum left of Naftali Bennett. Somebody should page that dastardly, settlement-freeze-promoting radical leftist .... Alan Dershowitz.

.... I feel like in posting this, I'm thumbing the eye of a friend who asked me to post on Jon Chait's glorious takedown of the ludicrous Free Beacon claim that TNR was purging its Jews. Alas, that the Free Beacon is run by utter idiots is neither novel nor capacious enough for significant commentary, and Chait, as per usual, has said anything I might want to.

The Snowflake that Starts an Avalanche

Boy Scouts get ready to kick out a troop for having a non-discrimination policy that covers sexual orientation. The offending policy reads

Pack 442 WILL NOT discriminate against any individual or family based on race, religion, national origin, ability, or sexual orientation.

The Boy Scouts, which insisted before the Supreme Court that discriminating against gays was essential to their expressive mission, are none too pleased, and is threatening to derecognize the pack if they don't take the statement down. As Les Baron, CEO and Scout Executive of the local umbrella scout organization put it: "That's a message that's against our policy, and we don't want it continue to be out in our community," Baron says.

One has to wonder if a dam is beginning to crack. Of course, Pack 442 is still deliberating over whether to rescind their non-discrimination policy or to stand firm. And Pack 442 would not be the first scout group to lose its charter over this issue. But as the years pass and the BSA's position grows more isolated and antiquated, this sort of local rebellion will only become more frequent and harder to ignore. And at some point, the levy will break and the organization will have a full-scale rebellion to contend with.

That Seemed To Go Quicker Than Normal

What does it take for Israel to rapidly evacuate a West Bank outpost that is deemed illegal? Why, if it's Palestinians who have set up camp there. Indeed, it appears that the Israeli government ignored a court injunction in their haste to ensure that the Palestinian outpost of Baab al Shams (built in the controversial "E-1" area near Jerusalem) was evacuated. One imagines that the Supreme Court does not look favorably on being ignored in this way.

AIPAC Won't Object to Hagel

Word in from Peter Beinart is that AIPAC will not oppose former Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-NE) nomination as Defense Secretary (perhaps Bernard Avishai will issue a retraction? Or perhaps not). Beinart notes that this is consistent with AIPAC's key interest in differentiating itself from the "pro-Israel" far-right (groups like the ECI and RJC), as the worst thing that could possibly happen to Israel's standing in the US is if it became known as a annex of partisan Republicanism. As Jeffrey Goldberg points out, AIPAC is not stupid and has no interest in sacrificing its bipartisan credentials over a nomination fight. In the words of a top AIPAC official, "we don’t deal with nominees. We deal with policies." And from my vantage, anything that puts daylight between AIPAC and the far-right is good news.

In any event, this seems to falsify at least one of two claims: (1) the "Israel Lobby" is indomitable, and no mortal can long resist its wrath, or (2) the "Israel Lobby" can't countenance anyone who registers any sort of criticism of Israel whatsoever. In Hagel, we have someone who has criticized Israel before (and it's worth reiterating that this distinguishes him from precisely nobody who's ever had any opinion on Israel -- including far-right groups like ZOA), and AIPAC is perfectly content to see him confirmed. Despite this, I predict AIPAC's neutrality on this issue will have zero impact on any of the rhetoric surrounding it, because said rhetoric remains untethered from anything AIPAC actually does.

When the Chips Are Down

The ongoing conflict in Syria has created a new Palestinian refugee problem, as Palestinians (and other minority groups) have been among the most vulnerable and heavily impacted by the ongoing brutal civil war. Refugees have began pouring into Jordan and Lebanon, but both countries' support for Palestinians in other countries notoriously exceeds the hospitality they display to Palestinians in their own borders. Facing an escalating crisis, the UN has asked that the Palestinian Authority (West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza) take in some of their compatriots themselves.

Both refused. The PA's excuse is at least facially reasonable: they don't have any money. But Hamas gives a different reason: rescuing these Palestinians now, you see, would denigrate any "right of return" claims they have against Israel later. I'd say these Palestinians are only useful to Hamas as a bargaining chip against Israel, except that Hamas has no interest in striking a bargain: Palestinians living abroad have precisely one role to play in Hamas' vision of Palestinian nationalism: a human wave to wash away the Jewish state. If they can't serve that function, they have no value and Hamas couldn't care less about them. It's that simple.

New Year's Resolutins: 2013

Just because essentially nobody can read it is no excuse for dispensing with tradition. It's my new year's resolutions for 2013! Previous installments can be found here. And as always, we start with evaluating my performance vis-a-vis last year's list:

Met: 1 (several times over!), 2, 3, 4 (not yet, anyway, as far as I know), 5, 6, 7, 9 (just this past weekend!), 10, 11, 14.

Missed: 8, 15.

"Well, technically I met this....": 12, 13.

Unfortunately, despite a frankly superb showing by the numbers, number 8 looms quite large and casts a big shadow over the rest of the list. So I come into the new year more demoralized than I can remember in some time. But it's the sort of thing I'll have to just push through. It will come.

Anyway, to the new year's resolutions:

1) Find employment post-clerkship. (Met)

2) Be at peace with the employment I have post-clerkship. (Missed)

3) Move the big screen TV into the living room. (Met)

4) Make significant progress on another article. (Met)

5) Keep the blog's blood pumping long enough so it can return in full force when the clerkship ends. (Pick 'em)

6) Feel decently competent in an additional area of law beyond my current specialty. (Pick 'em)

7) Watch either The Two Towers or Return of the King with Jill. (Missed)

8) Have people over to watch a boxing event. (Missed -- I think, but don't actually remember)

9) Present Our Divine Constitution somewhere. (Missed)

10) Try the cooperative multiplayer in Portal 2. (Met)

11) Attend the Carleton Reunion! (Met)

12) Crack the 200 follower mark on Twitter. (Met)

13) Find my copies of War and XPs and No Cure for the Paladin Blues. (Met -- amazingly enough, since I didn't find them until I moved to DC)

14) Don't be jealous of other people's successes, even when things aren't falling into place for me. (Met -- I can honestly say this)

Dead Man Tell No Tales

The big Senate news is Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie's (D) selection to replace Sen. Daniel Inouye (D), who recently passed away. Inouye -- a legendary figure in Hawaiian politics -- released a deathbed letter saying his "one and only choice" for a successor was Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D). But Abercrombie rocked the boat by instead picking Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz to take the seat. Schatz will serve two years until a 2014 special election; the winner of that will have to run for reelection in 2016.

So the question on everyone's mind is why Abercrombie decided to spurn Inouye's dying wish? The line I've heard is that Abercrombie wanted to demonstrate "independence" from Inouye's giant shadow. If so, it strikes me as a bit weak -- it seems less like a bold stroke and more like, well, kicking a dead guy.

I'm not saying that Abercrombie was obligated to pick Hanabusa. I'm saying that one would hope that there are substantive differences between her and Schatz that motivated the pick, because if it was more of an inside-baseball sort of deal then I can't imagine that it will really turn out well for Abercrombie.

The Ever-Shifting Influence of AIPAC

Last week, Open Zion (through Peter Beinart) was predicting that AIPAC would not "publicly oppose" the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, because it would be a fight it "can't win." This week, Open Zion (through Bernard Avishai) accuses a who's who of Jewish organizations (including, but not limited to, AIPAC) of being "Neo-McCarthyites" due to their alleged role in sinking Hagel's as-yet-unannounced nomination.

Maybe all this shows is that the political instincts of Open Zion just aren't that good. Or maybe it shows that Open Zion treats AIPAC more as a phantom to project their own distaste for how American and Jewish politics operates than as an actual organization that does actual things. There is a lot of fulmination about AIPAC's "intimidation", but very little about what AIPAC has actually done in this controversy, and there's whining that Jewish organizations are haphazardly "branding" anyone who opposes them as an anti-Semite without noting that this charge has been explicitly disavowed with respect to Hagel (oh, but they don't have to say it, because the things they are attacking Hagel for are "things only an anti-Semite would do." How conveniently unfalsifiable, that saying you're not calling someone anti-Semitic isn't even relevant evidence to whether one is trying to "cow" them into submission by calling them anti-Semitic).

Finally, I'd note that we have a bit of Chas Freeman syndrome all over again here -- the Jews are only after that one thing. Senator Hagel hails from the realist wing of the foreign policy community. And there are plenty of Americans who are not foreign policy realists, for a variety of reasons that often have nothing to do with Israel and which can be held independent of any political beliefs on Israel. Chinese dissidents, for example, had plenty of reason to be skeptical of Freeman without taking any positions whatsoever on Israel. And so it is with Hagel -- if one is not a fan of his particular intellectual orientation to foreign policy, one can be skeptical of his nomination without it being Israel-or-bust.

Probably Just a Massive Welfare Operation

LGM has some stories from the failed Romney campaign:

Rich Beeson, the Romney political director who co­authored the now-discredited Ohio memo, said that only after the election did he realize what Obama was doing with so much manpower on the ground. Obama had more than 3,000 paid workers nationwide, compared with 500 for Romney, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers.

“Now I know what they were doing with all the staffs and ­offices,” Beeson said. “They were literally creating a one-to-one contact with voters,” something that Romney did not have the staff to match.

Like the LGM guys, I too am curious what Beeson thought the Obama campaign was doing with all those workers. Did they think it was just a handout to layabouts -- "walking around money", as I believe the conservative conspiracy goes?

Anyway, the good news is that the corporate-style campaign Romney run is both (a) a terrible model and (b) culturally ingrained within the modern Republican Party. So I look forward to many more electoral spankings coming their way.

Making Lemons out of Lemonade

This is a very interesting and, in its way, very tragic column by Peter Beinart on the potential nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as Secretary of State. Beinart starts off by observing that AIPAC is not exactly VP of the Chuck Hagel fan club, which is probably true enough. He then predicts that AIPAC will not publicly oppose Hagel's nomination. Why? Because they "can't win." Hagel has too much support amongst both Democrats and Republicans. Well, ring up another for the supposedly indomitable Israel Lobby. And of course, it's possible that AIPAC won't oppose Hagel because they don't think he's worth opposing.

But moving on -- Beinart does predict that some folks will be pretty vociferously anti-Hagel: the putatively "pro-Israel" groups to AIPAC's right. Groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel, or the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Washington Free Beacon, will hardly share AIPAC's sense of prudence.

Now, what does Beinart take from this? That AIPAC will have been "outflanked", "look[ing] like the loser in a fight it didn’t want to have." Which is strange, because I see it as "AIPAC consciously putting distance between itself and groups to its right," which is an unabashed gain for the good guys. Indeed, the more that AIPAC views entities like the ECI and company as obstacles to its continued influence and Israel's continued security, the better, since AIPAC still does have plenty of influence and I'd love for some of that clout to go towards taking Noah Pollak down a peg.

But Beinart is too excited at seeing AIPAC in a bind that he's missing an opportunity to take back the center. The way Beinart puts it, any time AIPAC doesn't join the far-right on something Israel-related, it's because it can't, not because it doesn't want to. The group is as right-wing as it possibly can be, and any act that seems more centrist is to be cheered not because it signifies that the lodestone of pro-Israel is tacking center, but because it purportedly signifies that the lodestone of pro-Israel is losing its grip.

And I think that's a mistake. The pro-Israel left may not be best buddies with AIPAC, but they're not preordained to be our adversary either. It is those right-wing groups like the ECI that are the real threat from within the "pro-Israel" camp, and if they're dumb enough to actively marginalize themselves from mainstream organization, you have to take that and run with it.

Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore Meets Tommy Hilfiger

Gaza manufactuers have created a new perfume scent named "M-75", after the rockets Hamas shot into Israel during the last flare-up of violence. The director of the manufacturing company says it serves as the "smell of victory" over Israel, and customers seem to agree. One tourist from neighboring Egypt bought thirty vials and said "I hope the smell is strong enough for them to whiff in Tel Aviv and remind the Jews of the Palestinian victory." Charming.

The Populace of No

McClatchey polls America on the fiscal cliff. And it turns out, we're quite worried about it. 70% say it matters if we make a deal. 74% say that the parties should compromise rather than stay steadfast on principle.

And then voters are asked whether they support various plans for reducing the deficit.

Democrats oppose every option except raising taxes on the rich. Republicans oppose every option, period.