Above all, the Arabs don't want the Jews to have a state....

Finally, a leading Israeli politician tells it as it is.

The Arab street, and elites,  may or may not wish the Palestinians to have a state.  But their main preoccupation, now as much as at any time, is to get rid of Israel.  This, more or less, is the gist of a remarkable interview with left-of-center Knesset member Einat Wilf, published in the Jewish Week of September 16. To read the whole interview, click here.

And here is an excerpt:

... the last decade, with the failure of Camp David, the intifada, the disengagement, the repeated failures of the Palestinian leadership to take advantage of opportunities to have a state has made me very skeptical. I began to question whether the Palestinians want a state more than they want the Jews not to have a state. They may want a state, but it’s second or third priority after making sure the Jews don’t have their state … I’ve become increasingly convinced that the conflict is not about simple territorial claims that can be resolved by finding where exactly the border should go. At the core, the entire Palestinian identity is wrapped in the battle against Zionism. It emerged as a separate identity only through this battle, and for them justice was always more important than statehood. … Given the opportunity to have a state but not perfect justice they’ve always tried to pursue their version of justice and given up on having a state…

 Einat Wilf

I felt the self-flagellation that has become a mark of the left — we don’t have peace because Israel didn’t do enough, in Camp David Barak should have been nicer to Arafat, should have let him go first through the door — it was getting to the point of just being ridiculous...
I’m still in the left in the sense that if by some miracle tomorrow there were an agreement with the Palestinians and it came to a vote in Knesset and we had to get out of the West Bank, I’d vote for it. I don’t have an emotional problem or attachment or messianic views that would make that difficult for me … But I’ve become skeptical that this is what the conflict is about and that it is possible to reach an agreement …

RIP: Eugene Nida, 1914-2011

He was not literally my teacher.  I never met him, and I certainly never sat in a class that he taught.  But I have learned from colleagues who had learned from him.  Two of his great books are on my shelf and I still refer to them from time to time:  God's Word in Man's Language (1952), and Bible Translating (1961).  Despite the fact that I have never had a direct interest in Bible translating, these books had a lot to teach me and indeed all social scientists.  Nida, together with a few others, was a giant in the social science of linguistics.  (Those were the days when linguistics was still a social science and not the speculative game it became later). Now he died, aged 96.

Here is a rare video of Nida as an old man, still teaching:



and here, a bit of comic relief, is an attack on Nida's scholarly approach to translation by a fundamentalist who thinks that the Bible needs to be translated one word at a time:



Of course the Chomskyans, who do not believe that language should be studied empirically any more than this misguided religious fundamentalist, could no doubt make an equally ludicrous anti-Nida video.  Maybe they already have.

Not to be missed:  the fine obit in the NYT by Margalit Fox.

Snake Oil for Sale: The Charlatans of Jewish Public Opinion Research

Two well-known Jewish organizations with contrasting attitudes toward Israel have recently claimed to have plumbed American Jewish attitudes in this subject.   Each group has claimed that its own political stance is the one actually favored by the Jewish community as a whole.  But since neither of these groups -- JStreet on the one hand, the Committee for Accuracy in Media (CAMERA) on the other -- has used scientific methods of public opinion research,  neither's claim can be said to be supported.

I have recently written an article in which I summarized my objections to JStreet's methods, including its polling, so I will not repeat this material here.  My objections to CAMERA's polling materials will become clearer presently.

*****

Some thirty or forty years ago my colleague Tony and I were sipping a little something in the Faculty Club, and this is the amusing tale he told:

It seems that a couple of decades before this, a man who later became quite important as "an intellectual" -- let's call him X -- crossed the US-Canada border from Detroit to Windsor to spend a half hour  of "observation" in Ontario.  He carefully took note of the automobiles that passed him in the street of Windsor, noting the manufacturer of each.  Upon returning to Michigan, he penned a report to his nephew.   Canadians, X averred, favor the Ford automobile over any other make, by a margin of about ten to one.  That "observation," I believe, later became enshrined in the X's published oeuvre.

But snake oil sold as social-science wisdom is not always so charmingly harmless.  During the presidential election campaign of 1936, the Literary Digest polled ten million Americans (of whom about 2.5 million responded) and concluded that Ralph Landon, the Republican, would be an easy winner.  In November, as we all know, it was the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt who won, overwhelmingly, carrying 46 out of 48 states.

What went wrong ?  And what went wrong with the current polling of American Jews that I am so concerned about here ?

When properly done, the science of public opinion polling can accomplish remarkable feats of understanding.  By consulting about two thousand people -- an appropriate random sample of about this number -- it is possible to gain insight into the opinions and attitudes of millions.  The theory of  this sampling (i.e. probability theory) has been understood by mathematicians for hundreds of years, but it has been the social science of the twentieth century that has developed the techniques to accomplish adequate public opinion polling.  But recent times have also brought to the fore a host of charlatans in this area.  How can we tell the genuine from the specious ?  The genuine from the grey-area operator ?

The principles are clear enough.  On the one hand there is a "population" or "universe," too large or otherwise impractical to study directly, on the other hand there is the random sample which, to a known degree of accuracy, "represents" this population.  How can this sample be obtained ?  The most basic requirement is that each member of the population has an equal chance to be drawn for the sample.  So, in principle, we must have a complete listing of the members of the population, and then a mechanism, such as a lottery cylinder, to draw individuals by strict random methods.

In practice, the strict adherence to random principles is generally impossible, not least because a complete enumeration of the underlying population does not exist.  If American Jewry is postulated as the population, there is also the additional problem of definition:  who is a Jew, exactly;  is synagogue affiliation either a necessary or sufficient attribute ? Jewish parents ?  If so, how many ?  And so forth.  Also, as I have shown elsewhere, there are inherent problems of a sample of American Jews if it is based on a random sample of all Americans,  primarily because American Jews are not distributed randomly in the American population, so that such samples systematically under-sample areas of Jewish concentration.  All such problems have reasonable solutions, but these are scientifically complex, and also generally more expensive than certain "pollsters" will want to consider. The  National Jewish Population Survey, on the other hand,  furnishes an example of responsible scientific work.

For the use of public opinion polls in general, the New York Times has published its own very sensible standards.  What can the reader do when faced with reported "public opinion data" of unknown quality ?  Responsible, high quality social science in this area is not always easy to verify, since there are so many variables:  the selection of a scientific sample (obviously the first necessity), the formulation of the questions (sometimes inadequate, sometimes biased), the overall scientific quality of the various steps in the research process.  On the other hand, there is a telltale of absolutely unacceptable work:  failure of the researcher to disclose the details of his work.  When, as is the case of both JStreet and CAMERA here, the researcher fails to specify how his sample was obtained, the research, if for no other reason, is unacceptable.

As it happens, I have in the past corresponded with the executives of CAMERA, and so felt free, especially in view of my overall support of the work of that group, to express my suggestions in regard to their use of polling data.  I wrote to two of these people, for a total of three times, without ever once receiving a reply.  Here is the text of one of my messages:

Dear   , 

It would appear that the Luntz poll, which CAMERA sent around in its latest Alert, is not a scientific poll.  If I am right on this, it should be labelled non-scientific, to be accepted, if at all,  with caution. 

I am particularly interested in this problem because I recently had to criticize the polling practices of JStreet....It would appear that my methodological points here apply to Luntz as much as to  Gerstein (JS's pollster). The problem is the following:  it is very difficult (read expensive) to have a valid sample of the American Jewish population.  As I point out in my blog, the National Jewish Population Survey does a very good scientific job of surveying the Jewish population, but, as far as I can tell, nobody else does.  I wrote to JS's Gerstein to voice these concerns, but never received an answer. 

Yesterday I wrote to Luntz, as follows: 

Would it be possible to get details on how your sample was selected ?
My interest in the matter is detailed here:
http://www.fringegroups.com/2011/05/jstreet-gentle-facade-and-whats-behind.html
thanks for your help
Werner Cohn 

to which I received the following reply: 

Thank you for contacting us.  We appreciate your thoughts, suggestions and time it took you to write us. 

You MUST register ON OUR WEBSITE to be eligible for one of our focus groups or nationwide surveys.   You can sign-up on our website at http://www.theworddoctors.com/  Sorry, but requesting to sign you up by emailing us will not work. 

Due to the high volume of emails we receive, we cannot guarantee a response to your email. 

Remember: it's not what you say, it's what people hear. 

Sincerely, 

Dr. Frank Luntz & The Word Doctors Team
*Become a fan on Facebook* http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Frank-Luntz/249263279310

The report of the Luntz survey, to which CAMERA links, contains no information on how the sample was selected.  When this information is missing, no knowledgeable  reader can accept the results as scientific.  I think that you should press Luntz to explain his methodology publicly.  If he does not provide this information, and/or if, as I suspect, his methods prove to be less than scientific, there needs to be a disclaimer on your website, IMHO. 

No doubt you will appreciate the position of CAMERA supporters like myself when we criticize JStreet's various obfuscations.  If, as I hope it will, CAMERA comes out for truth in polling, our criticisms of JStreet  can gain significant additional force.

IN MEMORIAM:  John Gray Peatman (1904-1997), my first statistics professor at CCNY, ca. 1949


UPDATE, MARCH 2013

The organization Workmen's Circle has an old and proud history in the American Jewish community.  Formed by Eastern European immigrants in the early 20th century,  it had connections with the anti-Stalinist Jewish socialist movement.  It gained many members through its "fraternal benefits," i.e. funeral arrangements.  I myself belonged to it for a short while.

But lately, partly through its emphasis on its Yiddish-speaking heritage, it has largely fallen prey to a new type of membership:  militantly secularist, allied to anti-Israel causes.  Its old-time membership, people in their eighties, seem bewildered and outgunned.

Now this latter-day WC published what it calls a poll of American Jewish opinion, arriving at conclusions that purport to show that American Jews actually care little about Israel.  And how did the pollsters of the WC learn all this ?  Here is their description of their sampling method:

The poll was commissioned by the Workmen’s Circle / Arbeter Ring. For more information on the organization, go to:www.circle.org.
Principal investigators were Professor Steven M. Cohen of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and Professor Samuel J. Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College and Stanford University.
The Washington office of IPSOS, under the direction of Dr. Alan Roschwalb, fielded the survey. Respondents included 1,000 American Jews, by Internet, who had previously agreed to participate in social research conducted by IPSOS. Survey was conducted April 19 – May 3, 2012.
The results were weighted to reflect the American Jewish population with respect to age, gender, regional distribution, educational attainment, marital status, intermarriage status, and Jewish parentage (none, one, two parents). They were also weighted to reflect registered voters

The participants in this "poll" were, it would seem, self-selected.  All were internet users, which of course automatically eliminates Haredi Jews.  The procedure seems, as if by design, to evade all scientific understanding of sampling.

Or did I perhaps miss something ?  Can something be said by way of reasonable scholarly explanation of this poll ?  I sent polite separate e-mails to Professor Cohen and Abrams, as well as to IPSOS and even the WC itself, asking for more details on the sampling method used in the poll.   Not one of these bothered to answer my  questions.

The Syrian revolutionary anthem -- Get out, Bashar

And here is the NYT article that gives the background

The Brouhaha about the Anti-Boycott Law in Israel

Two days ago two events took place in Israel: 1) the Israeli Knesset passed a law that provides for civil penalties for those who organize boycotts against Israel, and 2), at about the same time, Hamas resumed the firing of Qasam missiles into Israel. And guess what: all the self-described friends of peace in the Middle East -- the New Israel Fund, the Americans for Peace Now, and their allies -- are outraged, absolutely outraged at event number one, but considerably less so at event number two. In fact, these great friends of peace, to judge by their websites, have not at all noticed event number two. Peace, to these peaceniks, is not at all endangered by Hamas bombardments.

(It seems that Jewish organizations across the political spectrum have expressed criticism of the the anti-boycott law, but the hysteria about it is restricted to the self-styled Left. NGO Monitor has published a very good analysis of the law, including an English translation of its text.)

It may very well be, as NGO Monitor maintains, that this new law is objectionable on a number of grounds, and it also may very well be that it will be overturned by the courts. But in the meantime here are some factors that got lost in the brouhaha:

1) Israel finds itself in an existential crisis. The loftiest of advice is of questionable value when it comes from people far away, who, moreover, do not have to face the consequences of their admonitions. A beau mentir qui vient de loin.

2) Freedom of expression is a vacuous formulation if considered without context. For example, there is no jurisdiction on earth, or imaginable, without limitations to freedom. There are the obvious prohibitions about shouting "fire" in a crowded theater; about libel and slander; about false advertising; and many others. What the limits should be in a given circumstance can only be determined by a close consideration of its particulars. In the case of the anti-boycott law, it is important to recognize the evil to which this law is addressed: the agitation by a number of well financed groups, with the bulk of the money coming from abroad, to delegitemize the state of Israel. That is a problem to which the Knesset obviously had to react. Perhaps the law in this first version is overreaching or otherwise inappropriate, and it seems that amendments to it are under consideration. But to criticize the law without at all recognizing the underlying problem is mindless.

3) The right to organize boycotts, pace the opinion of the hysterics who are discussing this law from afar, is not one of those rock-bottom democratic rights like freedom of the press. It is not a tool of rational discussion but rather a tool of coercion: do as I say or I will try to take away your livelihood. In the United States there are limits to the right to organize boycotts. Unions may boycott employers with whom they have a dispute, but they cannot engage in "secondary boycotts," i.e. boycott those who do business with these employers. And it is also illegal, in the United States, to collude in boycotts organized by foreign governments. It is similarly illegal to orchestrate boycotts against racial or religious groups where public accommodations are in play. In brief, public policy recognizes that the freedom to engage in public actions must stop where the freedom of others is encroached.

4) The left-leaning groups who are so enraged at what they think is an unjustifiable limitation of freedom here never criticized the Knesset, as far as I can remember, when it banned Kahane's Kach party in 1988. It seems that these great defenders of absolute freedom are quite happy when it is their opponents who are banned.

In the end, many people in this world, including many diaspora Jews and not only those on the Left, are quite eager to see a mote in Israel's eye while missing the beam elsewhere.

Excising the Context, Killing the Truth

How the contextomists (those who would cut out the context) see a Mafia without crime, a Hiroshima without World War II, and Israel's defensive actions without the Arab terror. Read my new posting

The rooster clucks defiant ....

As advocate, a lawyer zealously asserts the client's position under the rules of the adversary system. As negotiator, a lawyer seeks a result advantageous to the client but consistent with requirements of honest dealings with others. American Bar Association

The rooster clucks defiant, the lawyer ....s the client. Disputed legal maxim

In my life of 85 years I only rarely had occasion to engage a lawyer. All of the instances in which I did involved either real estate transactions or preparation of a will. Most of these transactions went smoothly enough, but there were exceptions. Too many of these, IMHO.

One case of malfeasance can be described simply enough. Some fifteen years ago I had a neighborhood attorney, whom I shall call Mr. A., prepare wills for Rita and me. Upon completion of this task, A. told us that he would keep the originals in his files, at no charge, so that they could always be found. Some thirteen years later we felt it necessary to revise these wills and tried to get hold of the originals. But A., who was still listed as a member of the NY bar, was nowhere to be found. He had no listed telephone, nor had he bothered to inform Appellate Division of the NY Supreme Court of his whereabouts, as by law he was obligated to do. After about a week of phoning people who had the same last name as he, I located a relative who gave me his then-current address. It took another week or ten days before I could finally wrench our wills out of him. I reported the incident to the legal disciplinary body, which, months later, administered the slightest tap on A's wrist that it could find.

Comment: lawyers who keep your will for safekeeping do you no favor. It is a common practice whose sole purpose seems to be to ensure more legal business for the lawyer years hence. In the state of New York, the Surrogate Court will file a will for safekeeping; that, IMHO, is the logical course of action to take.

We were victims of an earlier, more complex case of attorney malfeasance twenty years ago.

The matter arose in connection with the sale of our house in Vancouver in 1991. The incident was very painful to me at the time but I cannot say that it caused me actual damage. So, as far as I am personally involved, you might say that the matter is moot. But I think that there remain issues of public concern, and it is for that reason that I am spending time on it now.

I retired from teaching at the University of British Columbia some years before, and Rita and I decided to leave Vancouver to return to New York. We sold our house in the West Point Grey section of Vancouver in March of 1991 in preparation for our return to New York on April 15. We were represented in this sale by a solo-practice neighborhood attorney (Mr. B) with whom we were acquainted because he was a "friend of a friend" (red flag !). The buyer was a member of a very prominent Canadian family and was represented by one of the most prestigious law firms in Canada (firm C.). B. is no longer listed as a member of the British Columbia bar; firm C. seems to have become even more powerful and more prominent in the intervening years, many QC's serving among its partners (QC, Queens Counsel, is a distinction bestowed by the government upon the most prominent lawyers in Canada). I have now written to the Chair of firm C.; his reply was gracious (he had been a student of mine, it turns out), but he professed ignorance of the case.

The possession date in our transaction was March 31, 1991. On March 25, B. presented us, for the first time, with a Vendors' Statement that included the following as Note 4:

All parties agree that the representations regarding the sale and purchase of the subject property are not merged in the formal completion of this transaction and survive the execution of the closing documents.

When I questioned B. about the meaning of this provision, he explained that I had represented the house as free from Urea-Formaldehyde Insulation (UFFI) in the pre-purchase stage of the transaction, and that this warranty of freedom from UFFI would ordinarily expire with the formal completion of the sale under the doctrine of merger. Now, B. explained, the "other side" wanted me to sign a waiver of merger so that I would continue to be liable for any UFFI found in the future, apparently in perpetuity.

I explained to B. my position as follows: 1) I had not participated in his negotiation that resulted in the drafting of this waiver, and I do not agree to it; 2) my representation regarding UFFI was made in good faith, according to the best of my knowledge and belief; 3) the buyer had inspected the house in the pre-purchase period, and had not, presumably, found any UFFI. Thereupon B. explained that if I were to demand the deletion of this Note 4, the buyer would interpret that as a sign of guilty knowledge and would back out of the deal. He also said that Note 4 was the fair thing to do. Fair to whom, I asked. I explained to him that it was his obligation to represent my interests, and, in any case, to consult me about making concessions. Nevertheless, he pressed me to sign.

My situation was as follows: my family had packed its belongings and was ready to leave Vancouver within days. To have the buyer back out of the deal at that stage would have been very inconvenient, to say the least. So I did sign, but I also wrote a letter to B. that expressed my great displeasure at his disloyal behavior. I considered it malpractice, and I also wrote to him that, in the unlikely event that his negligence result in damages to us, I would hold him responsible for these.

As it turned out, there never were any subsequent claims about UFFI at this residence, at least not as far as I was informed.

Now here are my conclusions about this affair. Points 1) and 2) are critical of my lawyer, Mr. B.; Point 3) is critical of the law firm that represented the buyer, firm C. Point 4) is critical of both. Point 5) is the most important, and relates to the problem of inequality in legal representation.

1) An attorney should not agree to concessions on behalf of a client without consulting the client.

2) An attorney should not agree to concessions which, once made by this attorney, turn out to be irreversible, even before the client is ever made aware of them.

3) The party adverse in a case like this should be mindful of the behavior of the attorney with whom it is negotiating. It should be careful not to collude with an attorney who appears to violate obligations to his own client.

4) The legitimate concerns of a buyer over possible hidden defects should be met in ways other than binding the seller in perpetuity. I understand, for instance, that it is possible to buy insurance to cover such contingency.

5) As I reconstruct the events in this transaction, it would seem that the great inequality in power and prestige between the attorneys may well have been influential in the outcome. It seems that B. may have felt powerless to stand up to the high-prestige legal team on the other side, and may, for that reason, have agreed to terms that were injurious to his own client.

My Point 5) is of course conjecture. But it might be interesting to look into the problem by consulting other Vendor Statements. How often are there non-merger clauses when the seller is a client of a high-prestige firm, compared to when the seller is represented by low-ranking lawyers ?