10 August 23
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
The woke works of William Shakespeare are the last casualties in the state's ongoing battle against education.
Students will be assigned pages from the classics, which might include “Macbeth,” “Hamlet” and the time-honored teen favorite, “Romeo and Juliet.” But if they want to read them in their entirety, they will likely have to do it on their own time. School district officials said they redesigned their instructional guides for teachers because of revised state teaching standards and a new set of state exams that cover a vast array of books and writing styles. “It was also in consideration of the law,” said school district spokeswoman Tanya Arja, referring to the newly expanded Parental Rights in Education Act. The measure, promoted and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, tells schools to steer clear of content and class discussion that is sexual in nature unless it is related to a standard, such as health class.
What on earth does this leave us with? Romeo and Juliet never going past first base? A eunuch Macbeth and his sexless wife? Benedick, hanging his actual bugle in an actual — not invisible, not metaphorical — baldric? No rape in Titus Andronicus? No woodland canoodling in A Midsummer Night's Dream? No cross-dressing in Twelfth Night? Perhaps the greatest writing in the English language parceled out to students piecemeal?
There are ways that students can read these works in their entirety, district officials said. If a student can obtain a copy of one of the books or plays, perhaps with the help of their parents, they can do so. But teachers are advised, during class lessons, to stay with the approved guidelines, which call for excerpts. If not, in extreme circumstances, they might have to defend themselves against a parent complaint or a disciplinary case at their school.
I don't know what this is, but it's not education. And neither is this, god knows. From Slate:
Despite its name, PragerU isn’t a university—or any kind of accredited educational institution. It was founded in 2009 by Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host previously known for being a less inflammatory voice of the right. Prager, convinced that the key to a brighter future was to instill college students with conservative values, first dreamed of an actual university. But he and his co-founder soon realized that the venture would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, PragerU, a nonprofit, pivoted quickly to creating free, slickly produced educational videos as conservative counterprogramming. Its “5 Minute Ideas” videos proved particularly popular, relying often on misleading or even outright false claims about U.S. history, and racking up millions of views on YouTube. High school and college students across the country meet on campus in support of PragerU content and gather at annual conferences. A host of prominent right-wing figures, including Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro, have supported PragerU, either by speaking out in support or appearing in the content itself. It earned some $20 million in net revenue in 2021—largely from contributions.
I am in the wrong damn business. In any case, the heirs to Frederick Douglass probably have a cause of action here.
In another video, Frederick Douglass teaches the children the virtues of patience and compromise in activism. The children get upset when seeing activists call for abolishing the police and protesters destroying cars on TV. (Leo also complains that his math teacher has given him a social justice assignment.) Douglass—another person born into slavery—reassures the children that “our founding fathers knew that slavery was evil and wrong and they knew it would do terrible harm to the nation” but that they were forced to be patient. “I’m certainly not OK with slavery, but the founding fathers made a compromise to achieve something great: the making of the United States,” Douglass says. He, like Washington, boasts of America’s role in ending slavery worldwide and complains about “radical” abolitionists. “Our system is wonderful, and the Constitution is a glorious liberty document,” he says. “We just need to convince enough Americans to be true to it.”
In what we like to call reality, Douglass was nothing like this. He did business with John Brown, who was as radical as abolitionists got prior to the Civil War. In 1881, Douglass delivered a memorable address in Brown's memory at Harpers Ferry, which is where Brown's most famous act of abolitionism took place. Douglass said,
"Did John Brown fail? Ask Clement C. Vallandingham, one other of the inquisitorial party; for he too went down in the tremendous whirlpool created by the powerful hand of this bold invader. If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harpers Ferry, and the arsenal, not Col. Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises.
"When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone - the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union - and the clash of arms was at hand. The South staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century."
Hell, Afro-Sheen treated Douglass' memory with more respect than Prager's poisonous intellectual history porn does. And certainly with more respect than Hillsborough County is treating Shakespeare. Once more into the ditch, dear friends.
READ MORE
Ohio voters defeated Issue 1 in a special election with higher than expected turnout for an August election day. (photo: Samantha Hendrickson/AP)
This means an amendment that could enshrine abortion rights into the state's constitution will need to pass by a 50% plus one margin when it comes up for a vote this November.
A higher than expected number of Ohio's registered voters cast ballots in this special August election that was set by supermajority Republican state lawmakers who oppose abortion.
Some of those lawmakers just months ago approved a law eliminating most August special elections because of low turnout and high costs.
But when lawmakers couldn't pass a resolution in time to put the constitutional change on the May primary ballot, they turned their eyes to August anyway.
Following a lawsuit by opponents, the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday's special election could proceed because the new law against August special elections doesn't apply to lawmakers putting a constitutional amendment before voters.
Tuesday morning, there were problems at some polling places.
Nazek Hatasha, policy affairs manager for the Ohio League of Women Voters, said some poll workers had turned away voters over confusion about a photo ID requirement. That was also part of the law that banned most August special elections.
"They had the proper ID but are being turned away with a driver's license that has not expired but doesn't have a current address," Hatasha said.
Hatasha said there was a problem with signage for curbside voting at many polling places, so voters who needed assistance were confused about where to park or how to get that service. And she said there were issues with lines at some polling places in some urban areas, especially where precincts had been moved or consolidated.
It was known going into this election that some areas would be short on poll workers, since the state had said it hadn't reached its poll worker goal. Hatasha said throwing in the new voter ID law made it especially difficult.
"Anyone who has ever been a poll worker, whether you are experienced or you are new, you really need a greater degree of training," Hatasha said.
Mike West, manager of the outreach department for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said there were challenges in getting enough poll workers for this election. New voter laws and new voting machines also made things tough.
"At a couple of locations, it took them a few minutes to get the scanners up and running because these are brand new scanners so all of the procedures are new for our poll workers," West said.
West said the scanner problems didn't cause any delays and all of the scanners were working properly. Summit County had similar scanner problems, but those were handled early in the day.
The turnout for this election was higher than anticipated. Some Republican officeholders had said they expected the attention on Issue 1 would drive up turnout.
Even so, the weekend before early voting began, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a primary backer of Issue 1, said he "wouldn't be surprised" if turnout was similar to last year's legislative primary. The turnout in that August 2022 vote was 7.9% statewide.
Early voting on Issue 1 boosted turnout numbers this time around. Nearly 700,000 Ohioans cast early ballots, a number five times higher than the total turnout last August.
READ MORE
'Russians are aiming to retake the Kharkiv region to take revenge for their loss there last year,' Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s Armed Forces Command East told POLITICO. (photo: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP)
Moscow tests Kyiv’s fortifications on the northeastern front.
With Ukraine now pushing on the southern front, where Kyiv has liberated settlements and destroyed Russian logistics, the Kremlin’s invading forces are heavily targeting Kupiansk, an important logistics hub in the Kharkiv region.
The renewed Russian offensive comes as fighting in Ukraine’s east is heavily bogged down in a war of attrition, with both sides struggling to make big gains. Ukraine’s counteroffensives faces heavily fortified Russian positions, as Moscow’s forces learn lessons from a total wipeout last September when Ukraine stormed the Kharkiv region. And amid the grinding stalemate in the south and east, the Kremlin’s troops are pivoting to a major assault in the northeast.
“Russians are aiming to retake the Kharkiv region to take revenge for their loss there last year,” Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s Armed Forces Command East told POLITICO. “But we’re ready, we know their plans, we have built a strong defense line. Plus, there Russians will face an army under the command of one of the most experienced Ukrainian generals — Sirskiy.”
Ukraine Land Forces Commander General Oleksandr Sirskiy was behind last year’s rapid Ukrainian success in the Kharkiv region, where it pushed Russian occupiers out in a lightning counterattack. The Russian front collapsed within days, and towns including Kupiansk came back under Ukrainian control.
But in the last 24 hours Russia has conducted 16 airstrikes and shelled Ukrainian positions 559 times on the northeastern front, Cherevatyi said. The Russians attacked four settlements in the Kharkiv region, two villages in the nearby Luhansk region and three in the Donetsk region. “The enemy also tried to storm the positions of the defense forces. Three attacks took place in the Kupiansk direction,” he added.
Intensified Russian shelling forced Kharkiv regional authorities to consider evacuating more than 11,000 people from 53 settlements on the front line, said Oleh Synegubov, Kharkiv regional governor. In the last day, Russia has massively bombarded populated areas of Bohodukhiv, Kharkiv, Chuhuiv, Izyum, and Kupiansk districts using guided air bombs and other weapons.
So far, Synegubov added, the Russian attacks have not yielded any success in the Kharkiv region.
READ MORE
Donald Trump's Twitter feed is photographed on an Apple iPad in New York, June 27, 2019. (photo: J. David Ake/AP)
A lower-court judge, Beryl A. Howell, ruled in March that Twitter, now renamed X, had to comply with a sealed search warrant requested by the special counsel and pay $350,000 for missing a court-ordered deadline by three days. The filing also reveals that Howell had found reason to believe that should the search warrant be made public, Trump might engage in obstructive conduct or flee prosecution.
Twitter appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which in July upheld Howell’s ruling. Now that Trump has been charged with four felonies related to his attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, the appellate decision has been unsealed.
Attorneys for Twitter did not oppose the search warrant but argued that a gag order preventing the company from alerting Trump to the search violated the First Amendment. The company argued that it should not have to hand over the records until that issue was resolved. Howell sided with the government, finding Twitter in contempt Feb. 7 for failing to comply with the search warrant. She gave Twitter until 5 p.m. to produce the records, with sanctions of $50,000 per day, to double every day that Twitter did not comply. Twitter produced the records three days later.
The following month, Howell upheld the nondisclosure order and imposed a $350,000 contempt sanction on Twitter. She found that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that disclosing the warrant to Trump “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,” according to the appellate ruling. Howell also found the former president might “flee from prosecution,” although the special counsel’s team later said they did not intend to make that argument and it was not included in her final analysis.
In June, the government moved to modify the gag order, saying Twitter could alert Trump to the contents of the warrant — just not the identity of the case agent. That request came shortly after another judge in D.C. unsealed a ruling compelling former vice president Mike Pence to testify against Trump.
Trump was banned from Twitter two days after the Jan. 6 attack. Elon Musk restored Trump’s Twitter access after buying the company in 2022, but the former president has not returned to the platform.
The ruling does not specify what was turned over, but a subpoena could cover draft tweets and direct messages, as well as information on who had access to the account. The grand jury indictment against Trump handed down this month includes references to 18 of Trump’s tweets, including seven from the day of Jan. 6. In those messages, Trump spread false fraud claims, attacked officials who tried to correct the record, rallied supporters to Washington for Jan. 6 and pressured Pence to help overturn the election results.
The panel of three appellate judges found Twitter’s First Amendment rights were not violated, because “the nondisclosure order was a narrowly tailored means of achieving compelling government interests” — protecting the integrity of a grand jury investigation. The appellate court panel — two Biden appointees and one appointee of President Barack Obama — found it was within Howell’s discretion to refuse to delay execution of the search warrant.
The appellate court also upheld Howell’s $350,000 sanction, saying it was reasonable “given Twitter’s $40-billion valuation and the court’s goal of coercing Twitter’s compliance.”
Attorneys and a spokesman for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
READ MORE
Israeli protesters march for 'judicial independence' in Tel Aviv, Israel, August 5, 2023. (photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency)
In July, Israel’s far-right government pushed through a law undermining the power of the country’s Supreme Court. Israeli protests against the law have scarcely mentioned one of its key features: making it even easier for Israel to trample the rights of Palestinians.
Sami Abu Shehadeh is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a former member of the Knesset, and the leader of the political party Balad (the National Democratic Assembly). While Palestinian citizens of Israel face institutional discrimination and the state openly proclaims itself “not a state of all its citizens,” Palestinian citizens have voting rights and are much better off than their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The latter live under military occupation, displacement, blockades, and frequent military attacks, and have no rights at all under the Israeli state that rules them.
For Jacobin, Jordan Bollag spoke with Shehadeh about the current political moment in Israel and how Palestinians feel about a conflict over an Israeli “democracy” that has never truly included them.
Jordan Bollag: What is going on in Israel? What’s your reaction to the passage of the judicial reform law?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: What’s happening in Israel is a very complicated situation, but those who are reading it as something new are far from reality. What we are seeing now are the results of at least two decades of deterioration toward the fascist right, and the extreme national religious Jewish groups controlling nearly all the important decision-making processes in Israel. We are also seeing deterioration of political discourse in Israel into a fanatical, religious way of reading reality and dealing with it.
There has been a long process of religious national extremists — Zionists — taking control of all the important decision-making processes and being overrepresented in all the Israeli ministries, in all the important places in the Israeli government. These new elites are fighting with the old elites; the old elites that established the State of Israel were liberal Zionists. From a Palestinian point of view, both of them are settler colonialist, and both of their agendas are built on Jewish supremacy.
The struggle between them is about what kind of Jewish supremacy they want to lead in this part of the world. The old elites want to have Jewish supremacy built on race, but which deals in a liberal way with the Jewish people who live here, and the new elites want to lead a Jewish supremacy that is established on a fanatical national religious discourse. They are struggling over the identity of the apartheid state they want to lead in Israel.
Jordan Bollag: We’ve seen massive protests and threats of strikes and military resignations in response to the judicial reforms. How do you, as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, fit into this oppositional pro-democracy movement?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: We’re not part of the protest movement, because its political demands are very far from our political demands. The old elites, who are trying to gain back control of the state, do not want to build a state and society on the values of justice and equality for all. The only thing they want to do is to go back a few months before the last elections in Israel. From their point of view, the old racist apartheid regime, as long as it only destroyed Palestinian lives, was bearable. It was something that they could live with.
For us, as the victims of this racist apartheid regime, we don’t have any good past in Israeli history that we want to go back to. Our political agenda is totally different. We are aiming at building a better future, which is built on the values of human rights — mainly on justice and equality for all the people who are living in this part of the world.
We want a serious change inside the Israeli government, to change it from a state that is built on race, a Jewish state, into a normal democracy that is built on justice and equality for all, that deals equally with all citizens, whether they are Jewish or not. We are the indigenous population in this part of the world, and we are not Jewish. We are 20 percent of the population of this state, and we want to have a better future for all, for Jews and for us. We believe that we should have a political project different than what has existed until today because both sides — those who are for the judicial changes and those who are against the judicial changes — each want a system of Jewish supremacy.
The Arab Palestinian minority that represents 20 percent of the population in the State of Israel — it is not just that we are not part of the protest movement, but that we are not [seriously involved in Israeli institutions at all]. If you check all the ministries since the establishment of the Israeli state, we have barely existed. If you check all the heads of these ministries, we were never represented there. If you look at any important decision-making process that has to do with planning the present and the future of the state and society in Israel, we are not there. Not in the media, not in the culture, not in sports, not in anything.
Jordan Bollag: When the mainstream media talks about the pro-democracy movement, they’ve mostly focused on Netanyahu and his personal corruption as the reason for the judicial overhaul. But it’s also become clear that the reforms have been pushed by ideologues like Justice Minister Yariv Levin specifically to stop the court from protecting Palestinian rights, to facilitate more legal settlements, to block Arabs from Jewish neighborhoods and Palestinians from Israeli highways.
On the other hand, the Israeli Supreme Court very rarely protects Palestinian rights anyway. Given this reality, how do Palestinians navigate the current moment?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: You are right: the Israeli high courts, in all the important big issues that have to do with the Palestinian question — we did not have justice there. But still, we don’t want the situation to get worse. Those who will be affected first and foremost by this weakening of the judicial system in Israel will be the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line: Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Palestinians who are living under the occupation of 1967.
I’ll give you a few examples. First, I am the head of a political party called the National Democratic Assembly [Balad]. Since we established our party — because our main agenda is changing Israel from a Jewish state into a normal democracy, a state of all its citizens — all the Zionist parties have been against us. Under Israeli law, the Elections Committee is composed of members of the Knesset. So every election they ban us from running in the elections! We used to apply to the high courts, and the high courts would give us the right to at least compete in the elections. With the new judicial reform, we will not be able to do that.
In any political system, there are checks and balances that can defend individual citizens or groups against oppression. Usually the main thing is a constitution. In Israel, there is hardly a constitution, so there is nothing that can save or defend our rights. Another important form of checks and balances is having different systems [e.g., the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary] balancing each other. In Israel, this also does not exist, because the government and the parliament are the same.
The only place that we could seek justice, or at least reduce the system’s oppression of us, is through the high court in Israel. The new judicial changes want to remove a lot of authority from the high courts. So we’ll not be able to do the minimum we did before. We did not win all of what we wanted there, but at least we had a place that we could try to defend ourselves. If the judicial reform passes, we will not have even this minimum.
Jordan Bollag: These reforms surround the court’s powers in interpreting the “reasonableness” of laws. But the court has only needed this power because Israel does not have a written constitution, which may be difficult for an American audience to understand. Why doesn’t Israel have a constitution, and what are the implications of this?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: Israel does not have a constitution for a few important reasons. The Orthodox religious groups in the old times dealt with Zionism as a secular movement: they accused Zionists of infidelity, of not believing in God, and they did not think that there could be a consensus between themselves and the Zionists. Writing a constitution would’ve wrote the religious groups totally out from the state and society at that time. So in order to keep them as part of the project, the founders did not write a constitution.
This is one reason. Another important reason is that the State of Israel, from the beginning, was built on Jewish supremacy. [Israel’s founders] could not write a democratic constitution because they knew from the beginning that they were building a system on Jewish supremacy that discriminates against 20 percent of the population, who are considered the indigenous people in this part of the world — the Arab Palestinian minority.
Another important thing is that after the establishment of the Israeli state, Israel put that 20 percent of the population under military control. Imagine a state controlling 20 percent of its citizens with a military system; this could not work with a constitution.
Nowadays, when we are talking about a democratic constitution, unfortunately we don’t have partners among the Zionists. The vast majority of the Zionist parties are ready to compromise on different systems, but all of them must maintain, according to the Zionist parties, Jewish supremacy. Keeping any kind of Jewish supremacy means that the system cannot have equality among its citizens. No equality, no democracy — it’s as simple as that. The Zionists were quite aware that they had a problem with the value of equality from the beginning.
Jordan Bollag: In the wake of all this turmoil, we’re seeing high-tech companies moving assets out of the “start-up nation” or leaving entirely, and the Bank of Israel is warning of economic risks from the judicial overhaul. With assets leaving the country, the Netanyahu government has ironically accomplished what the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been working toward for years. And in the New York Times, Bret Stephens lamented Israel’s “self-inflicted wound” as more damaging than BDS.
Does this instability in the Israeli state present opportunities for Palestinian movements, and is there an upside to all of this?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: I don’t think there’s an upside to all this. There’s a proverb that we use: the train has already left the station. What we are seeing inside the Israeli state and society is quite similar to Italy on the eve of fascists controlling the state. Unfortunately, there is no serious, rational democratic movement among the Jewish majority that can salvage the situation and lead us to a better place. Of course, on the margins, there are great activists — great people trying to build something better — but these are totally marginal, and their numbers are very small.
Is there an opportunity for the Palestinians here? I’m seeing a very big opportunity. I think that what’s happening now is helping the world to see what we have been warning them about for decades, is helping the world to see the truth, to see the real face of the State of Israel, to see the apartheid system that was built in this part of the world, to see the racist elements of the Zionist project, to see the way Israel has been dealing with Palestinians for decades.
Unfortunately, when the victims were Palestinian, the world did not care much. Now, when this system is also affecting Jewish lives, the world is talking about it much more. It’s important — it’s our duty now as Palestinians to again go and explain what has been happening here for decades, and all the evils that have been ongoing for a long time. Also, it is our duty to open a horizon and give hope for a political project that can build a better place for everyone. This political project must be built on human rights and on the values of justice and equality for all. I know that we are very far from reaching such a vision, but at least there should be people who are opening this horizon to Arabs and Jews alike.
Jordan Bollag: Do you think this moment could serve as a catalyst for a Palestinian mass movement that fights for real democracy?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: A Palestinian mass movement with also the small number of the people I mentioned before — our Jewish friends who do not want to have a political system built on Jewish supremacy, people who believe in justice, people who believe in equality for all and who don’t want to be racist and don’t want to live in a racist system. I think it should be the work of all of us together, to open this horizon for a much bigger group. But those who will be leading it probably will be the Palestinian minority here, because as victims of this racist system for a long time, we have the [greatest] interest in making change.
Jordan Bollag: As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, you are a second-class citizen of a state that openly claims not to be a state of all its citizens. Still, you enjoy rights that millions of Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza do not. How are the different classifications of Palestinians experiencing this moment differently? What are their different concerns with the judicial overhaul, and what can be done to unite your movement inside the Green Line in Israel with movements in the West Bank and Gaza?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: The State of Israel has developed five different systems of apartheid. You have the situation in Gaza: two million people in the biggest prison in the world put under siege for this long time and with all their difficulties and problems. Then you have another system controlling my people in the West Bank, three and a half million people under occupation who are not allowed to vote, who don’t have basic rights including freedom of movement — we’re talking about people in the twenty-first century who don’t have the right to move.
You have another kind of apartheid system dealing with four hundred thousand Palestinians who are considered “residents” living in East Jerusalem, but they are not citizens, and they don’t have the right to vote. Then you have another system that controls the Palestinians within the State of Israel: the 20 percent of the population who are considered citizens and who have the right to vote, but who are discriminated against in all fields of life. And then you have another political system that controls the lives of Jews all over — in the settlements, inside the Green Line.
It Is a very complicated situation. We should be able to collaborate with all the Palestinians that seek the same as we do: those who want to have a normal democratic system in this part of the world that will deal equally with all of its people, no matter if they are Palestinians or Jews or foreigners or anyone. The state would be neutral: it will not deal with the citizens according to their ethnic identity or religious identity or any other identity. People here should have their rights because of their citizenship.
Among the Palestinian people, not everybody agrees on this, but there are big groups that want this, and they can be partners in our struggle. Anyone who believes in justice and equality for all can be our political partner, whether they are in the United States, in Europe, in China, or in historical Palestine, whether they are Palestinian Arabs or Jewish. What counts here is if they can be partners in a democratic project in this part of the world.
Jordan Bollag: There are now rumors that the court may strike down the judicial reform law and that, if it does, Netanyahu may refuse to abide by the ruling. Do you think that, if this happens, there will be a major “constitutional” crisis?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: First, it’s very important to remember that what has passed until now is a very small part of the whole judicial revolution that the fascists controlling the State of Israel now want to carry out. This is only the start. So we are in the middle of a very big hurricane whose end we do not see; we don’t know exactly where is it leading. There are two parts in society struggling for and against these changes, and the situation is deteriorating very fast.
It’s hard to know where will it lead exactly. There are different scenarios. The army in Israel is involved in everything; this is a very militaristic society. Will the army decide to be a more proactive player [and try] a little military coup? We don’t know. What about the economic elites? We are not sure of those who are supporting Netanyahu. What are their red lines? Will they continue supporting him in everything, or might he have a serious problem in his coalition? It’s a parliament of 120 seats, and he has 64; if five members turn against him, the whole situation will change dramatically.
The most important thing, in my point of view, is that unfortunately the political discourse in Israel is totally controlled by fanatical, national religious groups who are using irrational discourse, which is built on religious myths and religious narratives. It’s hard to discuss things with them rationally.
Jordan Bollag: If you think that the Netanyahu government might fall, whether in the next election or sooner, do you worry that Israeli liberals and the international community will “go back to brunch” and everything will go back to business as usual — no more concerns about Israeli democracy, and Palestinians will be forgotten?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: If we have the elections, we don’t know what the results will be, but one scenario is what you have been discussing now. Unfortunately, I think that the majority of the world is dealing with Palestinians in a racist way. They don’t see us as equal human beings. They are more interested with what happens to the Jewish people. They are forgetting that there are victims of this Zionist project, and we are paying the price.
At the same time, I think that the gaps between the two sides in Israel are irreversible. This is a very old disagreement between religious and secular groups within the Zionist movement, and I think that the gaps between them have been deepened a lot in the last few months.
It will need a lot of time if there will be any chance to fix it. I think that the only positive path out of all that’s happening here, not just with the judicial issue . . . what we should be thinking about is a historical compromise between the two peoples living in this part of the world, a historical compromise that will guarantee the rights of both sides and give a political solution for the crazy conflict that has been going on all this time. The historical compromise must be built on mutual respect and acknowledging both groups: each group should acknowledge the rights of the other, as individuals and as a group, to live and develop here on the values of justice and equality for all. Without a serious democratic political project, we will continue in this vicious circle of violence for a long time.
Jordan Bollag: Anything else to add?
Sami Abu Shehadeh: Now we have decided in the National Democratic Assembly, my party, to open a frank, clear, and respectful dialogue with our Jewish friends and those who are interested in developing a serious dialogue on democracy and the meaning of democracy, on the values of justice and equality for all, on our political project, and also on thinking about a democratic constitution. We are starting this now; we will start the first such seminar in Jaffa on August 13, but then we’ll be also having such seminars in Haifa and other cities, to start building a group of citizens who believe in a civil society and in a democratic state and are ready to consider a political solution that is built not on supremacy but on equality.
READ MORE 
Wildfires fueled by strong winds and drought have whipped across western Maui, Hawaii, this week, razing structures and forcing evacuations. (photo: Zeke Kalua/County of Maui)
A large hurricane, drought, and perhaps even invasive grasses have fueled the devastating fires in Hawaii.
Numerous brush fires have burned hundreds of acres in Hawaii and utterly decimated Lāhainā, the tourism heart of the island and the largest city in its west. Hospitals are overrun with burn patients, thousands of people have lost power, and as of Wednesday morning, 911 service was down.
“We have suffered a terrible disaster,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Wednesday. “Much of Lāhainā on Maui has been destroyed and hundreds of local families have been displaced.”
Wildfires were once rare in Hawaii, largely ignited by volcanic eruptions and dry lightning strikes, but human activity in recent decades has made them more common and extreme. The average area burned each year in wildfires, which tend to start in grasslands, has increased roughly 400 percent in the last century, according to the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit group.
Part of the problem is that climate change is making Hawaii drier, so it’s more likely to ignite when there’s an ignition event (most Hawaii wildfires are sparked by humans, though the source of the current blazes is unknown). The spread of highly flammable invasive grasses is also to blame. Native to the African savanna, guinea grass and fountain grass, for example, now cover a huge portion of Hawaii, and they provide fuel for wildfires, as Cynthia Wessendorf has written in Hawaii Business Magazine.
These factors are at play today, as is a storm hundreds of miles away. Here’s why these fires have become so intense so quickly.
Hawaii is dry right now and getting drier
The simplest reason why parts of Maui are burning is that it’s hot and dry — summer is the dry season. And dry, hot weather provides the foundation for extreme wildfires by sucking moisture out of vegetation and essentially turning it into kindling. (That’s partly why the Canada wildfires have been so severe this year, too.)
Zooming out, carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are making the planet hotter and deepening droughts around the world. Hawaii is no exception. Today, there’s less rainfall in 90 percent of the state compared to a century ago, according to the state government.
Winds from a major hurricane sweep through Maui
The wildfires burning today are also made worse by a powerful hurricane churning hundreds of miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. Although Hurricane Dora is not expected to make landfall in Hawaii, it’s pushing strong winds that can, in turn, fuel wildfire blazes, according to the National Weather Service.
The winds not only help fire spread quickly but make it difficult for firefighters to put them out. Heavy gusts can knock down trees near roads, blocking access to certain regions, and can also ground helicopters that dump water to quell the blaze. It’s an important example of how hurricanes and wildfires — both of which are set to become more extreme under climate change — interact with each other.
There is more fuel for fires to burn
The last reason has less to do with climate and more to do with ... grass.
Unlike fires on the mainland — which are large and spread in forests, burning hundreds of thousands of acres in a given year in places like California — those in Hawaii are typically small and ignite in grasslands. They tend to burn something on the order of tens of thousands of acres a year across the state.
But over the last century or so, humans introduced a variety of nonnative grasses to the state, such as guinea grass, which is often used as feed for livestock. These plants are known to outcompete native grasses, and they grow incredibly quickly after rainfall, which can produce an enormous amount of fuel for wildfires.
Today, nonnative grasslands and shrublands cover nearly one-quarter of the land area in Hawaii, according to the Hawaii Wildlife Management Organization. “Together with a warming, drying climate and year-round fire season,” the group said, the nonnative grasses “greatly increase the incidence of larger fires.”
The good news is that Hurricane Dora is traveling west, away from Hawaii, and so winds are likely to slow later today and over the rest of the week. Better weather has also made it possible to send up helicopters to control the blazes. That should bring some relief. Yet bigger climate trends point to hotter and drier summers — which could lead to even more destructive fires in the years to come.
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
