Haaretz: 'We Look at Them Like Donkeys': What Israel's First Ruling Party Thought About Palestinian Citizens

One proposition that arose frequently in the discussions was that of a “transfer” – the expulsion of the Arabs who continued to reside in Israel – a term that some found grating already then. In the June 1950 meeting, Sharett took issue with the allegation, voiced by Ben-Gurion and his supporters, that the Arabs in Israel were a “fifth column.” That was a simplistic assumption, Sharett said, “which needs to be examined.” As he saw it, the fate of the relations between the two peoples depended overwhelmingly on the Jews. “Will we continue to fan the flames?” Sharett asked, or try to douse them? Even though a high-school education was not yet mandatory under law (and the state was not obligated to offer one), a large number of the Jewish youth in the country attended high school, and Sharett thought that the state should establish high schools for the Arabs as well. Israel needs “to guarantee them their cultural minimum,” he added.  [...]

Zalman Aran, a future education minister, objected to the military government that had been imposed on Israel’s Arabs at the time of statehood and remained in effect until 1966. Under its terms, Arabs had to be equipped with permits both to work and to travel outside their hometowns, which were also under curfew at night. “As long as we keep them in ghettos,” Aran said, no constructive activity will help. Lavon, too, urged the dismantlement of the military government. In 1955, a few months after resigning as defense minister, he savaged the concept at a meeting in Beit Berl. “The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means,” he stated, adding, “Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews.” [...]

Taking issue with Dayan’s approach, Aran compared the situation of the Arabs in Israel with the situation of Jews in other countries. “On the basis of what we are doing here to the Arabs, there is no justification for demanding a different attitude toward Jewish minorities in other countries I would be contemptuous of Arabs who would want to form ties with us on the basis of this policy. We would be lying in the [Socialist] Internationale, we are lying to ourselves and we are lying to the nations of the world.”

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FiveThirtyEight: The Identity Politics Of The Trump Administration

The administration is not proposing less intervention from the federal government, which is the typical Republican approach, but rather it is seeking to wield federal power, just as Obama did. But whereas Obama’s policies focused on protecting African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, people who are gay or transgender, and other groups that most Americans view as marginalized, Trump and his team are focusing on defending different groups: Christians, police officers, victims of crimes by undocumented immigrants, and people who fear Latino immigrants are taking their jobs or redefining U.S. culture, among others. [...]

The Department of Justice, and law-enforcement agencies generally, have broad discretion in terms of what crimes to prioritize, what kinds of punishment to pursue and how they operate. Both Obama and Trump have used that authority — or, in Trump’s case, pledged to use that authority — to focus resources on the issues they and their voters care about most. And Trump, like Obama, is trying to push local law-enforcement agencies to emphasize those same priorities. [...]

In political terms, Obama was shifting law-enforcement practices in ways that would particularly benefit African-Americans and Latinos, two blocs that largely backed him in 2008 and 2012. Trump is shifting practices to favor five other groups: legal U.S. residents who might be the victims of violent attacks by undocumented immigrants; legal residents who might lose out on jobs or face lowered wages due to competition from undocumented immigrants; Americans who believe that allowing undocumented people to come and stay is a sign of disorder; police officers; and border-enforcement personnel. Trump, of course, won overwhelming support among voters concerned about illegal immigration in both the 2016 primaries and the general election, and he was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and by unions that include members of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement service. [...]

But the Trump administration, despite its generally get-tough posture, does have a soft spot for one group that has technically violated the law: those addicted to opioids. At the launch of the president’s task force on opioid abuse in March, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is leading the task force, likened drug addiction to cancer, heart disease and diabetes, saying addiction is a disease that people should not be ashamed to talk about. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the states facing the highest rates of death from drug overdoses are West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio. Three of those states — Kentucky, New Hampshire and West Virginia — have smaller black and Latino populations than the national average. The opioid problem has hit heavily white areas of America, and some experts say that explains why it has not led to the type of tough-on-crime policies that came amid the crack epidemic in black areas in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Many Lives of François Mitterrand

Mitterrand’s origins lay not on the far left, but in the more moderate corners of French republican socialism. An inveterate opportunist, his commitment to principle went only so far as his political ambitions would allow. And yet the future president had moved progressively leftward over the course of his life — from his youthful exploits as a supporter of the collaborationist Vichy regime, through his conversion to the Resistance left, to his days as a moderate socialist minister in the short-lived cabinets of the 1950s, to his failed 1965 and 1974 presidential runs, and finally his entrance into the PS in 1971.  [...]

Mitterrand’s activities as a cabinet minister during these years were most notable for his involvement in the repression of the movement for Algerian independence. Early in the decade, Mitterrand had made his feelings on Algerian independence clear, when he had proclaimed, “Algeria, that’s France.” As Justice Minister under Mollet, he ordered the extension of martial law and recommended the death sentence forty-five times. [...]

The radicalism of Mitterrand’s 1980 electoral program embodied the fruits of this trajectory. But it also reflected the influence of a changing political context, in France and in Europe, during the 1970s. Thus, on the one hand it reflected the Socialists’ desire to compete with the Communist Party (PCF), traditionally the hegemonic force on the French far left, for votes and influence, as well as the impact of France’s growing economic difficulties in national political debates. [...]

But either way, the French case illustrates an important point for socialists to remember: the political power of the capitalist class flows not just from what capital can do, but from what it can choose not to do — invest. It is its control over the investment function, not its collective organizations, that is the key source of capitalists’ power in the political sphere: since, in a capitalist economy, investment is the prerequisite for growth, employment, and tax revenue, policymakers will always have an incentive to prioritize the demands of business confidence over all other considerations.

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The New Yorker: The Trump Era After Bannon

This week, Steve Bannon was ousted from his position as the executive chairman of Breitbart News, the self-described “platform for the alt-right.” Andrew Marantz joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the rise of the alt-right movement, and what Bannon’s downfall means for Trump and nationalist economic populism.

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