Worthy Reads: Zion & Music

Worthy Reads for April 2024

Welcome to Worthy Reads, where I share some articles and other links I think are worth your time. It has the rare De Civitate paywall. Everyone gets the first half of Worthy Reads, but only paying subscribers get the second half. Retweets are not endorsements. There will definitely be another installment of Worthy Reads on time next month, because I’ve already written it. (This installment got wayyyyy too long and I had to split it.)

Substack does not allow open comments on paywalled posts, so I have opened a separate thread here if you want to post comments about this post. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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“Memories of Gaza,” by Rachel Lu:

I am quoting this at greater length than usual because the article is paywalled, and National Review seems to have no way to pay for an article—even a Worthy Read—a la carte.

I zealously promoted the two-state solution. My interlocutors had a range of views on this, but in general the Gazans were skeptical. They tended to see negotiations with Israel as a dead end, and possibly a trap. Israel, they assured me, would break any agreement they signed, probably with American support. They were familiar with soldiers, or residents of settlements, who, among all Israelis, were probably the least kindly disposed towards them. Trust was low. Over the years some Palestinians had been employed as day laborers in the kibbutzim bordering Gaza, where people viewed them more benevolently, but those workers were also a regular reminder of the hard reality that Gazans were for the most part consigned to work others’ land.

On the other hand, different paths to freedom seemed more hopeful in their eyes. Older people were still hanging on to the possibility that the Arab states would finally liberate them, as they had long promised, while younger Gazans seemed to favor the United Nations as the more promising rescuer. I myself developed a pronounced antipathy for that organization over the course of the summer. It was mainly rooted in the way that Resolution 194, passed in 1948 shortly after the Arab–Israeli War, seemed to have inflamed the minds of young Palestinians. I saw “194” graffitied on buildings through the West Bank and especially Gaza. This document declared, among other things, that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so.” Those words were quoted to me constantly, as people assured me they would be most happy to live alongside Jews if only they could “go home.” The strength of their attachment was stunning. Many people still kept house keys or other mementoes of homes vacated by ancestors decades before. For a footloose college sophomore, that kind of yearning was very hard to grasp, and the best touch-point my mind could find ironically came from the Psalms: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”

The United Nations was not going to save them. I tried to make that case on the ground, but it was a hard sell. Gazans were well aware that a different U.N. resolution had originally brought the State of Israel into being. Why should one resolution be held sacred and not the other? The lingering hope for repatriation soured Gazans on the Camp David negotiation, which indeed did not offer much by way of resettlement opportunities or restitution for refugees. I realize of course that I court controversy even by using the term “refugee” in this context, and I have no real interest in fighting for terminology, but it’s difficult to find an adequate substitute. Shall we call them “unwilling residents” of Gaza? They are not properly “citizens” of anywhere, which is indeed part of the problem. The Gazans wanted more freedoms, and a path to a better future. But what, realistically, was the best-case scenario for them, even in 2000? The two-state solution seemed like the only possible answer; even now, I can see no other way forward. But it was clear that their history and culture would make it hard for them to lay the foundations for legitimate representative government. The nakba loomed large over their collective identity, and victimhood had increased their sympathy with a range of malignant ideologies, from wokeism to Islamic fundamentalism. Meanwhile, the political situation had given them very little occasion to develop the paradigms and practical habits of good citizenship.

There has been considerable discussion of late of growing Palestinian support for Hamas, and of the work of writers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali who see antisemitism as a driving force within the Arab world. This is interesting to me, because I of course believe the terrible stories of Hamas fighters bragging about rape and murder and of crowds cheering as they returned. I am haunted by the memories of children I knew in Gaza, wondering which might have participated in the slaughter. But I never personally saw that kind of virulent antisemitism. People could have prudently chosen to conceal those ugly sentiments in our conversations, rightly guessing that they would alienate me. What I mostly perceived, however, was a frustrated yearning for better answers, better opportunities, and more freedom.

The people I remember most fondly are those who tried hard to create opportunities even in the Gazan concrete jungles. One friend started a fast-food joint that July, the only thing of its kind in the Strip. We went to the grand opening and were astonished to find that the entire town center was packed with people, dancing and cheering for hours. The hamburger party seemed much larger and more joyous than Arafat’s homecoming celebration. We tried to do our part by teaching the cashiers to ask in English, “For here or to go?” After that, people sometimes called the phrase at us as we walked down the street. It was the silliest thing, but for me the words began taking on whole new layers of significance.

Eyeballing it, that’s still only about a third of the article, and the other two-thirds are good, too.

I have avoided writing about the Israel-Hamas War, because I have very little to say that hasn’t been said better by others.

Rachel Lu, in this February piece in National Review, adds something valuable. Lu is no naïf. She is not one of those nutters on Twitter who will do any crime, tell any lie, in the name of opposing “settler-colonialism.” Lu is a vivid writer with impeccable taste in friends. As a consistent conservative opposed to Trump, her integrity has very probably cost her family a lot of paychecks in recent years. (Trumpers on Twitter who rage about “Conservatism, Inc” are years out of date. Anyone who has tried to actually earn a living Doing Conservatism since 2017 knows that all the money now is in promoting Trump, not fighting him. That’s why a guy named “catturd” outearns me by orders of magnitude!)

So when Lu tells me what she saw in Palestine, I sit up and listen, because I know that, in a conflict where everyone is constantly spinning a narrative, I’m about to get a few observations free of cant.

I especially like her piece because it has no pretense of offering a solution to the World’s Most Unsolvable Problem. It offers insight and compassion, which seems like two things we need a lot more of before solutions are going to start presenting themselves.

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“Open Letter to Anti-Zionists on Twitter,” by Scott Aaronson:

I hope even the anti-Israel side might agree with me that, if all the suffering since Oct. 7 has created a tiny opening for peace, then walking through that opening depends on two things happening:

1. the removal of Netanyahu, and

2. the removal of Hamas.

The good news is that Netanyahu, the catastrophically failed “Protector of Israel,” not only can, but plausibly will (if enough government ministers show some backbone), soon be removed in a democratic election.

Hamas, by contrast, hasn’t allowed a single election since it took power in 2006, in a process notable for its opponents being thrown from the roofs of tall buildings. That’s why even my left-leaning Israeli colleagues—the ones who despise Netanyahu, who marched against him last year—support Israel’s current war. They support it because, even if the Israeli PM were Fred Rogers, how can you ever get to peace without removing Hamas, and how can you remove Hamas except by war, any more than you could cut a deal with Nazi Germany?

I want to see the IDF do more to protect Gazan civilians—despite my bitter awareness of survey data suggesting that many of those civilians would murder my children in front of me if they ever got a chance. Maybe I’d be the same way if I’d been marinated since birth in an ideology of Jew-killing, and blocked from other sources of information. I’m heartened by the fact that despite this, indeed despite the risk to their lives for speaking out, a full 15% of Gazans openly disapprove of the Oct. 7 massacre. I want a solution where that 15% becomes 95% with the passing of generations. My endgame is peaceful coexistence.

But to the anti-Zionists I say: I don’t even mind you calling me a baby-eating monster, provided you honestly field one question. Namely:

Suppose the Palestinian side got everything you wanted for it; then what would be your plan for the survival of Israel’s Jews?

I suppose I’ll just get all my Israel-Hamas material out of the way. Scott Aaronson spins out a useful thought experiment that I, too, have used to reason about what Israel ought to do:

Suppose Q (the Star Trek villain, not the conspiracy theory) puts you in charge of the Israeli government. You have the absolute confidence of the Knesset and don't need to worry about the political constraints Bibi is under. (Everyone recognizes you as the legitimate ruler, because Q.) You won't be assassinated by an Israeli, no matter how radical your policies, another real-world constraint you can ignore.

However, although the people won't throw you out of office, they may not fully cooperate with your policies, either; individual settlers may resist your new edicts, for example. Meanwhile, Hamas is totally unchanged and considers you another Jewish settler-colonist. They vow to kill you the day you arrive, and they might succeed if you give them an opening. Their negotiating position is unaltered, and they do not suddenly become more honest or trustworthy.

If you bring about a lasting peace, you win, and Q grants you three wishes. However, if more than 100,000 Israeli Jews are killed at the hands of non-Jews, or the Jewish population of the region falls by more than half, Q declares that you have caused a genocide. You lose, and Q kills everyone in North America (you included).

How do you proceed?

Aaronson, like me, thinks that Israel has a range of options. Aaronson, like me, thinks that the Israeli government has chosen very bad options on several occasions going back decades, and especially recently. However, he does not seem to think that Israel could have avoided the current war in Gaza, and neither do I. It seems like a plurality of Americans agree with this position, which is roughly a middle ground between the cheerleaders who think Israel can do no wrong, and the self-styled “anti-Zionists” who think that Israel has a moral obligation to immediately stop the war and “free Palestine.”

Aaronson (a Jew himself) takes us through the various “anti-Zionist” proposals. If you ignore all the facts on the ground and everything we know about Palestinian-Jewish relations—and sniff quite a lot of glue—some of those proposals are almost plausible. Unfortunately, Aaronson shows us that, in the real world as it actually exists, there is no way to “free Palestine” without a Jewish genocide. (A real genocide, far worse than the current, non-genocidal war.) Every anti-Zionist option boils down to “kill all the Jews” or (at best) “let them die.”¹

So, unfortunately, Israel’s actual options all involve substantial violence in Gaza and the West Bank for the foreseeable future, unless Palestinian public sentiment and behavior changes dramatically. Israel could end the current war quickly, without dismantling Hamas, but this would guarantee further bloodletting for many years to come. Or Israel could continue the current war until Hamas is destroyed, which would reduce the amount of future bloodshed but at the cost of very high (mostly Palestinian) casualties today. That’s really it. Short of mass suicide, those are the actual options Israel has.

If the “anti-Zionist” you are talking to doesn’t acknowledge this, and continues to insist that Israel must immediately lay down its arms, either:

1. they haven’t thought about it very hard and thus haven’t realized that their preferred option boils down to “all Israeli Jews die”, or

2. they’re hoping you haven’t thought about it very hard and thus that you won’t realize that their preferred option boils down to “all Israeli Jews die”.

I really like Sam Kriss and Freddie deBoer (because I am a Substacker stereotype) but they both seem to realize they are in category #2. They try to escape it by (Kriss) suggesting that Palestinians change their behavior, something Israel can’t control or (deBoer) suggesting that the United States invite all 8 million or so Jews in Israel to immigrate here, something Israel can’t control. Having made these vague nods in the general direction of plans that Israel can’t actually implement, they can get back to their main business of calling the IDF murderers. (I link them anyway because, wrong ideas aside, each has some useful insights.)

There is a tragedy here: since Israeli Jews will not (and should not) commit mass suicide, the only thing this relentless criticism accomplishes is make radicals on the other side seem more reasonable. Richard Hanania wants to break the will of Gazans so that they can all be deported “from the river to the sea.” Curtis Yarvin wants the same thing, with the added step of bombing Gaza into a parking lot (and then a national park) afterward. Even uber-centrist Matthew Yglesias is startlingly open to the possibility of at least voluntary depopulation of Gaza. (I link them anyway because, wrong ideas aside, each has some useful insights.) What defense does deBoer have against this line of argument? He’s already signed up for mass deportation of Jews, so what principle can he stand on when the Jews suggest deporting Palestine instead? The “anti-Zionist” line of argument will not bring down Israel… but it could, in the end, destroy Palestine.

Meanwhile, here in the Overton Window, I don’t have a solution to the World’s Most Unsolvable Problem, either. Israel appears to be stuck with the same two bad options: continue the war, despite the agonizing casualties, in hopes of hurting Hamas enough to reduce casualties in the future—or end the war, and accept that low-intensity violence will continue to kill Jewish and Gazan babies intermittently for decades to come. Our goal should be to help Israel find the course of action with the smallest number of dead kids.² I suspect that that course involves the invasion of Rafah, but I could be wrong.

In the meantime, it would be extremely helpful (and of course morally obligatory), for Hamas to end its strategy of maximizing the number of dead kids. It is important to regularly remind ourselves that, while Israel is indeed responsible for minimizing the number of dead kids, the chief reason Israel bears this responsibility is because the government of Palestine has completely abandoned it. The legitimate government of Gaza, led by Hamas, has adopted a straightforward strategy of getting its own civilians killed in exchange for international sympathy. It is best not to reward this strategy by giving them international sympathy.

Wow, that was heavier than Worthy Reads likes to get. Let’s step it down to something everyone enjoys: billionaire schadenfreude and vague financial anxiety:

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“New Glut City,” by Andrew Rice:

Beneath class A, there’s the commodity space: the buildings categorized as class B and class C. Rechler believes they are hopeless. “That’s the stuff that’s competitively obsolete,” he said. “Side-street buildings. Dark buildings. It’s not close to public transportation, doesn’t have the infrastructure. Ultimately, that’s a subset of the market that will need to be redeveloped, repurposed, or torn down.”

With that, he condemned around 70 percent of New York City’s 1,381 office buildings. That was easy for Rechler to say — he doesn’t own much of the lower-rated stock — but his view is widely held. At a recent event sponsored by the publication The Real Deal, Jeff Blau, the chief executive of the Related Companies, advised owners of such buildings to “take what you can and run.” Jeffrey Gural, a real-estate investor who owns a lot in the supposedly obsolete tier, says the coming shakeout is “going to separate the men from the boys.” Some buildings might live on if they can be converted to other uses, like housing, but a significant number — not just the decrepit and old but ones that were considered Class A until recently — will probably be torn down.

“If you have a building that is half-empty and a loan coming due,” says Gural, who adds that he’s not in this position himself, “odds are you’re going to give the keys back to the bank.”

…Owners who purchased four or six or eight years ago will soon face such choices, needing to refinance their buildings with much more expensive loans. Rechler explained the math in a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say you bought a million-square-foot office for $1 billion in 2015. You took on $600 million in debt at a low fixed rate, and now your loan term is up and you have to refinance. The present value of your building is in the eye of your lender. In 2023, it does an appraisal and decides it is now worth only $700 million. But commercial mortgages are usually interest-only loans, so you still owe that $600 million you borrowed. The decline in value comes out of your equity. You’ve just lost $300 million. And because your bank needs to maintain its loan-to-value ratio, when you refinance, you will get a smaller loan, at a higher rate, and you will have to sink more money into the building to shore up your equity if you decide to keep it.

…“Right now, it’s doomsday,” says the real-estate investor who sized up Worldwide Plaza. “There’s no lenders; there’s little tenant demand.” He says he thinks the market will still muddle through. Banks don’t want to end up owning a distressed property, so both parties are incentivized to string loans along in the hope of a market rebound, a strategy known in the industry as “extend and pretend.” They cannot keep up the charade in every case, though, which means that a lot of previously profitable buildings will likely end up being disposed of in distress sales.

This article is pretty long in the tooth by now (July 2023). It’s close to the point where I’d have to take if off the Worthy Reads backlog for obsolescence… but things haven’t really changed in Manhattan since it was written. The vacancy rate reported in this article is 22%. The vacancy rate reported three weeks ago is still around 22%.

This is a whole world I don’t really understand, but it’s fascinating to read about… and, of course, when New York catches a cold, the whole country feels the ramifications, so I figure it’s good to be aware of it.

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If you have comments on this post, you can visit the comments thread.

Below the paywall: that nifty musical instrument from Aldea, Tiktok & monopoly, and an unorthodox defense of the “pornographic” writing of D.H. Lawrence—by way of a withering attack on masturbation. Also the video(s?) of the month and a bonus Retro Short Review of Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless! Subscribe if that sounds fun!