Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, responds to The Times' Jan. 2 Op-Ed article, "Bibi and Barack." Bennis is the coauthor of "Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer" and the author of "Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer."

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Aaron David Miller is right: President Obama does have an Israel problem. But Miller is wrong about the roots of the problem. 

The problem isn't Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his Likud Party, or even Israel's current extreme right-wing government. Israel's fundamental policy toward the Palestinians is the problem, and that policy has hardly changed, despite the seemingly diverse sequence of left, right and center parties that have been in power.

Just look at the occupation of the territories seized in 1967 -- the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Settlement building, along with all the land and water theft that goes with it, began just weeks after the Six-Day War. And a right-wing government wasn't in power; it was Mapai, the left-wing precursor to today's Labor Party. The right wing wouldn't come to power until almost three decades after Israel's founding, when Menachem Begin led the Likud coalition to victory in 1977. 

Settlement construction and expansion started right after the war and continued under all the leftist (in the Israeli context) governments. By the time Likud came to power 10 years after the 1967 war, there were already more than 50,000 Israeli settlers living in Jews-only settlements in the occupied territories, most of them in occupied East Jerusalem, with smaller numbers in the West Bank and Gaza. Settlement expansion advanced under Labor, Likud and Kadima-led governments. Now there are more than 600,000 settlers living illegally in Palestinian territory, divided between the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

As Moshe Dayan, a former defense and foreign minister, explained, the settlements were necessary "not because they can ensure security better than the army but because without them we cannot keep the army in those territories. Without them the [Israel Defense Forces] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population."

The different parties, prime ministers and officials sometimes used different language. Some repeated the words the international community wanted, a "land for peace" deal and "two states"; others insisted that only "peace for peace" or "Jordan is Palestine" was acceptable. Some spoke loudly in defense of settlements, while others only whispered.

But there was no diversity of substance. What happened in the real world, the "facts on the ground," continued regardless of which party was in power.  

Other things continued too -- settler violence against Palestinians, expropriation of Palestinian land and water, illegal closures, collective punishments including massive armed assault, arrest without charge, extra-judicial assassinations and the siege of Gaza. 

Of course, that's just in the occupied territories. Inside Israel, Arab Israelis -- those who survived the dispossession of 1947-48 -- live as second-class citizens. They have the right to vote, but they are subject to legalized discrimination in favor of the Jewish majority. The Israeli human rights organization Adalah reported to the United Nations more than 20 such discriminatory laws, the most important of which deny Palestinian citizens equal rights on issues of immigration and citizenship as well as land ownership. And outside, the Palestinian refugees, now numbering in the millions, have been denied their internationally guaranteed right of return by Israeli governments of every political stripe.

The whole range of Israeli political parties has continued to implement these same policies. They may talk a different talk, but they all walk the same walk.

What none of these governments is prepared to acknowledge is what it will take for a real solution, one that is lasting, comprehensive and just: human rights and equality for all based on international law. It shouldn't be more complicated than that. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies everyone has the right to return to their home country, no exceptions; that everyone has the right to live in safety, no exceptions; that everyone has the right to an equal say in the government that rules their country, no exceptions.

Every law should treat all citizens the same, no exceptions. Every government has the obligation to live up to the treaties it has signed, including the U.N. conventions on human rights, against racism, the Geneva Conventions and more. Israel has signed them all. Yet not one Israeli government, of any party, has implemented them. 

As long as the United States provides the Israeli government more than $3 billion in aid every year, regardless of those violations, and protects Israel from being held accountable in the U.N., regardless of those violations, no Israeli prime minister has much reason to change. That's Obama's Israel problem -- not Netanyahu. Changing U.S. policy should provide the solution.

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Bibi and Barack

Middle East states of mind

Settlement outposts at root of Jewish violence in West Bank

-- Phyllis Bennis

Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

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I will say this for Rick Santorum: He's one of the more well-spoken bigots I've heard in a while. His defense of his absolutist position on gay marriage, delivered in front of a largely hostile crowd of college Republicans in Concord, N.H., was concise, logical and delivered with the rhetorical flourish of a seasoned attorney. None of it hadn't been expressed by same-sex marriage opponents before, but Santorum's gift is to make his morally and legally untenable position sound reasonable.

Boiled to its essence, his argument has three parts: First, the burden of demonstrating that same-sex marriage should be legalized falls on its supporters rather than its opponents, because the former group is the one that wants to change the law. Fair enough. Here's the reason, Rick: Because discriminating against a class of people by failing to grant them the same rights enjoyed by everyone else is unfair and unconstitutional.

The second part of Santorum's argument is that many of the legal benefits of marriage, such as the right to visit a hospitalized spouse, can be obtained via legal contract, so why should gays insist on marriage rights? This is monstrously disingenuous, as Santorum the lawyer well knows, but it seemed to confuse the crowd, so apparently there weren't any law students among them. Santorum is correct that property and inheritance rights can be transferred to another via contract -- gay partners can leave their houses to each other in their wills, for example. But, as Oakland attorney and author Fred Hertz explains, public benefits -- tax advantages, health insurance and so on -- can't be transferred via contract, except in states that recognize domestic partnership agreements (and most states, including Santorum's native Pennsylvania, don't). Even in the domestic partnership states, no federal tax, Social Security or other benefits apply to such partners because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

Finally, there is Santorum's third argument, which by now is pretty familiar to anyone following the same-sex marriage debate: If you allow same-sex couples to marry, why not allow polygamy? This one's tougher to refute because it gets to a truism that gay-marriage proponents don't like to discuss -- there is a social-values component to marriage. Religious conservatives see no distinction between same-sex marriage and incest or polygamy, because to them, all of these things represent sexual sins. Yet there are obvious differences.

Setting aside the ick factor of incestuous marriage, sexual liaisons between family members can lead to offspring with terrible genetic abnormalities. Polygamy is slightly less objectionable on its face, but in practice it causes enormous social problems -- polygamous societies inevitably create a surplus population of young, restive males who end up on the streets or fuel upheaval because they can't find wives, most of whom have been snapped up by powerful older men. Underage women are frequently forced into marriages with much older men, and there is an innate power imbalance built into any relationship between one man (or one woman) and multiple partners of the opposite sex.

But more important than any of these distinctions is the fact that the entire comparison is irrelevant. There is no mainstream political movement in this country to legalize polygamy or incestuous marriage; when and if there is, we can debate whether it's appropriate. By dragging these things into the debate over same-sex marriage, Santorum and his ilk are simply playing reductio-ad-absurdem rhetorical games. This technique can be used to discredit nearly any position on anything: If we allow same-sex marriage, what's next, people marrying dogs? If we allow people to drink alcohol, why not let them snort cocaine? If we guarantee the right to bear arms, why not guarantee the right to build thermonuclear devices in one's garage?

The answer: Because it's ridiculous. Let's stick to the matter at hand -- whether consenting adults of the same sex should be allowed to marry. It's OK to agree with Santorum that they shouldn't, but let's not drag the cast of "Big Love" into the discussion.

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Iowa caucuses' count confusion: Hold on to your hanging chads

-- Dan Turner

Do standardized tests have any meaning to students' lives? Well, yes, they do, according to a groundbreaking study from professors at Harvard and Columbia universities, and as reported Friday by the New York Times.

Teachers who are effective at raising student scores on those annual tests appear to have a much bigger effect on students' lives than just a number on a piece of paper. Their students are less likely to become pregnant as teenagers and more likely to go on to college, and even to earn more money. In other words, the learning as measured by the tests means something -- to students' sense of self-worth, to their ability to handle college work and, as a result, their ability to move into better-paying jobs.

It's worth noting that these measures of teacher value have various holes. So-called value-added measurements -- the improvement in a student's scores beyond what should have been expected based on previous performance -- are more effective at singling out the highest-performing teachers, and the lowest, than at assessing the majority in between.

This study looked at what happened to the students of those very effective teachers and found -- no surprise -- that great teachers matter tremendously to students. They change lives. What wasn't clear before was whether you could measure that greatness by test scores. The answer appears to be yes.

It's not a matter of whether teachers are working at low-performing schools with students who face considerable obstacles, or at middle-class schools. Value-added doesn't measure teachers by the actual student score but rather the real versus expected growth of any student over time.

Sadly, the topic has immediately turned to firing all the teachers who don't get outstanding results, which is both unfair and unhelpful. Get rid of 75% of teachers? Where are all the supremely qualified people who are willing to work for relatively low wages to try to match those top performers -- and be fired if they don't?

More helpful would be a qualitative study of what these remarkable teachers do, so that their secrets can be taught to others.

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Teachers and test scores

L.A. Unified's grade-school game

LAUSD reform from the inside out

Blowback: A call for accuracy in evaluating school progress

--Karin Klein

Photo: Kathleen Bellas assigns homework at Grant Elementary in Santa Ana. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Doesn't anybody love former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney? The editorial board of the Boston Globe, arguably New England's flagship newspaper, on Friday endorsed Jon Huntsman Jr. over Romney for the GOP presidential nomination. Given that Massachusetts' GOP primary (I know, I know, but there really are Republicans in Massachusetts) isn't until March, the endorsement is clearly aimed at voters in nearby New Hampshire, who hold their first-in-the-nation primary Tuesday. That's the state where Huntsman, who skipped the Iowa GOP caucuses, has piled all his chips.

An endorsement from the Globe won't make Huntsman or break Romney. It's not as influential as a nod from the conservative Manchester Union Leader, which backed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in November. That's when Gingrich's star was rising; his numbers in New Hampshire are heading in the other direction now.

Romney said the left-leaning Globe board was expected to be in his corner; the paper endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over Romney in the 2008 race. The smaller, right-leaning Boston Herald last week backed Romney unequivocally.

And the Globe wasn't exactly critical of Romney. Instead, it mainly argued that he's spent the campaign pandering, not laying out a vision for the future. Huntsman, by contrast, has been "bold."

The problem with the Globe's endorsement, though, is that it practically paints Huntsman as a Democrat:

The priorities he would set for the country, from leading the world in renewable energy to retooling education and immigration policies to help American high-tech industries, are far-sighted. He has stood up far more forcefully than Romney against those in his party who reject evolution and the science behind global warming....

When the national economy fell into recession, some Republican governors made a show of rejecting federal stimulus money on ideological grounds; sensibly, Huntsman took the money. While he endorsed the notion of a federal stimulus, he also offered a credible critique of the way the Democratic Congress had structured the plan. Then, when Obama offered him the post of ambassador to China, Huntsman accepted. Other Republicans, such as New Hampshire's Judd Gregg, couldn't bring themselves to accept entreaties from a Democratic president. Huntsman did. It attests to his sincerity when he vows to lead in a bipartisan spirit.

If I were Huntsman, I might be inclined to say, "Thanks but no thanks." The heart of Huntsman's campaign, at least at this point, is not his ability to work across the aisle or his support for solar power. It's his economic plan, which is built around a simpler, flatter tax code with lower rates. In September the true-red conservatives on the Wall Street Journal's editorial board judged it "better than anything so far from the GOP presidential field," and they haven't revised that stance.

As much as liberals want to focus on Huntsman's digressions from the socially conservative, climate-change-disputing GOP orthodoxy, his positions on economic issues, regulation and the size of government are unmistakably in the Republican wheelhouse. He reminds me of former Rep. Tom Campbell, as conservative and anti-Keynesian as they come on economic issues but not ideological on social issues. Don't be fooled -- neither man would be comfortable at a Democratic convention.

There was a time when the Republican "big tent" was built around a few basic conservative premises: that markets are better suited than government to guide the economy, and that competition does a better job protecting the public's interest than regulation. That was before conservatives began to see government as a bulwark against perceived threats to their vision of family values. I've never been able to reconcile those two notions of government, frankly; the latter is far more intrusive than the former. (And libertarians, before you jump in, please explain again why Ron Paul thinks it's OK for states to effectively eliminate abortion rights?)

At any rate, if the GOP primaries were just about economics and the role of government, Huntsman would probably have taken his turn as flavor of the month by now. The Globe is more interested in the other aspects of the campaign, bringing up the things that Democrats like about Huntsman -- the things that have made it hard for his candidacy to climb out of the single-digit dungeon.

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It's Rick Santorum's turn

Mitt Romney: Not a sure bet

What happened to Michele Bachmann?

-- Jon Healey

Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images

Post-Iowa, it's generally accepted that the news media underestimated Rick Santorum. It's not the first time.

In 1990, I was an editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That year Santorum was challenging an entrenched Democratic incumbent in a House district representing Pittsburgh suburbs.

The editor of the paper and I interviewed the would-be dragon-slayer, and after he left us, the editor, usually an astute student of politics, turned to me and said: "We'll never hear from that guy again."

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It's Rick Santorum's turn

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What happened to Michele Bachmann, a once-promising candidate?

-- Michael McGough

Photo: Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum pumps his fist during a campaign stop in Manchester, N.H. on Jan. 4. Credit: Charles Krupa / AP Photo

Hold everything:  There may be trouble in River City -- and in other places in Iowa.

There's late-breaking counting news from Tuesday's Republican caucuses: Rick Santorum may actually have defeated Mitt Romney. 

Oh yeah? Says who? Says True, that's who.

As The Times reported late Thursday night:

On Thursday, Edward True of Moulton, Iowa, filed an affidavit saying that Romney's reported total in the caucus he attended overstated his support by 20 votes, the Daily Iowegian reported.

True, who said he was one of three people who helped count ballots, said Romney only received two votes -- not the 22 reported on the Iowa Republican Party's website. He says Santorum had actually won the precinct, winning 21 of the 53 total votes.

So, with apologies to Vin Scully:  "In a year that's been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

Or, to paraphrase George W. Bush: Oh goodie -- are we going to have hanging chads again and everything?

Or, to paraphrase Al Gore:  Can't anyone in this country count anymore?

What's uh, truly amazing about this, though, is that it turns out that the Iowa caucuses, which the news media covered as if they actually counted (there's that word again), are run more like a high school contest for homecoming queen.

Or, as The Times' Michael A. Memoli put it, a bit more soberly:

The incident is sure to raise new questions about the quirky process that typically begins the presidential nominating contest. The Republican caucuses, run by the party and not the state, are essentially a popularity contest among those who attend; at some caucus sites there are no paper records of the vote.

"Quirky process"?

To me, a quirky process is the one used to pick the college football teams that play in the BCS championship game. Or how I fill out my March Madness brackets. Or the way I used to do my taxes.

In those cases, quirky is fine.  But not when picking the potential next president of the United States.

I mean, when Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper stay up into the wee hours to confirm the results -– even bringing in some nice women from Iowa by phone to help  --  I don't want to find out 24 hours later that it was all just for fun. You know: Hey, Mitt Romney, you're not prom king after all!

Still, it may all work out: 

State party chairman Matt Strawn noted at the time that a certified tally would not come for two more weeks.

 Oh. And this:

There is also no official provision for a recount because no delegates are at stake.

On hearing the news, Santorum took the high road, saying the final final results didn't matter to him -– that the race was a tie.

But I hold to a more American ideal, expressed by one Vincent T. Lombardi:

"If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?"

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Michele Bachmann: What happened to the once-promising candidate?

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Caucus-goers register Tuesday in Ankeny, Iowa. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Mitt Romney may have only squeaked by with a win in Iowa on Tuesday, but he's poised for a landslide in the New Hampshire Republican primary on Jan. 10. But the GOP candidate isn't necessarily a sure bet as the eventual nominee to go against President Obama. For everything we do know about Romney -- including Think Progress' 99 facts  -- there remains the issue that we may never truly know Romney. Below, Opinionators from around the Web explain.   

Mitt Romney, GOP puppet

A President Romney would have little leeway to push a GOP Congress to the center, and he has pledged himself to fulfill the agenda that the Party has already determined. Former Bush administration Minister of Propaganda Pete Wehner echoes, "This year, it seems to me, the party is the sun and the candidates are the planets ... They are trying to prove to primary voters that they are reliable and trustworthy when it comes to the basic platform of the GOP." It is surely clear that Romney's apparent victory was obtained by erasing every last vestige of his old and (I believe, though I can't be sure) authentic self. At this moment hardly anybody believes that his conversion was actually authentic. The support for him, such as it is, is simply a combination of disqualifying rivals and the assumption that the Party will continue to own him in office.

--Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine [via LA Observed's Mark Lacter, who also weighs in on Obama's best shot at reelection.]

The upshot of Mitt vs. Mitt

[On Mitt Romney] Jay Leno offered: "Well, the presidential race is getting interesting. In an effort to clear up his reputation as a flip-flopper, Mitt Romney will give a speech on health care. And then, right afterward, he'll give a five-minute rebuttal." […]

[I]n the coming months, the most interesting political battle may be between Romney and Romney. Now, do we really want a chameleon as a nominee for president? That's a legitimate question. But I'd much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn't require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says things that Republican candidates have all been saying and, God forbid, actually means it.

--Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

President Romney, American nightmare

I understand the impulse behind Kristof's musings, but even if Mitt Romney is a chameleon, the fact remains that he is fueling and encouraging the political right by pandering to them. That alone speaks negatively about his character. Moreover, it is a perfect illustration of what Romney would likely be as president: an empty vessel who allowed Congress to drive his agenda. […]

Perhaps with a progressive majority in Congress, a President Romney wouldn't be a disaster. But with a Republican majority -- even in just one chamber -- Romney would be an absolute nightmare. Anyone who wants a sensible approach to governance needs to realize that there really is no acceptable Republican presidential candidate, chameleon or otherwise. And as important as it is to reelect President Obama, it's also critical that we return Congress to Democratic control.

--Jed Lewison, Daily Kos

The Mitt Romney mystery

So would Mitt Romney govern as he did in Massachusetts, or as his more recent rhetoric suggests? I'm confident that he really couldn't get away with reversing himself and embracing an individual mandate at the national level, since that has been such a sticking point during the campaign. On the whole, however, I don't think we know with anything like the certainty Packer suggests how Romney would govern.

--Conor Friedersdorf, the Atlantic

Mitt Romney, not a sure thing

[Ron] Paul may have disappointed supporters with his third-place finish Tuesday, but he more than doubled his vote over 2008, while Romney stood still. If the last four years have taught us anything, it's that politics is even weirder -- and more unpredictable -- than it looks.

--Matt Welch, CNN

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks in Salem, N.H. Credit: Matt Rourke / Associated Press

This post has been corrected, as indicated below.

Here we go again: A U.S.-born citizen deported from her own country. This time the case involves a 15-year-old girl who was sent packing from Houston to Colombia, according to published reports.

Clearly, U.S.-born citizens can't be detained by immigration officials, much less deported by the Department of Homeland Security. But it seems to be happening with greater frequency. Last month, The Times reported that at least four U.S. citizens were detained in Los Angeles County over the last two months. And in 2007, Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled man who is illiterate, was deported from Los Angeles to Tijuana even though he was born in this country. Guzman spent months in Mexico sleeping on the streets. Other cases have also popped up in recent years, and a study by a UC Berkeley think tank suggests the number is much higher.

The latest reports of mistaken deportations are obviously alarming. But these cases also raises some interesting questions about safeguards. Federal officials say they increasingly rely on technology such as fingerprints to help identify those immigrants with criminal records or outstanding deportation orders. So what accounts for the mistaken identity cases that keep popping up given that federal officials now have more sophisticated tools at their disposal?

Clearly, Jakadrien Turner's case is complicated. This much is known, according to news reports. She lied to authorities about her identity. The false name she gave indicated that she was a Colombian woman, who appears to have been deportable. Turner, who speaks no English, remains in Latin America while officials in both countries figure out what to do.

OK, so a teenager lied. Hopefully, federal immigration officials are prepared for such a scenario and have the technology and policies in place to ensure that they are deporting the right person. After all, that's what Homeland Security has said when touting the benefits of Secure Communities, a controversial program that requires local police to submit the fingerprints of anyone booked into local jails with federal authorities, including immigration officials.

To be fair, providing a false name isn't going to help someone's case. But that doesn't relieve the federal government of its obligation to make sure it knows who it has in custody and who it is deporting.

[For the Record, 2:45 p.m. Jan. 5: The original post stated that Turner gave authorities a false name that belonged to a Colombian woman. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the name Turner gave did not belong to any real Colombian citizen.]

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Immigration enforcement snares citizens in L.A. County, group says

Immigration reform: Scrap Secure Communities

Obama administration reports record number of deportations

--Sandra Hernandez

 Photo: Pedro Guzman, a U.S. citizen deported to Mexico after he was released back to his family. Credit: Provided by the American Civil Liberties of Southern California.

It seems that the no-pants trend has got legs. A prank that started 10 years ago in New York City -- when seven men without pants boarded a subway train in the dead of winter and filmed the crowd's reaction -- has, thanks to YouTube and Facebook, attracted thousands of followers and spread to Los Angeles  and about 50 other cities across the country. So if you're not interested in seeing more of your fellow passengers than you're accustomed to, avoid the Red Line this Sunday.

What's the point, you ask? Simply to spread confusion and delight. Improv Everywhere, the group behind the annual No Pants Subway Ride, has been setting up flash mobs and other performances/pranks in public places since 2001. If you're over 40, think of them as Allen Funt without network backing but with a huge Internet following. If you're under 40, no explanation is required. Except, maybe, for the answer to one question: Can you get arrested for trouser-free train riding?

LAist blogger Zach Behrens posed that question a few years back to Metro's chief of transit police and was told, essentially, that the cops have better things to do than act as a panty patrol. So ladies and gentlemen, feel free to drop your drawers. And to today's generation of Merry Pranksters: a full-moon salute to you all.

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Don't hack my high-tech car

-- Dan Turner

Proposals to require porn actors to wear condoms on screen are only the first step in porn reform, cracks Ted Rall in this week’s cartoon. First come the condoms, but where will the reform initiatives stop?

Some possibilities, Rall jokes: The Realistic Plot Act. The Aesthetics Equity Act. The Seduction Actualization Act. Or perhaps the Morning-After Visualization Act.

The editorial board has discussed the issue of porn actors wearing condoms in recent weeks, but the debate has hovered over who should enforce the law.

"Performers in adult films should be required to use condoms to protect themselves and others against the spread of HIV and AIDS. Enforceable state regulation would make the most sense; it would be preferable to see such a law adopted by the Legislature," the board wrote in a recent editorial, adding: “But sometimes cities must take the lead, even in workplace safety regulation, because Sacramento may lack the will or interest to protect workers. Los Angeles banned smoking in restaurants and bars to protect not merely the comfort of patrons but the health and safety of staff who otherwise were inhaling carcinogens each day. The move pressed the state to finally catch up.”

But back to Ted Rall. Here’s his take.  

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Safe sex on the set 

Condoms in porn? What should we do?

Will L.A. take the initiative on condoms?

--Alexandra Le Tellier

Cartoon by Ted Rall / For The Times