In the past several years, “whiteness” has emerged as a ubiquitous academic buzzword, spawning an entire field of “whiteness studies.” While the term sprung out of efforts to deconstruct notions of race, Balazs Berkovits argues that it has become part of a worldview based on immutable racial characteristics. Experts on “whiteness” also tend to ignore anti-Semitism, or engage in it, as Berkovits explains in conversation with Alan Johnson:

Within “woke” discourse everything can be reduced to race, to racial and ethnic group membership. Individuals are construed as being fundamentally determined by collectives that are often racially defined. This is how “white privilege” is acquiring importance in the discourse on social inequalities. The term white privilege not only expresses inherited social status as unmerited advantage, but it narrowly associates it with skin color. Also, it often signals a kind of original sin, which is why white people in the U.S. and maybe also in Britian are often sent by educational institutions or their employers to participate in training sessions to confess their guilt.

For example, in Karen Brodkin’s so-called pioneering book on “Jewish whiteness” (How Jews Became White Folks, 1998), the [term] “Euro-ethnics” seems to refer implicitly to skin color, subverting the original thesis according to which “whiteness” is a historical construction. This is why she gets into circular arguments, since it is not clear whether Jews are already white, or at least prone to whiteness, . . . or, while considered non-white at the beginning, they only acquire this status over the period of couple of decades.

Coming to terms with the presence of anti-Semitism would have made this kind of theoretical overdetermination based on color difficult to maintain. This is partly the reason why Jews constituted an (epistemological) obstacle to that criticism, and received the “white” label. This obstacle is clearly expressed by Matthew Frye Jacobson, a “whiteness scholar.”

What’s more, Berkovits argues, this nonsense doesn’t simply place Jews in the irredeemable white category, but plays directly into the demonization of Israel as a “white, settler-colonial state” which must therefore be destroyed.

By purportedly using some social-scientific concepts and procedures, whiteness and race scholars as well as other “social critics” frequently implicitly, but occasionally even directly, support a number of anti-Jewish stances that are presented as anti-hegemonic positions. This means that the critique of Jews in Western societies is presented as a legitimate social critique, stemming not from hostility to Jews, but from a political position, susceptible to being bolstered by rational arguments.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.