Yes, I Think a One-State Solution Is Really a Good Idea

As we approach יום העצמאות (Israeli Independence Day), I think of all of the progress that Israel has made since 1948. What started off as a discombobulated nation-state that was barely able to stand on its own metaphorical two feet is now a beacon of democracy and economic prosperity in an otherwise dark abyss of totalitarianism and economic stagnation. Even with Israel's successes, I can't but help think that Israel has not made as much progress with its neighbors as it should have by now. Sure, there's a cold peace with Egypt and the Jordanians are much more tolerant of an Israeli neighbor than during Israel's inception, Israel still has a while to go, particularly with the Palestinians. At least since the Oslo Accords, Israel has sincerely pushed for a two-state solution in which an Israeli state can live alongside a Palestinian state in "peace and harmony." If anything should have confirmed the unfeasibility of a two-state solution, it should have been Gaza attacking Israel as soon as Israeli forces were removed from Gaza back in 2000s. None of this even takes into account the geographic distance between Gaza and West Bank, or the plethora of other issues that come along with creating a single, unified Palestinian state. Since the two-state solution approach is not working, how about a one-state solution?

A lot of the success of the one-state solution would be contingent upon its implementation. First, this one-state solution would be under the authority of the Israeli government, not a Palestinian government. Without getting into detailed comparative politics, Israel is the only one to handle the implementation of a one-state solution. There is also the matter of what Israel would annex. As long as Gaza's democratic representation is based in Hamas, a terrorist organization hellbent on Israel's destruction, I would not integrate Gaza into the annexation of the disputed territories. Gaza has been and continues to be a mess. Upon annexing Gaza during the Six Day War, Israel actually tried giving Gaza to Egypt, but not even Egypt wanted to deal with the headache. There is also the issue of whether to grant Palestinians full or limited voting rights, which would, amongst other institutional protections, act as a buffer to maintain the Jewishness of the State of Israel. Tangentially, I would imagine that a loyalty oath would be a prerequisite of the integration of West Bank's citizens, much like it was back in 1948. Furthermore, there is the issue of whether to grant the Palestinians in the West Bank full citizenship, permanent residency, or something in between (or even the infeasible explosion of Palestinians from the West Bank, which I think is a bad idea for more reasons than one). There are also issues of how to deal with "right to return," which I think would be relatively less contentious under a one-state solution than under a two-state solution.

A major potential impediment is the oft-called demographic time bomb, which is the notion that the Arabic population would procreate at a faster rate than the Jewish population, thereby making the Jews a minority in the Jewish homeland. Before crying "Never again!", we should realize that the demographic time bomb is more of a dud than anything else. I have not read Caroline Glick's The Israeli Solution, but from what I can tell from reviews of her book, she covers the topic pretty well. Israel has precedented success for integrating over one millions Arabs into Israeli society. The State of Israel has been able to maintain the Jewish facet of its national identity while being able to have a fifth of its population be non-Jewish. Even if they absorb those from both the West Bank and Gaza, at best, Arabs would be a third of the population. And if the Arabic birth rate is 2.97 and the Jewish birth rate is 3.50, mathematically speaking, there is no basis to fear a demographic takeover of the Jewish state. To make the integration of Palestinian Territories easier, what the Israeli government can do is grant the territories provincial quasi-autonomy while being under Israeli sovereignty.

With the current stalemate in the Middle East, this is all theory. Miscegenation did not help in the United States, and I don't think the miscegenation inherent within a two-state solution would help with fostering amicable relations between the Israelis and Palestinians. A one-state solution would foster better understating and co-habitation in the long-run, and it would be less likely to alienate Palestinians in Israel than a two-state solution would. Even if you want to say "bi-nationalism works with Northern Ireland, South Africa, or Canada (well, sort of), but doesn't work with places like Iraq or Yugoslavia," the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unique enough where precedent acts as a tenuous proxy. The right to nationalist self-determination, political feasibility, integrating the new Arabs into the Israeli welfare system, international criticism, and maintaining the legitimacy of Israel being a Jewish state would all be obstacles to the one-state solution. I still strongly believe that Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state is a pre-requisite before either a two-state or one-state solution, or even a three-state solution, takes place. However, if that were the case, I would make an educated guess that a one-state solution would work better than a two-state solution in the long-run.

Debunking Heritage Foundation's Debunking of Marijuana Myths

Even with the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, pot is still a contentious issue with both sides adamant about their positions. When the debate is this heated, there tends to be too much misinformation out there on the topic, which is how I felt when I read an article from the Right-leaning Heritage Foundation entitled Marijuana is Harmful: Debunking Seven Myths Arguing It's Fine. What I would like to do is go through their list of myths and see if they are indeed mythical or factual in nature.

1. "Marijuana is harmless and non-addictive." Framing the effects in such absolutist terms is a straw man argument that advocates of marijuana reform don't even use. If you're smoking something, there's a good chance that it's going to come with some risks (see this interactive chart from Healthline.com). The Heritage Foundation uses emergency room visits as a metric for just how unhealthy marijuana usage is. While 455,668 emergency room visits due to marijuana sounds like a lot, put that into context of the 129.8 million emergency room visits per annum, which would make marijuana-related emergency room visits a 0.35 percent of overall emergency room visits.  I'd be curious to see a breakdown of the diagnoses of these emergency room visits. Is this merely a reflection of individuals who abuse the emergency room? Is it that because the marijuana-based visits are due to individuals incapable handling the experience of tripping out? Inquiring minds would like to know. What I find distracting about bringing this myth up is that is we allow for other substances that can be harmful and addictive, such as alcohol (See Point #4 for further elaboration). 
2. "Smoked or eaten marijuana is medicine." I'm going to try to sidestep the debate on medical marijuana as much as possible here. First, it would be nice if marijuana were no longer classified as a Schedule 1 drug so more conclusive studies can be performed. Second, if marijuana is as effective as the Sativex spray that the individuals mention in their analysis, does it really matter which treatment a patient chooses as long as it doesn't harm anybody else? Third, even if one is able to extract the necessary, medicinal components of marijuana that avoid one from getting high, it is a red herring argument because marijuana is also used for recreational purposes. 
3. "Countless people are behind bars simply for smoking marijuana." Heritage Foundation brings up that 0.3 percent of state prison inmates are behind bars for smoking marijuana. Let's assume that the incarceration rate for mere pot possession is low. The number of arrests for marijuana possession is still the most common form of drug-related arrests. It still costs our justice system time and money to process these arrests, which is made all the more frustrating by low conviction and incarceration rates. Given the financial constraints that state and local budgets have experienced since the Great Recession, wouldn't it be better to focus on crimes that have actual victims?
4. "The legality of alcohol and tobacco strengthen the case for legal marijuana." The people of Heritage Foundation's argument is "alcohol and tobacco take so many lives. Why legalize another harmful drug to the list?" Because this is a country based on the idea of freedom. Even if it comes with risks, we should have the right to consume alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Look at the risks of marijuana compared to alcohol. For example, one can die from alcohol overdose, but the amount of THC one would have to ingest to overdose on marijuana makes it nigh impossible to die from overdose. It would explain why the CDC does not have a category for death caused by marijuana usage. Also, a study from British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal shows that health-related costs for alcohol are eight times higher than that of marijuana (Davis and Thomas, 2009). Alcohol causes more damage to the brain than marijuana (Jacobus et al., 2009). Furthermore, legalizing marijuana is shown not to increase crime rates (Morris et al., 2014). Alcohol causes way more harm to others than marijuana (Nutt et al., 2010), yet we allow for alcohol's legalization. If we see a substitution effect between alcohol and marijuana with marijuana's legalization, it would mean a decreased likelihood of harm to others. In a free society, we make certain choices and live with the consequences, whether good or bad, of those actions. We legalize alcohol and tobacco not only because we know that Prohibition doesn't work, but also because in spite of the risks of these drugs, it is preferable that we allow individuals to free to make their own choices. If we allow individuals to consume more harmful substances like alcohol or tobacco, a fortiori, we should legalize marijuana. 
5. "Legal marijuana will solve the government's budgetary problems." No one reputable would argue that marijuana is the silver bullet of budgetary problems. I sure wouldn't. On the federal level, the leading drivers are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office publishes regarding budget reform, it's not that simplistic. Although marijuana is not meant to solve fiscal woes, it still creates a net positive for the budget. 500 economists signed off on the positive budgetary implications of legalizing marijuana. From an economic standpoint, legalizing marijuana is a no-brainer.
6. "Portugal and Holland provide successful models of legalization." I am not going to disagree with Heritage Foundation on this one. Portugal and Holland have only decriminalized marijuana, and Holland has become more strict about its drug laws in the past few years. We have no modern-day examples of whether marijuana legalization, which is why it will be nice to see how Colorado, Washington, and Uruguay handle marijuana legalization. 
7. "Prevention, intervention and treatment are doomed to fail, so why try?" This does not refute the argument for legalizing marijuana. Prevention, intervention, and treatment are not mutually exclusive options when it comes to marijuana legalization. The difference between legalization and prohibition is that in the former scenario, you don't pile on the additional issues that come along with prohibition.  
8. "Colorado and Washington are examples to follow." Heritage Foundation added this so-called myth at the end as an addendum. Calling this a myth is premature. After all, marijuana has been legalized in these states for a few short months. That is hardly enough time to determine anything of substance. Rather than take a pot shot at marijuana legalization, what should be done is that we wait and see what the effects of marijuana are before making conclusions.

Would Boycotting the L.A. Clippers Have Taught the NBA a Lesson?: Why Boycotts Rarely Work

There has been plenty of hullabaloo lately around the racist remarks of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Magic Johnson thought it would have been a great idea to boycott the L.A. Clippers to teach the lesson that racism is unacceptable in a civilized society. However, the threat of a boycott was allegedly averted because the NBA fined Sterling, as well as placed a lifetime ban. While the outrage towards Sterling's racist comments is perfectly justifiable, the question I have to ask is whether a boycott would have actually done harm.

Boycotts are nothing new. People have collectively and voluntarily abstained from economic commerce with a certain company, country, or other entity to make a political or social statement. The idea is that if one can amass enough support for a boycott, it can adversely affect the bottom line and send the message that certain behavior or beliefs are unacceptable.

Let's take a look at some of the academic work on the topic. A couple of economists showed that the American boycott on French wine because of France's opposition of the Iraq War actually succeeded (Chavis and Leslie, 2006). Other economists have shown that either the threat of boycotts nor boycotts themselves inflict noticeable economic damage on the boycotted entity (Koku, 2012; Koku et al., 1997).

Even with conflicting scholarly works, I'm still unconvinced that a boycott on the Clippers would have worked. If one decides to boycott a country, at least the country has enough economic commerce where it can withstand that sort of pressure. In spite of the attempts of certain countries boycotting Israel, Israel's economy is doing just fine (Congressional Research Service, 2013, p. 3). Companies don't have the luxury of having entire national economies to bolster their revenues. Even so, companies typically have enough insulation to make it through. The L.A. Clippers are worth $575M [as of 2/2014] and bring in $128M in ticket revenues per annum.

For a boycott to work, you need to have a targeted, massive enough of a collective to impact the revenues. Then there is the temporal factor. Even if the Clippers had a bad year in term of its revenue, the boycott would need to last long enough to run the entity out of business.  Most boycotts don't have the longevity to make an impact, presumedly because many people have short attention spans and simply move on to the next thing. Finding a sufficient amount of people who can show the zeal to boycott long enough is highly improbable to affect the bottom line. However, the threat of a boycott or the perception that it works seems to do more harm to one's reputation than anything else (King, 2011). If boycotts succeed in anything, it is a boycott's ability in reaching a compromise solution, which would explain why the NBA replied by fining and banning Sterling in lieu of any actual boycott.

Do Proponents of Mandatory Vaccinations Have a Point?

Between the fact that it's World Immunization Week and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) recently published a statement on the benefits of immunizations, I started to think about vaccines and their benefits. The truth of the matter is that vaccines work. Vaccines have averted 2-3 million deaths per annum; they also have completely eradicated smallpox and rinderpest. As the infograph from UNICEF below shows, vaccines have greatly reduced the incident rate of many diseases, including polio, measles, tetanus, malaria, and whooping cough. The World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC all agree that vaccinating children is a good idea. I'm sure that there are naysayers out there, and my response is this: much like any other health-based procedure (e.g., circumcision), there are always risks, but the risks of vaccines are few and far in between (also see here), and are certainly much, much smaller than the benefits derived from vaccines.      

If vaccines are so great, then it would make sense for everyone to voluntarily get vaccinated. However, there are still a sizable amount of people who refuse to do so. The question I would like to ask here is not about the efficacy of vaccines, but rather about whether the government should mandate that citizens get vaccinated.  

In the United States, we currently have de facto opt-out system. What this means is that children who enter public schools are required to get vaccinated. However, if the parents finds that vaccination violates their [religious] beliefs or there is a legitimate medical issue, they can file for an exemption. 48 states allow for religious exemptions, and 19 allow for exemptions based on philosophical grounds. For most states, parents are not so much coerced to vaccinate their children as they are coaxed in doing so.

The premise behind the opt-out system is to prevent the negative externality of the spreading of communicable diseases while showing some respect for one's personal liberties. The question here is whether the negative externality argument is legitimate enough to warrant the government mandating that everyone get vaccinated.

We cannot make a blanket statement about vaccinations because it partially depends on the disease for which one is being vaccinated. There are diseases such as the chicken pox, influenza or rotavirus for which the threat of death is minute, which is to say that the immune system can fight off those sorts of diseases just fine. Measles, meningitis, or polio...that's a different story. It also depends on the extent of the outbreak of the disease, which, if bad enough, might justify government-mandated vaccinations. But short of a pandemic of epic proportions, it's hard to justify such paternalistic impulses.

If you want to ignore the fact that vaccines have been a medical innovation that have saved millions of lives, that should be your prerogative. Unlike with the negative externality of pollution, the individual is not in control of the disease; there is no way to determine with certainty whether the individual will actually pass on the disease. Plus, if the only ones who get ill are the non-vaccinated, the only ones who would contract the disease are other non-vaccinated individuals. Those who want to be immune from a certain disease will get vaccinated, and those who are neglectful in that will pay the price for making that choice. It's no different from telling someone to stop smoking, drinking heavily, or eating a voluminous amount of unhealthy food. In a free society, you are allowed to make whatever intelligent or idiotic health-related decisions you want regarding your body as long as you are not harming others. In spite of what criticisms I have of the British health care system, at least the British government allows for voluntary vaccination, and it works.

If we are to keep the system we have, the government should allow for a way to opt out of vaccinations, regardless of religion or philosophical persuasion. Informing individuals of the benefits of vaccinations would also help. Conversely, I don't see any pronounced negative externalities that would require an opt-out system, so why don't we give a system based on voluntary vaccinations a shot?

2-5-2015 Addendum: With all of the hullabaloo I have seen on Facebook regarding vaccines lately, I thought that I would slightly modify my position on the issue. At the end, I thought that an opt-out system was unnecessary. In order for there to be a legitimate case for requiring an opt-out system, two things need to be the case: 1) vaccines actually work, and 2) herd immunity is ineffective because not enough individuals are vaccinated. I don't have a problem with the first bit; vaccines do work. If you don't think they do, well, that's a problem, to put it lightly. As for the second part, it's trickier, partially because herd immunity is different for each disease. However, if there are a sizable amount of people not getting vaccinated, like we currently experience, then an opt-out system is required to protect public health. In this case, diseases and viruses are a negative externality, and people are unable to control them. For many diseases, a vaccine is the best approach. If you have an exigent medical condition, then you should receive an exemption. Religious exemptions are trickier, but on the whole, they should not be considered because their freedom to not get vaccinated affects others around them. On the whole, vaccinating children should be the default because we should not put ourselves in a situation in which we infringe on other peoples' lives, intentionally or otherwise.

Parsha Kedoshim: "Loving Your Neighbor" Also Means Loving Yourself

One of the most oft-quoted Biblical verses is "love thy neighbor" (Leviticus 19:18). When people say "love your neighbor," we have to remember that it's typically abridged, and the entire verse is "love your neighbor like yourself," or ואהבת לרעך כמוך. It brings up a good question: why didn't G-d just say "love your neighbor"? Why did He have to add the word כמוך (like yourself)? What is G-d trying to convey here?

I have two possible answers, the first being that implicit in this famous Biblical verse is that we are commanded to love ourselves.  People who love themselves are happier, which means they are able to better succeed in and enjoy life. If you're in bad shape, how much more difficult is it to have interpersonal relationships? As R. Joseph Telushkin brings up in his book A Code of Jewish Ethics, Vol. 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself (p. 10), "Think about your own behavior. Are you more likely to be patient, forgiving, and generous to others when you are feeling good about yourself or when you are feeling low or self-critical?"

The second possibility, which is not mutually exclusive with the first, is that the word כמוך is acting as a clarifier. Many individuals have a high opinion of themselves. Many individuals will still love themselves when they screw up. Many individuals also make sure are concerned about their own welfare. This is not to say that this sort of behavior is wrong. As Pirkei Avot 1:14 brings up, "If I'm not there for myself, who will be there for me?" But the verse doesn't end there. It goes on to say, "If I'm only for myself, what am I?" The Sefer HaChiniuch elaborates on Leviticus 19:18, and says that we are supposed to take the needs of others quite seriously, as if they were our own needs. Rabbi Israel Salanter was one to say that the physical and material welfare of another was indeed tending to one's spiritual needs.

We were not meant to be so altruistic that we neglect our own needs while we help others. Conversely, we do not live in isolation. "Love thy neighbor" means that the universe doesn't revolve around you, and that we are here to treat others in a fashion that would be comparable to how we would want to be treated if we were in the same situation. It means that when we screw up, we forgive others by giving them the benefit of a doubt (Pirke Avot 1:6), the same doubt that we would give ourselves. Even when someone is being cross or you're having a day, it still means treating them with dignity and respect because they are your neighbor, regardless of whether they are Jewish or not.  It's about not judging someone until you have been in their place (Pirke Avot 2:5), whether literally or figuratively. "Loving your neighbor" is about putting yourself in the other person's shoes and loving them as you would yourself. The next time you have an interaction with another (or even if you're dealing with yourself), ask yourself what would be the most loving course of action. Take it as an opportunity to realize that you have multiple opportunities a day to actualize what Rabbi Akiva called the single most important principle to fulfilling the Torah.

Holy Smoke, an E-Cigarette Ban in Los Angeles!

This past Saturday, the City of Los Angeles enacted a ban on electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes. Proponents of the ban think that e-cigarettes are too close to the real thing, whereas opponents argue that e-cigarettes are nowhere near the nuisance that regular cigarettes are. A few months ago, I had made a libertarian argument that partial smoking bans in public places were actually justifiable. The question I have to ask here is whether e-cigarettes have the same externalities as regular cigarettes or if e-cigarettes are merely mimics of real cigarettes.

Upon answering the question of whether the City of Los Angeles should have passed an e-cigarette ban, we should first ask ourselves what an electronic cigarette is and how it differs from a regular cigarette. An electronic cigarette is a cigarette-shaped, battery-powered, cylindrical tube that vaporizes liquid nicotine. The major emission from an e-cigarette is nicotine; e-cigarette "vaping" does not entail combustion, which removes the negative externality of imposing second-hand toxins unto others. The other major carcinogens, the ones make tobacco smoke such a negative externality and harm one's health, are essentially non-existent. I know that e-cigarettes are still a new enough of a development where one could argue that conclusions from e-cigarette studies are premature.

However, there is an increasing amount of academic literature that show that e-cigarettes are less harmful than regular cigarettes, which makes sense because e-cigarettes not only lack the carcinogens and tars that are in tobacco products, but they also have smaller concentrations of nicotine than a regular cigarette (also see Oxford study here), which means that they are healthier (Polosa et al., 2013; Waegner et al., 2012; Cahn and Siegel, 2011) and can be used to reduce the smoking of tobacco products (Polosa et al., 2011; Siegel et al., 2011; CDC, 2013). Additionally, what is lacking is the evidence showing that there are second-hand smoke impacts from this vapor (Burstyn, 2013; McAuley et al., 2012), not to mention the emissions from e-cigarettes are by and large non-offensive, which is why e-cigarettes have been immune from cigarette bans prior to. I can also cite a recent study at the Lancet (Bullen et al., 2013) that suggests that e-cigarettes can be just effective as nicotine patches, which means that they can be used to wean people off of tobacco products.

Just because electronic cigarettes look like cigarettes and use the word "cigarette" does not make it a tobacco product that has the same level of harm of traditional smoking products. E-cigarettes have the nicotine that smokers crave, but it comes without the toxins from tobacco smoking. If we are to aim for the goal of national harm reduction, which is important because tobacco smoking kills many individuals per annum, we should not stub out e-cigarette smoking with e-cigarette bans. Instead, we should find a way to encourage smokers to use these healthier alternatives so smokers aren't killed by the real culprit of tobacco.

5-3-2016 Addendum: The latest and greatest in studies point out why we shouldn't ban e-cigarettes is from the Royal College Physicians in the United Kingdom. To summarize the study, e-cigarettes come with huge harm reduction, and is the next step towards a more tobacco-free society. 

Dayenu: Is It Really Ever Enough?

I was visiting Chicago this past Shabbat, and I was in shul listening to R. Leonard Matanky give a d'var Torah during Shabbat Chol HaMoed Passover services. After his prefatory comments, he began his remarks on the Passover song דינו ("It would have been enough for us"; Dayenu). Dayenu, which is a popular song in the Passover haggadah, is a fifteen-stanza tune that expresses the thanks for the gifts that G-d gave the Jewish people during the Exodus, ranging from freeing the Jewish people from slavery to giving the gifts of Torah and Shabbat.

Taking his insight from Dr. Israel Eldad's haggadah, R. Matanky brought up an interesting question: was it really enough? One of the stanzas said that it was enough for G-d to take the Jews out of slavery. But what good would that be without the Torah or a raison d'être? What is the point of being thankful for G-d bringing the Jews to Mount Sinai if G-d had not presented the Torah? Traditionally, we keep saying Dayenu either because we have done nothing to deserve G-d's mercy or because we should be thankful for every little thing that G-d does. The point that both Dr. Eldad and R. Matanky were trying to make was that Dayenu was not meant to be literally. It was meant to be a springboard to help us think about what is enough.

This springboard is where I would like to make my comments on the matter. In Pirke Avot (4:1), Ben Zoma asks what makes for a rich person. His response?

השמח בחלקו, or "the person who is satisfied with his own lot." Ben Zoma's response brings us to a paradox in Jewish thought. If we are happy with what we have, doesn't that translate into passivity? If we're supposed to be happy with what we have, why bother striving for more?

A lot of the commentary surrounding this Pirke Avot verse has to do with material wealth (Commentary, Pirke Avot 4:1, Rashi, Magen Avot, Tiferet Yisrael). As R. Matanky brought up, people have way too high of standards when it comes to material wealth. We are always looking to own the latest technology and acquire mass amounts of wealth because they think it will fill in the void. Spiritual fulfillment is conflated with acquiring material wealth, and the crossing of wires leaves many highly unsatisfied.

When it comes to spirituality, however, many people set the bar too low. For many, it is regrettably set so low that they are lulled into a sense of complacency of doing enough. Judaism is not a religion of passivity. Judaism is not a religion in which we say Dayenu because we did something and we were meant to stop. We are meant to continue developing ourselves as better humans, help our fellow man, and foster a stronger relationship with G-d. As R. Zelig Pliskin points out in his book Happiness (p. 68), "In spiritual matters, look up and raise your sights. But when it comes to material and physical matters, look down."

In addition to raising the bar in spiritual matters, we can resolve another paradox of human nature. As humans, we are partly physical creatures and partly spiritual creatures. G-d didn't create us to be angels, but He didn't create us as animals without impulse control. We have free will. In Jewish thought, we are created in His Image. In this respect, we are "good enough." On the other hand, we were meant for more; we were meant to strive and constantly improve in our spiritual lives. As the Sages once said, although we were not meant to complete the task, it does not excuse us from desisting (Pirke Avot 2:21). Let Dayenu be a reminder that while we are to recognize where we have progressed spiritually, we are more importantly supposed to remind ourselves that we can always strive for further spiritual development.