Lately Philip Weiss, proprietor of the blog Mondoweiss, has been reading up on the work of Peter Berkowitz, a George Mason law professor who moonlights as Rudy Giuliani’s “Senior Statecraft, Human Rights and Freedom Advisor” (pretty good gig, if you can get it). Today Weiss dug up a 2004 Weekly Standard article in which Berkowitz offers an analysis of Israeli demographic policies hinging on one overwhelming concern: How do we get Arabs in Israel to stop breeding so damn much? Berkowitz begins by acknowledging that the very term “demographic problem…conjures up illiberal images of a government classifying people by ethnicity, race, or religion.” OK, duly noted. And then, natch, Berkowitz goes on to make some chillingly illiberal policy prescriptions. Weiss sums up:
[Berkowitz] said that Arab birth rates are a “threat” to Israel’s “political sovereignty and territorial integrity” and came out for a policy aimed at curbing subsidies to large families, thereby limiting Arab birth rates in the Jewish state. It’s hard not to describe this attitude as racist. Does Rudy Giuliani endorse such family-planning policies?
Yup, that would be yet another question for an enterprising campaign reporter to ask Giuliani on the trail. I nominate someone from the New York Times, which, as far as I can tell, has completely ignored the Giuliani advisers story. For now, see this American Prospect rundown and this Talking Points Memo video on the subject.
—Justin Elliott
