On outrage and its limitations, Bernard Avishai in The New Yorker:

'Barring American members of Congress from Israel is deplorable. What makes the move also counterproductive is that the best defense against B.D.S. is to expose skeptical foreign visitors such as Omar and Tlaib to Israel’s internal divisions, which will seem utterly familiar to them: its comparatively élite, cosmopolitan—and frustrated—Tel Aviv coast up against poor, pietistic Jerusalem and the rest of the country. Time spent examining more Israeli realities might even persuade them that B.D.S. is an unexamined, contradictory bundle, because boycott, divestment, and sanctions are three very different things, hurting very different slices of Israeli society.

One can imagine governments sanctioning Israeli settlement policies, much like George H. W. Bush did, in 1991, when he warned that he would deduct any sum that Israel spent on settlements from American loan guarantees. One can imagine international organizations setting telecommunications standards sanctioning Israelis for hogging bandwidth from Palestinian telecom companies.

But to boycott all Israeli universities, or boycott all Israeli entrepreneurs, to disinvest from all Israeli companies, or global companies that invest directly in Israel—all of these things will cut the ground out from under the very people who remain a crucial constituency for the kind of progressive politics that Omar and Tlaib represent and hope to foster. Indeed, it is the moral equivalent of the European Union boycotting Silicon Valley or Harvard in order to undermine Trump’s America. Boycott the Hebrew University and you boycott scholars trying to bridge the studies of the Holocaust and the Nakba. Boycott Israeli chipmakers and you boycott companies setting up research offices in Palestine. If American progressives have a role, it is not to fantasize about collapsing Israel’s universities and economy but to support Israeli progressives who, like Omar and Tlaib, are trying to reform their country. In both places, it will be a long haul.

Make no mistake: it is an outrage that members of Congress should be barred from visiting Israel for any reason. (And it is equally an outrage for an American President to encourage another nation to bar his political opponents.) Imagine another beneficiary of aid, King Abdullah of Jordan, barring Representatives Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler for supporting resolutions that, in his view, put his kingdom in jeopardy. But outrage is Trump’s specialty.'

Read the article here.

Outrage is Trump's only specialty, but outrage itself has become a business model, a slick mask and a powerful tool to divert attention.

The main thing outrage produces nowadays is more outrage.