Author Archive | David Bernstein

We hear a lot about how much Arabs resent early 20th century “Western imperialism,” but tend to forget that the (decidedly non-Arab) Ottoman Turks ruled the Arabs (including South Syria, the area that became Mandatory Palestine after WWI) for hundreds of years. Via lgf, Mark Steyn relates that fact to contemporary Arab states’ reaction to […]

Reader Victor Steinbok writes: A Financial Times piece has a couple of interesting contradictions that are worth noting. “Lebanon’s Hizbollah movement on Thursday denied that a massive Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut had hit any of its leaders.” vs. “The Shia fundamentalist group took reporters on a visit to its devastated stronghold […]

The left-wing blogosphere is abuzz over a clip from Bill O’Reilly’s radio show Tuesday night where he has some rather harsh, and hyperbolic, words about the Jewish left, basically stating that the Jewish left (first he says “liberals”, then “far left”) supports, or at least are apologists for, anti-American and anti-Israel terrorism. I’ve gotten some […]

SSRN has posted my Washington U. Law Quarterly article Lochner v. New York: A Centennial Retrospective. Immodestly, I’ll claim this as the most comprehensive look at the Lochner case to date. Among other things, the article makes two particular contributions to the literature: First, it establishes without a doubt that the sixty-hours law at issue […]

UPDATE: My bad, I didn’t notice the date (Nov. 2003) on the article, which was just emailed to me. A reader reports in the comments that “Review membership in last year’s incoming editor class had roughly the same male/female proportion as the HLS class as a whole. There are currently no affirmative action proposals pending.” […]

To hear ABA officials tell it, all the ABA’s accreditation officials are looking for with regard to law school equal opportunity and diversity is a good faith effort. And the ABA, according to them, never abuses its power by threatening to deny accreditation to a law school simply because it hasn’t met some arbitrary goal, […]

It’s the first I’ve heard of this, but so says this article in ynetnews: The first signal came on Monday, 5 December, when during a dinner with the Benarroch family, Zapatero and wife began claiming what Vidal Quadras, member of the European Parliament, described on the radio as “a tirade of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism”. By […]

Last night (Israel time), the IAF dropped 23 tons of bombs on a bunker thought to be hiding Party of God (Hezbollah) leader Nasrallah and other top Party of God terrorists. The bunker was completely destroyed, Party of God’s t.v. station claims that neither Nasrallah nor any other top leader (or even member) was killed, […]

A question from a reader prompts the following rhetorical question: how much of the sympathy that Hezbollah is receiving from the far Left would dissipate if the media referred to “Hezbollah” by its English translation “Party of God,” the way it refers to Israel’s “Mafdal” party as the “National Religious Party?” The fact that the […]

Many bloggers [just do a Technorati search for “Christian areas” and “Lebanon” if you’re doubtful] have criticized Israel for allegedly attacking Christian villages in Lebanon. Many argue that they would support Israel if the attacks were limited to Hezbollah strongholds, but that attacking Christian villages seems not just wrong, but counter-productive. My own assessment was […]

My posts on the war have been rather detached, but here’s a personal one. My sister-in-law and her family live in Petach Tikvah, near Tel Aviv. She’s a worrier, in general, and not surprisingly she is very worried about Hizbollah missles making their way South. She’s also concerned that her husband, a medic in the […]

Supporters of Israel are often accused of paranoia when they claim that the New York Times tends to be hostile to Israel. Hmm. Check out this piece, written by Chris Hedges, who was New York Times Middle East bureau chief from the late 90s to the early 2000s. After equating the “extremists” in Hamas and […]

A ridiculous euhpemism. For an explanation, click below. Examples of other ridiculous euphemisms are welcome in the comments. (show) Boston Globe: Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Massachusetts’ largest real estate firm with more than 3,500 agents, is coaching agents on how to persuade clients to list their homes at an asking price that undercuts those of […]

Browing around the blogosphere recently, I’ve noticed that critics of Israel consistently repeat various versions of the following talking point (promoting by false propaganda emanating from sources such as this one): “what do you expect from the Palestinians? Israeli occupation impoverished them, and desperate, hungry people can only be expected to take desperate measures.” The […]

A reader alerts me to a piece in the Washington Post by Glenn Frankel on the Israel lobby, via this email: I know you made a series of posts about W&M’s paper on the Israel lobby. I commented on a few of your threads (as David in DC). At least one of the posters asked, […]