He says exactly what I was thinking: Israel necessarily gives up tangible assets (land) for promises of peace. Israel is willing to do only if her government trusts the U.S. When President Obama ignores promises made to Ariel Sharon by Obama’s predecessor in exchange for withdrawal from Gaza–that American policy started from the premise that […]
Archive | Israel
A Lesson for Israel Advocates from the OBL Reaction
The nonsense spewing from the various usual suspects–the European left, left-wing NGOs, leftist international law experts [update: here’s an excellent example from an Israeli commentator]–regarding the takedown of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces should provide an important lesson for advocates of Israel. The hostility emanating to Israel emanating from these sources is not, primarily, […]
Human Rights Watch (and Amnesty International) on Goldstone Retraction
By David Bernstein on April 6, 2011 8:17 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Israel
As I noted a few days ago, Justice Richard Goldstone wrote a Washington Post op-ed last week in which he states that contrary to the implications of his eponymous report, Israel did not deliberately target civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Human Rights Watch contributed heavily to the content of the Goldstone Report, and […]
HRW Defends Shawan Jabarin
By David Bernstein on February 21, 2011 8:01 am in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Israel
Last week, I noted that Human Rights Watch had appointed Shawan Jabarin to its Middle East Advisory Board. Jabarin runs a Palestinian human rights NGO based in the West Bank. He also has been found in a series of Israeli Supreme Court opinions to secretly lead a double life as a top official of the […]
New York Times (?) on “Jewish Voice for Peace”
As regular readers know, I’m often critical of the New York Times’ reporting on various matters. But this morning, the ninth most popular article on the New York Times website, about the hard-leftist “Jewish Voice for Peace,” is not even a Times piece, but reprinted from a local San Francisco online startup called the Bay […]
Likud versus the Neocons
I’ve pointed out several times before that contrary to mythology created by leftists (e.g., Juan Cole) and paleoconservatives who dislike both right-of-center Israelis and American neoconservatives, the latter are not “Likudniks” and the former are not “neocons.” [“Short and sweet, the Likud is not neoconservative, and neoconservative foreign policy, while pro-Israel and hawkish, is otherwise […]
Saudis and Other Arab States Want U.S. to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Program
So say documents leaked by Wikileaks. This shouldn’t be very surprising, but over the last several years I’ve seen many, many commentators (update: as has Jeffrey Goldberg) claiming that the only parties plugging for U.S. military action against Iran are Israel and its American “Likudnik” supporters. [Update: Omri Ceren provides some examples of “experts” who […]
Is Israel Behind the Stuxnet Cyberattack on Iran?
I’m going to leave it to Co-Conspirator Stewart and other cybersecurity legal experts to discuss the legal issues, but regarding the recent Stuxnet worm that Iran reports infected its computers and, we are told, particularly its nuclear program, the New York Times says … Experts dissecting the computer worm suspected of being aimed at Iran’s […]
Greenwald: Israel has a “Higher Standard of Living” than the U.S.
Glenn Greenwald, in the midst of a typically ridiculous, over-the-top [update: and false in its underlying premise] screed about American policy toward Israel, writes (emphases mine): In other words, Cantor wants American citizens to sacrifice in the extreme, to lose all sorts of benefits and security in the name of austerity, but wants to shield […]
“Rape by Deception” Turns Out to be a Plea Bargain
A few weeks ago, Israeli newspapers reported that an Arab man had been convicted of “rape by deception” after having intercourse with a Jewish woman while pretending to be a Jew. Various blogs ran with the story. The more sober blogs noted that the crime of rape by deception was established as a crime in […]
Interesting Freedom of Religion Case from Israel
Jerusalem Post: The Jerusalem District Labor Court last week rejected a temporary appeal by a Muslim teacher at a private Christian school to allow her to continue working after she decided to wear a hijab in class after teaching without one for 27 years. Essentially, the court rule that as a private Christian school that […]
Tony Judt, Israel Expert
A certain group of aging and mostly otherwise irrelevant academics have reinvented themselves as prophetic critics of Israel, despite a lack of real knowledge of the relevant subject matter. Mearsheimer and Walt are two; Tony Judt, whose academic specialty is European history, is another. Judt has a rather predictable op-ed in today’s Times, replete with […]
Genetic Evidence Shows Common Origins of Jews
N.Y. Times: Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, even though each community also carries genes from other sources — usually the country in which it lives. That is the conclusion of two new genetic […]
More on Israeli Incompetence
As readers know, I am sympathetic to Israel, especially when compared with its vile enemies like Hamas and Hezbollah, and that’s reflected in my blog posts. But it’s frustrating, because the Israeli government has proven to be so incompetent [beyond the general standard of incompetence one can expect from any government]. This is to a […]
“Free Gaza” Activists’ Version of the Ship Incident
A bunch of eyewitness accounts are collected here. Various left-wing blogs are trumpeting these accounts as contradicting the Israeli account, but there are actually more commonalities, or at least more important commonalities, than differences. The commonalities: (1) Ship passengers armed themselves with makeshift weapons to prevent the Israeli navy from boarding. Israel claims that these […]