I obviously can’t vouch for this, and governments and militaries have been known to engage in CYA after botched operations. And Israel lost its chance to thoroughly investigate the ship rioters when it decided to release everyone immediately to placate Turkey. With all that said, the highlights: (1) Some passengers tried to take captive three […]
Archive | Israel
Telling Interview with the Director of Amnesty Israel
Via Avi Bell, here’s a fascinating interview with Itai Epstein, Director of Amnesty International in Israel. The interviewer asks some fairly sharp questions, and he gets answers filled with addled logic that amount to, “Whatever Israel does, Amnesty is still going to say it was acting illegally/violating human rights.” Here’s an excerpt (but read the […]
Let Turkey Have Gaza
Turkey’s Islamist government, not known for its compassion to, say, Kurds in Turkey, has been shedding crocodile tears over Gaza for several years now, and helped instigate the flotilla fiasco. So I have a modest proposal: if Turkey is so concerned with the welfare of Gazans, why not let Turkey run the place. Israel doesn’t […]
Greenwald and Gaza
Since Glenn Greenwald is showing up on MSNBC and elsewhere, as an “expert” on Israel and Gaza, this is as good a time as any to recall his record with regard to the last major Hamas-Israel blowup, the Gaza incursion in 2008-09. Greenwald consistently accused Israel of a “disproportionate” (and therefore illegal under international law) […]
Pollak on Uniquely Israeli Stupidity
Noah Pollak: Those who sent an elite unit into a hostile confrontation armed with toy weapons made an incredibly stupid decision. And a uniquely Israeli one. In recent memory, Israeli military action has been violent but not decisive, bloody enough to provoke the outrage and condemnation of the world (at this point, a stubbed toe […]
Pro-Palestinian “Peace Activists”
Incredibly (and stupidly), Israeli officials believed the protesters’ claims that they were mere humanitarian peace activists with no violent intent (in fairness to both Israel and the protesters, it appears that the violent passengers were on only one of six boats). An embedded reporter with YNet News sets the scene: Officials estimated that passengers will […]
Gaza Blockade Violence News You May Have Missed
Reading the news this morning, I got a big dose of he said/she said, with Israeli spokesmen claiming that its naval personnel were attacked with clubs and knives, perhaps even live fire, from one of the “peace activist” boats, and spokesmen for the blockade runners claiming, for example to the New York Times, that they […]
Jews, Liberalism, Nationalism–Some Interesting Historical Continuities
Ted Bromund has this interesting follow up to the Noah Pollak piece I linked to Wednesday: The problem today is not that the peace process has failed or that this reveals the failure of the liberal vision. All that is true enough. The problem is that the liberal vision itself has changed. Not all liberals […]
Peter Beinart–Trite
Peter Beinart has written a scathing indictment of organized American Jewry’s “conservative” views on Israel. He claims that “right-wing” Israeli policies, combined with American Jewish groups’ unflinching support for Israel, are alienating young American Jews, and reducing their attachment to Israel. Beinart’s essay has received a remarkable amount of attention, especially considering that its underlying […]
The Palestinian Authority and the ICC
My Opinio Juris co-blogger, Julian Ku, has posted up a note on submissions recently made to the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office on the question of ICC jurisdiction: Last year, the Palestinian National Authority filed a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. This declaration is controversial, to say the least, because it […]
The Sound of Crickets Chirping
So the New Republic published the most thorough critique to date of Human Rights Watch’s record on Israel this week. Contrary to its typical belligerency, HRW has not responded [beyond this tepid and largely unresponsive letter to TNR from a co-chair of HRW’s Middle East advisory committee, who is not an employee of HRW, but […]
Some “Realism” About John Mearsheimer
I understand that John Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby, was once considered a respected “realist” scholar of international affairs. If so, it’s a shame he’s gone more and more off the deep end into the Mondoweiss/Finkelstein–two individuals he identifies as Jewish heroes, along with such prominent foreign policy “realists” (not) as Noam Chomsky and […]
Birnbaum on Human Rights Watch and Israel
Benjamin Birnbaum’s investigative piece for The New Republic on Human Rights Watch and Israel is now up. The piece mentions, but does not dwell on, the various scandals that engulfed HRW last year—the fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia in which HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson invoked the organization’s hostility to Israel and the […]
Forthcoming TNR Piece on Human Rights Watch
Word on the street is that the next issue of The New Republic will have an extensive investigative article on Human Rights Watch and its hostility to Israel, written by young journalist named Ben Birnbaum. On cue, Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss–a Nation Institute sponsored anti-Israel and often anti-Jewish blog (really, how many “introspective” posts by […]
More on “What if the Palestinians Don’t Want a State?”
Yesterday, I wondered whether the Obama Administration has pondered whether the Palestinians are at this point willing to accept a state based on the formula that “everyone knows” is the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A Palestinian state in all of Gaza, and 90%+ of the West Bank, plus land swaps to make up for […]