Just a couple of lines to recommend a lecture on the question of proportionality in war by Professor Jeff McMahan of Rutgers University. It’s worth the full hour and twenty four minutes of your time but in case you need a couple of teasers to tempt you I’ll throw you these; he thinks that certain classes of Israeli and Palestinian civilians are not entitled to complain if they are harmed by enemy action and that the idea of proportionality in unjust wars makes no sense. I found the lecture here.
Archive for October, 2009
A friend of mine in Warsaw emailed me earlier today with the sad news that Marek Edelman (zichrono livracha) - the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising - has passed away at the age of ninety.
In 1942, Edelman was one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) which united Bundists, Zionists, communists and others to confront the Nazi threat. The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto the following year was the first act of mass civilian resistance in Nazi-occupied Poland - a salient fact that should be remembered by those who portray the victims of the Holocaust as having passively accepted their fate.
Continue reading ‘Marek Edelman z”l: Hero of the Warsaw Ghetto’
We’re no nearer to seeing any of the Iranian suspects wanted for the AMIA massacre in custody but some progress is being made towards making some of the Argentines responsible for obstructing the original investigation answer for their actions.
There appear to be two developments worthy of note from the direct talks in Geneva between Iran and the P5 along with Germany. First, the announcement that IAEA inspectors will visit the newly uncovered Qom enrichment facility, according to the EU’s Javier Solana, “in the next couple of weeks.” Second, that US Undersecretary of State William J. Burns held a 30 minute private discussion with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Where now from this point?
The great Norman Geras, says that,
… Arab and Palestinian collaboration with Nazism has no bearing on what the Palestinians lost or what they have suffered because of Israel’s creation. To maintain the contrary is to make every Palestinian responsible for Haj Amin al Husseini. It is also to treat the existence of Israel as a form of punishment - punishment on account of Husseini and other Arabs who were complicit with Nazism.
