Crossposted from the IDF’s official blog.
Yesterday, Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010, IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, sent to every commander in the IDF a letter in which he expressed his personal thoughts on ethics with regards to several recent incidents that had occurred. This letter was to be read to each and every soldier by the commanders of the IDF, as ordered by Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi.
Below, please find a translation of the letter, whereas the letter itself is originally Hebrew form:
Continue reading ‘The Ethics of the IDF’
Judge Fernando Andreu of Spain’s Audiencia Nacional court is investigating the assassination by Israel of Salah Shehadeh, a leader of Hamas, in 2002. The investigation has been described as “lacking the slightest degree of systematic rigor”, resting on an “opportunist interpretation” of the law and being based on a “conceptual error”.
Continue reading ‘Spanish Shehadeh Investigation “Opportunist”’
El Criador de Gorilas is one of Argentina’s leading political blogs. Its pseudonymous author mainly concerns himself with questions relating to voter behaviour here and the United States but occasionaly ventures further afield. I take the liberty of translating part of his his latest - titled “El Criador Makes Himself Even More Unpopular” - post below, with some minor editing.
Continue reading ‘Gaza and El Criador’
This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman, author of the Warped Mirror blog at the Jerusalem Post
“Israel’s international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army’s behaviour … There were calls for a United Nations-led inquiry into allegations that the Israeli army carried out a massacre and that its soldiers were guilty of war crimes.”
Continue reading ‘Rushing to Judge the IDF’
Grozny, Chechnya, 1995
Gideon Levy is reporting the Gaza conflict from Israel’s Negev region. He is eager to emphasize that the threat posed by the Hamas rocket attacks is overblown (“This is no Second Lebanon War, to judge by a visit to southern Israel Thursday. Life carries on somehow, no cities have been abandoned and so far the fatalities are in single digits”) but that’s not surprising. What struck me is that he apparently didn’t grasp the meaning of the following conversation with two immigrants from the Caucasus who are now in Sderot.
Continue reading ‘Grozny, Gaza and Gideon Levy’
