As readers of this blog know, Roger Cohen is not a wise man. His latest column in the New York Times gives further evidence of this.
Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought - even open debate - on the process without end that is the peace search.
Continue reading ‘Roger Cohen And Wishful Thinking, Part 974′
Here’s my latest piece for AJC’s Reality Check on Iran’s nuclear program, in the light of the regime’s announcement that it will be enriching uranium to 20 per cent. Included is an extended interview with French UN Ambassador Gérard Araud, who just assumed the Presidency of the UN Security Council.
By way of Engage, I came across this excellent interview with Moishe Postone which I commend it to your attention. I have a quibble though and it’s about the very first thing he says:
It is true that the Israeli government uses the charge of anti-semitism to shield it from criticisms.
Continue reading ‘Moishe Postone, Antisemitism And Star Trek’
I received an e-mail circular from B’Tselem today about Israel’s policies towards Gaza. The first substantial argument offered is this:
“The siege of Gaza is causing enormous suffering among innocents, and it’s hard to see how that deprivation can be justified,” said Uri Zaki, B’Tselem’s USA Director. “International law, as well as basic human and Israeli values, demands that Israel do its utmost to address its legitimate security concerns without inflicting unnecessary harm to the civilians of Gaza. The current policy doesn’t come close to meeting that standard.” Gazans’ rights to minimal standards of food security, shelter, health, education and to travel are protected under international law. These needs should not be held hostage to security and political issues.
Soccer Dad points us to this fine essay by the Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher which demonstrates why Operation Cast Lead was a just war justly fought. Among the pertinent points Kasher makes:
 |
The Tehran Symphony Orchestra has been wending its way around Europe performing a piece nauseatingly entitled “Peace and Friendship Symphony,” by Majid Entezami, and described - in a brilliant piece by Michael Kimmelman - as “a four-movement jeremiad of martial bombast and almost unfathomable incompetence and silliness.” As Kimmelman points out, protests did greet the orchestra in certain cities, but I’m not aware of Naomi Klein, Brian Eno, John Pilger or any other minor radical celebrity urging a boycott.
The repellent George Galloway turned up in Boston this week, raising money for Hamas. Via Solomonia, a video of the crowd greeting him.
Commenting on Human Rights Watch’s criticisms of the Jordanian government for stripping nearly 3,000 Palestinians of their citizenship, Elder of Ziyon makes the following observation: “…every Arab country is equally wrong by refusing to grant citizenship to people of Palestinian origin born in their countries - who now number in the millions. Not only is the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness being violated, but also the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Read it all.
“Anthony ‘Genius’ Julius, 39, is not a divorce lawyer but a specialist in media law, acting for Robert Maxwell and once employed by the Daily Mail. His background could not be further from the upper-class world inhabited by his opposite number. He is a Jewish intellectual and Labour supporter and less likely to feel restrained by considerations of fair play.” So wrote a reporter on The Daily Telegraph during the divorce proceedings between Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Read more from Anthony about the antisemitism which can surface in England’s elite here.
1
Yesterday I reviewed Bridget Kevane’s ignorant and ill-intentioned attempt to besmirch the memory Jacobo of Timerman. Today I’m going to take a look at her hatchet job on Argentina in general and its current ambassador it Washington in particular, a text in which she gets in a few final swipes at Timmerman along the way.
1.
Many readers will be familiar with the name of the Argentine journalist and publisher Jacobo Timerman. Kidnapped and tortured by agents of the 1976-1983 dictatorship, he was eventually allowed to leave for Israel where he wrote a book, Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number that was to become a classic account of the horrors of military rule in Argentina.
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff have a piece here in which they assess Operation Cast Lead a year after its conclusion. They acknowledge that,
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) penetrated to the heart of the strip — the center of Gaza City, where most of Hamas’s major compounds are located. The organization’s defensive infrastructure, which had been painstakingly built over three years and included hundreds of booby-trapped houses, tunnels, landmines, and smuggled anti-tank rockets, was destroyed.
Hamas fighters had no answer for the IDF’s technological and military edge. Their attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers failed and, though Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, only a few civilians were killed. More than a year after the fighting, the strip is still under siege by both Israel and Egypt. Most Gazans are forbidden from traveling abroad, while their supply of goods depends primarily on smuggling through tunnels from Egypt.
This article by Richard Landes is cross-posted from Augean Stables.
Judge Richard Goldstone spoke yesterday at Yale in the framework of the George Herbert Walker Bush Jr. Lecture in International Relations. Obviously a most prestigious platform for someone of stature, but inappropriate for a figure who is not only highly controversial, but has done much to marginalize himself, as Noah Pollak and Adam Yoffie pointed out the previous day in the Yale Daily.
Continue reading ‘The Coke-Lite of International Law: Goldstone Speaks at Yale’
This is a guest post by Modernity.
Stanley Kubrick’s marvellous film Spartacus was the inspiration behind the “I am Seismic Shock” campaign
This web Web phenomena, courtesy of the Streisand effect, was started to highlight how inappropriate it was for the British Police to visit a blogger and intimidate him into deleting one of his blogs.
Please take a copy and embed it in your blogs, as a reminder that the Police should not be involved in legitimate political criticism and discourse on the Internet.
This is piece by Kenneth Bandler of AJC is cross-posted from JTA.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is not likely to take a seat at the U.N. Security Council’s horseshoe table, but the Hezbollah terrorist organization he has led since 1992 now has a toehold inside the world body’s most prestigious room.
Continue reading ‘Hezbollah gains a toehold inside U.N. Security Council’
Subscribe to the Z Word blog via RSS - click on the orange button below. For more information on using RSS, please read this helpful guide.
