Alan Dershowitz: Israel’s Policy Is Perfectly ‘Proportionate’
Israel’s actions in Gaza are justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its self-defense against terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality.
Since Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, Hamas has fired thousands of rockets designed to kill civilians into southern Israel. The residents of Sderot — which have borne the brunt of the attacks — have approximately 15 seconds from launch time to run into a shelter. Although deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime, terrorists firing at Sderot are so proud of their actions that they sign their weapons.
Noah Pollak: Hamas’ Extracurricular Activities
Noah Pollak of Commentary Magazine has a few words regarding the feckless media coverage of the events taking place in Gaza, which Michael J. Totten correctly refers to as Journalistic Malpractice:
Allow me to propose a metric for evaluating whether a journalist is behaving responsibly or not: If he reports that Israel bombed a UN school and killed 30 civilians, he is irresponsible. If he reports that Hamas used a UN school as a weapons cache and base of operations for launching mortars at the IDF, and the IDF’s return fire killed the Hamas cell along, tragically, with a yet-unspecified number of civilians, then he is behaving responsibly. If he wishes to be particularly scrupulous, he might additionally note that Hamas had rigged the school with explosives which detonated after the IDF took out the mortar team, killing a large additional number of civilians. And he might add that you can go to the IDF’s Youtube channel to view footage from 2007 of Hamas using the very same school as a mortar-launching base.
Journalists who abjure reporting the vital details of this story should be called what they are — activists masquerading as reporters.
Indeed.
Melanie Phillips: Refugees from whom?
So let’s get our head round this: Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel fled from other Palestinians committed to the destruction of Israel into Israel, which is providing them with sanctuary and medical treatment, while the president of their putative state who bases his claim against Israel on its alleged refusal to admit Palestinian ‘refugees’ refused to allow actual Palestinian refugees fleeing Palestinian violence access to that same putative state, while Israel agonises over whether to grant them permanent asylum. Surreal, or what?
Victor Davis Hanson: Upside-Down Politics in the Middle East
Western liberals seek to downplay the Islamic roots of terrorism and engage in dialogue with authoritarian regimes and movements. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern dissidents find themselves in an odd, if not embarrassing marriage of sorts with the conservative Bush administration on the need to identify and confront the causes and abettors of intolerance and terror.
What explains such strange political alliances?
Modern liberals – fearful of offending non-Westerners – have almost become more like old-time conservatives in their “live and let live” politics and neo-isolationism.
In contrast, some conservatives have gradually drifted away from their past realpolitik and easy detente with illiberal regimes.
Such an about-face did not start with George Bush and his now maligned neo-con advisers. It was evident earlier with Ronald Reagan. He rejected detente with the Soviet Union and instead championed religious and political dissidents, calling for the end of, not tolerance of, the tyranny of the Soviet “evil empire.”
Liberals, on the other hand, have embraced multiculturalism often in guilt and as a reaction against past purported Western chauvinism. We are not supposed to judge different religions and foreign cultures by imposing our own arbitrary standards of morality.
But the end result of multiculturalism in the real world is an insidious relativism. So Jimmy Carter turns a blind eye to Hamas’ street executions. Gordon Brown fears offending radical Muslims, and Nancy Pelosi flies to embrace Syrian President and terrorist enabler Bashar al-Assad.
Victor Davis Hanson: Our Enemy’s Attrition
The majority opinion is that the occupation in Iraq has been so bungled that the blowback has ruined American efforts at promoting positive change throughout the Middle East.
Perhaps. But for all the justifiable criticism of the Iraqi reconstruction, two truths still remain — the United States is taking an enormous toll on jihadists, and despite the terrible cost in blood and treasure, has not given up on a constitutional government in Iraq.
The Sunni front-line states, who subsidized jihadists and still enjoy our misery in Iraq, are now terrified that these killers, in league with the Iranians, will turn on them. The net result is not just that some Sunnis are helping us in Iraq, but that they are being urged to for the first time by those in the Arab world, who would prefer to see the Iraqi government, rather than the terrorists, succeed. And if Iraq is still a terrible disappointment, Kurdistan is emerging as a success few envisioned, refuting some conventional wisdom about the incompatibility of capitalism and constitutional government with Middle Eastern Islam.
Victor Davis Hanson: More Middle East Madness
“The Palestinian people will never forgive the Hamas gangs for looting the home of the Palestinian people’s great leader, Yasser Arafat.” So Palestinian Authority spokesman Abdel Rahman recently exclaimed. “This crime will remain a stain of disgrace on the forehead of Hamas and its despicable gangs.”
Looting? Crime? Despicable gangs?
Excuse me. For years, Palestinian Authority-sanctioned gangs shot and tortured dissidents, glorified suicide bombing against Israel and in general thwarted any hopes of various “peace processes.”
Of course, this kind of behavior isn’t limited to the Palestinian territories but is spread across the Middle East. The soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy in Iran is grotesque. Iraqis continue to discover innovative ways to extinguish each other. Syria assassinates democratic reformers in Lebanon. ABC News now reports that new teams of al Qaeda and Taliban suicide bombers have been ordered to the United States and Europe from Afghanistan.
Barry Rubin: Folded hands, closed eyes
Consider Palestinian politics, always illustrative of these principles. The new theory is that Fatah, chastened by defeat in the Gaza Strip, will be more moderate and seek peace. Consequently, even if nothing changes in its program or behavior it should be rewarded lavishly as a Western client. And that’s the saner Western reaction; the even worse alternative is to embrace Hamas.
But even the pro-Fatah strategy disregards a lot: the group’s continued disinterest in reform, its weak leadership, incitement and tolerance of anti-Israel terror, its factionalism, corruption, mistreatment of its own people, and much more.
Bret Stephens: Who Killed Palestine?
And make no mistake: No matter how much diplomatic, military and financial oxygen is pumped into Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, it’s oxygen flowing to a corpse. Palestine has always been a notional place, a field of dreams belonging only to those who know how to keep it. Israelis have held on to their state because they were able to develop the political, military and economic institutions that a state requires to survive, beginning with its monopoly on the use of legitimate force. In its nearly 14 years as an autonomous entity, the PA has succeeded in none of that, despite being on the receiving end of unprecedented international goodwill and largesse.
