Gerald Steinberg, the head of right-wing propaganda outlet NGO Monitor, is not happy about George Soros' recent $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch: In accepting a huge grant from George Soros, Human Rights Watch has spurned the public advice (and warning) offered nearly a year ago by its founder Robert Bernstein. Rather than grapple with the serious...
I am in Israel this week on a nationwide tour with Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders from Los Angeles to examine in detail the current state of Israeli-Palestinian relations. We have heard from Arab and Jewish members of the Knesset, visited hot spots along the Green Line, toured holy sites together, spoken with journalists who report from both sides...
Someone should tell Mr. Netanyahu that he is supposed to wait until after the inquiry to announce its predetermined findings: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Monday's cabinet meeting that the main goal of the Gaza flotilla probe is to prove to the world that the Israel Navy operation on the Gaza-bound aid ship was...
The Jerusalem Post reports that the Turkish government, in collaboration with Hamas, is considering applying to the International Court of Justice over the Gaza Flotilla incident. The agreement to work together against Israel reportedly came in a Thursday telephone conversation between Turkey's justice minister, Sadullah Ergin and his Hamas counterpart, Muhammad Faraj Al-Ghoul. As the article points out, it is far from...
A few days ago, I recorded a conversation for Bloggingheads.tv with Mark Leon Goldberg of the invaluable UN Dispatch. It was a wide ranging discussion -- and long, 45 minutes -- covering everything from the Gaza blockade to the definition of aggression to drone attacks. Something tells me, though, that the only thing people will remember is my description of...
Despite the increasingly desperate nature of the attacks on Judge Goldstone, I never thought an academic institution would give in to the hysteria: In response to an enquiry by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) about its reported removal of Judge Richard Goldstone from the Board of Governors, Hebrew University of Jerusalem responded by email that: "The Hebrew University of Jerusalem...
This would be amusing, were the Obama administration not backing Israel's insistence that any investigation into the attack on the flotilla be conducted (read: whitewashed) by Israel itself: When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June...
I'm not about to get into a debate over whether there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza; you either think there is or you don't, and facts won't matter. So I thought I would simply post the following chart from that notorious left-wing propaganda outlet The Economist and let readers judge for themselves whether the blockade is designed solely to...
In addition to saying kind things about me, which I appreciate, Julian noted in his earlier post that Eric Posner has an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal that uses Lincoln's blockade of the Confederate States of America (CSA) to defend the legality of Israel's blockade of Gaza. I find the editorial very unconvincing, for two reasons. First, it provides...
I know that will sound like a provocative question, but it's not meant to be. According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel justifies its interdiction of the "Freedom Flotilla" by reference to Article 67(a) of the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflict at Sea, which permits the attack of neutral merchant vessels that "are believed on reasonable...
I tread warily into the debate over the Israeli commando raid on the Gaza flotilla. There has been no shortage of commentary and reactions abroad (here in the U.S., it seems most folks are unmoved by the whole incident). Of course, most of the facts are hotly disputed and, frankly, will remain hotly disputed. Still, let me start by advising...
Winning Afghani hearts and minds, one dead civilian at a time: In the civilian deaths case, attack helicopters fired missiles and rockets into the convoy on a main road near Khod village, where U.S. Special Forces and Afghan troops were battling militants at the time, a summary of the investigation said. Commanders judged that the convoy contained...
