Roundup

Here are a bunch of interesting links I've come across, offered as a service should anyone need any of them in the future. My apologies for not remembering who deserves hat tips for what.

Robert L. Pollock describes mass indoctrination in Turkey. Long live pure hatred.

The Economist reports on AlJazeera, and note the description of a big conference hosted by the station where everyone rejected Israel's right to exist. Across the board.

Do you ever get the feeling the international-law-brigade is pulling wool over your eyes, and that the only constant is that what Israel does is illegal? It turns out that the laws of engagement at sea are actually clear and agreed upon. Ed Morgan, a Canadian law professor, tells about them, and how Israel's actions seem pretty clearly to have been legal. (Don't tell this at the Guardian).

Apropos international law and wool over the eyes: the canard about how Israel still occupies Gaza even though it doesn't gets discussed by David Bernstein (another law professor) at the Volokh Conspiracy. The subject is bleak, but his treatment of it is light, and the comments below the line are actually fun.No, of course Israel doesn't occupy Gaza, and yes, of course the other side will continue to claim it is for ever.

Walter Russel Mead, who is growing on me the more I read him, takes a sober look at the Israel-Palestine conflict. No, there's no happy ending, sadly.

Finally, to top off all this gloom despair, despondency, desolation, dejection and gloom, here's a very nice Jewish story by Victor (who sometimes calls himself Avigdor. Victor is probably his Jewish name, and Avigdor is his Bible-Belt name).