Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Useful Links

Jeffrey Goldberg last week got it all wrong when he blogged about Israel's potential loss of democracy. I was offline, however, and didn't find the time to respond. In the meantime, Victor has done a good job at it.

The Military Attorney General (MAG) of the IDF has posted some information about naval blockades in international law and the application of the laws to Israel's blockade of Gaza. Knowing how lawyers operate there will be inevitably be some who disagree, just like there are those who disagree that Israel has left Gaza, or has claims to Jerusalem, or any of the usual things. Still, it's good to see this material online.

If you thought George Kennan finally died, in 2005, well, apparently not. Werner Scholem, however is long dead - but worthy of a quick moment of memory.

3 comments:

Barry Meislin said...

Goldberg is increasingly pathetic.

Won some brownie points with his pal, Andrew Sullivan, though.

And the Lieberman=Putin line will make him quite popular with the usual suspects.

More on Lieberman=Putin...

http://www.nationalreview.com/david-pryce-jones/255991/civilianization-communism

Silke said...

what I minded most of all about Goldberg's post was this:
"either you do as I say or you'll be punished"

that's how one talks to children ...

Y. Ben-David said...

When the Jewish/Israeli Left talk about supporting "democracy" that means making sure they are in power, and if they say "democracy is in danger" it means there is a danger they will be out of power. They have taken the label of "democracy" for themselves and all the other political forces in the country, i.e. Russian olim, Orthodox/religious, Sefardi workers are viewed as a "danger to democracy", also called "populism" which is a curse word in Israel.
This is similar to when the USSR was around and the Communist Party said its being in power was the same as the "proletariat being in power" or there being a "workers state".

Actually, if you read Jewish Leftist/Progressive thinking now, there is a big effort being made in trying to figure out how to get Israel to make withdrawals and other policies AGAINST the will of the public and for constantly decrying the Knesset (a popularly elected parliament) as getting in the way of the Progressive agenda. That is why they are now demanding that Obama impose a "peace" agreement on Israel.

I have suggested that the policies that the losers of the US Civil War followed in order to prevent "unqualified" people there from voting and that involved instituting literacy tests or imposing poll taxes. That kept the undesirables away from the polling booths!