Amid hasbara letters, and a Holocaust reminder from Seymour Reich, the Times finds room today for a progressive-Christian realist, Andy Whitmore of Kansas City, who largely agrees with the Times editorial of yesterday that said Netanyahu's statements re Palestinian state ring "hollow":
Unfortunately, the American media in the past haven’t leaned hard enough on Israel. That has helped lead to entanglements we have now, and has allowed Israel to box itself into its current strangled (and strangling) situation.
No one has ever asked anything of Israel other than following international law — which now involves torturous removal of illegal settlers from all over the West Bank and possibly civil war. Yet if peace is ever to come to “regular” Israelis, and certainly to the beleaguered Palestinians whose lands have been carved up and served to settlers who care nothing about peace for either Israelis or Palestinians, then the Saudi peace plan from 2002, recently renewed, needs to be vigorously pursued, as you suggest.
What international law? Israel and the US have been dismantling international law for the past 30 years. I am surprised there is not more dismay expressed in the legal community over the immoral enterprise of dismantling international law.
This quote is from Jeff Halper's book: Israel’s manipulation of international law also poses a grave challenge to anyone concerned with achieving a just peace in the Middle East – or anywhere. Recognizing the increased importance of international law in global political life, an Israeli expert in international law, who curiously chose to remain anonymous, made this remarkably candid comment to the Jerusalem Post (Up Front magazine, April 15, 2005, p. 34): International law is the language of the world and it’s more or less the yardstick by which we measure ourselves today. It’s the lingua franca of international organizations. So you have to play the game if you want to be a member of the world community. And the game works like this. As long as you claim you are working within international law and you come up with a reasonable argument as to why what you are doing is within the context of international law, you’re fine. That’s how it goes. This is a very cynical view of how the world works. So, even if you’re being inventive, or even if you’re being a bit radical, as long as you can explain it in that context, most countries will not say you’re a war criminal.
Another Israeli pointed out recently that you can create new precedents in international legality, which then if not challenged become norms. He was talking about attacking civilian areas outside your borders to root out 'terrorists'.
Preventative war with nation states is another area that is smashing international law and was the legal basis for the attack on Iraq and will be the legal basis for an attack on Iran. In the old days, it was a war crime. In other words, there is no international law other than might makes right. And Israel is a free rider on US might. That's why Russia had to follow the old international law of proportionality in its dispute with Georgia and Israel does not have to follow the old law of proportionality in its neighborhood disputes. For the smashingly grave war crime of aggressive war, the US must be the ultimate perpetrator. That is why Iran must be portrayed as a threat to the US, the issue on which AIPAC is lobbying so diligently. In order to establish a patina of legality, even as that legality breaks the old norms of international law anyway. That's how weak the case against Iran is.
There actually is quite a bit, including recently a contingent that went to Gaza and has tried to bring attention to the issue. The MSM does not pick up it up, no matter how illustrious the legal community's voices.
Yes, the difficulty of at what point any set of perceived facts justifies preemptive war is a big loophole left unanswered by the old Christian legal theorists' view of just war, articulated back when you could eyeball invading troops getting ready on the far crest of a hill. The loophole now includes nearly anything you can imagine as a paranoid–even the notion that somebody in another country may be thinking of harming you with nukes (or an anti-semitic knife in the back) 30-70-100 years in the future.
RE: "So, even if you’re being inventive, or even if you’re being a bit radical, as long as you can explain it in that context, most countries will not say you’re a war criminal." MY COMMENT: No doubt Yoo, Bybee, Cheney, Addington etc share this "very cynical view of how the world works".
Israel has been constantly trying to extend its territory since 1948, In 1955, it was stopped from taking over Sinai by Eisnhower. In 1967, it started a pre-emptive war, and took it over anyway. Jimmy Carter persuaded them that they didn't really want even more desert land. Since then, they've been dispossessing the nomadic Bedou from their own claimed territory in the Negev. Just try to remember that Israel is only a shitty little country in the Levant, operated by an eastern European gang of Ashkenazis, who have absolutely no ancestral claim to the land. (but they monopolse the world trade in certain drugs). But that shitty little country has an annual $3 billion poured into it, in arms. They don't need all that, except for aggression.
The full text is a quote btw, I didn't add comments at the end. test html
I read it everywhere, but what did Israel preempt with that war?
I think that's a very important point. And it's pretty much infuriating when you see the media go along with it in real time. Part of it is imposing a narrative, such as the narrative of retaliation against Gaza. Critical minds then consider it excessive retaliation, thus completely buying into the narrative. Another factor is how the legal guys go hunting over precedents everywhere, questionable and criminal actions that someone got away with are used to build a case on: they were allowed to do this, and we aren't? Kosovo for example was very welcome for the latest Lebanon war.