Total number of comments: 31 (since 2009-08-09 18:44:49)
Helena Cobban
Helena Cobban is the owner of Just World Books. She’s been blogging since 2003 at JustWorldNews.org. Her 1984 book The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power, and Politics, was published by Cambridge University Press and is still in print. Her early-1990 study “The PLO and the Intifada” was published in The Middle East Journal (Spring 1990).
Website: http://justworldnews.org
Ah, right, Meron's at ICTY not the ICC. Much of my earlier critique still stands, though. In particular, my critique of the idea that allegedly 'international' tribunals (or any tribunals, in any jurisdiction) can deliver a 'pure', totally unpoliticized form of justice... Plus, my critique of all these international tribunals formed during the years of 'western' dominance of the world system which somehow, mysteriously, never have the many and continuing crimes committed by western and pro-western governments (including Israel), on their docket... There is no equality of nations or responsibilities before the bar of 'international' criminal justice; and absent far-reaching reforms in the world's governance system it is illusory to imagine that there could be.
Actually, to be correct, in Sept 1967 he was the legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and offered this judgment regarding the illegality of Israeli settlements in occupied territories: link to scribd.com.
Interestingly, in many more recent biographies of Judge Meron, his earlier service to the state of Israel has been completely expunged.
Some very interesting aspects to this issue:
(1) Neither the United States nor Israel is actually a 'state party' to the ICC. It is outrageous, therefore, that the Assembly of States Party appointed an Israeli-US jurist to be the president of the court. They were kowtowing, to try to win U.S. support for the court.
(2) Though the U.S. is NOT a party to the Rome Statute (and therefore, handily, its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC!), it has nonetheless tried over a course of many years now to USE the Hague court in furtherance of its own imperial policies in various parts of the world.
(3) Ted Meron himself is a fascinating figure. He was the chief legal counsel of the IDF in 1967-68 (!) But in that period he actually issued an advisory ruling to the IDF, as the occupying power in the OPT's, that the implantation of Israeli settlements in the OPTs was contrary to international law... Regardless of that ruling, the fact that a previous chief legal officer of the IDF was appointed not just a judge but also president of all the judges on the ICC speaks to the extreme political/juridical bankruptcy of the ICC as a 'world' body. (The illusion of all the ICC advocates/supporters in the western liberal glitterati, that any court anywhere could be completely a-political and 'pure' is surely unrobed by that fact?)
What's with "Samarian" hills? Why not say "hills of the northern West Bank"? Anyway, what do Palestinians call these hills?
In re Harry above, I've been arguing since Obama got re-elected that he should visit Jerusalem, as such, and indeed make TWO distinct visits there: One to a significant Israeli place in West Jerusalem and the other to Orient House in East Jerusalem. He should make clear ahead of time that he'll only go to West Jerusalem if it is understood that the visit to East Jerusalem will be conducted only under Palestinian auspices. Plus, in both places, he should speak clearly about the need for the conflict to be resolved on the basis of international law.
Are these legitimate demands to make of him? You bet! How could any decent person argue against any of them?
Certainly, if he were to do this, it could be a game-changer on the order of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. (Sadat, as I recall, also insisted on visiting occupied East Jerusalem in addition to the Knesset-- in his case, it was the Dome of the Rock, and Al-Aqsa.)
Anyway, for my whole argument on this point, check out the archived video of the Pal. Ctr's annual conference on Nov. 9.
No, it's not just Larry Page and Sergy Brin. Google has a HUGE (and imho very threatening) data center just north of Tel Aviv. That's why we should all try to reduce our Google-exposure as much as possible.
Marc, I am very upset by the casual breeziness of your reference here to the ongoing crisis between Turkey and Syria, and inside both countries (especially Syria.) This crisis has already left somewhere around 20,000 Syrians dead and many thousands more gravely wounded-- with many of these casualties caused by the hands of the "opposition", as well as those caused by the Syrian government and its allies. This crisis and the attendant foreign "interventions" have also, like the earlier west-backed "interventions" in Mozambique, Nicaragua, etc, left hundreds of thousands of residents of the targeted country displaced either within or outside their country, and have wrecked a substantial proportion of the country's basic, life-sustaining infrastructure.
Our country has major culpability in this situation, Marc. Do not evade that fact.
What do you mean, therefore, by your glib reference to Syria and Turkey as "mixing it up"? Marc, there is a possibility of deeper, considerably escalated warfare between these two countries, and your language there is too glib by far.
Also, when you say, "No question that the Syrian government is collapsing"-- what is the evidentiary basis on which you build this abrupt conclusion? People in the west have been "predicting" the imminent collapse of the current Syrian government for >18 months now. Syria is NOT, as you claim, "already the next Libya." Luckily, in Syria's case, major portions of the power elites in the NATO powers (including Turkey) have already realized that the idea of using military means-- in addition to the extremely long-drawn-out and actually very damaging imposition of sanctions by the US and its allies-- may be counter-productive for them. So we in the 'west' still have a good chance to avert NATO military action.
Words are powerful tools, Marc. I hope that in the case of a deeply tragic situation like the current one in Syria you might try to deploy yours in a way that is a lot more considered and more compassionate than the way you do here?
Um, Phil, you know how much I admire the vast majority of your work. But the last portion of your PS here doesn't make any sense: "I supported [the US "intervention", = acts of war, in Libya]; and don't regret that support; and sense that there's pro-American feeling in Libya on that basis."
You "sense" that there's pro-American feeling in Libya? Since when was that a scientific method? Also, you "sense" this on the basis that you supported the US war there last year? One of your weakest sets of arguments ever, I'm afraid...
Link for your R. Khalidi smear, Tokyobk? Citation? Either provide good evidence or retract your smear, grovel, and apologize.
No, this is ways than Golda. She claimed that the Palestinians somehow 'forced' the Israeli soldiers to shoot them. (It was never specified how this force was exerted... ) Now, this guy claims that the Palestinians strongly 'desire' to be shot, and the Israeli soldier gives in to their desire-- and this is an example of her 'compassion'.
Lying disinfo and BS. I can't imagine why Remnick published it. His decision to do should be strongly criticized!
Ned, Miko grew up in W. Jerusalem, which was (and remains) THE most thoroughly ethnically cleansed of all the urban areas that came under Israeli rule in 1948. Jewish Israelis from Haifa or the Galilee would have had more contacts with the remnants of the Palestinian population in Israel-- though as in the old US South, this would have been mainly in service or other subservient capacities...
I think it's great that this movement is arising and active in NYC, and that Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans are part of it. In earlier times, Arab-Americans were generally glad to come under the US racial classification of "White" or "Caucasian" (whatever "Caucasian" actually means???) But for the younger generation, it seems fairly clear that the "White" world is going to treat them like people of color... so getting into coalition with all the country's other peoples of color (and "White" allies) seems like a very smart thing to do.
I am also fascinated with this concept of "Desi", which is a cultural identification used by people from both India and Pakistan, that celebrates the many, many threads of their common culture regardless of religious or "national" differences. I wish there were some similar unifying cultural concept that Arabs and Jews in the Middle East could draw on and use. For mizrachi Jews, there certainly is (as shown in the work of Ella Shohat, etc). But for Indians and Pakistanis-- especially perhaps those living in the west-- the concept of Desi culture is extremely powerful, and unifying. And it defies all that divide-and-rule that the Brits used so skillfully in "British" India, for so long.
Godspeed to all flotillastas-- and all Gazans!
Ashkenazic Jewish Israelis have known for a long time (no surprise here) what an overwhelming proportion of their own number have either hung onto their or their foreparents' passports of origin or, since the fall of the Warsaw Pact/Soviet Union, have been able to go back to Poland, Hungary, etc and renew their family's citizenship in those countries.
I was blogging about this in 2009, after my conversation with Yossi Alpher about it...
Which raises some interesting questions. Including (1) the fact that so many Palestinians remain stateless-- i.e. they have zero passports and the protection of zero states in this present, state-dominated world-- while so many Jewish israelis now have two or more?? (2) Israelis love to claim that it's unreasonable for Palestinians to cling to citizenship/property rights from 1, 2, or 3 generations back... But then they themselves are still extremely eager to do so! (3) Among Jewish israelis, it's the Ashkenazis, by and large, who have this privilege and opportunity. Most mizrachim would find it far harder to 'reclaim' the citizenship of their or their foreparents' lands of birth.
But of course, it is also easy for all Jewish israelis (but not for Palestinians) to immigrate to the U.S...
Phil, you and everyone should know that (contra what you write in your headline) these events did not take place at Syria's border with Israel. They took place at the disengagement line between the occupied Syrian Golan and unoccupied Syria. Golan is NOOOOOT Israel! (Even though, as with occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, the Israeli Knesset passed an annexation bill years ago-- i this case, 1981. But that has zero weight under international law.)
Phil, have you ever lived in a country wracked by war? I have. I lived in Lebanon for the first six years of the civil war there, and could tell you so many stories... Bottom line: War is by its nature anti-humanitarian, and any act of warfare that's justified on the grounds that it's being undertaken "for humanitarian reasons" nonetheless ends up inflicting an amount of harm on civilian populations that's greater than what they would have suffered had there been no war.
There are myriad other ways that atrocities can be prevented or, if already underway, suppressed. In the present case, many respected leaders from African Union countries, Turkey, etc were, after the passage of UNSCR 1970, actively preparing urgent missions to negotiate a peaceful resolution between Qadhdhafi and the Libyan insurrectionaries that would, presumably, have included the introduction of monitors and other measures to ensure no further atrocities would be committed by either side. (And both sides have committed them.) But the western countries "intervened" with enormous haste to launch acts of war instead.
War is also, by its nature, quite unpredictable. How will this one end? We absolutely cannot tell. But it is almost certain that it will not end well for the Libyan people...
Did you read what I blogged about this Saturday?
Why could you not have have supported concerted action by non-Libyan governments to help Libya's people resolve their own differences through peaceful means? I truly can't understand how you imagine the military attacks by western nations has any chance of making things better.
Thanks to MJ for finding the New York mag piece on Breindel! This is deep inside it, from the account of Breindel's time at Harvard: "He was mysterious," says classmate Philip Weiss, who writes for the New York Observer. "He was sophisticated, he had a private life, he had girlfriends. And he had people who loved him. There were many people who were fiercely attached to him."
Hey, Phil, we think you're sophisticated! You have people who love you, and are fiercely attached to you!
Noah Feldman, aged about 13 years old, got to write and impose a whole new constitution for occupied Iraq! He must ipso facto be a brilliant guy, right? (not.)
And look at the guy's ridiculous, childish bragging as reported in the description of the Minow/Su/Feldman discussion linked to in the main post here: "there are established forms of legal thought that are not accessible to general reasoning." Gimme a break!
Phil, your "some of the people here must be the children of refugees..." Well, duh. First of all, "children of refugees" are themselves refugees. And their children, and their children's children. People don't lose their claim to place, home, or nationality by being forced to be born away from them. Second, a majority of Jordanians are Palestinians-- a majority of the people you meet are probably Palestinians. Talk to them. Ask them their family stories? Even if your Arabic is not so hot, for the majority of them their English is probably pretty good. Tell us much more about them.
Oh, wow. She is so beautiful in every single way.
OverweAning-- maybe they were weaned too early? Or taken off too many different forms of milk, not only maternal??
Hey don't forget Tom Toles in the WaPo, including today, and archived... and of course the matchless Ann Telnaes.
I think the fact that so many of the cartoonists "get" it is really significant at the level of the general culture. (Thank G-d Herb Block retired a few yrs ago.)
"How do we make sure the Turks keep in their lane?" Oh boy, those uppity nigras are at it again... (I wonder if he has any idea how colonialist he sounds?)
Phil, I think going "crazy" is the wrong word to describe what Israel's assault on Gaza did to Erdogan (and others.) A sudden breakthrough to sanity and real clarity and understanding would be more like it?
(Also, not kind to people with mental impairments.)
Ethics????
(That's all I want to say but the software rejected my comment as 'too short.')
Many, many Israelis living in West Jerusalem are very proud of the fact that they live in "Arab houses", which have considerable cachet-- and are well-built. I blogged about this in 2006, here: link to justworldnews.org
Interesting. I deeply admire Amira.
But let's look at some more asymmetries here. When will we see a reporter from a Palestinian newspaper getting to ask the first question at a news conference given in Israel by a high-ranking Palestinian-American Senator?
No, Potsherd, if you read Ilan Pappe it's clear the ethnic cleansing started in November '47-- right after the passage of the partition resolution but before the end of the Mandate; and that it included ethnic cleansing actions in areas the partition resn designated for the Arab state in Palestine. It was deliberate from the get-go and from long before the 'war' actually started at all.
Hey, quit messing with my heritage, will you?
When i was at an English boarding school we had 'spotted dick' and 'boiled baby' as desserts. Both were steamed suet puddings. SD had currants (or 'sultanas', ha!) in it; BB had generic bright red jam that would come pouring out as you cut into the pallid, grey-colored suet pudding.
Wonderfully descriptive names.
And for breakfast there was a porridge that the girls used to call "boiled STs." (Don't even ask, if you don't know what that stands for.)
Bronner also 'reports' this: “Rioters hurl rocks, Molotov cocktails and burning tires at defense forces and the security fence,” the military said in a statement when asked why it had taken to arresting village leaders in the middle of the night ... but he makes ZERO atempt to authenticate that claim.
I've been at Bil'in, and seen Palestinian boys and youths throwing stones, sometimes with slingshots. I've never seen either 'rocks', Molotovs, or burning tires being thrown. Don't you think if they had ever been thrown, the IOF would have video footage to prove it?
Bronner really needs to start acting as (fact-sensitive) reporter, rather than just a govt stenographer.
On the role that the Z=R debate has played in interntional politics, I find it really helpful to remember that the concept of "race" (and thus by extensionalso "racism") is constructed quite differently in the US than in other English-speaking countries. In the US, "race" is function almost wholly of skin color-- no doubt because the US's historical issues regarding complexion-based discrimination, mass enslavement, etc. In all or nearly all other English-speaking countries, "race" is construed more or less along the lines of nationality or what the Americans call ethnicity". Hence, growing up in England, I certainly thought the French constituted a different "race" than ours.
The effect of this in international politics is that when some people argue that Zionism is racism, mainly because of the ethnic/religious discrimination inherent in the whole Zionist movement, Americans hearing that say "No! Zionism has nothing to do with skin color, and any suggestion that it does is clearly motivated by anti-Semitism!" ... Back in the heyday of this argument in the 1970s, the international Zionist movement hurried to try to prove this by importing lots of black-complected Jews from Ethiopia into Israel and then rolling them out to "prove"-- to Americans-- that Zionism is NOT racist...
So in any discussion of this issue, it is always helpful to take a step back and ask people who're arguing one side or the other what it is they think that actually constitutes racism.