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Yes, UN Security Council Resolution 242 Is Legally Binding on Israel

Yes, UN Security Council Resolution 242 Is Legally Binding on Israel

by | Apr 3, 2024 |

On March 14, Lex Fridman published a debate he hosted that pitted Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani against Benny Morris and Steven Bonnell (a.k.a. “Destiny”) on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Norman Finkelstein is an American scholar well known for his work on the conflict, and Benny Morris is a renowned Israeli historian whose work is the subject of my short e-book Benny Morris’s Untenable Denial of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

I was unfamiliar with Rabbani before watching this debate and was impressed with his knowledge and eloquence. I was also unfamiliar with “Destiny”, a popular video streamer who first became widely known streaming gaming videos and later got into political commentary. At numerous points during the debate, Finkelstein appropriately called out Bonnell for displaying only a pretense of knowledge while repeatedly failing to get his facts straight and to produce valid arguments.

Watch the full debate below (a full transcript is conveniently available here):

The team of Finkelstein and Rabbani fairly well tromped Morris and Bonnell by calling out their factual and logical errors, and there’s much that I could say about the debate, but for the sake of time, for the moment, I want to highlight a particular false claim made by Bonnell.

read more…

The Israel Lobby Ain’t Shy

by | Apr 3, 2024 |

They are lots of things, but not that.

Members of Congress’ far-left “Squad” who have championed Palestinians in the Middle East conflict are in danger of losing their seats in Democratic primaries.

The efforts to remove Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York have gained momentum with an influx of money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its political arm, the United Democracy Project.

AIPAC-connected organizations are expected to spend up to $100 million this election cycle, mainly on House races. That is four times the $26 million the United Democracy Project spent in the 2022 election cycle.

“We evaluate candidates from both parties on one criterion alone — their support for the US-Israel relationship,” AIPAC said in a statement to The Washington Times.

In Minnesota, former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels said AIPAC’s support would boost his chance of winning a rematch with Rep. Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of Israel who has been criticized for antisemitic rhetoric.

“It’s going to be a different race,” he told The Forward of increased support of pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC.

And Another Thing

by | Apr 3, 2024 |

One reason I object to Israel’s behavior is that it brings anti-Semitic creeps out of the woodwork. Thanks a lot, Israel.

Production Precedes Distribution

Production Precedes Distribution

by | Apr 2, 2024 |

The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of employment, not its increase. It is because we have become increasingly wealthy as a nation that we have been able to virtually eliminate child labor, to remove the necessity of work for many of the aged and to make it unnecessary for millions of women to take jobs. A much smaller proportion of the American population needs to work than that, say, of China or of Russia. The real question is not whether there will be 50,000,000 or 60,000,000 jobs in America in 1950, but how much shall we produce, and what, in consequence, will be our standard of living?
The problem of distribution, on which all the stress is being put today, is after all more easily solved the more there is to distribute.
We can clarify our thinking if we put our chief emphasis where it belongs—on policies that will maximize production.
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson

Is Israel Our Ally?

by | Apr 2, 2024 |

While I was sleeping, did “our representatives” in the U.S. Senate ratify an alliance treaty with Israel, complete with a NATO-style Article 5, obligating us to defend Israel if attacked?

Haaretz: IDF Bombed Aid Convoy on Approved Route

by | Apr 2, 2024 |

Haaretz has more details on IDF drone strikes that killed seven international aid workers on Monday night.

The victims included two US-Canadian dual-national Palestinians and five citizens of Australia, Poland and the UK. (Edit: World Central Kitchen – the NGO that employed the aid workers – has since identified those killed and clarified their nationalities: one US-Canadian, a local Palestinian, three UK nationals and citizens of Australia and Poland.)

Per IDF sources cited by the newspaper, Israeli forces had approved the convoy’s route, but suddenly realized a single “terrorist“ was present and had to be executed immediately. A Hermes 450 drone proceeded to methodically bomb all three vehicles in the convoy, one after another, killing all of its passengers.

They did not include the nameless “terrorist.“ He remains at large, “ostensibly armed.“

Israel Gives Cover to Anti-Semites

by | Apr 2, 2024 |

Israel identifies itself as the Jewish state and claims to represent “the Jewish people” everywhere, not only Jewish Israelis. Thus Israel’s atrocious treatment of the Muslim and Christian Palestinians at least tacitly encourages the anti-Semites, who are eager to point to anything they can describe as bad acts committed by “the Jewish people.” The Jewish state equals the Jewish people — that’s what they’ve been told. (It’s not true.)

In other words, Israel’s own definition of itself and its own treatment of the Palestinians ratify the anti-Semites’ crazy ideas about the malevolence and collective guilt of all Jewish people. The anti-Semites are encouraged to ignore the super-large number of Jewish people outside of Israel who vociferously oppose both Israel’s self-identification and its oppression of the Palestinians.

Israel then makes matters worse by conflating the rotten but fringe anti-Semitism it encourages with sincere anti-Zionism (principled opposition to Israel and by implication any ethno-state). That in turn gives cover to the crazy anti-Semites, who can hide in plain sight among the anti-Zionists, Jews included.

Israel encourages and then protects the anti-Semites!

You’d think that would be a bad thing. And it is. So why do Israel’s leaders and supporters make it happen?

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