Why UN Fiat Won’t Turn Terrorists Into Statesmen

Posted on: December 19th, 2012

Terrorism is always a crime under international law.

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For Israel, What Next In The Matter Of Iran? (Third of Three Parts)

Posted on: December 12th, 2012

Sometimes, in complex military calculations, truth is counter-intuitive. In essence, the persuasiveness of Israel's nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis Iran will require prospective enemy perceptions of retaliatory destructiveness at both the low and high ends of the nuclear yield spectrum. Ending nuclear ambiguity at the optimal time could best allow Israel to foster precisely such needed perceptions. This point is very important and possibly overriding.

For Israel, What Next In The Matter Of Iran? (2 of 3)

Posted on: December 5th, 2012

Steadily, Israel is strengthening its plans for ballistic missile defense, most visibly on the Arrow system and also on Iron Dome, a lower-altitude interceptor that is designed to guard against shorter-range rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza.

For Israel, What Next In The Matter Of Iran? (First of Three Parts)

Posted on: November 28th, 2012

Israel's final decision concerning what to do about a nuclear Iran will depend on answers to certain core psychological questions. Is the Iranian adversary rational, valuing national survival more highly than any other preference, or combination of preferences? Or, on even a single occasion, is this enemy more apt to prove itself irrational, thereby choosing to value certain preferences more highly than the country's indispensable physical security?

Resisting War, Terrorism, And Genocide (Third of Three Parts)

Posted on: November 21st, 2012

For the most part, we Jews have always accepted the obligation to ward off disaster as best we can. For the most part, we generally understand that all humans have free will. Saadia Gaon included freedom of will among the most central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that all human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”

Resisting War, Terrorism, And Genocide (Second of Three Parts)

Posted on: November 14th, 2012

Israel, with an understandable desperation, still seeks to discover some discernible correctness and reassuring clarity in the theatre of world politics. However, the polite diplomatic meanings with which it is pressed to "make peace" remain squalid and elusive. Ominously, these meanings continue to seethe menacingly.

Resisting War, Terrorism, And Genocide (First of Three Parts)

Posted on: November 7th, 2012

All things move in the midst of death, even nations and civilizations. From 1948 to the present day, certain of Israel's prime ministers, facing war, terrorism, or even genocide, have been deeply reluctant to admit core national vulnerabilities. Indeed, rather than acknowledge the plainly exterminatory intent and (increasingly) the corollary destructive capacity of determined enemies, these leaders have sometimes opted for (1) so-called terrorist exchanges; 2) utterly inexcusable deals of land for nothing; and (3) endlessly assorted surrenders of power.

Nuclear Posture And Israel’s Survival

Posted on: November 1st, 2012

Nuclear weapons and nuclear war. This is not a new subject for my column in The Jewish Press. What is new is the urgent need to confront, head on, an expanding international movement to eviscerate Israel's nuclear posture – and at precisely the precarious moment when this critical posture should actually be made more visible, and hence, more compelling.

Palestinian Statehood, Terror, and the US Election (Pt. 2)

Posted on: October 24th, 2012

Whenever an insurgent group resorts to openly unjust means, its actions become incontestably terroristic. Even if the ritualistic Palestinian claim of a hostile Israeli "occupation" were somehow reasonable rather than invented, the corresponding right of entitlement to oppose Israel "by any means necessary" would be false.

Palestinian Statehood, Terror, And The U.S. Presidential Election (First of Two Parts)

Posted on: October 17th, 2012

President Obama and Governor Romney strongly disagree on many issues but the daylight between them is especially great in the imminent matter of Palestinian statehood. For his part, the president still believes in a two-state solution, and in a corollary willingness of the Palestinian side to negotiate fairly. His opponent is unambiguous in a fully contrary insistence that the Palestinians are not interested in peace.

The Way It Really Was: George W. Bush Pushed For A Palestinian State

Posted on: October 11th, 2012

Today, conventional wisdom maintains that the George W. Bush administration had been a good friend to Israel and, unlike the Obama administration, had fought mightily against the creation of a Palestinian state. With this “wisdom” in mind, I ask readers to consider the following column of mine that originally appeared in The Jewish Press in August 2007.

Israel, ‘Palestine,’ And The Law Of War (Second of Two Parts)

Posted on: October 4th, 2012

Historically, viewed against the background of extensive and unapologetic terrorist perfidy in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has been innocent of any alleged disproportionality. All combatants, including all insurgents in Gaza and Lebanon, are bound to comply with the law of war of international law.

Israel, ‘Palestine,’ and the Law Of War (First of two parts)

Posted on: September 25th, 2012

For the moment, at least, a state of Palestine does not exist. Historically, of course, such a country has never existed. Nonetheless, current supporters of Palestinian statehood (sometimes Jews as well as Arabs) have discovered substantial practical benefit in persistently referring to Israel and "Palestine" as if there were some existing legal equivalence between them. Indeed, repeated again and again, ritualistically, as if it were an incantation, such propagandistic usage is already transforming "Palestine" into a jurisprudential fait accompli.

What If Israel’s ‘Peace Partners’ Actually Prefer War?

Posted on: September 21st, 2012

At this point in Israel’s problematic diplomatic agenda, there is really only one overriding policy question: Can any form of negotiation with the Palestinians, Fatah and/or Hamas, ever prove reasonable and productive? From the very beginning, even before formal statehood in 1948, Israel has sought courageously and reasonably to negotiate with its many unreasonable enemies. [...]

Markets, Politics, And The True Legacy Of Adam Smith

Posted on: September 13th, 2012

We wonder about the endlessly volatile markets and also (not often enough) about plainly unequal distributions of national wealth, but are the nation’s official policy responses based on correct views of classical economic theory? In particular, what about Adam Smith and his oft-quoted arguments for “free market capitalism”? More than any other classical theorist, Smith has been embraced by conservatives.

Israel, Iran, And The Shiite Apocalypse (Third of Three Parts)

Posted on: July 18th, 2012

The primary point of Israel's nuclear forces must be deterrence ex ante, not preemption or reprisal ex post. If, however, nuclear weapons should ever be introduced into a conflict between Israel and one or more of the several states that still wish to destroy it, some form of nuclear war fighting could ensue.

Israel, Iran, And The Shiite Apocalypse (Second of Three Parts)

Posted on: July 11th, 2012

For Israel, and also its cross-pressured U.S. ally, there would be very difficult problems to solve if an enemy state such as Iran were permitted to go fully nuclear. These problems could lethally undermine the conceptually neat, but probably unrealistic, notion of balanced nuclear deterrence in the region.

Israel, Iran, And The Shiite Apocalypse (First of Three Parts)

Posted on: July 5th, 2012

Finally, after many years of effective disregard, a core irony in the matter of Iranian nuclearization can be acknowledged: For President Ahmadinejad, and also his clerical superiors, any prospect of hastening the Shiite apocalypse – a decidedly “sacred” prospect linked to war with Israel and/or the United States – could be welcomed. Naturally, this religion-driven view of a "terrible beauty" would contrast starkly with senior leadership attitudes in both Jerusalem and Washington. In these plainly more secular circles, of course, any thought of a conscious encouragement for Final Battle must always be rejected.

‘Slaughter The Jews’: Israel, Anti-Semitism, And International Law (Third of Three Parts)

Posted on: June 27th, 2012

The Genocide Convention criminalizes not only various acts of genocide, but also (Article III) conspiracy to commit genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Articles II, III and IV of the Genocide Convention are fully applicable in all cases of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. For the Convention to be invoked, it is sufficient that any one of the state parties call for a meeting, through the United Nations, of all the state parties (Article VIII).

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‘Slaughter The Jews’: Israel, Anti-Semitism, And International Law (Second of Three Parts)

Posted on: June 20th, 2012

Genocide has always been prohibited by international law. In the words of the Genocide Convention, a binding multilateral treaty that codified post-Nuremberg norms and that entered into force in 1951, the sorts of murderous acts long advocated by Arab/Iranian leaders and jihadist terror groups qualify very precisely as criminal. The “moderate” Fatah organization’s June 2009 congress even called openly for the eradication of Israel.