Columns

For Israel, the prime inheritor of Genesis, an expanding global chaos portends a very unusual, and also ironic, kind of fragility. A relentlessly beleaguered microstate, and always the individual Jew writ large, Israel could become the principal victim of international disorder. In view of the exceptionally far-reaching interrelatedness of all world politics, this could be true even if the actual precipitating events of war and terror would occur elsewhere.

Full gas in neutral. With nearly built-in enmity on the part of the U.S. to the most basic Israeli positions regarding Jerusalem, it is no wonder our efforts to keep Jerusalem continue to run up against so many obstacles.

Continuing turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa signals important and potentially catastrophic transformations. For Israel, the greatest danger stems from the interpenetrating and largely unpredictable effects of war, terrorism and revolution in the region. In essence, these plainly destabilizing effects could spawn an unprecedented and historically unique kind of chaos.

I am a professor of international law. In my columns, therefore, I focus from time to time on distinctly legal aspects of Israel's foreign relations. Nonetheless, I am always deeply attentive to examining these particular aspects within a genuinely realistic geopolitical or geostrategic context.

Next month the Palestinian Authority is planning to seek United Nations recognition of its unilateral declaration of statehood.

The Islamic Waqf rests not in its efforts to rub out all Jewish connections to Jerusalem - so how can we even consider relaxing our efforts to keep the Holy City Jewish?

When on October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian surprise attacks came dangerously close to jeopardizing Israel's survival, it was because of a monumental intelligence failure. Similarly, on January 18, 1991, the scream of air-raid sirens could be heard in every corner of Israel. The Iraqi Scuds that slammed through Tel Aviv and Haifa neighborhoods had caught the country, in the words of a former Israeli intelligence chief, "with its pants down." In the latter case, the only element that saved Israel was Iraq's notably ineffectual warheads. If they had not been so ineffectual, Israel could have suffered profoundly, if not existentially.

Israel's persisting legal obligation to abrogate the Oslo Accords, as we have seen, stemmed from certain peremptory expectations of international law. Israel, however, also has substantial rights of abrogation here that bind its behavior apart from any such expectations. These particular rights derive from the basic doctrine of Rebus sic stantibus.

Who caused Israel's housing shortage? The Left. That sounds demagogic, but here's the reason why:

It's a well-known cliche that Jerusalem is "holy to the three main religions" - and in truth, it is not surprising. After all, the city was first holy to the Jews - and so it was inevitable that the rest of the world would ultimately jump on the bandwagon.

The explicit application of codified restrictions of the laws of war to noninternational-armed conflicts dates back only as far as the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Recalling, however, that more than treaties and conventions comprise the laws of war, it is also clear that the obligations of jus in bello (justice in war) comprise part of "the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations," and bind all categories of belligerents. Indeed, the Hague Convention IV of 1907 declares, in broad terms, that in the absence of a precisely published set of guidelines in humanitarian international law concerning "unforeseen cases," the preconventional sources of international law govern all belligerency.

The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO have always been in violation of international law. Israel, therefore, has always been obligated to abrogate these non-treaty agreements. A comparable argument could be made regarding PLO/PA obligations, but this would make little jurisprudential sense in light of that non-state party's antecedent incapacity to enter into any equal legal arrangement with Israel.

When the recent spontaneous protests against the arrests of Rabbis Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef gave way to official spin, the provocative initiators from the Attorney General's office likely breathed a sigh of relief. Once again, the "enemy" had painted himself into a patently irrelevant corner, and the partisan justice system - growing public disgust with it notwithstanding - remained the only show in town.

Many unanswered questions remain surrounding the fire that broke out in the Jerusalem Forest on Sunday, burning 40 acres and sending four people to the hospital.

At the end of April 2011, the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas reached a formal reconciliation and unification agreement. At that time, Hamas leader Mahmoud Azhar carefully noted the still-unchanged Hamas platform - "no recognition of Israel, and no negotiation." To be sure, this refractory position will become the de jure and/or de facto position of Fatah as well.

Approximately a year ago, Rabbi Dov Lior, venerated chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, gave his approbation on a book about the Jewish laws of war, The King's Torah, written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira. Among other issues, the book deals with the legal ramifications of the Israeli army taking action to kill terrorists even when enemy civilians may also be killed in the process.

In the farthest reaches of northeastern India, a long-lost community is about to fulfill its age-old dream of returning to its ancient homeland, the land of Israel.

After suffering anyenemy nuclear aggression, Israel wouldcertainly respond with a nuclear retaliatory strike. Although nothing is publicly known about Israel's precise targeting doctrine, such a reprisal would most likely be launched against the aggressor's capital city, and/or against similarly high-value urban targets. Understandably, there would be no assurances, in response to this sort of plainly genocidal aggression, that Israel would in any way limit itself to striking back against exclusively military targets.

Israel has taken a significant step this week toward enhancing the Jewish national character of the country. The Cabinet voted to appoint a ministerial committee to approve a uniform Hebrew naming system - not Arabic, not English - for all Jewish locations in the country.

In Israel, a core disagreement has emerged between Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon and former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan.

Author's Note: The following article was originally in these pages in February 2000. It is being reprinted now because President Obama has recently advanced a "Two-State Solution" that utterly ignores the irremediable core impediment to real peace in the Middle East. This impediment was, and still remains, the far-reaching and fundamentally doctrinal Islamic hatred of Jews.

It is true that support for Israel is very high among American voters. In fact, a poll of earlier this month showed that 56 percent of voters say they support Israel, compared to 10 percent who say they support the PA.

Even with Osama bin Laden gone, al Qaeda operatives, some actively collaborating with more-or-less kindred groups, are planning terror attacks against the United States. These attacks could conceivably involve chemical and/or biological weapons.

This month marks the 44th anniversary of one of the most momentous miracles of modern times, when Israel, facing annihilation at the hands of its enemies, emerged triumphant in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Mr. President, the "Two-State" approach to peace between Israel and Palestine, strongly reaffirmed in your recent meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, accepts the position of an Israeli occupation. Yet even the most cursory look at pertinent world history would reveal several compelling reasons to reject any such position. Organized Arab terrorism against Israel began on the very first hour of Israel's independence, in May 1948. Indeed, virulent anti-Jewish terrorism in the British Mandate period had even taken place many years before Israel's statehood.

President Obama's recent remarks on Israel and the 1967 lines garnered wide attention both for what he said - most notably, that Israel must remain the same size it was before 1967 - and for what he should have said, but did not - that the Palestinian refugees are an Arab problem, not Israel's.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Soon, even the more "moderate" Palestinian forces will re-start their carefully choreographed terror attacks against Israel. Simultaneously, more or less, Hamas- even as it proceeds to a presumably formal rapprochement with Fatah - will do the same. In Lebanon, Shiite Hizbullah, steadily mentored and lavishly re-supplied by Iran, and operationally allied with Sunni Hamas, has already initiated massive preparations for the next war.

Adam Smith published his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. A revolutionary book, Wealth did not aim to support the interests of any one particular class, but rather the overall well being of an entire nation. He sought, as every American high school student learns, "an invisible hand," whereby "the private interests and passions of men" will lead to "that which is most agreeable to the interest of a whole society."

Osama bin Laden was assassinated by U.S. Special Forces on May 1, 2011. Although media emphasis thus far has been focused almost entirely on the pertinent operational and political issues surrounding this "high value" killing, there are also important jurisprudential aspects to the case that require similar attention. Whether or not killing Osama was a genuinely purposeful assassination from a strategic perspective, a question that will be debated for years to come, we should now also inquire: Was it legal?

I never really cared for Tony Kushner. To bestow an honorary award to a notorious Israel critic, especially by academia, is nothing new. Honorary awards and Nobel Peace Prizes seem to be increasingly synonymous with, at best, meaningless efforts, and, at worst, anti-Semitism as a prerequisite for the recipient.