Kozmik, "Actually, LBJ was always against black civil rights in the South. " is completely untrue. LBJ had many faults. His life long support for black civil rights was not one of them. In the 1950's as Senate Majority Leader he managed to get Congress to pass the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Most / perhaps all historians agree that no one else but this power broker could have done it. There had been many earlier tries, but the solidity of southern opposition had always triumphed before. I recommend Caro's hardly sympathetic multivolume biography e.g. his Master of the Senate for perspective. Saying that LBJ is famous for his fears of black civil rights "losing the south" misses the point. He signed civil rights legislation accurately predicting that this act would lose the South for his party. It is hard not to see this as to his credit. It is very easy nowadays to underestimate and forget the fanatical and insane but widespread oppostion to civil rights back then. A mass movement, some sympathetic politicians and many years were what it took to overcome it. The actions of everyone back then have to be judged in terms of the real situation they confronted, not just abstract right and wrong.

Posted at January 22, 2008 1:07 PM in response to Clinton, Obama, MLK: Leadership for Change?

No, Abdul's bringing up some forgotten history is well worthwhile. The Arabs have basically accepted the two-state solution since the aftermath of the 1973 war, and even before that, the Arab states (Egypt and Jordan, with quiet Syrian approval) had offered peace treaties to Israel in 1971 and afterward, but were rather insultingly rebuffed by Israel, which came under strong American criticism for their rejection of the Jarring initiative and later diplomatic efforts. (see Rabin's memoirs). (Or Finkelstein's Image and Reality, or Saadia Touval's Peace Brokers for the Jarring Initiative.) The recent Abdullah initiative goes beyond the earlier offers, but the real change in the Arab position came much earlier.

The 1967 Israeli cabinet decision is worth knowing about too, and is quite laudable, but its meaning is hard to assess. Contrary to your statement, it said nothing about the West Bank and was only directed at Egypt and Syria. Most historians think it was never actually made to the Arabs. The offer was communicated to the US, which was never told that it was to communicate it to the Arabs; Egyptian and Syrian archives have been searched fruitlessly by their former Foreign Ministers who had never heard of it at the time. See Shlaim's Iron Wall.

Israel is being asked to give up tangible things it has no right to, and in return would get peace. The same kind of criticisms were made in Israel of the Camp David treaties, by idiots like Golda Meir and Ariel Sharon. Begin was intelligent enough to not listen to them, which is why his premiership is still generally well-regarded by Israelis. When was the last time Israel and Egypt fought a war, with thousands of Israeli casualties? The ones who don't care rationally about dead Israelis are the ones who are too ignorant and stupid to accept a generous and rational peace offer like the Arab peace initiative.

Posted at August 4, 2007 4:53 PM in response to Israel: Never Missing An Opportunity to Miss An Opportunity?

Well, there's Bertrand Russell's old observation that the main economic function of the modern press is the promotion of war, whose accuracy is borne out nowadays, as usual. Along with this is the fact that concentration of the media has reached the level that they themselves can be major military contractors - GE/NBC. Popularity is often not enough to fight such interests - look at Phil Donahue losing his popular, highly rated show for not being sufficiently part of the militarist streaming media during the runup to the Great Patriotic War against the Saddamites.

Posted at February 17, 2007 9:51 PM in response to Mainstream Media and Democrats

"The major wars were clearly not initiated by Israel" is astonishing to see coming from an intelligent and reasonably unbiased person. There is not the slightest question that the 1956 and 1982 wars were planned wars of Israeli aggression. For the first, for instance, Eisenhower very prominently on US national television, right before his re-election called this "armed attack" on Egypt by the three powers including Israel an "act of aggression". These two wars, at least, were definitely initiated by Israel against "enemies" that desired more peaceful relations with it, and who, unlike Israel, were not at all trying to provoke a war. Concerning that other thread a while ago, a point I was trying to make was that the Geneva Conventions do provide for prosecution of individuals (as much as they can) and that since 1996 in the US, they no longer need enabling legislation in the US. (The UN charter was ruled a long time ago to not create by itself any enforceable rights in the US.) I agree with your ambivalent attitude about the ICC,on the one hand, a good thing, on the other likely to be just used politically against the usual suspects.

Posted at February 4, 2007 7:45 PM in response to Is Another Holocaust Inevitable?

Howard, your view of international law is not standard, and pretty much misses the divide between classical and modern international law. First, the Kellogg-Briand Pact is still valid international law, and considered as such by the US, but is not referred to much because it has been basically superseded by the UN charter. (It was of course used at Nuremberg.) There is not and never has been any debate that the UN charter makes war, even more, the "use or threat of force", illegal, with exceptions: (individual and collective) self-defense, UNSC action, or humanitarian intervention, rather than just "encourag[ing] the use of the UN for conflict resolution and discourag[ing] war." What nations invariably do is claim they are acting under one of the exceptions. The question is whether this is true or not, whether one say agree with a straight face. IMHO and the opinion of the great majority of international law experts, the US's claimed justifications are clearly insufficient, and the war in Iraq is illegal. There is little doubt that if it came somehow to the ICJ that it would be called illegal by an overwhelming vote. Whether or not a matter is brought before the UNSC is besides the point. Actions outside the UNSC include the UNGA acting under a "Uniting for Peace Resolution" This isn't in the charter, but is accepted international law. The purpose is to bypass a Security Council veto. (It was invented by the US to continue the prosecution of the Korean War after the Soviets came back to the UNSC.) George Bush et al, are personally prosecutable under international and US laws for their actions. For one, the Geneva Conventions grant universal jurisdiction over individuals committing grave breaches, so any nation would be within their legal rights to try him for any US violations in Iraq. In particular, the conventions have been incorporated into US law by the War Crimes Act of 1996, so he and others could be prosecuted here under it.

Posted at February 1, 2007 7:14 AM in response to From New Republic: Preparing for War With Iran

The US gave Israel de facto diplomatic recognition a few minutes after it declared independence. The SU topped it by giving de jure recognition (stronger) a couple days later, which the US equalled only a few months later. So which was first depends on how you mean "endorse." Both had voted for GA 181, the UN partition plan, a few months earlier. You are right that the founding was not a US inspired phenomenon, but US support was very important, probably crucial. Soviet support was less important but probably crucial too.

Posted at January 29, 2007 8:57 PM in response to Israel's Isolation

Regarding 425, you are misreading it. It set up UNIFIL to assist the Lebanese government in returning effective authority, not ensuring or demanding that this project would succeed, nor asking the Lebanese government to do anything. Nobody but Israel is asked to do anything by this resolution. SC 1614 is different, and your arguments make a lot more sense if you refer to it rather than 425. The latter does call upon Lebanon to do something - to extend its authority to the south.

Posted at July 18, 2006 10:03 AM in response to Will Bush Provide Middle East Crisis Management?

Zionista, you helpfully provided a link to SC 425, which created UNIFIL, and which was a response to the 1978 "Operation Litani" invasion of Lebanon. As anyone can check, it was not a "multilateral UN resolution" like SC 242. The only party which is called upon to do anything is Israel. Your argument thus makes no sense.

Posted at July 17, 2006 11:24 AM in response to Will Bush Provide Middle East Crisis Management?

Mr Berkowitz, your statement that "the UN Charter does not prohibit wars that are not brought before the Security Council. In the absence of a Security Council action, the matter, rational or not, defaults to national law" is quite wrong. It is not merely the case, as Transhuman says, that most international law experts would disagree.  All would disagree.  The charter is clear about this.  The only other real way war can be legal is self-defense against an "armed attack." (There have been recent efforts to justify "humanitarian intervention", an idea more in line with Jentleson's main post, but that is not too relevant here, and is of lesser importance and legitimacy.  It is more important to understand the basics.)  The 2 ways that the US and its "coalition" justify the Iraq war are in line with this - it is argued that old SC resolutions justify the war and that it is a case of (collective, anticipatory) self-defense.  Nobody argues as you suggest.  States always at least pretend to be following international law - they do not just formally deny the existence of the most basic part of the UN charter.  That's not how they play the game.

Posted at June 27, 2006 4:00 PM in response to How Sacrosanct State Sovereignty?

No, what Israel recognized when it signed Oslo was that the PLO was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO on the other hand recognized Israel more or less in the normal way states recognize eachother. This is a typical assymmetry. We have already gone through a long period of greater Palestinian concession with lesser Israeli reciprocation. A Hamas position of you recognize us and we will recognize you is, unlike Oslo, the normal way these things are done. Tit for tat works. One can argue that historically Israel has behaved so irrationally and self-destructively aggressively that a strange period of Oslo psychotherapy was necessary for it - before it the Israeli public was much more opposed to a feasible and rational 2 state solution, but now, been there, done that. I am sure that Hamas would be equally willing to scrupulously abide by Oslo if Israel were, say, willing to abide by the Geneva Conventions, a far more important treaty. Which would necessitate the immediate abandonment of all the settlements, and the immediate trial of everyone who had planned them, as they are clear, serious war crimes, (punishable by death under US law if Americans had done it) but I doubt Hamas & the PA would press their clear legal right that far.

The supposed empty rhetoric by Arafat amounted to relinquishment of claims to 78% of pre-1948 Palestine - hardly chopped liver. This is the true - and remarkably -"generous offer" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, without it Israel does not have clear title to the land within the Green Line. If Israel had accepted it over thirty years ago, the conflict could have ended then. As declassified cabinet documentation from that period has shown, Israel's leaders thought the offers then were genuine and would probably lead to peace, they just wanted to commit some grand larceny - "we think we can get a little more." On the other hand Sharon et al's recognition of a right to a "state" on much less than the West Bank is accompanied by statements like - "if they want to call it a state they can call it a state, if they want to call it fried chicken, they can too."

Posted at May 14, 2006 12:06 AM in response to Israel/Palestine: From the Quartet Meeting to Olmert's Washington Visit