Israel's actions are lawful and commendable

Israel's military actions in Gaza are entirely justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its act of self-defense against international terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality. Israel's actions certainly satisfy that principles.

When Barack Obama visited the city of Sderot this summer, he saw the same things that I had seen during my visit on March 20 of this year. Over the last four years, Palestinian terrorists - in particular, Hamas and Islamic Jihad - have fired more than two thousand rockets at this civilian area, which is home to mostly poor and working-class people. The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others hit their targets, killing more than a dozen civilians since 2001, including in February 2008 a father of four who had been studying at the local university. These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children.

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Israel's entry ban of Richard Falk

Imagine the UN appointing David Duke to report on how Blacks are victimizing whites, or Hugo Chavez to report on American foreign policy, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred.

Well the UN has done something comparable by appointing Richard Falk as its supposedly impartial "rapporteur" on Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories. For those of you who don't know who Richard Falk is, he is a notorious crackpot who believes that the United States is hiding the truth about 9/11, implying that our government has "complicity" in that terrorist attack and that its role "taints the legitimacy of the American government" which he has characterized as "fascist." His rants have become fodder for conspiracy nuts all over the world who claim that America and Israel orchestrated the attacks. 

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Questions for Walt and Mearsheimer

Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer have been invited to speak at Hebrew University. They will continue to pedal their bigoted drivel about the iron grip, the Jewish lobby - which they call the "Israel Lobby," in capital letters - holds over American foreign policy. They will claim, as they did in their previous writings, that Israel's birth was an original sin and crime, that Israel holds the moral low ground, and that if the cause of Israel were in any way deserving of American support, it would not need a lobby. They don't make similar claims about the powerful Saudi lobby or the numerous other lobbies that have been part of America since the days of Thomas Jefferson. If just causes did not need lobbies, then it would follow that the causes of civil rights, civil liberties, gay rights, environmental rights, the rights of the elderly, etc. would all be unjust since each of them has high-powered and effective lobbies. 

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Hamas has declared war on Israel - how should Israel respond?

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter guarantees its members "the inherent right to...individual self defense" against "an armed attack." In January 2006, Hamas was elected to govern the Palestinian Authority. After Israel ended its occupation of Gaza and removed all of its settlers, Hamas threw the Palestinian Authority out of the Gaza and assumed de facto as well as de jure control over the entire Gaza Strip. Its leaders then instructed its military wing to direct rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel. At first these rockets were Kassams with a relatively short range. Now they include Katyushas, which can reach Israel's large cities, including Ashkelon, with its population of 120,000 civilians. Hamas has officially declared that its policy is to develop or smuggle even longer range missiles capable of reaching Israel's largest city Tel Aviv and its lifeblood, Ben Gurion Airport. It has promised to keep aiming its missiles at civilian targets until the Jewish state is finally destroyed.

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