Righteous ridicule

Via

Another fan of collective punishment

Jonah Goldberg:

We’ve been maintaining an embargo against Cuba for half a century. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the supposed voices of peace and sanity argued for “giving the sanctions time to work” and “keeping Iraq in the box” — the “box” being a stiff sanctions regime. What was so great about the sanctions against South Africa if they too were a form of collective punishment?

Only one blockade is deemed indefensibly beyond the pale: Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Why? Because it imposes “collective punishment.” The U.N. Human Rights Council, which rarely finds time to condemn the barbaric practices of its own members, routinely denounces the blockade as a crime against humanity.

So what if Gaza can't import coriander?

I get it, but there's a double standard when it comes to so-called collective punishment. It's OK to impose sanctions on South Africa for apartheid but it's not OK to impose them on Gaza--or for that matter Iraq.

Maybe it's not a good strategy; it certainly doesn't deliver fast results: The UN first voted for sanctions against SA in 1962. Of course, many western nations talked a good game when it came to opposing apartheid, but they continued trading with her. And the whole Iraqi Oil for Food thing undermined the sanctions imposed on Iraq after Gulf War I. And that's before we discovered how corrupt the program was.

I should say that it's not a good strategy if it's not effectively deployed. If the UN imposes sanctions on South Africa and no one follows the sanctions, not much is going to happen. And if the UN imposes sanctions on Iraq and then gives Saddam a loophole you could drive a truck through, Saddam will remain in power.

But the Union blockade of the Confederacy worked very well. Probably because Lincoln didn't make an exception for peace activists from the North to breach the blockade.

Collective punishment--whether it be in the form of blockades, embargoes, boycotts or sieges--is supposed to bleed a population--or a leader or a party--white. So that they cry uncle and agree to stop doing whatever it is you want them to stop doing. Allowing "peace flotillas" to enter and dispense coriander and flower pots sounds great--harmless really--but it undermines the mission. Israel is basically at war with Hamas and the blockade is a form of economic warfare.

Not surprising

IDF: 'World duped by Hamas death count.'

While the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose death toll figures have been widely cited, reports that 895 Gaza civilians were killed in the fighting, amounting to more than two-thirds of all fatalities, the IDF figures shown to the Post on Sunday put the civilian death toll at no higher than a third of the total.

The international community had been given a vastly distorted impression of the death toll because of "false reporting" by Hamas, said Col. Moshe Levi, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), which compiled the IDF figures.

Via David Hazony.

Hoist by his own petard

Fourteen resign from Carter center over book.

Board member Steve] Berman, who emerged as the resignation campaign spokesman, answered one question before it was asked. "It's fair to say," he said in an interview, that "most" of the people he contacted about the book were Jewish, as were the signatories of the resignation letter. "But that wasn't a subject that came up in our discussion."

He and the others who signed Thursday's letter say Carter went too far. "The thing that really disenchanted all of us--it broke our hearts--was to see the president abandon his traditional position of mediator, promoter of peace and honest broker [to become] an advocate for one side of the conflict."

I hate to break it to you, Steve, but Carter abandoned "his traditional position of mediator, promoter of peace and honest broker" a long time ago. In fact, it could be argued that he's always been an advocate for one side of the conflict. Still, better late than never.

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