israeli-palestine conflict

The doctrine of deterrence has taken a beating. Few doubt that Israel can strike back at Gaza in a very powerful way, and yet that wasn’t enough to stop the attacks. I am still trying to digest this one.

The deepest insight for understanding the lenses people use to understand the world comes from @KlingBlog in his superb, concise book, The Three Languages of Politics. Simple idea. Liberals see the world as a struggle between oppressor and oppressed. Conservatives see the 1/

Overall, Israel, like all countries, has committed some crimes and many mistakes. But it has offered more opportunities to the Palestinians than the Palestinian leaders have. And it has proven less tyrannical than any of its Arab neighbors would be if they’d had the same military might and were subjected to the same 75 years of constant existential... See more

Hillary Clinton on the Israelis and the Palestinians today on The View. Covers everything from Hamas to humanitarian pauses to Yasser Arafat to Anwar Sadat.

It’s amazing how perfectly this conflict encapsulates the spiritual deficit of modernity, how every action may only be taken if it is in compliance with the ‘opinion of the world’, and how both sides only exist still because the mustered the support of actual kinetic powers by making those powers feel sorry for them or ethically appeased by helping... See more