Sublime

Arafat knew he could get Israel to overreact, first by electing a more hawkish prime minister to replace the dovish Ehud Barak,

Although the Palestinian demand for the destruction of Israel and the transfer of its Jewish population—as articulated in its covenant—is far less compelling from a moral perspective than the complaints of other stateless and occupied people, such as the Tibetans, the Kurds, and the Basques, the PLO’s resort to global terrorism has leapfrogged Pale

Criminal lawyers, not surprisingly, are increasingly drawing on brain images supposedly showing a biological defect that “made” their clients commit murder.

Only Alan Blinder, once a Fed vice chairman and a former Princeton colleague of Bernanke’s, defended the Fed. Blinder told this tale:

First, the state of Israel did not come into existence at the expense of either the Arabs or the Palestinians. The area partitioned for a Jewish state had a Jewish majority that had a right to self-determination vis-à-vis the British (and the Ottomans before them). The land in question was neither Arab nor Palestinian. It had passed from one empire

For many, the bare arithmetic was enough: more Palestinians than Israelis were dead, and that fact alone proved that Israel was the villain. Ignored was the fact that although “only” 810 Israelis were killed (as of June 2003), Palestinian terrorists had attempted to kill thousands more and had failed only because Israeli authorities had thwarted “a

Not wishing Israel to establish itself as the central address for world Jewry, the American Jewish Committee believed that the Eichmann trial should not be held in Israel; some of its members even met with Golda Meir to emphasize their displeasure at the prospect. Infuriating the Israeli officials, AJC leaders charged that trying Eichmann in Jerusa