Dear Tom (7)
You are right in a way about the phantom status of international law. There is obviously a common tendency is to regard the issues and provisions of international law as mere legalisms that do not impact “facts on the ground”; yet when adduced against the Israeli brief, they are suddenly transformed into legalities. One can’t have it both ways. This is the essential point. If the concept of international law is to have any meaning at all, if its dispensations are understood to be valid and to apply in all circumstances, and if we intend to be consistent as moral agents and political actors, then we have no option but to accept the conclusion that Israel is not an “occupying power,” that the territories in question are its legitimate possession, and that it has every right to dispose of these lands as it sees fit. If we reject this conclusion, not to put too fine a point on it, we are merely cynics wedded to the politics of expediency or temporizers divorced from the dictates of conscience. Cosi fan tutte, perhaps; nevertheless, it remains a scandal. To reiterate, international law is international law; it cannot be applied unevenly or preferentially without damaging or abrogating the very concept itself. It must be bluntly said that the anti-Israeli consensus concerning the Territories and the Golan is tantamount to the annulment of the principle of law, to revoking what is supposed to be imprescriptible. But Israel is not the only victim of such chicanery; the convention of international law is equally damaged, if not vitiated. So, I concede, you are probably right.
And Paul (6), there is some truth to what you say, except for the fact that I’m not wearing rose-coloured glasses. I grew up in ultramontane Quebec where antisemitism was in the air one breathed, and to this day I bear the facial scars from some of the ambushes that were prepared for this Jewish kid walking to school. Nothing even remotely similar ever happened to me during my various sojourns in Greece from 1967 to 2001, not even verbally. As for the history of antisemitism in Greece, yes, it’s not a very pretty sight, but when compared to the phenomenon in a host of other countries (which I need not mention), I’d take it anytime.
David
