Qifa Nabki has decided to touch the third rail of Lebanese politics (or at least one of them): the status of Palestinian refugees, who make up somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the population of Lebanon. He discusses the arguments against tawteen, or the naturalization of Palestinians, and finds them wanting.

To add to the discussion, I’ve decided to do a series of posts discussing refugees, one of which will explore the arguments for naturalization (and not just for ameliorating conditions, which most people seem to support, or at least in the abstract). That post will probably have to wait until this weekend or even next week, but in the meantime, I’d like to address some of the comments made in Qifa Nabki’s post reflecting the Israeli perspective and give an outline of the basic issues surrounding the politics of the refugees.

One Israeli commenter states,

The Palestinians in Lebanon, whether naturalized or not, have forfeited any claim to their former homes. Furthermore, the only way they will return to their “homes” is literally over my dead body. Zionism is about building a Jewish state and it is a cause I am willing to sacrifice much for including giving my life. There has to be one place on earth where a Jew does not need a visa to come.

This is a pretty clear-cut declaration and is fairly consistent with the line that Israel has had since the war. Here, for example, is Israel’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs,  Moshe Sharett, writing to the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (pdf):

The new development on which I should like to report concerns the question of the Arab refugees. Members of the Knesset are fully aware of the basic attitude of the Government on this problem, that in the main a solution must be sought, not through the return of the refugees to Israel, but through their resettlement in other states. There has been no change in this basic attitude.

…[T]he state of Israel cannot consider itself in any way responsible for the problem of the refugees. Israel places the responsibility for this problem and for the grim suffering it has caused fully and squarely on those who violated the U.N. decision on the solution of the Palestine problem, either through armed revolt inside the country to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel, or through invasion in order to stifle the State at birth. On the other hand, while disclaiming all responsibility for the problem, the State of Israel cannot remain indifferent to the suffering and distressed by which the problem is surrounded. The State of Israel is vitally concerned with a solution of this problem and deems it its humanitarian duty to do what it can to bring it about.

The extent of Israel’s contribution, however, cannot be determined by the dimensions of the problem. Its scale must be measured only in terms of the security and economic capacity of the State. From bitter experience, the Government of Israel is convinced that the return of Arab refugees will involve serious economic difficulties.

So actually, the first comment is somewhat more lenient towards the refugees in that by stating that they have “forfeited any claim to their former homes,” he is implying that they had a legitimate claim in the first place. The Israeli government has been careful not to ever cede that point, for Sharett insists that Israel is in no way responsible at all for the plight of the refugees, but that through magnanimous generosity, the Jewish State is willing to accept a token number of refugees on the condition that the whole affair is considered closed for all refugees.

This, of course, runs counter to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (not to mention several UN general assembly resolutions), which in Article 13 states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” So if we are to take the line that the Palestinians have “forfeited” their right to return, it’s helpful to ask what exactly that means. Palestinians have certainly not agreed to give up that right, so one can only assume that we’re talking about some sort of a statute of limitations here. Because it’s been 61 years, this means that their right becomes null and void?

That might be a defensible position if it weren’t for Israel’s “Law of Return,” which awards automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone born a Jew, anyone with Jewish ancestry (ironically following the Nuremberg criteria of one Jewish grandparent), and converts to  Judaism.  Based on the Zionist idea that the Jews form a discernible nation that was dispersed and forced to live in exile for 2,000 years away from their homeland (the promised land, no less), the “Law of Return” frames its preference for Jews as a rhetorical return. Now I’m no expert on Judaism, and there are plenty of indications that the Zionist founding myth is, well, a myth, but if we are to take Zionism at face value, it’s clear that the ideology doesn’t include a statute of limitations on exile. The second temple, after all, was destroyed 2,029 years ago. So even if all Jews are actual descendants of the Israelites, which is extremely doubtful, it doesn’t make much sense to invalidate a 61-year-old claim while honoring one that dates back two millennia.

It stands to reason, then, that the reason why Israelis don’t want an influx of Palestinian Arabs is much more mundane: ethno-religious nationalism. Israelis want to live in a Jewish state with other Jews and aren’t interested in a pluralist society that would be shared with Arabs.

So where does this leave Palestinian refugees in Lebanon? Ironically, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. The Jews of Israel don’t want to share power with Arabs, and the Christians and Shi’a of Lebanon don’t want to lose their sectarian edge by giving a boost to the Sunnis. In short, sectarian tribalism is keeping the Palestinians in squalid refugee camps. In fairness to the Lebanese, they don’t see why they should have to make allowances for the actions of the Jewish State.

But let’s not leave the Palestinians out of their own drama here. After all, Arafat and the PLO were as much against tawteen as the Lebanese nationalists, albeit for different reasons. On the surface, the PLO claims to be afraid that by gaining Lebanese citizenship, Palestinians would forget their Palestinian identity and give up their right of return to what is now considered Israel. The first reason is hard to justify considering the strong Palestinian identity that remains in Jordanian society, where Palestinians make up the majority of the population and were for the most part given Jordanian citizenship. The second issue, however, is somewhat murkier. According to UNRWA, the definition of a Palestinian refugee is as follows (emphasis mine):

Under UNRWA’s operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA’s services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of the original Palestine Refugees are also eligible for registration.

The key word here is “operational.” So this is how UNRWA decides who can register, but they don’t seem to be making any legal distinctions here. So while a Palestinian refugee can apparently (correct me if I’m wrong) have another citizenship and still be registered with UNRWA, it’s not clear what effect this would have on her or her legal status.

But Palestinians are not alone here. Up until 1994, Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi hosted scores of thousands of Rwandan Tutsi refugees who had been forced to flee the country either during the 1959 “Hutu Revolution” that preceded the end of Belgian rule or during the periodic spurts of anti-Tutsi pogroms that flared up in the 1960s and 1970s. Two Hutu regimes in Kigali continuously denied the right of return to the Tutsis, by the reasoning that tiny and densely populated Rwanda didn’t have room for them. It finally took an armed invasion of Rwanda from neighboring Uganda that finally led to a genocide against the remaining Tutsi before the diaspora was able to return to Rwanda.

But back to the legal question: I’m not really sure what the official status of Palestinian refugees is, but it’s largely irrelevant, because  as in the case of the Tutsi refugees, the issue has become political more than legal. Israel has made it clear that it will not accept the right of return, or in the case of the previous commenter, only over his dead body. So barring an eventual demographic collapse of the Jewish State (something that is looking more and more inevitable given the dead end the two-state “solution” has taken), Palestinians are left with several unappealing options:

1. in the (unlikely) event of a negotiated two-state solution, move to the newly formed Palestinian state in the crumbs of the West Bank or Gaza
2. become citizens of the countries where they currently reside
3. emigrate to third countries, mostly in North America, Europe or the Gulf
4. continue to rot in ungoverned and poorly serviced camps
5. be accorded full residence rights without citizenship
6. return to their homes as part of a one-state solution.

Option 1 is extremely unlikely, and given Lebanese politics, option 2 may even be more so. This leaves option 3 for those who are able to get out and option 4 for everyone else. The current situation in Ain el-Helwe and the recent violence in Nahr el-Bared show how such a situation leads to increased radicalism and possibly to violence.

Over the next couple of weeks I’d like to address each of these four options in more detail, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: I’m not really sure why, but I didn’t explicitely mention points 5 and 6 in the original version of this post, even though both are steps that I support wholeheartedly. In any case, Darwish in the comments and my housemate in the other room have suggested I add them, and I’m happy to oblige.

For those of you who, like me, are terrible at typing in Arabic, Google has just made things a bit easier in a couple of ways. A while back, I was excited to have discovered Yamli, which is a search engine that transliterates Latin text search phrases into Arabic. This has made searching the Arabic-language internet much, much easier for me, since I am likely the slowest typist in Arabic you’ll ever meet. Google, however, has upped the ante and integrated a similar system into the translate tool and even into Gmail. (It’s likely that this has been integrated into other parts of the vast Google empire upon which the sun never sets.)

I haven’t played with the new option much, but one thing I have noticed is that whereas Yamli gives you several options for a transliteration (since the ways of putting Arabic into Latin script are many and varied), Google only gives you one option, which is automatically selected after you’ve typed in your Latin script phrase. The translation page seems to have some colloquial as well as standard Arabic, but there are some kinks to iron out. For example, if I want to say “I want” in colloquial, I have to to be careful to get it to not write “in my hand.” Likewise, it seems to sometimes confuse “soul” and the colloquial for “to go.”

In any case, it’s good to see Google becoming more Arabic-friendly, and I’m sure I’ll figure out how to get my point across to the system. Either that or learn how to type properly in Arabic…

It has become a truism of sorts that student politics here in Lebanon “mirror” those of Lebanon at the national level. I’ve written about elections at AUB before, even expressing my disappointment with the whole process. Student elections were held yesterday at AUB, and while I didn’t stick around to see the results yesterday, from what my students told me this morning, March 14 won.

Generally, my students get worked up about the elections and feel that the results are very important. And as I mentioned before, since student elections are considered a bellwether for the national scene, it’s understandable that students would feel that their university elections might have an effect on actual politics, although this year, nearly half of my students said they didn’t vote at all.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to see that these elections seem to have replayed national politics instead of foreshadowing them. For one thing, the March 14/March 8 divide  was still the primary grouping of candidates, even though this is a division that I believe is largely defunct after last June’s parliamentary elections and even more so now that there is finally a government five months later.  (See Qifa Nabki and Miss T for some views on the new government.) For example, even though Jumblatt left March 14 back in August, student members of his Progressive Socialist Party still ran on the March 14 ticket. (A student representative was on television last night explaining that they participated in the March 14 block, because they thought they would have better chances of success than with March 8.) And when I say ticket, I mean that literally, because students, mirroring national parties, prepared little color-coded electoral lists so their classmates would be able to vote a straight ticket, or “as is,” as the electoral campaign had it last summer.

But without a clear signal of what direction the country’s going, students have reverted to a political autopilot that reflects last year’s dynamics. In fact, many of these students are young enough to not really understand Lebanese politics in any other context than March 8 and 14. Perhaps it’s only a function of timing — student elections falling well after parliamentary ones  (but before scheduled municipal elections, possibly subject to postponement) — but the elections here seem to have very little predictive value for national politics. This being the case, the students seem to have just echoed what their older compatriots were doing, like a long distance phone call over a bad connection. March14, March 14. March 8, March 8.

So what does this tell us about politics in Lebanon? Well, as far as coalition politics, party popularity, or the state of the nation, not much. What is does tell us, though, is that the political culture that so many Lebanese complain about, the blind loyalty to party, coalition or big man, is alive and well in the nation’s youth. With the young generation mimicking even defunct political memes, Lebanese politics don’t look ready to change any time soon.

Via Qifa, this is the best video I’ve ever seen of Beirut:

If you’ve ever lived in a city like Beirut or Baghdad, you’ve probably been scanned by a bomb sniffing wand at a checkpoint. Here in Beirut, they’re used at army checkpoints as well as entrances to the parking lot at the mall. I’ve always wondered how these things detect explosives, and I’ve heard that they somehow work by smell.

This has never made any sense to me, and my curiosity was piqued when while driving a friend’s car, I was stopped at the entrance to the parking lot of my local supermarket. The security guard took the wand and walked to the side of the car, the famed Datsun, and as I was getting ready to keep driving as I’ve done hundreds of times before, he asked me to stop. He said that the wand had detected something and wanted to know if I had perfume in the car. I said that I was wearing cologne but didn’t think there were any major amounts in the car. He said that that must be it and then waved me through without actually checking the car.

Needless to say, I was even more confused as to how the wand worked and more than a little disconcerted about the level of security. If all a suicide bomber had to do to get past the bomb sniffer was spray on some imitation CK1, then we’re in for some trouble.

It was with some fascination, then, that I read this piece in the Times today about the conflict between Iraqis and Americans when it comes to these bomb sniffing wands:

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.

… The suicide bombers who managed to get two tons of explosives into downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25, killing 155 people and destroying three ministries, had to pass at least one checkpoint where the ADE 651 is typically deployed, judging from surveillance videos released by Baghdad’s provincial governor. The American military does not use the devices. “I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives,” said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military. “If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work.”

The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”

…“I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.”

This, to me, is a sort of psychological experiment. Despite my complete lack of understanding about these devices, I’ve always just assumed that they more or less worked. Otherwise, why would they be so ubiquitous? And maybe that’s the point. Maybe security is based on the assumption that if a checkpoint has one of these detectors, then people will assume that they can’t go through it with explosives. Apparently, the company that sells them markets the devices as being able to detect “guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high.”

And maybe it works as kind of a security placebo-deterrent.  Or maybe, at tens of thousands of dollars a wand, it’s just a way for modern day snake oil salesmen to prey on the governments of developing countries:

To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable,” Colonel Bidlack said, “except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”

Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.

If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.

On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle.

During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.

“You need more training,” the general said.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog that I found that focuses on the use of similar devices throughout the world, but especially in Thailand.

My friend Elias highlights a post over at Syria Comment on Syria’s “four seas strategy,” which has Syria at the center of an alliance with Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Presumably, one of the aims of this strategy would be to further isolate Israel in the region.

Now, I don’t know if I buy this strategy, as I don’t really see the strategic connection between such a hodgepodge of countries, except of course, that Syria is kind of roughly at the center of the bunch. But what the idea does underline is the souring of relations between Turkey and Israel, while the former gets cozier and cozier with Syria.

This ranges from the Turkish cancellation of NATO exercises in which Israel was to play a role and Erdogan’s outspoken criticism of the war in Gaza to the  lifting of visa requirements between Syria and Turkey and the announcement of future joint military exercises.

So what’s going on here? While it’s clear why Damascus would like to strengthen ties with Ankara, it’s not evident what Turkey has to gain in the exchange. Theories that I’ve heard range from the revival of Turkish influence in a neo-Ottoman alliance to a general souring of relations with the west because of European resistance to Turkey’s entry into the EU. Some others claim, often breathlessly, that this is a logical consequence of Ankara being ruled by an ostensibly Islamist government.

None of these ideas is particularly convincing to me on its own. It is likely a combination of several things. First of all, Turkey might be hedging its bets in case its bid for EU membership never comes through, and domestically speaking, Erdogan has nothing to lose and everything to gain by criticizing the war in Gaza and putting some distance between Israel and Turkey. Furthermore, in general, Israel needs Turkey more than the other way around. While Ankara does buy weapons from the Israelis,  as a NATO member state, Turkey is never in danger of a dearth of weaponry. Also, Israel has been weakened from an international standpoint by its conduct in Gaza and Lebanon, so pushing on the Jewish state is really a zero-cost course of action. Erdogan is able to shore up support at home and in the region at large without really risking much.

The increasingly cordial relations with Syria (and to a lesser extent Iran), I think, follow roughly the same logic. With both Damascus and Tehran leaning toward the possibility of improved relations with the US and consequently the rest of the West, Ankara doesn’t really risk much by improving relations with them, especially if the Turks keep a low, neutral profile when it comes to things like the Iranian nuclear program and support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Furthermore, by having friendly relations with Syria and Iran, Turkey can do its best to preemptively head off any Kurdish plans for independence, since all three countries share a desire to not have their Kurdish minorities lured to an independent Kurdistan, broken away from Iraq. So as long as Washington and Brussels continue to flirt with Damascus, Ankara doesn’t really risk upsetting anyone except the Israelis. And like I’ve said, the Israelis aren’t really in a position these days to dictate terms to one of the only Muslim countries that even recognizes them. So the Turks can strengthen their role in the region while getting in on the financial opening of Syria with little to no cost to relations with the West: again, win-win for Ankara.

The Economist has an interesting post on the Bernstein op-ed, which I looked at the other day:

Mr Bernstein has little concrete to say about allegations, substantiated by the UN’s Goldstone commission, by the Israeli human-rights organisation B’Tselem, and by HRW, that the IDF committed war crimes in Gaza. He writes that it is hard for human-rights organisations to “know” whether crimes took place because they rely on testimony from possibly self-interested witnesses. This is a very strange thing for someone who once founded a human-rights organisation to say, though I can well imagine it coming from representatives of the regimes they criticise. In my experience working with them, HRW’s researchers have been rigorous and scrupulous in their evaluations of testimony and evidence.

… As with other groups, there’s a long tradition of Jewish literary investigation into the unique historical predicaments of Jewishness. That impulse makes for great culture, and lousy politics. Israel and its supporters need to stop using their historical narratives for political cover. As far as international law is concerned, there is nothing so terribly exceptional about Israel. Every nation is different from every other nation, but we’re all subject to the same Geneva Conventions. The standards for Israel are no different from those for Hamas. That is what Human Rights Watch stands for, and Richard Bernstein isn’t doing Israel any favours by arguing the opposite.

I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment and don’t really have much to add to its content. But I will say that things seem to be changing for Israel. Even in the US, there is much more scrutiny of Israel’s actions and questioning of whether those actions, which are generally supported or at least not hindered by Washington, are in the American national interest. The Walt and Mearsheimer article on the Israel lobby got people talking about a topic most people kept away from like a third rail, and then as if it wanted to prove their point, Israel reacted to Hezbollah’s border raid and capturing of soldiers by brutally destroying much of Lebanon.

Since then, we’ve had Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, continued settlement of the West Bank and an overall lack of cooperation with the Obama administration. Things have gotten so bad for Israel that Olmert has been shouted down in Chicago and subject to an attempted citizen arrest for war crimes in San Francisco.  The current smears against J Street are but a sign of weakness from the pro-Likud lobby in Washington, whereas J Street’s success in staking out a pro-peace middle ground is a bellwether of the direction that American attitudes, including those of Jewish Americans, are starting to take on Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territories.

The Titanic, as it were, seems to be sinking, and the Israelis aren’t even rearranging the deck chairs, they’re barreling down on the same course right into the iceberg, full steam ahead. When even the US finally has little sympathy for Israel’s actions, the Jewish state will have no one to blame but itself.

Robert Bernstein, a founder of Human Rights Watch, has penned an essay censuring the organization for its criticism of Israel:

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.

This is wrong on many levels. First of all, for all his ignorant bluster and malicious holocaust denial, Ahmadinejad has never threatened to “murder Jews everywhere.” In fact, at around 25,000 people, Iran has the biggest Jewish population outside of Israel in the region. So if the Iranian regime, despicable as it is, has decided to start murdering Jews, that’s news to the tens of thousands of them who currently live in Iran.

Second, Bernstein seems to be saying that ostensibly democratic nations should get a free pass on human rights abuses. So by this logic, Guantanamo Bay would be fine, but a comparable detention center in, say, Uzbekistan wouldn’t be, because the former country is democratic while the second is authoritarian.

He finds fault with the idea that human rights groups ought to look at conduct instead of motivation. But motivation is by its very nature a subjective measurement. Israelis think that Hamas is motivated to send rockets because they just want to kill Jews, whereas Palestinians will tell you that their motivation is to do with 40 years of occupation and the blockade of Gaza’s land and sea borders. Conduct, on the other hand, is a much more objective thing to measure. Either Israelis used white phosphorous in populated areas or they didn’t.

What Bernstein, who surely knows better, is failing to note is that the fourth Geneva Convention, which is the international mechanism that deals with the treatment of civilians during war, makes no distinction between acts carried out by “open” societies and “closed” ones. Nor does it distinguish between “wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.” Finally, the convention states that even if a country’s enemy is not a signatory of the convention, that country is still bound to uphold the laws of war and that if one party of a conflict does not abide by these laws, that is not a reason for the other to fail to do so.

Simply put, a country, no matter how democratic or “open” it may be, cannot get a free pass on war crimes just because it is defending itself. A country’s responsibility to uphold the Geneva Conventions is not dependent on the nature of its enemy. The Israeli Supreme Court itself has said,

This is the destiny of a democracy: She does not see all means as acceptable, and the ways of her enemies are not always open before her. A democracy must sometimes fight with one arm tied behind her back.

Some wrongheaded defenders of Israel have claimed that because Israel is “defending itself,” the responsibility of dead Gazans lies at the feet of Hamas instead of the IDF, which has actually killed them. They often confuse motive with intent. The first explains why a country has done what it has and is irrelevant when discussing war crimes. In this case, Israel attacked Gaza in response to rocket attacks, whose motives were in return a response to the occupation and the blockade on Gaza (insert cycle of attacks and reprisals here).

On the other hand, intent, which is whether or not the action was done intentionally, is relevant to war crimes. So even if my main motive for blowing up an apartment building is to protect troops from rocket fire coming from next door, if I’ve intentionally destroyed that building knowing that the 25 civilians inside will likely be killed, I open myself up to accusations of war crimes. My motive is irrelevant, but the intent is important.

Finally, this all means that neither a country’s “openness” nor how democratic it is has any bearing on whether or not it has committed war crimes.*And as long as we’re talking about “openness,” this year’s ranking by Reporters Without Borders is probably germane to the discussion. In terms of freedom of the press, Israel has slipped to 93rd place out of 175 countries, putting it behind both Kuwait and Lebanon, while also placing 150th for Israel’s extra-territorial holdings, right behind Sudan and Afghanistan.

*Incidentally, for a discussion of how democracies might actually be more inclined to commit ethnic cleansing than their autocratic counterparts, see Michael Mann’s interesting book.

• My friend Elias over at The National the problems with consensual politics
• Alex de Waal on how Bayart’s politics of the belly relate to Sudan
• Christopher Borgen on how great powers talk about self-determination in Kosovo and South Ossetia
• Al-Megrahi lays out his case
• WaPo on Gration and another point of view from Bec Hamilton who was also there
• Patrick Seale on the implosion of Yemen
• LATimes on Amal Saad-Ghorayeb v. NATO
• Ian Ayres on headstone snark

There has been some interesting news out of the IAEA recently. The UN nuclear watchdog expressed concern about the nuclear capabilities of a certain middle eastern nation (hint: starts with an “I”) and voted to have all of its nuclear sites subject to UN inspections. But this is how that country responded:

“The delegation of [I] deplores this resolution,” David Danieli, deputy director of [I]’s atomic energy commission, told the chamber after the vote.

“[We] will not cooperate in any matter with this resolution which is only aiming at reinforcing political hostilities and lines of division in the Middle East region.

This news should get the hawks in Washington riled up and should be a prelude to getting western nations ready to lay on economic sanctions, right? Of course none of those things will happen, because the nation in question isn’t Iran, it’s Israel.

The latter, as opposed to the former, actually does have nuclear weapons and keeps their existence a poorly guarded secret. In fact Israelis are prosecuted for publicly speaking about the Jewish state’s nuclear weapons program. But where is the outrage? Where are the economic sanctions aimed at Israel?

This double standard certainly does not go unnoticed in Tehran, where the Iranian government can see a clear difference in how Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are treated as  opposed to, say, Iraq. And what lesson do we think Iran will learn from such a double standard?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: eventually, either nobody will have nukes in the middle east, or everybody will.