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Thoughts after the Murder of Hersh Goldbeg-Polin and the Other Hostages
I am devastated and angered by the news of the murders of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages in Rafah. Hersh, an American Israeli, became the face of the hostage crisis in America. In part that was due to Hersh himself. Many young American Jews who visited Israel, including one of my children, got to……
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The ICJ Makes Peace Harder
The ICJ’s advisory opinion on Israel and the Palestinian territories is so, so dispiriting. Let me begin with the caution I gave in my very first post after the October 7 massacre and repeated in one form or another in my post explaining the view of scholars who said that Israel did not have the……
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Paper of the Day: Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept
The paper of the day is Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept, by Harvard SJD student Rabea Eghbariah, which has just been published—at least I think it has. Eghbariah’s article has had a long history of getting to press. In November 2023, the board of the Harvard Law Review decided against publishing the post in……
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The ICC Prosecutor’s Request for Warrants
Okay, I suppose I ought to comment on the decision of the ICC’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas as well as for Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and defense minister Gallant. I begin as always with my disclaimer: I am not an expert in the relevant law! First, it’s……
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The Boston City Council Gets It Wrong On Gaza
I’ve lived in the City of Boston for more than twenty years. I love Boston. I do not always love Boston’s City Council. That’s especially true today. Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, whose prior antisemitic comments I am not going to detail here, offered a really unfortunate resolution on the Gaza war, and the City Council,……