War Crimes Are War Crimes

Yglesias mixes it up with Noah Pollak (who also attacks me):

I really have to say that it makes me extremely angry when I need to read this kind of bullshit written in which wild and implausible views are attributed to me. What I’m sayingand I don’t think this should be controversialis that whatever you think about Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel still has obligations under international humanitarian law and many credible investigators have reached the conclusion that Israel violated those obligations.

This isn’t the only important issue in the world. It’s not the only important issue in the region. It’s not even the only important issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it’s an important issue. And there’s a set of people in the United States who are determined to avoid talking about this issue and to instead engage in a lot of imputation of bad faith to the people trying to raise it.

Here's one snippet from Pollak:

[N]o, for the record, Israel did not commit war crimes in Gaza. Watch Richard Kemp’s remarkable UN testimony if you disagree. You won’t see his presentation debated on Sullivan’s blog because it does not provide an opportunity for obnoxious and empty moral posturing.

Except Pollak just used Richard Kemp's testimony for "empty moral posturing." For a little background on this neutral observer, here's the Wikipedia entry on UN Watch, the hard neocon group Kemp is representing. My defense of the post Pollak takes issue with here.


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