Alfred-Hoe

Happy Indigenous History Month + Pride Month ❤️

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories. That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza. The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared. Cohen’s personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Mossad. His activities were authorised at a high level and justified on the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli source briefed on the operation against Bensouda said the Mossad’s objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands. A third source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger”. Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu’s closest allies at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right in Israel, personally led the Mossad’s involvement in an almost decade-long campaign by the country to undermine the court.

Here's a link to the full original comment: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

One of the most important parts of this is that everything we call "liberalism" or "progressivism" is a flavor of conservatism for this purpose. This is not a Democrats v. Republicans issue, it applies to Democrats and Republicans.

And I think that viewed through this lens, the VoteBlues make tons of sense (from their perspective).

The election in November is about how those VoteBlue individuals are classified.

Will they be the people who are protected by the law and not bound by it?

Or will they be the people who are bound by the law and denied any protection?

They cannot imagine the law protecting non-white people. Or Palestinians. Or the homeless. Or ...