The Volokh Conspiracy

I will be speaking at several law schools and universities in Ohio and Florida the week of March 18th (our spring break). All events are free and open to the public. Always happy to meet readers of the Conspiracy. Additional information at the links.

March 18th, Case Western Reserve University Law School (noon), “Piracy and the Limits of International Law.”

March 18th, Ohio State University, The New Palestinian State.

March 19th, Ohio University, “Disputing Occupation: Israel’s Borders in International Law”

March 21st: Florida International Law School, “Israel & International Law.”

Human Rights Watch has just released a report on Israel’s recent “Pillar of Defense” operation to suppress rocket fire from Gaza. The report concludes that 18 airstrikes violated international law by not being properly targeted. I do not know if 18 is a little or a lot for an operation of this scale, as there an no good comparative data (though the report is released as Afghanistan says yet another NATO airstrike hit a house with innocent women and children inside.)

The report, by its description of its methods, appears to be a hit piece. Here is what the report said about the group’s investigative method (emphasis added):

Human Rights Watch sent detailed information about the cases to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on January 14, 2013, requesting further information. At a meeting on January 24 and in subsequent phone conversations, the military spokesperson’s office told Human Rights Watch that the military chief of staff had ordered a general (aluf) to conduct an “operational debriefing” (tahkir mivtza’i) concerning “dozens” of Israeli attacks during the conflict, including the cases Human Rights Watch investigated, which would be completed by late February.

Because previous Israeli “operational debriefings” involving attacks were not conducted by trained military police investigators or dedicated to investigating alleged laws-of-war violations, Human Rights Watch has decided to publish its findings rather than wait for their results.

In other words, HRW received high-level and consistent cooperation. A meeting between HRW and the IDF took place on Jan 24 (just 10 days after HRW asked for further information), and were told that the IDF would have a more detailed response by late February after its own investigations were over. One month is not a long time to wait, certainly not covering an incident that occurred months ago.

It is completely baffling why HRW, would rush to publish their report a mere two weeks before they could hear in full Israel’s response to their allegations. Furthermore, HRW’s explanation why they chose not to wait lacks any coherence. What is so special about designated military police as opposed to toeher investigators? And even if the IDF investigations were not conducted by trained military police, it is unquestionable that the IDF investigators would have access to sources HRW does not. One would expect that an organization whose influence is completely based on their reputation for objectivity and thoroughness would wish to have all the facts before rushing to publish.

Well-meaning observers are often puzzled why Israel sometimes does not cooperate with the multitudinous foreign investigations into its military operations. The minimal lack of procedural fairness investigations such as HRW’s is surely one reason for their reluctance.

Hat tip: Gidon Shaviv

Media in Australia and Israel are abuzz with news about a detainee in an Israeli prison, a dual Australian and Israeli citizen named Ben Zygier working for the Mossad who committed suicide in late 2010 after being held in solitary confinement for unknown security offenses.  I don’t have anything to add to the basics of the story, but I was struck when I saw the following in the original report from Australia’s ABC service:

Bill van Esveld, a Jerusalem-based advocate for Human Rights Watch, has described the secret imprisonment of Prisoner X as “inexcusable”. “It’s called a disappearance, and a disappearance is not only a violation of that person’s due process rights – that’s a crime,” he told Foreign Correspondent. “Under international law, the people responsible for that kind of treatment actually need to be criminally prosecuted themselves...”

Mr van Esveld says it is inexcusable for the Australian Government not to be notified.”The obligation of one country to notify another when the other citizen has been arrested, detained, especially if they die – that is so basic. It is called customary law,” he said. “Which means that even if Israel didn’t ratify a treaty saying it has to notify the other country, it still has to do so because that is such a basic norm of interstate relations.”

It seemed to me that van Esveld was jumping to a lot of conclusions based on whatever information the reporter fed to him.  As it turns out, subsequent media reports have confirmed that (a) the Australian government was informed of Zygier’s arrest back in February 2010, months before his suicide, and was informed of his death the day after it happened; and (b) Zygier was represented by counsel through his entire ordeal, and indeed saw one of his attorneys just a few days before his suicide.

So, Zygier was hardly a “disappeared.”  I’m sure we can expect forthwith a profound apology from Mr. Van Esveld and HRW, in line with all of their other apologies for their misreporting on Israel over the years.

UPDATE: NGO Monitor has much more.

Despite the recent United Nations Human Rights Council’s report, France and many other European countries are against attempts to revive the peace process, end the occupation and remove settlements. They prefer a “long-term stalemate” (which sounds like Boogie Yaalon’s “long term conflict management plan“). Outside pressure to push peace could backfire and benefit hardliners on both sides, according to European journalists interviewed recently by Reuters.

Of course, I am not talking about Israel’s occupation of parts of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine previously occupied by Jordan, but rather about Turkey’s occupation of a full-fledged EU member state.

In other European contortions, while France bombs terrorists “on the footsteps of Europe” in Mali, thousands of Hezbollah members operate openly in Europe. Their activities are now known to include bus bombing. France and other European powers have long been reluctant to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization – apparently because they only kill Jews, and most elsewhere, according to an astounding analysis in the New York Times:

There’s the overall fear if we’re too noisy about this, Hezbollah might strike again, and it might not be Israeli tourists this time,” said Sylke Tempel, editor in chief of the German foreign affairs magazine Internationale Politik.

Europe has recently been indicating that it will be pressuring Israel to take so-called risks for peace. But Europe is not unbiased, nor is its attitude towards Israel driven principally by Israel’s actions. European actors are driven by political agendas, fear, and a variety of factors. And given their fear of taking on Turkey, or even Hezbollah, they are ill placed to talk about risks for peace.

The Geneva Convention is generally thought to apply to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank – that portion of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine previously occupied by the Jordan. This is important because the legal argument against settlements is that they violate Art. 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, a provision which did not reflect prior international law.

Art. 2 of the Convention provides:

In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace-time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.

The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.

Because the West Bank was not part of the sovereign “territory of a High Contracting Party” (or of any country) in 1967, and Israel has argued that “occupation” within the meaning of the Convention can only exist in such territory. Of course, most international lawyers disagree, though in the years after 1967, some very prominent ones agreed.

What is more interesting is what people thought the provision meant before 1967, that is, before they knew the identity of the alleged violator. There is very little written on this, and few have looked at pre-1967 sources. However, one quite serious (pro-Israel) blogger has unearthed this intriguing discussion from Hans Kelsen in 1952, which clearly does not assume that the occupation of non-sovereign territory has the same consequences as the occupation of sovereign territory:

The principle that enemy territory occupied by a belligerent in course of war remains the territory of the state against which the war is directed, can apply only as long as this community still exists as a state within the meaning of international law. This is hardly the case if, after occupation of the whole territory of an enemy state, its armed forces are completely defeated to that no further resistance is possible and its national government is abolished by the victorious state. Then the vanquished community is deprived of one of the essential elements of a state in the sense of international law: an effective and independent government, and hence has lost its character as a state. If the territory is not to be considered a stateless territory, it must be considered to be under the sovereignty of the occupant belligerent, which—in such a case—ceases to be restricted by the rules concerning belligerent occupation. This was the case with the territory of the German Reich occupied in the Second World War after the complete defeat and surrender of its armed forces. In view of the fact that the last national government of the German Reich was abolished, it may be assumed that this state ceased to exist as a subject of international law.

There is a lot of research to be done in this vein. I recently came across a discussion in the U.N.’s International Law Commission from 1950, as part of the drafting of the Draft Declaration on Rights and Duties of States. There were quibbles from countries such as France about whether annexation is always banned, or whether there might be various exceptions.

In response, the Secretary observed: “It might be suggested that in order to constitute a crime under international law an annexation must be carried out through the use of armed force, with a view to destroying the territorial integrity of another State.” [See I Yearbook of Int. Law Comm. 137 (1950).]

Indeed, it was not surprising that there was some confusion and concern about the extent of an annexation norm, since as the delegates admitted, there were some “frontier adjustments” made by the Allies after WWII.

[Cross-posted on OpinioJuris]

In response to my post, immediately below, about Turkey’s settlements, at OpinioJuris, Kevin Jon Heller argues that from the perspective of International Criminal Court liability for “indirectly... deporting or transferring” its nationals into occupied territory, Israel would be more vulnerable than Turkey.

Although statistics are not easy to come by for Cyprus, a comprehensive 2006 study suggests that the overwhelming majority of the Turks in Cyprus arrived there between 1974 and 1979 — [before Cyprus's ICC membership went into effect] and that the number of immigrants in the past decade has been relatively small, likely in the thousands. Contrast that with Israeli immigration: the number of Jewish settlers living in the West Bank in 2002 was around 214,000; there are more than 350,000 living there today — an increase of approximately 136,000 civilians.

[Prof. Heller seems to assume, as he has argued before, that ICC jurisdiction over Palestine could be retroactive to 2002, if it files an Art. 12(3) declaration. I think that position has real textual basis, but is not in my view the best reading of the text as a structural or policy matter. Let's set this aside - just as we set aside big questions about territorial jurisdiction - and, since we're talking about my original post, stick with my assumption of purely prospective jurisdiction.]

Now to the issues Prof. Heller raises. In fact, Turkey’s settlements are a far graver violation of the anti-transfer norm and its purposes.

1) How does one measure the gravity of civilian “transfer”? Typical war crimes are measured in the number of bodies — but that is because the purpose of the provisions is to protect lives. But this doesn’t seem the right way to measure “deportation or transfer.” It must be measured in light of its purposes – colonization, etc. Otherwise, if 1000 people are transferred into a territory of 500, it would be considered de minimis, whereas if 1 million were transferred into a territory of 100 million, it would be a big deal.

Turkish settlers constitute an absolute majority in N. Cyprus (and by many accounts the prior Turkish population is not so happy about the new arrivals). By contrast, Israeli civilians in the West Bank (not including Gaza) are under 20% of the total population, if you include E. Jerusalem (and follow Palestinian population figures). Throw in Gaza, and the percentage drops considerably.

Lets look at it another way. The total population of the island is 1.1 million. Turkish settlers in N.Cyprus constitute over 13% of the population of the island. In the unlikely event of reunification, the Greeks see this as a bitter pill. Population statistics for the Palestinians are also greatly in the dispute, but if one estimates the total population between the river and sea at 11 million, the Jews across the Green Line would be about 5% of the total. Given that Israel has had more time to cement its hold, and it doesn’t have far go to to “transfer” settlers, one might conclude it was not trying particularly hard, or that the Turks are just better at it.

2) In the same vein, In N. Cyprus, the influx of settlers has been accompanied by the collapse of the local population, ie had net emigration. That exacerbates the demographic effect, and is course part of the classic “move in, kick out” model where 49(6) violations were helped effectuate de facto 49(1) breaches. In West Bank, by contrast, population has grown rapidly. Similarly, the ICRC commentary mentions economic effects as one of the policies behind 49(6), and the WB has done in the past decade whereas N.Cyprus has stagnated.

3) That leaves the question of when the Turkish “transfer” happened, which is a real and important point Prof. Heller raises. The real is answer is we do not know for sure. Yes, the big surge was in the years after the invasion. But all these numbers are very disputed and we do not have the benefit of human rights groups like Peace Now or Foundation for Peace in the Middle East that have gone out of their way to track Turkish settlers with the precision of their Israeli counterparts.

However, in June 2003, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a recommendation that stated, in part:

“It is a well-established fact that the demographic structure of the island has been continuously modified since its de facto partition in 1974, as a result of the deliberate policies of the Turkish Cypriot administration and Turkey. Despite the lack of consensus on the exact figures, all parties concerned admit that Turkish nationals have since been systematically arriving in the northern part of the island.”

Based on the European Parliament’s estimates of the settler population a decade ago (115K) and conservative estimates today (150K), one can conservatively estimate an increase equivalent 16% of the territory’s population a decade ago.

More anecdotally, a quick Google search reveals news accounts that suggest non-trivial mainland influx in the past decade, and more importantly, it appears this period saw the significant out-flow of the previous locals.

Moreover, some portion of both populations are the children born to those who have allegedly been “transferred.” Israel has a higher fertility rate than N.Cyprus as a whole, and the Jewish civilian population across the Green Line is higher than the Israeli average. So more of the contested Israeli population was delivered, rather than transferred, than their Turkish counterparts. That is why “natural growth” allowance proposals for Israeli settlements were once more in vogue, and now not so much.

4) The bigger picture concerns the unit of analysis. The number of people on the island of Cyprus has changed drastically as a result of Turkey’s settlement program. The number of people between the river and the sea has not changed a whit. Thus ultimately the effects cannot be measured independently of the proposed political solution. In the case of Cyprus, the international community favors a one-state solution, which makes the sending of external migrants relevant. If the dominant paradigm would be partition, no one would care how many Turks Ankara squeezed into their corner of the island.

Since the dominant paradigm for Israel involves a border demarcation that puts the vast majority of Israelis inside Israel, and kicks the rest out, the demographic implications are entirely unlike Turkey’s settlement program. And if the dominant paradigm were one-state – all the more so, the number of Jews between the river and sea has not increased at all, unlike the number of Turks on the island.

5) As for Kevin’s point that Israel has taken greater steps to facilitate transfer – well, that gets into the merits, which I wish to avoid at this point. I’ve assumed for the sake of argument that “transfer” has occurred on both sides. That is a highly fact specific question, and I am pretty sure I would not characterize some of the Turkish and Jewish migrants as “transferred.” I will observe that the WB is on the other side of an imaginary line, while N.Cyprus is on the other side of a body of water. The latter takes more getting to.

In a press conference recently, Mahmoud Abbas threatened to use Palestine’s G.A.-recognized “state” status to challenge Israel’s settlements in the International Criminal Court. He picked a most unlikely venue for the presser – Ankara, in a joint conference with the the Turkish president. The absurdity of this is that Turkey continues to occupy northern Cyprus, and is responsible for a massive settlement program there.

I’ve written before about “other countries’ settlements,” but one might think that an increasing discussion of Israel’s civilian communities in prosecutorial terms would increase the discusion of other (often more blatant) violations of the same international norm. Not quite.

Cyprus was a state with clear borders when Turkey invaded in 1974, and is a charter member of the ICC. If anyone should be loosing sleep over settlements suits in the ICC, it would be Turkey. Interestingly, no one has suggested in the past decade that Cyprus’s ICC membership would scare the Turks out of N. Cyprus, or get the Turks to agree to a peace deal). But a referral by Cyprus would not face the various thorny temporality and territoriality issues of a Palestinian complaint. Moreover, Cyprus is a particularly gross case of changing the demographics of occupied territory through settlement, with settlers now outnumbering protected persons n the territory.

Apart from the manifest hypocrisy, what should be disappointing for believers in international humanitarian law is the failure of anyone to call Abbas (or Erdogan) on it. I am not aware of any news, NGO, or governmental response pointing out the unseemliness of Abbas invoking the ICC from Ankara.

But it turns out that Europeans have for the past decade taken a different kind of interest in the Turkish occupation, as Dore Gold reports. Priced out of the French Riviera and Amalfi coast, Europeans wanting to buy a Mediterranean vacation property increasingly flock to Turkish-occupied Cyprus.

Gold observes:

European governments have warned their citizens that former Greek residents of Northern Cyprus may initiate legal proceedings in European courts against those who take over their properties. But there is no objection being stated in principle against European citizens moving into these territories in order to build vacation homes.

But the European foreign ministries cannot have it both ways: they cannot condemn Israelis who build homes in the West Bank for violating international law, while they approve, in principle, or are at least silent about Turkish settlers and their European business partners who benefit from the lands Turkish Cypriots have taken over, as they develop what has been one of the hottest Mediterranean real estate markets for Europeans seeking a place in the sun.

Discussions of a potential ICC referral often focus on potential liability by Palestinians as a factor that would dissuade them (or the Court) from proceeding. But Israel’s best bet for heading off such a suit would be to advertise the implications for other non-member states that would clearly be on the settlement hook: Turkey and Russia.

For the record, I think it quite unlikely that the ICC will indict Israeli leaders over settlements, but I’d bet the farm it wouldn’t indict Israel and Turkish leaders in this decade. Indeed, if I were the Israeli government, I’d spend less time preparing an ICC defense that working up a Cypriot case against Turkey, as a favor to its new bestie.

By the way, the Europeans who are “settling” N. Cyprus do not themselves violate the Geneva Conventions, because i) only the “occupying power” can violate it, and ii) it only prohibits “transfer” of “nationals of the occupying power.” Assuming the Europeans are not Turkish citizens, they can’t be settlers. Similarly, American Jews who move to, say East Jerusalem as American citizens cannot be said to be “settlers,” though popular usage may vary.

ADDENDUM: Because Cyprus is an ICC member, ANY member state can refer the situation of Turkish settlements to the ICC (or the prosecutor could begin an investigation on his own motion, which would be more exceptional). It does not have to be Cyprus – they’ve already consented to jurisdiction by signing the treaty. Given the great odium the international community attaches to settlement, it is interesting that there has not even by serious discussion of a such a referral.

The General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a state (which I’ve discussed previously) is widely regard as having the central upshot of facilitating a case against Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court. Indeed, Prime Minister Abbas has already threatened such action in regard to Israeli settlements – which are said to constitute an unlawful “deportation or transfer” of Israeli civilians into occupied territory.

Yet the GA’s recognition of Palestine’s statehood does not establish that the Israeli civilian population centers are “on its territory,” a basic requirement for ICC jurisdiction, as I explain today in a post an the European Journal of International Law’s blog. Here is part of it:

The mere fact of Israeli occupation does not make the territory part of Palestinian sovereign borders... the dominant interpretation of the Geneva Conventions is that an “occupation” can arise even in an area that is not the territory of any state. Yet even if Israel is an occupying power throughout the West Bank for the purposes of substantive humanitarian law, this does not establish that settlement activity occurs “on the territory” of the Palestinian state.

To put it differently, even if violating the Geneva-based norm of transfer need not take place in the territory of a state, it still must be “on the territory” of a state for the ICC to have jurisdiction, as the ICC exercises delegated territorial jurisdiction. This is consistent with the respective roles of the Geneva Conventions and the ICC. The Conventions, which have near universal adherence, are interpreted broadly because of a desire to not have gaps in coverage. With the ICC, which has a limited and particular jurisdiction, gaps in jurisdictional coverage are inherent.

I am working on a longer article on the jurisdictional issues that would be raised by a Palestinian referall of the settlements issues, which will discuss the question of gravity, and the implications of such case for other potential ICC situations, like Cyprus/Turkey, or Georgia/Russia.

I previously wrote of the manifestly false claims made by world leaders, and parroted as fact by the New York Times, that Israel’s permitting Jewish civilians to live in the area of Maaleh Admumim closest to Jerusalem cuts a potential Palestinian state in half. Some commentators went to far as to suggest I apologize to the New York Times. Instead, it is they who apologized – or rather corrected – their news pieces on the subject. Twice in three days.

Here is part of it: “the proposed development would not, technically, make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.” I love the “technically,” as if people reading the Times do not think they are getting the “technical” truth but rather the “absolute truth,” as executive editor Jill Abramson memorably put it.

Of course, the putative Palestinian State would have odd borders. But so would Israel. If you make two states between the river and the sea, it is likely no one will be driving straight for long, but that has been clear since the General Assembly’s proposed partiton plan in 1947, which manifestly contemplated massive discontiguities all around. Indeed, lots of states are not contiguous, sometimes massively so, and get along fine. The U.S. is one, Israel 1949-67 was another. Belgium and Holland have a truly amazing number of extraterritorial enclaves and exclaves. It seems if nations have peaceable relations, some kinks in contiguity can be dealt with. If they are at each other’s throats, they could exacerbate tensions, and not be discontiguous for long (can anyone spell Nagorno-Karabakh? No seriously, can anyone spell it?). But since we are told that Israeli withdrawals from territory will create Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, we can assume we are dealing with the former case.

1) It should be no surprise that 130-odd countries took the rather technical step of of voting recognize Palestine as a “non-member” in the U.N. General Assembly. That is roughly the number of countries that already directly recognize Palestine as a state! If they have already actually recognized the state themselves, voting to extend such recognition for some particular purpose is hardly precedent-making. (Palestine’s international-recognition level rivals Israel’s.)

2) The apparent diplomatic victory is itself a consolation prize for the collapse of Abbas’ bid last year for actual U.N. membership for Palestine, which was rejected at the Security Council. If that effort was to be a “diplomatic tsunami,” as Israel’s defense minister warned, the current ploy is at most a chill breeze.

3) The vote must be seen in the context of a long history of past anti-Israel resolutions in the GA. These illustrate both the automatic majority such resolutions enjoy, and their unimportance to actual events. For example, in the 1970s, the parliament of nations overwhelmingly agreed that Zionism is a form a racism, and thus the entire country is illegitimate. In 2009, the GA adopted a resolution that concluded Israel intentionally sought to slaughter innocent Palestinian civilians in the Gaza War – a resolution based on the Goldstone report, which has since been retracted by its eponymous author.

4) There is nothing new even in the European position. Since 1980 Europe has maintained that the lands occupied by Jordan and Egypt in their 1948-49 war against Israel is actually
“Palestinian territory,” which Israel must leave. The European votes are consistent with their accord with almost all major Palestinian demands.

5) The theory that some European votes were motivated by the recent Gaza campaign shows that Israel can’t just win. It gets rocketed when it leaves territory, and that same rocketing is used as a pretext for going along with efforts that defy all previous agreements. It is a classic good cop/bad cop routine Hamas and Fatah are running.

6) Abbas’s repeated refusal to heed any of America’s insistent and increasingly pathetic requests (stop the resolution, or even tone it down) represents a slap in the face for President Obama – a flat refusal to cooperate or accomodate American (and many European) interests. This demonstrates the failure of Obama’s policy “outreach” towards the Palestinians, and his general courting of the Arab world. Despite his explicitly creating “space” between Israel and the US in his first term, it has not made the Palestinians even the least bit tractable on any issue, even when it comes to embarrassing the U.S.

Presumably all those who were indignant about Netanyahu’s purported “defiance” of Obama will now take up the President’s honor against Abbas.

7) Speaking of the President – credit where credit is due. I have previously criticized the record of his first three years on Israel, and stand by that. My criticism was always non-partisan. As I often point out, the Democratic Party has always been in lock-step with the general American solicitude for Israel, but Obama in his first three years took a different, confrontational course.

In the year before the election, he switched gears. I am happy to observe that since the election, his support of Israel has been what one would expect of any generic American president. One suspects that Abbas’s obvious rejection of any serious peace process, and his open use of Obama as a cat’s paw, began to grate.

This is a talk I gave this summer to a group of Jewish college students, which in broad strokes outlines the international law reasons the West Bank cannot be considered “Palestinian territory,” independent of the political or equitable merits of creating a Palestinian state there.

Please watch the whole thing before commenting.

Hopefully I say more more to say soon on the Palestinian statehood vote (I’m shopping around an op-ed on the subject).

Voters in the Spanish province of Catalonia yesterday gave a large majority to pro-independence parties, who now command 2/3 of the seats in the regional parliament. The practical impact may be attenuated, because the secessionist movement is weakened by being spread across four parties: separatists can’t unite.

Madrid vows to resist any split. Spain apparently only likes two-state solutions when they involve other people’s states. And they are not alone in that. [UPDATE: More on this in the comments.]

Secession in the U.S. has historical baggage that leads it to be associated with reactionary and regressive tendencies. Interestingly, the historical valence of Catalonian separatism is progressive and Communist. The region was a hotbed of Anarcho-Syndicalism in the early 20th century. It was one of the last Republican strongholds in the Civil War (yes, the other one, and the other Republicans). Separatis movements through Spain were suppressed after the war. Orwell’s memoir that provides the title for this post criticized the Soviet domination of the anti-Fascist forces. So if opponents of secession in the U.S. may be the legatees of Lincoln, are the unionists in Spain followers of Franco?

UPDATE: The E.U. has been coy about whether it would accept a Catalan state, and as readers noted, EU rejection would put the kibosh on independence. The EU’s reaction is predictable: it is a country cartel, many of whose members face similar separatist drives. It wants to discourage this kind of thing, and I expect its threats of exclusion will mount as independence seems more likely.

On the other hand, part of the ideology of the Union is its continental nature, its scope – thus the persistent expansion to include even unlikely or remote members. Another part is its inevitability – that is why minor retrogression, like Greece dropping the Euro, is threatening. Thus having non-EU pockets within the union is a challenge to the notion of Europe. I think after some bluster, Brussels would put Catalonia on the (often long) road to accession. Anyway, the EU needs more solvent members, rather than fewer. So my advice to Catalan secessionists (who may not read this, and haven’t asked) would to be to tough it out and not go wobbly.

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: “Israeli friends have been asking me whether a re-elected President Obama will take revenge on Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the way he and Sheldon Adelson, his foolhardy financier, openly backed Mitt Romney. My answer to Israelis is this: You should be so lucky.”

I’m pretty sure it’s true that Netanyahu would rather have had Mitt Romney in office than Barack Obama. But “openly backed?” That’s just false. But note that Friedman cleverly gave himself plausible deniability for spreading this falsehood, by attributing it to his “Israeli friends.” And of course Friedman does want Obama to “take revenge” on Netanyahu, making the whole column an exercise in concern trolling. It’s too bad Israel can’t have a government that Friedman really admires, like China’s.

“Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.” So said Mitt Romney at the Monday debate. The Associated Press, The Guardian, The Telegraph, New York, U.S. News,  Brad DeLong, Rachel Maddow’s Maddowblog,  Comedy Central, and The Daily Kos promptly seized the opportunity to show off their superior geographical knowledge, pointing out that Iran has a coastline. The explicit or implicit explanation was that Romney does not even know basic geography. “Romney Flubs Geography” announced the A.P. headline on the Washington Post website. Readers in search of more sophisticated coverage  might have turned to Yahoo! Answers:

Q. Why did Romney say that Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea”? ...when 1) Iraq stands between Syria and Iran, and 2) Iran already has the Persian Gulf, not to mention the Indian Sea?

A. Romney was speaking in the context of the debate topic on foreign policy and the sanctions restricting the finances and trade of Iran. Although Iran is indeed located on the seacoast of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, the international trade sanctions have restricted and impeded its ability to transport armaments and other goods through its own seaports. To defeat these trade sanctions, Iran has resorted to using its air transportation to transport goods through an air corridor in Iraqi airspace into Syria and its seaports, such as Latakia.

Fact-checkers who actually investigate the facts might have started with expert websites such as StrategyPage. A 2006 article titled Syrian Delivery System for Iranian Nukes details the extensive seaborne smuggling operations carried out by Syrian companies operating out of Syrian ports. The article concludes:

Iran was generous with its “foreign aid” because Syria provided support for terrorists Iran backed. Now Iran is keen on getting nuclear weapons. The first ones Iran will get will be large and delicate. The only feasible intercontinental delivery system will be a ship. A ship that is accustomed to moving illicit goods.

Stratfor, which is an outstanding site for the collection and analysis open source intelligence, has the following reports involving Syria/Iran sea-related collaboration: An Iranian ship at the Syrian port of Tartus (also spelled “Tartous”) picked up Syrian oil for delivery to China, to evade the economic sanctions on Syria (Mar. 30, 2012). Iran warships docked at the port of Latakia in early 2012 (Feb. 18, 2012), and in early 2011 (Feb. 22, 2011; Feb. 24, 2011). During the 2011 visit, the Iranian navy’s commander, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, announced that Iran was ready to help Syria improve its port facilities, and to collaborate on technical projects with Syria. (Feb. 26, 2011). (All the Stratfor articles are behind a paywall.)

So in short, Syria is Iran’s route for the projection into the Mediterranean Sea (and from there, the Atlantic Ocean) of conventional naval power, and, perhaps soon, of nuclear weaponry.

Post-debate, the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler at least made a start towards a serious factcheck of the Romney quote. He published an updated and condensed version of a longer piece he had written last April about Romney’s repeated use of the phrase.

In the April piece, Kessler wondered what difference Syria made, since Iranian ships can enter the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. True, but anyone with even a mild knowledge of naval affairs could explain the utility of a Mediterranean port, as a opposed to a Persian Gulf port, for ships operating in the Mediterranean. In April and in October, Kessler wrote:

We also checked with other experts, many of whom confessed to being puzzled by Romney’s comments.  [DK: Kessler should have named all the "other" experts, and should also have included the explanation of at least one of the experts who was not among the "many" were were confused.] Tehran certainly uses Syria to supply the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, but that has little to do with the water. The relationship with Syria could also effectively allow Iran to project its power to the Mediterranean and the border with Israel. But does that really mean, “a route to the sea”?

The last two sentences are really the buried lede of the story: Romney is raising a very important issue (Syria as the base for the projection of Iranian naval power), but Romney is not explaining himself in a manner which the less well-informed members of the public (e.g., the sources linked in the 1st paragraph of this post) can understand. If Romney were a better communicator, he would have laid out the facts in greater detail, as Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill did in their own time, when warning their countrymen about the military dangers of aggressive totalitarian regimes. As Kessler wrote in April, “If Romney is elected president, he will quickly learn that words have consequences. Precision in language is especially important in diplomacy, and here Romney used a phrase that left people befuddled as to his intent and meaning, especially since he did not even make a distinction between the Mediterranean and Arabian seas.”

If you’re a journalist or a commentator, there’s no reason be ashamed just because a Washington Post writer reported a story much better than you did. But when you find yourself being outclassed by Yahoo! Answers, perhaps it’s time to rethink your assumptions that you’re much smarter and better informed than Mitt Romney.

Here’s the photo of Netanyahu’s Iranian bomb / red line image, from his speech today to the UN:

And here’s a version by David Ferguson (Snicker Snack Baby):

Thanks to Powerline and Instapundit for the pointer.

UPDATE: A commenter asked why I thought the cartoon was interesting; I hope that others perceive some of this themselves — a joke isn’t really funny if it has to be explained, and a picture is worth a thousand words — but for those who are curious, my thinking is that this cartoon works well because it packs in so many mutually interacting messages (whether or not intended by the author).

1. First, focusing on Netanyahu, imagine Netanyahu actually displaying this cartoon in the UN, especially with the serious facial expression that he’s wearing. That’s pretty absurd, given the meltdown that it would generate, which is a bit funny by itself.

2. But at the same time, while it’s absurd that Netanyahu would show the cartoon, the cartoon likely captures pretty well (I can’t read Netanyahu’s mind, but it’s a good inference) what Netanyahu is actually thinking. To him Ahmadinejad and much of the rest of Iran’s hardliners are exactly the Turban Bomb Mohammeds that the cartoon depicts.

3. What’s more, deep down inside (or maybe not so deep) Netanyahu and many other Israelis, especially ones on Netanyahu’s side of the political divide, likely secretly wish that someone would indeed go into the UN chamber and show the Turban Bomb Mohammed = Iran cartoon. In a sense, the cartoon is thus a picture of what might be (again, no-one knows, but political cartoons like this aren’t about conveying provable information) Netanyahu’s dream the night before his speech: That he might go into the UN and thumb his nose at his enemies this way.

4. Now let’s set aside Netanyahu, and focus just on the cartoon. I’m confident that most Muslims have no wish to be Turban Bomb Mohammeds themselves — most of nearly any large religious group just want to live calm, peaceful lives, and in fact do indeed lead such lives. Many Muslims don’t support terrorist attacks on civilians, or even nonterrorist wars against Israel and America.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fits the cartoon (in attitude, not appearance) quite nicely. He’s literally trying to develop a bomb. And his past rhetoric suggests that he might well light the figurative fuse on it. As I mentioned in item 2, Turban Bomb Mohammed is a pretty good representation of him. And there’s even a bonus subtwist in the form of his name, which as I understand it is a derivative of Mohammed, though the cartoon would work well even without that.

5. What’s more, the Iranian hardliners were among those who went apoplectic over the Mohammed cartoons — this cartoon tweaks them by using the same image to refer to them, and in a context where some of the criticisms of the original cartoon (that it doesn’t fairly represent the great bulk of peaceful Muslims) are inapt (see item 4).

6. Finally — and this is likely in the eye of the beholder — the Mohammed cartoon, used in this context, very much reminded me of a young (more Ahmadinejad-like) version of the iconic photos of Khomeini, the symbol of modern Iranian Muslim extremism.

Political cartoons, I think, are especially interesting when there’s a lot going on conceptually in a very limited visual composition. This one, it seems to me, is an especially good example of that.