Wednesday Morning

We met this morning with Jonathan Rynhold who spoke on Israel in the International Arena. He posited that Israel is being demonized, delegitimized, and being held to double standards compared to the rest of the world community. He brought many pertinent points to the fore including a reduction of context in the discussion of Israel in the world community. His remarks were quite well-spoken especially as he was willing to debate and accept the possibility of human rights violations. His argument was not about the issues, but rather the disproportionate negative press as compared to other countries with human rights violations. In other words, the discussion is not about the morality of Israel's behavior, which he was willing to debate and negotiate, but about the desire, request and requirement that values about normative behavior be equally applied across the world. This seems to me to be viable argument and a reasonable request. The irony of the upshot of this situation in his opinion is that Israelis are probably more willing to compromise in the situation than ever before, but are less trusting of any compromise that comes to the table in practice.