The New York Review of Books: More Equal Than Others

But Waldron thinks that in neither case are we drawing fundamental distinctions of kind between humans: being a child or an alien is (in principle) a contingent condition, one that justifies different forms of moral treatment, but that does not speak of fundamental differences in moral worth. Or, to put it another way, insofar as our differential treatment of children and adults, or citizens and aliens, is justified, it is only because we can show how it is mandated by a principle that applies equally to everyone, including children and aliens.  [...]

Waldron is insistent that basic equality, despite its status as a second-order principle, is morally demanding. It requires us, he writes, to “insist unflinchingly that the benefit of basic principles of human worth and human dignity accrues equally to every human being.” His central example is a decision made by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2005 on targeted killings of Palestinians, including those not directly involved in terrorist activities. In his opinion, Supreme Court President Emeritus Aharon Barak argued that a ruling on the question had to respect the fact that “unlawful combatants are not beyond the law. They are not ‘outlaws.’ God created them as well in his image. Their human dignity as well is to be honored.” Barak went on to argue for an expanded notion of what counts as “direct participation” in terrorist activity, so as to make Israel’s killings compatible with international customary law. The other justices concurred. Waldron finds Barak’s invocation of basic equality moving, a sign of “the hard and desperately difficult work” that the principle does. A skeptic might think it a prime example of how talk of basic human equality can be used to dignify profound inhumanity. [...]

In offering his account of what makes profoundly disabled humans our equals, Waldron also means to “confront and refute” an argument famously made by the philosopher Peter Singer. Singer notes that most of us would be instinctively horrified by the idea of treating a human with severe cognitive impairments in the ways we routinely treat animals with similar cognitive capacities. But this, Singer says, is inconsistent; if profoundly disabled humans are our equals, then surely chimps, dolphins, pigs, and elephants are too. As a believer in distinctive equality—the idea that humans have significantly more worth than animals—Waldron must resist Singer’s conclusion. This is why Waldron does not simply expand what counts as the “ordinary” range of human capacities to include those capacities actually possessed by profoundly disabled humans. By instead locating the grounds of equality in a profoundly disabled human’s potential capacities, he hopes to defend the thesis of basic human equality without granting equality to non-human animals.

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Vox: How the first nude movies were made (Nov 29, 2015)

Slate: What Living off the Grid in Europe Looks Like

Bruy, who grew up in urban France, became fascinated by the self-sufficient, off-the-grid lifestyle he experienced and resolved to see more of it while documenting it with his camera. Using the WWOOF network, Bruy has lived on remote farms all across Europe, from Spain to Switzerland to Romania, staying anywhere from two weeks to three months at a time. “Most of the farmers had been living in big cities and I really respect their decision to say, ‘This is not my thing and I can't live this way anymore.’ I think there are a lot of people thinking this way but few making the steps to change. I was interested in how they managed to live another way,” he said.

While they all aspire to some degree of self-sufficiency, Bruy’s subjects represent a range of experiences. Some live without electricity or running water, while others are equipped with most modern conveniences. Bruy isn’t necessarily concerned with finding the most extreme cases. Instead, he’s interested in capturing a variety of people who have chosen alternative lifestyles. “Some of them would say they’re 30 percent self-sufficient or they’re 60 percent self-sufficient. It's very hard to check those numbers. The most important thing, for me, was the intention,” he said.

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Spiegel: An Author's Quest to Explain Muslim Anti-Semitism

There are a number of patterns to be found in the transcripts. For example, most had read something about a supposed Jewish global conspiracy or heard about it from friends or family. A female engineer who grew up in a Turkish family in Germany said, "People talk about it, that the world is governed by some families, about 120 families. They are Jewish and that they control the government, more or less. All these diseases, bacteria, that are being spread everywhere in the world here, supposedly also come from there, that means the whole system in the world! I do think that Jews very, very much manipulate the world and also control it." [...]

The central subject in his conversations, Ranan writes, was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of his interview subjects, he argues, said "Jew" when they meant "Israeli." As Ranan puts it, "When someone is shouting 'Jew, Jew, cowardly pig' at a protest in reaction to an Israeli bombing of Gaza, they aren't referring to London or New York Jews, but Israelis. That doesn't make it more pleasant for spectators and it is especially hard for Jews to bear." [...]

The number of anti-Semitic crimes is consistently high in Germany. Last year, the police registered 1,453 anti-Semitic offenses, an average of four per day. Of these, 1,377 crimes can be ascribed to the far-right extremist scene. Only 58 crimes were classified as being the result of "religious ideology" or "foreign ideology." According to anti-Semitism researchers, the number of unreported crimes is high. Critics also complain that the judiciary in German does not classify many crimes that are anti-Semitic in nature as such.

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Haaretz: Gaza Carnage Is a Propaganda Victory for Hamas – and a Hasbara Nightmare for Israel

Future developments are also in the hands of the Islamic organization. The more Hamas persists with the “March of the Million,” as it has been dubbed, and the more it succeeds in separating the protests from acts of violence and terror, the more it will succeed in defying and embarrassing Israel as well as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. If commanders of the Israel Defense Forces don’t find a way to repel efforts to breach the fence without causing so many casualties, Israel’s predicament will grow exponentially. Friday’s day of bloodshed may be quickly forgotten if it remains a solitary event, but if the bloodshed recurs over and over during the six-week campaign that is slated to culminate on the Palestinian Nakba Day in mid-May, the international community will be forced to refocus its attentions on the conflict. Criticism of, and pressure on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has virtually evaporated in recent months, could return with a vengeance. [...]

The immediate support of the Trump administration, expressed in a Passover-eve tweet by special envoy Jason Greenblatt, who lambasted Hamas incitement and its “hostile march,” is ostensibly a positive development from Israel’s point of view. Contrary to Trump, Barack Obama would have been quick to criticize what is being widely described as Israel’s excessive use of force, and might have conferred with Western European countries on a proper diplomatic response. Israel welcomes and Netanyahu often extols its unparalleled coordination with the Trump administration, but it could also turn out to be a double-edged sword, which will only make things worse.  [...]

The unqualified U.S. support strengthens the resolve of Netanyahu and his ministers to stick with their do-nothing polices toward both Gaza and the peace process. Most Israelis view Hamas purely as a terror organization, and their gut reaction is that Israel can’t and shouldn’t be perceived as caving in to terror and violence. At a time when early elections seem just beyond the horizon, the last thing Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition wants to do is deviate from its established policies, which would be tantamount to admitting the error of its ways. Calls from the left to review the IDF’s conduct in Gaza and reassess Netanyahu’s policies toward the Palestinians overall could bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back to the center of public discourse after an extended absence, but will also provide the prime minister with an excuse - as if he needs one - to divert attention away from the crisis in Gaza to backstabbing internal enemies from within.

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