From Ian:
Security guard shot by gunman in attack on Moscow synagogue
Security guard shot by gunman in attack on Moscow synagogue
A security guard at a Moscow synagogue was wounded Saturday evening when a man armed with a gun and a gasoline canister attempted to break into the Jewish institution and set it alight, Russian media reported.Double Standards for Aleppo and Gaza
Initial reports said the guard was in critical condition after being shot in the head and chest while trying to stop the assailant from entering the Choral Synagogue.
The attacker was arrested by police, according to media reports.
A rabbi at the synagogue said the assailant arrived during a Sabbath prayer service, when about 150 worshipers were inside, and asked to meet Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Ynet news reported. Several security guards then took him across the street, at which point he shot one of them.
Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties go unreported or even ignored by the press, and Israel instead finds itself regularly judged in the court of public opinion, which is led by a lazy or hostile media.Bystanders to Genocide
So Israel is subjected not only to a different standard than the deplorable militaries of Syria and Russia, but even to a different standard than other Western militaries.
If and when the Syrian conflict comes to an end, will anyone be held to account for what certainly appear, at face value, to be genuine war crimes? Will there be a UN investigation and a Goldstone-style report? Will the International Criminal Court issue indictments? Given Russian involvement and the lack of American global power projection, it is unlikely that anyone will be held to account.
The next time open conflict between Israel and Hamas breaks out, will the parameters of judgment have changed as a result of the carnage in Aleppo and other parts of Syria? Or will Israel continue to be held to a standard of behavior unlike any other military in the world?
The likelihood is that nothing will have changed when it comes to how Israel is treated, and we will be left to conclude that, ultimately, the world will be outraged by Israel defending itself and its citizens irrespective of how ethically it behaves.
The essay was titled “Bystanders to Genocide.” Ms. Power later expanded the article into a book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” for which she was widely praised. Barack Obama read the book and promoted her rise in government.
Fast forward to the present, and Ms. Power can sound like those officials she once scolded for thinking they were doing everything they could given the complexities of the situation.
“Well, Syria is a very complex picture,” Ms. Power told CBS earlier this month. “There are thousands of armed groups. The question again of what military intervention would achieve, where you would do it, how you would do it in a way where the terrorists wouldn’t be the ones to take advantage of it—this has been extremely challenging. But the idea that we have not been doing quote anything in Syria seems absurd. We’ve done everything short of waging war against the Assad regime and we are, I should note, having significant success against ISIL on the ground.”
Ms. Power’s list of achievements in Syria might seem grimly funny to the more than 10 million Syrians driven from their homes in the civil war and the families of its 400,000 dead, most killed by the Assad regime. The starving residents of Aleppo and other besieged Syrian cities also know that until last week the Obama Administration was eager to team up with the Russians—going so far as to share critical battlefield intelligence—so they could jointly attack Islamic State targets, thereby further freeing the Assad regime to do its dirty work. Another stab at U.S.-Russian cooperation hasn’t been ruled out.
President Obama bears ultimate responsibility for doing so little to stop the five-year Guernica that is Syria, and we don’t know what Ms. Power’s private policy advice has been. But in public she has become an echo of the officials she once denounced for justifying American inaction in the face of mass slaughter. The honorable decision would be to resign.
















