As a Jew, a friend of Israel, and a longtime reader/commenter here, I find you embarrassing on every conceivable level. You are a bigot and a fool. You suck. Everything you say is stupid. There, now I feel better.

"genocide of thousands"

I don't think genocide means what you think it means.

The UN Convention definition of genocide is interesting and certainly broader than I would have thought (so broad as to render it nearly meaningless, IMHO). It is also inconsistent with the commonly understood meaning of the word. The latter is reflected in my edition of Webster's, which defines genocide as the "deliberate and systematic extermination of a national or racial group."

Perhaps Million Dollar Picnic was citing the UN definition, but I suspect he/she was misusing the commonly understood meaning.

One can certainly express horror at something without it constituting genocide.

"You make it sound as if the U.N. came up with the definition yesterday and your definition is what has been in effect up until that point."

It's not my definition, it's Webster's. It's also what 99.9% of English speakers mean when they say it. As you know or should know.

Israel may fairly be accused of many things, as ably summarized by Omooex. Genocide, as the word is commonly understood in English usage, just isn't one of them.

As a legal matter, it may be a different story. On its face, the UN definition cited by Omooex appears extraordinarily broad and elastic. But I try to avoid discussing legal matters on blogs unless I'm sure I know what I'm talking about, and that is certainly not the case here.

None of Ambinder's 3 alleged experts offered anything resembling an expert legal opinion (much less a correct expert legal opinion), as least as quoted by Ambinder. One said you have to give Obama's people the benefit of the doubt (simply on faith, apparently). Another said, with no analysis, that he agreed with the decision. And another one stated that federal courts won't give the Obama administration time to review important issues, which is just ludicrous. (I myself am an expert on very few things, but federal litigation is one, and courts routinely give parties far less important than the US Government plenty of time to do things that are useless and stupid. Trust me on this.)

It's one thing to cite an "expert" who agrees with you; it's another thing entirely for the expert to actually say something meaningful.

FWIW, I also have extensive experience in federal appellate proceedings, and everything Glenn said is 100% correct. The idea that the administration had "no choice" due to procedural constraints just doesn't hold water.

Seldom does one see so much purposeful ambiguity packed into a single phrase, the alternative meanings of which, in this instance, comprise the essence of the debate over prosecutions.

The meaning urged by Conason and most of the Beltway Establishment is "people whose offenses were political," i.e., whose offenses were the product of a (presumptively legitimate) political viewpoint or philosophy, and as such would be truly offensive only to those holding a different political viewpoint or philosophy. For the latter group to initiate prosecutions upon attaining sufficient power must surely be "partisan vengeance" and therefore bad.

The meaning argued for by Glenn and the other lonely defenders of the rule of law is, "criminal offenders who are politicians or whose crimes were committed at the behest of politicians." When it is phrased this way, it is clear that the only purported justification for declining to investigate and prosecute the crime is the well-connected status of the criminal.

The entire Beltway argument against prosecutions depends on confusing the distinction between the two meanings. Without that comforting confusion, the Beltway elites would have to really consider spoiling their beautiful minds with unpleasant details, like human beings getting light fixtures shoved up their asses.

Thank goodness! Now all the lamentations about the ruthless, all-powerful, media-controlling neocon/Zionist lobby stifling debate will cease.

"It would be nice if someone here could offer a substantive debate for an anti-Palestinian position.... Any takers? Gator90?"

I certainly don't believe my views are "anti-Palestinian," so I'm not sure I can provide what you're looking for.

My impression is that many Palestinians do not desire peace with Israel, as they would prefer to cling to the dream of destroying their enemy and reclaiming their land -- all of it. I defer to your superior knowledge of ME history, but I believe the Palestinians' de facto government for many years was the PLO, which dedicated itself to Israel's destruction prior to Israel's conquest of the West Bank and Gaza and which maintained the destruction of Israel as its formal, official, written objective until about 2000 or so. A few years later when the Palestinians had an election, they elected Hamas, which has long been committed to the objective of destroying Israel and, as far as I know, still is.

I do not mean this as a condemnation of the Palestinians. I think Palestinians have eminently understandable reasons for hating Israel and wanting to destroy it. The problem is, they can't do it, and I don't think Israel can be blamed for resenting their ambitions. So the Palestinians keep killing and dying, mostly dying.

Both sides have committed horrific, inhuman atrocities. I think I've said before that anyone who perceives the existence of a moral high ground in the I/P conflict is irrationally romanticizing one side and dismissing the humanity of the other. I used to fall into that trap, but as a nice Jewish boy once said, I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.