Israel’s ‘unconditional’ right, NJ’s ballot corruption and more commentary

Mideast desk: Israel’s ‘Unconditional’ Right

The United Nations and President Biden claim Israel’s right to self-defense must be balanced with an imperative to protect civilians, but that right is actually “unconditional,” declares Ben Bayer at New Ideal. The Allies in World War II knew that and “were able to bring the Nazi regime fully to heel, in part by killing over six hundred thousand German civilians in strategic bombings.” Israel “should unapologetically exercise its unconditional right of self-defense as well.” After all, your right to live shouldn’t be “compromised by the fact that someone threatening to kill you has also taken a hostage who might be hurt in your attempt to defend yourself. There is no earthly reason for thinking the hostage deserves to live but you” do not.

From the left: Jersey’s Ballot Corruption

“Beneath the dramatic, operatic corruption outlined in the recent Menendez indictment lies what has been described as the soft corruption of machine politics in New Jersey,” warns The American Prospect’s David Dayen. Many unelected county party chairs are backing Tammy Murphy, the governor’s wife, in the primary for Sen. Bob Menendez’s seat, assuring her access to the “county ballot line,” which “groups candidates together who are endorsed by the county parties.” This has “the effect of putting a fat thumb on the scale for Murphy,” with other candidates relegated to columns off to the right, “a place sometimes nicknamed ‘ballot Siberia.’” Rutgers researcher Julia Sass Rubin found it makes a 38-point difference. Jersey elections “aren’t quite democratic as much as they are payments of tribute to party bosses.”

Ex-FBI agent: Lessons from JFK’s Assassination 

President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination “brought justifiable scrutiny on the law enforcement agencies that should have prevented it as well as those that investigated it,” reflects Thomas J. Baker at The Wall Street Journal. The investigation “devolved into a fiasco”: The FBI, “the Secret Service, the Dallas police and sheriff offices all argued with each other” over Lee Harvey Oswald, “the rifle and other evidence, witnesses and, most important, jurisdiction.” “The mishandling of Oswald allowed Jack Ruby to shoot the suspected presidential assassin in the basement of Dallas police headquarters,” adding “fuel to the already burning conspiracy theories.”

From the right: Populism’s Big Dutch Win

“With almost all the votes now counted,” Geert Wilders’ right-wing Party for Freedom “has won 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, with 24 per cent of the vote, trouncing his nearest rivals, a coalition of the Labour and Green parties,” reports Spiked’s Fraser Myers. “These elections are as much a win for Wilders as they are a loss for the centrist establishment,” as “European elites would have told you that a ‘sensible’ country like the Netherlands was immune to populism.” The Labour-Green alliance was defeated, showing “opposition to climate policy is now a significant driver of European populism.” “Politicians who think they can get away with impoverishing their citizens, while hiding behind waffle about Net Zero, are in for a very rude awakening.”

Culture critic: RIP, Netflix Queue

“I still remember my excitement that first time” Netflix’s “red and white envelope” arrived in “my New York City mailbox like a present waiting to be opened,” recalls Andrew Trees in The Smart Set. No more spending days “wandering the aisles of Blockbuster and debating whether to try a foreign film someone vaguely remembered or just watch Die Hard for the twelfth time.” Of course, this was before DVDs became “a quaint and dusty relic akin to a gramophone” — even what Netflix called your “queue” was “redolent of some Victorian past in which each film waited decorously in line to be seen.” He and his pregnant wife suffering from morning sickness “stumbled onto the original version of Upstairs/Downstairs (five years, sixty-eight episodes) and blew through it in under a week.” Netflix has ended DVD deliveries, but still: “As the lights lower and the screen flickers,” “the promise of transcendence always seems close at hand.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board