The European Union recently issued an “interpretive notice” requiring that products from Israel originating from anywhere outside the pre-1967 borders (including the Golan Heights) not be labeled as products of Israel. Avi Bell argues that the notice “violates international law and discriminates against the Jewish state,” is “badly reasoned and badly drafted,” and “drips with condescension and contempt for Israel”:

The notice presents its position on the borders between Israel and a future state of Palestine as those of “international law,” as if the EU had the authority under international law to establish Israeli-Palestinian borders. In fact, not only does the EU lack this authority under international law, the EU is signed as a witness on Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements that state that the borders are to be established only by agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Similarly, the notice claims that the EU “will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders, other than those agreed by the parties to the Middle East Peace Process” even though there were no pre-1967 Israeli-Palestinian borders. In fact, by trying to establish the pre-1967 Israel-Jordan and Israel-Egypt armistice lines as the new Israeli-Palestinian borders, the EU is trying to force changes to the pre-1967 borders contrary to the agreement of the parties to the peace process.

Roger Zakheim believes the U.S. has taken the wrong approach to the Israel-Hamas war, and to the fate of the five Americans currently being held in Gaza:

For more than seven months the secretary of state and director of central intelligence, along with other senior officials, have treated the Gaza war as if it were a conflict between state actors, employing shuttle diplomacy and negotiating with both sides. They have indulged in the conceit that you can negotiate with a terrorist organization by treating it as an equal party. The Biden administration has continued to allow Qatar to give Hamas’s political leadership sanctuary in its five-star headquarters in Doha, on the theory that if they can talk with Hamas leaders, a resolution is more likely.

It is long overdue for the United States to shift the paradigm. Over the past twenty years, the United States has developed an array of intelligence, economic, and military tools and techniques that can pressure and destroy terrorist networks. They should be deployed against Hamas.

We should also unleash our military and intelligence community’s world-class targeting and strike capability that killed Osama bin Laden and Qassem Suleimani, and has rescued hundreds of hostages held by terrorists. . . . Instead of fully utilizing this exquisite capability, only a handful of military advisers are whispering advice to Israeli counterparts in Tel Aviv. . . . As one IDF special operator told me, “Your Delta forces would be a game changer.”