The Care and Feeding of an Angry Territory

"Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care," Kate Allen, Amnesty International's UK director, told The Telegraph. "Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible."

There are a few problems here. First, food, clean water, electricity and medical care may be all kinds of things, but they aren't human rights. They may indeed be the minimum obligations a modern state must meet in terms of its citizens' needs, but there is no inalienable right to material stuff.

More important, we are constantly told that the Palestinians aren't Israel's people. Whatever obligations Israel might have to provide food, water, electricity and health care to its own citizens, it's not clear why it has those obligations to the Gazans, particularly when those Gazans are committed to the destruction of Israel.