With the start of the Palestinian Intifada in December 1987 one of the most distinguished Professors of International Law and Human Rights -- Professor Charles Black of Yale University Law School and Columbia University Law School -- felt he must speak up and call for a major change in the U.S. relationship with Israel until Israel allowed creation of an independent Palestinian State. When for the first time in his life no magazine or journal would publish his extensive essay, JCOME stepped forward to do so. It was published at the time in pamphlet form and expanded in 2021 into a book with a new updated Introduction by Mark Bruzonsky that tells the whole story behind this unique publication.
Let Us Rethink Our "Special Relationship" With Israel
by Professor Charles L. Black, Jr. - Sterling Professor of Law Emeritus Yale UniversityIntroduction by Mark Bruzonsky
"I believe that the so-called “special relationship” now assumed to connect the United States and Israel ought to be radically rethought, in all its aspects and clear down to its deepest foundations. I believe such a rethinking would sooner or later put an end to this “special relationship” in anything at all like its present form. This “relationship” is sweepingly and grossly incompatible with our country’s supposed dedication to the cause of human rights throughout the world; it poisons the sheer basic honesty of that dedication. I have no illusion that our extrication from this involvement, this visibly and invisibly “entangling alliance”, will be easily or soon accomplished. We can’t begin to know about that until we try. I think it a duty to try, and to keep trying.""Extraordinary ability to distill legal issues into human terms." Hillary Clinton
"So many of the great moral issues of the 20th century seem clear in retrospect, but were quite controversial at the time. He had the moral courage to go against his race, his class, his social circle.” Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar
