An interesting postscript to this exchange. Yesterday, outgoing Canadian Bar Association @CBA_News President Bianca Kratt, KC posted a reflection on the end of her term, emphasizing the responsibility of lawyers to defend the rule of law and advance justice. I responded with the comment below. I congratulated her on completing her term, agreed with her comments about the rule of law, and then respectfully raised what I believe is a serious issue: the CBA's extraordinary silence on Gaza. I pointed out the contrast with the CBA's willingness to speak about Ukraine and international criminal law, noted the ICJ and ICC proceedings concerning Israel and Palestine, and mentioned the efforts by CBA members and the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association to get the organization to address the issue. I ended by expressing the hope that incoming President Loreley Chekay, K.C. and the new leadership would do better. There was no personal attack. No insult. No abusive language. It was a substantive criticism of a national legal organization and its record on an issue of international law. Today I discovered that Ms. Kratt has blocked me. I cannot tell whether my comment was also deleted or is simply no longer visible to me because I have been blocked, so I will not speculate about that. But the blocking itself is disappointing. When a public figure who has just completed a term leading Canada's largest national lawyers' organization invokes the importance of defending the rule of law, another lawyer should be able to respectfully question that organization's record without being blocked for doing so. And perhaps this small episode illustrates something larger. We talk freely about international law, war crimes, accountability and the rule of law when the subject is Russia and Ukraine. But raise the same principles in relation to Israel and Palestinians, and too often the response is avoidance, discomfort, silence — and apparently, sometimes, simply blocking the person raising the question. That is what many of us mean when we speak about a Palestine exception. The rule of law means very little if we are only comfortable defending it when doing so is easy. I am posting both Ms. Kratt's original post and my response so people can read them and judge for themselves.