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On the 40th anniversary of the start of the Six-Day War, we have a couple of items.
Bret Stephens in WSJ wants to upset conventional wisdom.
Richard Chesnoff in NY Daily News.
Forty years ago tomorrow, Israel wielded its terrible swift sword against the attack-poised armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan – and saved the Jewish state from destruction.
It was the Six-Day War, and the fledgling state’s stunning victory over enemies determined to annihilate it galvanized the world and changed the Mideast map – perhaps forever.
I was one of the handful of foreign correspondents who reached the front during that monumentally brief battle. I was in Sinai on the first day, then returned north and managed to enter Gaza just as that benighted city was falling to Israel’s largely civilian tank corps. Then it was on to Jerusalem.
Like anyone who believes in the justice of Israel’s existence, I was deeply relieved by its victory on June 10. I had heard the bloodthirsty Arab threats of a new Holocaust. I had seen the “Kill the Jews” posters in Gaza schools. I had seen the bunkers and mass graves that Israel had been forced to dig in expectation of invasion, if not defeat. …
Daniel Johnson in Contentions has something to add to yesterday’s items on Israel.
Last week’s vote by the British Universities and Colleges Union admonishing its members to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions†marks a new stage in the concerted campaign to put Israel into a kind of cultural quarantine. This boycott and others like it are not merely aimed at forcing a change of that country’s policy towards the Palestinians—they are explicitly intended to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. By branding Israel an apartheid state, these academics are denying its right to exist in anything like its present form. …
… It is Britain, not Israel, that is most harmed by this vandalism. These academics are cutting themselves off from the mainstream of Jewish intellectual life—from one of the sources of their own civilization. When Alan Bloom conjured the image of the closing of the American mind, he meant just such self-inflicted amnesia. Only this time, it is the British mind that is closing.
Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters notes a new Brit health regulation.
Many people who want to “fix†the American health-care system want a single-payor model in which the government controls the distribution of benefits, as opposed to private-sector health insurers and providers. They claim that only government control will result in equitable distribution. However, given the intimate nature of health care, such control opens the door to intrusions on personal choice unseen in American history.
Don’t believe me? Ask British smokers, who have been threatened with losing ground in seeking care: …
Along the same vein, Cafe Hayek posts on trans-fat regs in Montgomery County, MD.
And Carpe Diem posts near the subject.
IBD with the seventh Carter editorial. This time on his “human rights” record.
… In the Soviet Union, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko laughed at Carter’s human rights record behind his back, but knew how to manipulate Carter in public. Gromyko browbeat Carter, telling him the USSR’s health care and housing trumped America’s. “I couldn’t argue,” Carter winced in his book, “Living Faith.” “We each had a definition of human rights, and differences like this must be recognized and understood.”
Carter’s inability to distinguish intentions from results through his “human rights” policy has led to more human rights violations around the world than any dictator could have done on his own.
But he didn’t just undermine human rights; he undermined the U.S. and its legitimate security interests. His legacy is the spread of tyranny, making him the U.S.’ worst president for human rights.
With Al Gore and the Fairness Doctrine, Neal Boortz starts off today’s huge Gore section. Neal segues into a post on global warming on Neptune. No SUVs there!
Ann Althouse says Gore’s too good for us.
Thomas Mitchell, editor of Las Vegas reviews Gore’s new book.
You have to give Al Gore credit for one thing: Truth in labeling.
His new book, “The Assault on Reason,” is precisely that — a relentless assault on reason, as well as science, history, Republicans, news media, the president, corporations, the wealthy and any ignoramuses who do not fall in line with his soft-core socialist friends.
It is a 320-page daisy-chain of platitudes, sophomoric clichés punctuated by vaguely relevant quotations ripped straight from the pages of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” and smatterings of pseudoscientific citations to prop up lame contentions.
The New Editor takes a turn.
Time for the Gore/Unabomber quiz. Twelve quotes. You have to guess if the quote is by Al Gore or the Unabomber.
The Captain links to a Guardian, UK piece on the corruption in the carbon offset biz.
Do you like your irony so thick that it drips? The Guardian has a nice, juicy slice of it for you today. The main organization used by Europe to trade carbon credits has mismanaged the process so badly that they have created an increase in greenhouse-gas emissions as a result: …