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Israel’s treatment by the left commentariat in the West, is the subject of our first offerings
Eugene Volokh notes university lecturers in UK calling for a boycott.
Also from Volokh, David Bernstein comments on the South Africa analogy.
Advocates of boycotts of Israel and Israelis, such as the British boycott Eugene blogs below, often draw an analogy between Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and South African apartheid. And just as South Africa was boycotted, they argue, so should Israel be boycotted.
For reasons that should be obvious to any objective observer, I find the South Africa analogy to be both absurd and obscene. However, let’s assume for the sake of argument that Israel’s occupation of the lands it captured in 1967 is indeed morally analogous to South African apartheid.
The relevant analogy would then have to be as follows. …
Speaking of double standards, Samizdata wonders how the world would have reacted if Israel was abducting BBC reporters.
Power Line posts on the latest from Ahmadinejad and segues to a David Horovitz essay in the Jerusalem Post.
That essay is here.
A two-hour drive, at most, from here, in a lawless land, extortionists are holding a British journalist captive to try and delegitimize my country.
The kidnapping of the BBC’s Alan Johnston in Gaza, and now the broadcast of his taped denunciation of the fact of Israel’s existence, are only one small part of a wider campaign. And it is working.
The international community is being drip-fed the toxic assertion that, were it not for Israel, ours would be a peaceful world, a harmonious community of nations, living in tranquility alongside each other, respecting differences and working out disagreements in a spirit of compromise. If it were not for Israel, the Original Sin, the bone in the Islamic throat.
In Alan Johnston’s Britain, the campaign is proving particularly effective. So much so that the union that represents his own profession, the National Union of Journalists, along with many academics, members of the clergy and numerous other opinion-shapers, now subscribe to this notion of Israel as prime irritant, prompter of terrorism. …
It’s spreading to this country too. Marty Peretz spots a lying obit in NY Times.
When you don’t know history, or forget it, you confabulate the past. Sometimes in grand dimensions. And sometimes in smaller ones. But even small distortions tell big lies. And that’s what, I regret to say, is what The New York Times has done… again. …
John Fund reports from the Richmond Fred Thompson appearance.
The Corner and Hugh Hewitt post on the dem debate.
… The weirdest moment: A five minute discussion of stopping the genocide in Darfur by boycotting the Beijing Olympics? Huh? And Chris Dodd called that going “too far.” This is not exactly a strong and decisive bunch.
Ben Stein – gas-price gouging laws.
… It sounds good, but in fact it simply destroys the free market. It takes away the genius of the free market, which is its ability to respond to shortages or surpluses through the price system. It punishes one specific class of people in the economy, people in the energy business, while anyone else — plumbers, electricians, lawyers, doctors — can raise prices any time he wishes. This is an outrageous attack on the mechanism that has served America brilliantly. The price system. It also is an attack on the liberties of citizens. What if drivers want to pay more for gasoline rather than wait in line or face shortages? …
Samizdata posts on what totalitarianism will look like in UK and us too.
… We are headed for a different kind of totalitarianism than that of Stalin or Hitler or Mao, but a total state really is what a great many people have in mind for us all. They seek a sort of ‘smiley face fascism’ in which all interactions are regulated in the name of preventing sexism, promoting health, and defending the environment. The excuses will not invoke the Glory of the Nation or the Proletariat or the Volk or the King or the Flag or any of those old fashioned tools for tyrants, but rather it will be “for our own good”, “for the Planet”, “for the whales”, “for the children”, “for the disabled” or “for equality”.
But if they get their way it will be quite, quite totalitarian.
Adam Smith.org goes through one day’s paper for examples.
Jimmy Carter and Chavez by IBD editors.
Someone with relatives in Cuba gives the lie to Michael Moore.
Scrappleface and Dilbert are in the humor section.