John Stossel: Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO’s Health-Care Study
The New York Times recently declared “the disturbing truth … that … the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care.”
As usual, the Times editors get it wrong.
Dennis Prager: If It’s Bad for America, It’s Good for Democrats
One of the two major political parties of the United States has linked all its electoral hopes on domestic pathologies, economic downturns and foreign failure.
It is actually difficult to name any positive development for America that would benefit the Democratic Party’s chances in a national election.
Name almost any subject, and this unhealthy pattern can be discerned.
Dore Gold: The Dangers of ‘Peace’ Making
The U.S. and other Western powers are pushing for a new Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough, to help contain Iran and undercut the appeal of al Qaeda and radical Islam. A grand-scale Middle East peace conference is planned for this fall.
The underlying assumption is that radical Islam has something do to with Israel-related political grievances. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made this argument repeatedly. If he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice roll up their sleeves and work toward a permanent settlement of the Palestinian issue, so the logic goes, they will be providing a powerful diplomatic antidote to the jihadism threatening the security of the entire Western alliance.
But is this really the case? In August 2005, the international community embraced Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza, largely for these very reasons. The “occupation,” which they tirelessly argued was polarizing the Middle East, would be rolled back. The Palestinians would take over Israeli greenhouses and export cherry tomatoes to the European Union. They would pump gas from lucrative off-shore gas fields being developed by British Gas to bring in huge revenues to the Palestinian people.
Ms. Rice also pushed hard for the “Rafah Border Crossing Agreement,” which was supposed to facilitate trade between Gaza and the rest of the world while keeping terrorists out. EU observers were deployed.
But moderation did not ensue. Five months after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas won the Palestinian elections and formed a government. In March 2006, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat that al Qaeda had penetrated the area. A month later, the newspaper reported that al Qaeda operatives had infiltrated Gaza from Egypt, Sudan and Yemen.
Huge amounts of weapons and cash also poured into Gaza. And regardless of their tactical disagreements, Hamas did not fight al Qaeda but in fact joined forces with one of its Gaza affiliates, the Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam), in kidnapping Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit. In July 2007, the head of al Qaeda in Egypt fled that country’s security forces to hide in Gaza.
In short, the U.S. and its Western allies thought that Israel’s Gaza pullout would establish the foundations of a Palestinian state and thus reduce the flames of radical Islamic rage. Instead they got an al-Qaeda sanctuary on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Victor Davis Hanson: Why they hate, and like, us
The more confident a nation is, even when poor, the more likely it seems to admire America. Some of our best supporters turn out to be one-billion person India (59 percent favorable rating), Japan (61 percent), and South Korea (58 percent) — all democratic, capitalist juggernauts, and appreciative of liberal American trade policy and U.S. military support. Again, should we Americans value the friendship of such democracies — or that of a China that cheats on international trade accords and intimidates its neighbors?
So it is encouraging to be admired by idealistic populations in Africa and Eastern Europe, and shown friendship by India and Japan. But perhaps it is equally to our credit that a bullying China and Russia, a dictatorial and intolerant Middle East, and smug nations of Western Europe seem to resent us, especially our support for democratic change abroad.
Charles Krauthammer: Obama would be quite the Democratic gamble
For Barack Obama, it was strike two. And this one was a right-down-the-middle question from a YouTuber in Monday night’s South Carolina debate: “Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?â€
“I would,†responded Obama.
Fouad Ajami: The mayhem of Palestine
Five summers ago, on June 24, President George W. Bush, in a landmark speech, offered the Palestinians his and America’s commitment to support “the creation of a Palestinian state.” America was in the throes of a campaign against terrorism; the Iraq war, as we now know, was in the planning phase. It was important for the Bush administration, or so it seemed, to set the stage for these two campaigns by a generous and forthcoming policy toward the Palestinians. This was claimed to be nothing less than an American equivalent of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which had pledged Britain’s support for the creation of a Jewish “national home.” Bush’s pledge drew the right moral and political parameters. America’s support was contingent, the president said, on leaders “not compromised by terror.” The vision was generous and held out to the Palestinians the promise of normalcy: “You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy.”
Victor Davis Hanson: When Should We Stop Supporting Israel?
The always brilliant Victor Davis Hanson asks: When Should We Stop Supporting Israel?
The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question—at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in cultural, economic, political, and social terms.
Well, we should no longer support Israel, when…
Mr. Sharon suspends all elections and plans a decade of unquestioned rule.
Mr. Sharon suspends all investigation about fiscal impropriety as his family members spend millions of Israeli aid money in Paris.
All Israeli television and newspapers are censored by the Likud party.
Israeli hit teams enter the West Bank with the precise intention of targeting and blowing up Arab women and children.
Preteen Israeli children are apprehended with bombs under their shirts on their way to the West Bank to murder Palestinian families.
Israeli crowds rush into the street to dip their hands into the blood of their dead and march en masse chanting mass murder to the Palestinians.
Rabbis give public sermons in which they characterize Palestinians as the children of pigs and monkeys.
Israeli school textbooks state that Arabs engage in blood sacrifice and ritual murders.
Mainstream Israeli politicians, without public rebuke, call for the destruction of Palestinians on the West Bank and the end to Arab society there.
Likud party members routinely lynch and execute their opponents without trial.
Jewish fundamentalists execute with impunity women found guilty of adultery on grounds that they are impugning the “honor†of the family.
Israeli mobs with impunity tear apart Palestinian policemen held in detention.
Israeli television broadcasts—to the tune of patriotic music—the last taped messages of Jewish suicide bombers who have slaughtered dozens of Arabs.
Jewish marchers parade in the streets with their children dressed up as suicide bombers, replete with plastic suicide-bombing vests.
New Yorkers post $25,000 bounties for every Palestinian blown up by Israeli murderers.
Israeli militants murder a Jew by accident and then apologize on grounds that they though he was an Arab—to the silence of Israeli society.
Jews enter Arab villages in Israel to machine gun women and children.
Israeli public figures routinely threaten the United States with terror attacks.
Bin Laden is a folk hero in Tel Aviv.
Jewish assassins murder American diplomats and are given de facto sanctuary by Israeli society.
Israeli citizens celebrate on news that 3,000 Americans have been murdered.
Israeli citizens express support for Saddam Hussein’s supporters in Iraq in their efforts to kill Americans.
The vast moral chasm that separates Israeli and Palestinian culture can only be denied by the pathologically ignorant, or those with a deep-seated anti-semitism.
