Middle East Desk: How Israel Should Fight Back
“The risks of escalation” if Israel responds to last weekend’s Iranian attack “are real,” warns the Jerusalem Post editorial board. “Yet the cost of inaction could be higher, given Iran’s continued aggression and progress in its nuclear program. » Israel’s “reaction must be interpreted not only as a response to an isolated provocation, but as the cornerstone of a comprehensive strategy aimed at maintaining regional stability and actively deterring” Tehran. It is about “upholding international norms” and “the necessary response from Israel should be robust and multi-dimensional, designed not only to neutralize the immediate threats posed by Iranian aggression, but also to project a message unambiguously to Iran and the international community. »
From the right: the Iranian attack changed everything
“Iran’s assault” on Israel with drones and missiles “has been extraordinary,” says City Journal’s Judith Miller. It was “the first time that Iran directly attacked Israel from Iranian soil” and “the first time that Israel’s air defenses successfully protected the country from an attack involving hundreds of drones and missiles.” But in a “most unexpected and, for Israel, welcome development,” the Jewish state received aid “perhaps from Saudi Arabia and certainly from Jordan, the latter of which publicly condemned Israel’s retaliatory war. Israel in Gaza. Jordan’s aid suggests what Israelis and Americans call the Middle East’s “new security architecture” — the strategic alliance of moderate Arab states and Israel against Iran and others members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – could continue to expand.”
Libertarian: the rich already pay their fair share
“After listening to President Joe Biden or looking at general public polls,” you might think that Monday’s tax filing deadline was “a holiday for America’s richest,” says Reason’s Eric Boehm, and that solving tax problems “is as simple as raising questions.” their taxes. In fact, “the wealthiest Americans now pay a higher share of federal taxes than at any time in the past 40 years.” The richest 1% of earners contribute 46% of all income taxes, the highest amount since 1980. The poorest 50% pay just 2.3%. “The demagoguery of taxing the rich might produce political fallout,” but it has produced a political culture “less well equipped to address the serious questions of who should pay what to cover the annual cost of our $7 trillion ( and which continues to grow). federal government.”
Free Speech Monitoring: Salman Rushdie’s Warning
On CBS’s “60 Minutes” this weekend, Salman Rushdie lamented that progressives reject “certain types of speech” because they “offend” this or that group. But it’s not just in America, observes UnHerd’s Tomiwa Owolade. For example, “Scotland’s new hate crime law.” . . claims to be in favor of tolerance, but is the very definition of intolerance. In August 2022, Salman Rushdie was “almost killed” in New York; the attack was a “stark reminder of the death sentence imposed on Rushdie by Iran’s savage theocracy” after he wrote “The Satanic Verses.” Yes, “violence and intimidation still pose the most serious threats to freedom of expression in the world,” but “this does not mean that other threats to freedom of expression should be treated with indifference” – in the United States and elsewhere.
Electoral beat: woe to the Convention for “Genocide Joe”
“These people applaud the drones and missiles aimed at Israel, chant ‘Death to America’ and never blame Tehran or Hamas for anything,” said William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, describing the pro-activists. -Palestinians planning to march to the Democratic National Convention in 2017. Aug. Despite President Biden’s initial strong response to the Hamas slaughters of October 7, he has since “moved away from his own words and closer to what the protesters want.” On the other hand, Senator John Fetterman (Democrat of Pennsylvania) takes the demonstrators “head on”. Unless Biden takes on the far left, the “anti-Israel protests in Chicago this summer will make him look even weaker.” As pollster Doug Schoen predicts, Biden’s failure to “outspokenly defend Israel” could well “cost the president and Democrats a victory in November.”
— Compiled by the Post editorial board
New York Post
