Foreign desk: An Arab-Israeli ‘Ray of Hope’
Thirty prominent public figures from 15 Arab countries, some facing “serious personal security issues,” gathered in London last week “to repudiate the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement” against Israel and demand their nations establish “direct civil relations” with the Jewish state, reports Jenni Frazer at the Jewish Journal. Attendees included Mohammed Anwar Sadat, a member of the Egyptian Parliament and a nephew of former President Anwar Sadat; former Kuwaiti Minister of Information Sami Abdul-Latif Al-Nisf; as well as other religious and political notables. The group recounted “personal stories about good relations with Jews” and deplored terrorism, “brainwashing” kids against Israel and politicizing Islam. Former US diplomat Dennis Ross called the participants “courageous” and “a ray of hope.” And while no government was officially involved, the views expressed are bound to resonate throughout the Middle East.
2020 watch: Ivy League Folly Is How Trump Wins
Saturday’s Yale-Harvard football game “was delayed for about an hour because of students protesting ‘climate change’ on the field at the end of halftime,” Mediaite’s John Ziegler fumes — and it was just the kind of “extreme political correctness” that will get President Trump re-elected come next year. The protesters deliberately timed their action to waste maximum time and gain maximum media attention. Instead of cracking down, however, officials at Yale, where the game was held, treated the radicals with “kid gloves,” the kind their spoiled, affluent cohort “has come to fully expect.” And while voters won’t remember this particular “debacle” when they step into the booth next year, “Trump’s political rocket ship is fueled by the extremely negative reaction Middle America has to political correctness.” All the brilliant Yalies did was “add a bit more gas to his tank.”
City desk: Prohibit Parking To Save Space
While critics bemoan any change to street parking in New York City, Connor Harris argues in City Journal that the system’s familiarity blinds residents to the fact that today’s system is “inefficient, anti-free-market and unfair.” For example, the city could install “hygienic municipal dumpsters” on reallocated parking spots, preventing garbage from piling up on trash-collection days, or convert spots to bus lanes and loading zones. Also, cheap street parking “exists by government fiat”: Letting the free market decide what to do with a space could “raise its price or convert it to more productive uses.” Fact is, even without street parking, “New York’s drivers could easily afford the true cost of driving” — and non-drivers would be better off.
Culture critic: Dolly Doesn’t Need Times Lectures
A recent New York Times profile of Dolly Parton sneered at the country-music legend’s supposed failure “to make the slightest hint of a political statement” — which should win the paper “some sort of prize for statements that are best at missing what is in plain sight,” snarks the Walter Olson at Cato. Parton’s positive persona and enormous charitable contributions make “a perfectly legitimate political statement,” as one Twitter correspondent told Olson. Besides, Olson notes, she’s written plenty of songs “about poverty, about the thing between men and women and about responding to bad treatment with forgiveness and magnanimity.” Or as another tweeter put it: “Dolly Parton’s life is a political statement for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.”
Brexit watch: A Collapsing Remain
Party loyalty has blurred in Britain since the Brexit referendum, The Spectator’s James Forsyth reports, but “feelings about the referendum are almost stronger than they were on June 23, 2016,” the day of the original vote, with pro-Leave and pro-Remain “the strongest political forces in Britain.” Remainers, however, have been unable to “unite behind any one party or leader,” and that lack of cohesion has proved fatal. Most damaging: Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn is “determined to maintain ambiguity in Labour’s Brexit position,” limiting a Remain alliance to minor parties. Unless Remainers can turn things around in the next three weeks, “their cause will be lost.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board