Among the many mischaracterizations and errors in an article that recently appeared on the front page of the New York Times is the statement, made in the first sentence, that “Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, emerged from retirement in July 1967 to warn Israelis they had sown the seeds of self-destruction” by their victory in the Six-Day War and therefore “insisted that Israel give up the territories it had conquered” in that war. Martin Kramer, who in April debunked this oft-repeated anecdote in Mosaic, writes:

In a little remarked-upon statement in May, James Jeffrey, the State Department’s envoy for Syria policy, said that his goal was to turn the war-torn country into “a quagmire for the Russians.” By using economic leverage, this policy has achieved modest success, writes Jonathan Spyer: