THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY NEGOTIATION OUTSIDE ARAFAT'S COMPOUND IN RAMALLAH: This article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a Palestinian kindergarten is one of the most chilling pieces I've read in a while:

Six days a week, kindergarten teacher Samira Ali El Hassain tells her class of 30 5-year-old boys and girls what makes the world go round.
"Here is how an egg becomes a chicken," she says to a student. "Here is how to draw a circle," she tells another.
Hassain then quizzes the class about a previous, more serious lesson. "Who are the Jews?" she asks.
The children know the answer by heart: "The enemy!" they reply in unison.
"And what should we do to them?" Hassain asks in a voice that is as casual as when she discussed chickens and eggs.
"Kill them!" the children cry out.

It only gets worse.

WHAT IS THE U.N. GOOD FOR AGAIN?David Tell describes its main pastime: investigating, passing resolutions and otherwise making a nuisance of itself towards Israel:

IN 1948, when the armies of five surrounding Arab dictatorships invaded tiny, newborn Israel--in what the secretary general of the Arab League announced was a "war of extermination" against "the Jews"--the United Nations sat on its ass. And did not send a fact-finding mission.
But, oh, how the U.N. has been making up for that oversight ever since. For more than 50 years now, the Jews have been its favorite subject.
Among the nearly 200 nations represented at the U.N., only Israel has ever been assigned special--reduced--membership privileges, its ambassadors formally barred, for 53 straight years ending only recently, from election to the Security Council. Meanwhile, and right up to the present day, that same Security Council has devoted fully a third of its energy and criticism to the policies of a single country: Israel. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which regularly--and unreprovingly--accepts delegations from any number of homicidal tyrannies across the globe, has issued fully a quarter of its official condemnations to a single (democratic) country: Israel.
...No fewer than four separate administrative units within the U.N.--two of them directly supervised by Kofi Annan's governing secretariat--do nothing but spend millions of dollars annually on the production and worldwide distribution of propaganda questioning Israel's right to exist. The "Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and other Arabs of the Occupied Territories," for example, "investigates" Israel's continued "practice" of "occupying" not just the territory taken in the 1967 war, but also the land within its internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders.
....Maybe the U.N. picks on Israel simply because it can. Or maybe, just maybe, there is a darker impulse at play.
...In curricular materials published by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education, "Objective Five" for high school history teachers reads as follows: "The student will understand why the people of the world hate the Jews." It is a question for the ages. Zionism may no longer be racism at the United Nations. But anti-Semitism is forever.

THE UGLY EUROPEANS: Charles Krauthammer scores again with his analysis of why the Europeans have reverted to their historic roles as abettors of genocide:

What is odd is not the anti-Semitism of today but its relative absence during the past half-century. That was the historical anomaly. Holocaust shame kept the demon corked for that half-century. But now the atonement is passed. The genie is out again.
This time, however, it is more sophisticated. It is not a blanket hatred of Jews. Jews can be tolerated, even accepted, but they must know their place. Jews are fine so long as they are powerless, passive and picturesque. What is intolerable is Jewish assertiveness, the Jewish refusal to accept victimhood. And nothing so embodies that as the Jewish state.
What so offends Europeans is the armed Jew, the Jew who refuses to sustain seven suicide bombings in the seven days of Passover and strikes back. That Jew has been demonized in the European press as never before since, well . . . since the '30s. The liberal Italian daily La Stampa ran a cartoon of the baby Jesus, besieged by Israeli tanks, saying, "Don't tell me they want to kill me again."
Again. And this time the Christ-killers come in tanks. Just when Europe had reconciled itself to tolerance for the passive Jew -- the Holocaust survivor who could be pitied, lionized, perhaps awarded the occasional literary prize -- along comes the Jewish state, crude and vital and above all unwilling to apologize for its own existence.
The French were the vanguard of this modern anti-Semitism that can tolerate the Jew as victim but not as historical actor. It was 35 years ago at the outbreak of the Six Day War that Charles de Gaulle cut off French support for Israel, denouncing its audacity in fighting for its life over his objections. But he did not stop there. He later went on to famously denounce the Jews as "an elite people, sure of itself and domineering."
The rejection of docility -- "sure of itself" -- was Israel's real crime 35 years ago. It remains Israel's crime today. Israel's recent three-week Operation Defensive Shield, the boldest and most justified Israeli military offensive since the Six Day War, provokes precisely the same reaction, though not always expressed with de Gaulle's candor.

ONE OTHER THING THE SAUDIS WOULD RATHER WE FORGET: Via Best of the Web, those who are tempted to take the "Saudi peace proposal" seriously can refer to this story after the collapse of the Camp David talks about the role of the Saudis and Egyptians, our supposed friends, in scuttling any chance for a peace agreement that might actually have had a chance of success. (At least it looked that way at the time.) It can reliably be assumed that if the Saudi proposal ever became the focus of serious attention, it would be "clarified" with all sorts of deal-breakers faster than Yasser Arafat gravitates to a CNN camera. When will people understand that the Arab regimes want the conflict to continue, not end?

A ONE-TRACK MIND LEADS TO A CONTEST: In one breath, the NY Times presents the following two items:
First, the news about how the U.S. economy surged at a 5.8% rate in the first quarter.
Second, an article with the following headline:
"Economic Revival Poses a Problem for Bush"
Yes, that headline really exists.
I'm sure that Bush has been dreading the possibility of an economic recovery, thinking to himself: "I can handle any problem, but not that!"
I know the New Republic once ran a contest for the "Most Boring Headline" ever (with the winner being a Flora Lewis NYT headline: "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative").
Blissful Knowledge is hereby beginning a "Stupidest Headline" contest, with this item as the first nominee.
Readers, please send your nominations (with links, if possible.)
The winner will receive a prize.
As the prize hasn't been determined yet, it is by definition of incalculable value.
The judges will be a panel consisting of:
1) A French figure-skating judge;
2) The three judges who voted against Roy Jones, Jr. in the 1988 Olympics, and
3) A random selection of election officials from the state of Florida.
Let's see what we can come up with.

THE CHURCH OF THE TERRORISTS: Steven Den Beste has an outstanding historical overview of sieges, and outlines the likely outcomes of the Bethlehem siege.

WHY ARIEL SHARON IS THE RIGHT LEADER FOR THIS TIME: I had been meaning to link to this Victor Davis Hanson piece for a while, about the utility of single-minded military men during times when war is unavoidable. Hanson makes some excellent points about the necessity for leaders like Sharon, whom he compares to Ajax, the great warrior of the Trojan war. But perhaps his most intriguing point is the following:
Most Israelis will learn that peacemaking will come easier for his absence. The Europeans in time will be wily enough to say, "Sharon did it, not the Israelis." And so in his lifetime, Mr. Sharon will get no credit and much blame.
What the anti-Sharon crowd does not understand is that peace is more likely due to the fact that Sharon was the one who sent the troops into the West Bank, rather than Rabin or Barak. The heirs to the latter, once they gain power in Israel, are more likely to have their peace plans taken seriously for not being Sharon.

THE ADVISER PRESIDENT BUSH SHOULD BE LISTENING TO: Bernard Lewis cautions the President against believing the conventional wisdom that asking the "moderate" Arab regimes for permission to destroy Saddam Hussein, and reducing our support for Israel, will enahnce stability in the region:

The submission to being scolded and slighted, as Secretary of State Colin Powell did in his recent meeting with the king of Morocco, and his failure to meet with the president of Egypt, make the U.S. seem it is reverting to bad habits. That only further contributes to a perceived posture of irresolution and uncertainty on the part of the U.S. administration.
This irresolution on our part has brought a corresponding uncertainty on the part of our nervous and hesitant allies, not without reason. Their fears have deep roots in the memory of what happened after the Gulf War when we called on the people of Iraq to rebel against Saddam Hussein and then abandoned them. Having granted Saddam a cease-fire, we sat and watched as he destroyed the rebels, group by group and region by region, using the helicopters we had thoughtfully allowed him to retain.
The leaders of al Qaeda launched their war against the U.S. in the belief that they were attacking a soft and demoralized enemy. They thought they could proceed with impunity. It would be wise not to let that misapprehension creep back.

THE GLASS-HOUSE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD: What on earth are the Saudis thinking? Apparently they plan to threaten President Bush with all sorts of horribles if they do not immediately bring Sharon to heel.
"It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive," the person close to the crown prince said, "and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship to our people."
This, from the nation that spawned 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11, from the nation that sponsors terrorism all over the world. If Bush gives in to their blackmail, the war on terrorism will be over and we will have lost. Rich Lowry has the right idea: Bush needs to be the one making Abdullah feel scared.

THE OLIVER STONE OF THE RESPECTABLE MEDIA: Michael Lind takes on the "Israel lobby," using his usual reductionism: the idea that even absent interest-group pressure, the U.S. might be more inclined to gravitate towards the only democracy in the Middle East rather than suicide bombers and their allies is nowhere to be found in Lind's article. For a more nuanced view of the "Israel lobby," see this article from the Economist, of all places.

THE COUNTER-REVISIONISM: Dennis Ross gives his account of what happened at Camp David and Taba.
First, at Camp David:

[A]t Camp David we did not put a comprehensive set of ideas on the table. We put ideas on the table that would have affected the borders and would have affected Jerusalem.
Arafat could not accept any of that. In fact, during the 15 days there, he never himself raised a single idea. His negotiators did, to be fair to them, but he didn't. The only new idea he raised at Camp David was that the temple didn't exist in Jerusalem, it existed in Nablus.

Regarding Taba and the final Clinton proposals:

Arafat came to the White House on January 2. Met with the president, and I was there in the Oval Office. He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give.
...He [was] supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that.
...He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent.
He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn't even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace.

And in conclusion:

[F]undamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict. We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that clause was, this is the end of the conflict.
Arafat's whole life has been governed by struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open, never close a door. He was being asked here, you've got to close the door. For him to end the conflict is to end himself.

This from the man who worked on the "peace process" full-time for most of 12 years.

GROW UP: Jonathan Rauch rips the infantilism behind much of the conventional wisom on the Middle East, calling it the "Mommy Model." He points out that the problem is that the current conflict is built on a rational understanding of the stakes. I can't quote any part of it; every word should be read.

ROBERT THE WRONG: Belatedly, Robert Wright joins the school of the Camp David revisionists and defends Arafat's behavior there. He credits his main source: this article in the New York Review of Books by Robert Malley (a former assistant to the President for Arab-Israeli affairs) and Hussein Agha (a professor at Oxford who, according to the NYRB article, " has been involved in Palestinian affairs for more than thirty years and during this period has had an active part in Israeli-Palestinian relations.")
Wright's article is wide-open to the following critiques:
1) First, the ad hominem point: Bill Clinton, Dennis Ross and Shlomo Ben-Ami (the ultra-dovish foreign minister in Barak's government) have all defended the conventional wisdom laying the blame for the Camp David failure at Arafat's feet. Somehow, I think they might be in a better position to judge than a hitherto anonymous White House staffer. And more seriously, since the article was co-written by a Palestinian activist, it should be treated with at least as much skepticism as the conventional account. Yet Wright assumes the truth of the article's assertions without further comment.
More substantively, the following two points:
2) Wright assumes the reasonableness of Arafat's refusal to budge from 100% of the pre-1967 borders. But if that is all that the Palestinians wanted, then how does that betray any willingness to compromise on their part? The only way it does is if you assume that they wanted more than the pre-1967 borders - which means Israel's suspicions suddenly look much more reasonable.
3) Most importantly, Wright mischaracterizes the situation between Camp David and Taba:
[B]y the time of Taba, the whole political environment had changed. In September, Barak had allowed Ariel Sharon to make his famous visit to Haram al-Sharif, which many observers consider the spark that ignited the current intifada. Given the only deepening mistrust between Arafat and Israel, America was, more than ever, a vital guarantor of any deal. Yet President Clinton was by then a lame duck, and comments from President-elect Bush had made clear his limited enthusiasm for Middle East peace brokering.
Arafat may also have been troubled by the fact that Barak seemed doomed to lose upcoming elections to Ariel Sharon, who probably wouldn't honor a Barak-negotiated deal.
Did anything happen in the interim to change the situation? Oh yes - the second intifada, only referred to by Wright in a manner which blames Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount for the whole thing. For those who do not remember, the time between Camp David and Taba included innumerable riots, shootings of Israelis, and the grisly lynching of two Israeli soldiers who got lost in Ramallah.
Wright and his fellow revisionists point to the near-deal at Taba as proof that the Palestinains were ready to make a deal. Well, what if there was reason to think that the Palestinians would sign the deal, take their state, and then launch another war against Israel (ostensibly) over the few millimeters of disputed territory remaining? By Taba, there was two months of evidence for that scenario. Notice that Wright, as Deborah Sontag did in a similar magnum opus of revisionism, glosses over the intifada and does not mention any reason why Barak was likely to lose by the time of Taba - drawing any connection between the two would make Israeli suspicions seem justified. As Robert Satloff noted regarding Sontag's article:
The uprising so transformed the Israeli-Palestinian political context that by the time the two sides were, in Sontag's telling, agonizingly close, it no longer mattered. By January's Taba talks, Barak had the support of just one-third of his people and an even smaller fraction of his parliament. Arafat, for his part, had forged an alliance between his Fatah movement and the radical Hamas opposition. But to discuss the intifada, its roots, and its impact would complicate Sontag's tale of imminent peace gone awry, so she sets it aside.
Hence, Sontag makes not a single reference to how violence--any violence--on the part of the Palestinians violated the founding accord of the Israel-PLO relationship, an exchange of letters between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin four days before the signing of the Oslo understandings in September 1993. (Israel's recognition of the PLO was premised on the organization's written commitment to forswear terrorism and violence and to pursue diplomacy as the only means to achieve its objectives.) Sontag makes no reference to Arafat's nine-month-long rejection of American pleas for a cease-fire or his flouting of understandings reached with Clinton at Sharm al-Sheikh on October 16 and 17, 2000, and with Shimon Peres in Gaza on November 1. She ignores Arafat's speech in Davos on January 28, 2001, when, the day after the Taba talks had ended and with Peres at his side, he lambasted Israel for using "fascist military aggression." Nor does Sontag mention the sacking of Joseph's Tomb, the terrorist exploits of Tanzim leader Marwan Bargouti, or the repeated denials by Palestinian officials, from Arafat on down, of any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. Any of that would have marred her portrayal of Arafat as a cooperative partner in peace.

While Wright's article is shorter and can thus be excused from citing as many details, it suffers from the same overall fault: the willful blindness to the ramifications of the intifada. Looking at Taba outside of that context is reductionist in the extreme.

AN ALTERNATE PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE: Via InstaPundit, Tim Blair offers a TV schedule for the Middle East.

A MOMENT IN THE SENATE: Gregg Easterbrook dissects today's vote:
Last month the conservatives in the Senate triumphantly screwed the liberals, voting to block higher fuel-economy standards for SUVs. Today the liberals in the Senate have triumphantly screwed the conservatives right back, voting to block oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. How festive. In so doing, conservatives and liberals together will have screwed the country. We will have the worse of both worlds: continued headlong petroleum waste coupled with continued dependence on Persian Gulf oil.

ACT I, SCENE XLVI: Jim Hoagland tries to get informal by trying to give a glimpse of how Yasser Arafat would see himself if he was the star of a one-man play:
No one will ever say I did not change. I am chimera, I am quicksilver, I am Arafat. I have had to turn on a dime every hour of my life to survive these murdering Israelis and my Arab brothers, who see me as a threat to them, too.
They are right. All Arab leaders have betrayed me, dissed me, tried to use me, to kill me and to kill the Palestinian revolution that I alone now embody. They will pay in time. Except brother Saddam Hussein. He knows that through it all, down deep, I did not change at all. I owe the guy, and this time I deliver.
Sure, I shed skin after skin. Watched as lieutenant after lieutenant was murdered when they began to upstage me. Jumped from burning deck to burning deck in the 1970s, ran to catch up with the kids' intifada of the 1980s, and hugged Shimon Peres to survive in the 1990s.
At Camp David, Clinton wanted to make me the George Washington of Palestine. But I would have had to sell out my people, in the miserable camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, to become emir of the West Bank. Remember, that was the deal on offer. The money underneath the table was already pretty good -- not as good as what Saddam offers, but more secure.
Those Israeli hacks say I could have achieved my strategic goals without bloodshed with that deal. But they miss the point. Bloodshed is the point. I had to seize, not passively receive. The Israelis now give me total credit for this intifada. History will remember me as warrior, resister, struggler.
I am not a turncoat. Armed struggle has always been my way, my meaning, my religion. The borders of Palestine will be traced in blood, as a great nation's should be. The frontiers will be demarcated and protected by international troops, not by a groveling peace treaty. That is and was my plan. When Israel elected Sharon, to prove to us that brute force could make Israelis secure, it fell into place: We had to show them they were wrong.
These fools in Washington and Europe chase their own tails by debating whether I am a terrorist or not. Did I ever shrink from murder when it was needed? They think if they come up with the right label, like "Enduring Freedom" or "homicide bombers," then everything is fixed. And they say we Arabs are prisoners of rhetoric.

JOURNALISM 101: James Lileks takes journalists to school, using the coverage of the Israel rally in Washington as the lesson plan. And his conclusion is a great use of a picture that says more than a thousand words (not for the squeamish, though).

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING....Victor Davis Hanson offers a glimpse at an alternate universe.

THE AXIS OF EVIL STRIKES AGAIN: The Israelis have apparently discovered more weapons from Iran and Iraq near Arafat's headquarters.

PLEASE BEAR WITH ME: I'm working on a couple of major (read: long) posts for the site. The first will hopefully be up at some point today.

REPORTERS ARE FROM MARS... Max Rodenbeck, the Middle East correspondent for the Economist, writes in today's NY Times:
... Arab coverage of the conflict is not really much more one-sided than, say, America's gung-ho coverage of the Persian Gulf war. (Or, for that matter, Israeli reporting on the intifada: Most Tel Aviv editors seem to accept Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's view that the press's job is "to give the nation pride and hope.")
Somehow, I don't remember the American press exhorting its military to murder citizens wholesale during the Gulf War. If Rodenbeck really believes that paragraph, it's a welcome window into the mindset driving the Economist's coverage of Israel.

ALL IN THE FAMILY: Among other places, James Lileks' site has the infamous picture of the Palestinian man holding up his little daughter with pretend dynamite wrapped around her. Lileks has the following observations:
As others have noted, the cultural attitude on display is an inversion of human decency - heaven is a whorehouse, and children are encouraged to die. It takes a particular sort of moral degeneracy to steep your children in the culture of death rather than shield them from it at all costs. Keep in mind that this picture was taken at a rally in Berlin, so it’s not like this fellow has lately seen in IDF kick down doors in his apartment block looking for martyr factories lately.... This man had to go down to the store looking for materials that would make a good suicide-bombing costume for his daughter, like it’s Halloween and she wants to be Ariel the Little Martyr. He had to tie the dynamite around her little waist; he had to look into those little eyes and answer her questions: what’s this? What’s this, Daddy?
He had two options. He could lie. Or he could tell the truth. I’m not sure which is worse.
What haunts me is the idea that she liked this, and thought it was fun - a day with Daddy! - and afterwards all the relatives came over, and she ran into the room and shouted BOOM!
And everyone laughed.
Isn’t that cute.

GIVE JOURNALISTS A CHANCE? P.J. O'Rourke simultanously argues that Israel was mistaken in barring journalists from Jenin and punctures the self-importance of his guild in his inimitable way:
Journalism is the opposite of pancake makeup and boudoir lighting. The farther journalists get away from you, the worse you look. But attempting to control news during a war is too usual to be labeled outrageous. Stalin didn't ban journalists from Stalingrad. He sent them there. They couldn't refuse. I'd rather be banned. And there was censorship in the Soviet press anyway. The International Federation of Journalists is right. Censorship did not bring peace. Not that peace with Germany would have been a good idea.
...Israel thinks reporters have a pro-Palestinian bias. They do. This is not because of the complex blames and injustices of the region. (Journalists are no better than other liberal-arts majors at doing regression analysis with infinite variables.) But when someone is pounding the stuffing out of someone else, there's more human interest in the unstuffed than in the stuffing pounders. The Sioux were right at the Little Bighorn, but Custer is what sells. Any good reporter would have stuck to Yellow Hair, at least until the last 20 minutes. How do you say, "I'm with CNN" in Sioux?
Also, from my own experience, Palestinians are warm, hospitable and chatty. Israelis soldiers are not. Journalists are as alert to social cues as any other herd animal. We prefer the Palestinians even if they don't invite us to come along on suicide bombings. Reporters thus ignore a basic principle of news: There are two sources you can't trust, those who won't tell their story and those who will.
...And where did the idea of Olympian objectivity in journalism come from? Not from the good liberal-arts majors that journalists are supposed to be. Olympus had its finger in every pie in "The Iliad." The great war correspondents of more recent history were strangers to neutrality. Richard Harding Davis seemed willing to fight the Spaniards in Cuba by himself. Ernest Hemingway styled his World War II press contingent "Hem Force" and liberated several French towns, or at least the wine cellars thereof.
As for shaping public opinion, the media's record is spotty. We practically caused that ignominious war with Spain and then, ignominiously, almost kept America out of the war against the Nazis. Maybe we ended the Vietnam War, but it took us long enough.
...Those of us in journalism who support Israel for being open and democratic were left with a lot of explaining to do, but we also learned a lot. The media learned that war, unlike politics, does not depend upon the media to exist. Reporters were being reminded that they are sometimes dense, prejudiced and self-seeking.

KOSHER CANADIAN BACON: A great editorial in the Canadian National Post regarding a loathsome resolution by the UN Committee on Human Rights:

Ariel Sharon is depicted as a blood-drenched butcher in the European press, although he sacrificed Israeli soldiers in ground assaults to spare Palestinians the indiscriminate aerial bombardments that Arab dictators would have ordered as a matter of routine. Palestinians use ambulances as terrorist taxis, yet Israel is lambasted for searching them. Human rights activists, who are appalled by bloodshed in every other context, reinvent themselves as doe-eyed apologists for terror when it is Palestinian teenagers lighting the fuse.
In fact, the mere act of killing people is redeemed in the eyes of an extraordinary number of people and governments around the world for the simple fact that the victims are Jews. It becomes "resistance" borne of "frustration" and "humiliation." Israeli self-defence is repackaged as "state terrorism."
...These coded phrases are understood by the Muslim nations that introduced the motion and the diplomats who passed it. "Foreign occupation" means Jews. "Armed struggle" means people blowing themselves up in restaurants and markets. Naturally, the UNHRC resolution mentions only the Palestinian deaths, condemns only the Israeli actions. It mentions not at all the hundreds of ordinary Israelis murdered in the course of going about their daily business during one of last month's numerous suicide bombings. Nor does it upbraid the Palestinian Authority for funding and facilitating them.
Israel's commitment to human rights is so clear that its Supreme Court ordered the Israeli army not to bury Palestinian victims from the Jenin refugee camp until an investigation could be conducted -- and the army complied. It is exactly the sort of legalistic gesture the world's human rights lawyers typically applaud. But instead, they take the side of Palestinian gunmen, who have whiled away their time in hiding by putting bullets into the heads of scores of suspected "informants."
...The resolution destroys whatever shreds of credibility were left to the UNHRC after the fiasco of the Durban anti-racism conference. The commission is made up of some of the world's worst human rights offenders. Fewer than half are free countries. Neither the United States nor Israel are on the commission, but 14 Muslim nations are. Naturally, dictatorships and absolute monarchies sided with the Palestinian Authority. The sad shock is that they were joined by supposedly decent nations such as France, Spain, Sweden and Belgium. Europe is abandoning the same people as those who were selected as its victims half-a-century ago. The continent's moral implosion is almost as terrible to watch as the terrorism its leaders yesterday endorsed.
And people wonder why Israel does not take the UN seriously.

GRADING ON A CURVE: Nicholas Kristof's column in today's NY Times noted that the Arab world applies a double standard to Israel:
[W]hile the Israeli brutality in the occupied territories is real, it is small potatoes by Arab standards.
Some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the latest round of violence erupted in the fall of 2000. In contrast, two million Sudanese have died in the ongoing civil war here, with barely anyone noticing.
Likewise, Syria blithely killed about 20,000 people in crushing an abortive uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. And Saddam Hussein, who has killed more Arabs than Ariel Sharon and all his Israeli predecessors put together, is somehow a hero for much of the Arab world.

As Andrew Sullivan points out, Kristof ignores the elephant in the room:
If you're a raving anti-semitic paranoiac, defeat at the hands of the Americans is one thing; but defeat at the hands of the Jews is beyond endurance. This is the pathology without which nothing that is now happening in the Arab world can be understood.
Kristof's column has a number of interesting points. Most notably, in describing the rage of the "Arab street" at Israel, he asserts that "there is a tendency among Israel's supporters to assume that the rage must be feigned, but that's a fantasy."
Kristof is attacking a straw-man. I don't think many supporters of Israel assert that the masses are somehow faking rage. Rather, those of us who would have the U.S. and Israel do things which may further inflame that rage are making two different arguments:
1) While real, the rage of the "Arab street" is partly created by and largely stoked by the Arab governments themselves, especially including the "moderate" regimes. Accordingly, those regimes do not deserve protection from the consequences of their policies of incitement, and the U.S. and Israel should not be dissuaded from doing the right thing because of the risks which such governments have brought upon themselves.
2) While real, the consequences of the rage of the "Arab street" will not harm the strategic interests of the U.S. as much as the State Department and media feel; either (a) the danger of "moderate" governments being overthrown is overstated by those corrupt leaders with an incentive to exxagerate the danger (and who in any case have little sense for public opinion in their countries) or (b) even if overthrown, the results to U.S. interests will not be as detrimental as commonly assumed.
Either point is debatable, but Kristof does not engage them.

ON GUN CONTROL AND SUICIDE BOMBERS: Jonah Goldberg expounds on the unwillingness of peace-processors (and their media enablers) to recognize reality.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE.... An e-mail correspondent to Instapundit offers the following observations:

The moral state of things is this:
1. If the Palestinians unilaterally lay down their arms and renounce
violence, they will be given peace, dignity, and their own state.
2. If the Israelis unilaterally lay down their arms and renounce
violence, they will be slaughtered.
3. As far as most of the world is concerned, either outcome would be
satisfactory.

On some days, that seems too generous, as in certain quarters option #2 might be deemed preferable. Take Mark Steyn's word for it:
The "whole world" has a pretty good track record of being wrong, especially where Jews are concerned. Fifty million Frenchmen can be wrong, and never more so than when they're teamed with Chris Patten, Mary Robinson, the European Parliament (which has demanded sanctions against Israel), the German government (which has announced an arms embargo against Israel), the brand-new International Criminal Court (which - in its very first 24 hours! - started mulling the question of "Israeli war crimes"), the Norwegian Parliament (which had a visitor thrown out of the building for wearing a provocative Star of David on his lapel), never mind the members of Calgary's "Palestinian community" who marched through the streets carrying placards emblazoned "Death To The Jews", a timeless slogan but not hitherto a burning issue on the prairies.
...Meanwhile, what have we learned from this last extraordinary month? Not much about the Middle East, but quite a lot about Europe. What happens when Palestinian civilians strap on plastic explosives and head for Israeli pizza parlours? Europe says Israeli checkpoints for Palestinians are "humiliating". Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances permit themselves to be used as transportation for bombs and explosives - and Europe attacks Israel for refusing them free movement.
"Ah, those Jews," an attractive, intelligent, sophisticated Parisienne sighed over dinner with me the other night. "They cause problems everywhere they are."
Actually, they don't. Of the 30 ongoing conflicts in the world today, the Muslims are involved in 28 of them. There are no Jews in Kashmir or the Sudan, so the Muslims make do with Hindus and Christians. What the Europeans call "Muslim-Jewish tensions" on the Continent do not involve Jewish gangs attacking mosques or beating up women in hejabs, only Muslim gangs attacking synagogues and stoning a bus of Jewish schoolchildren.
...The "whole world" is agreed that if anybody has to be blown up it might as well be the Israelis. Ah, those Jew troublemakers: why won't they just lie there and take it?
And he has this bon mot about the current Powell mission:
From Washington's point of view, the peace mission was necessary because of a scheduling conflict over scheduling conflicts: they'd booked the Middle East for a war with Iraq only to discover the joint being used for some other guys' war. In an ideal world, the US would like to restore peace in the Middle East in order to launch a massive conflagration there.

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Mrs. Manhattan was at the Washington rally in support of Israel today along with over 100,000 of her closest friends. It took them a long time to exit the Metro station to join the rally, and they emerged to discover that the crowd had overflowed its allotted space. So she technically was right next to the rally, not at it. Close enough.
Seriously, the rally was a great display of the power of the "American street," which is far more powerful than the "Arab street" so feared in the State Department.
UPDATE: Best of the Web advises the Arab governments:
Arab leaders, listen up: The American street is enraged, and you'd best ask yourselves: Why do they hate us? If you're honest, you'll acknowledge that we're fed up with your one-sided policies toward the Middle East. And if you're not honest, you risk paying an immense price. America's leaders cannot ignore the anger of the street; if they do, the street may bring down the moderate pro-Arab government currently in the White House. It is long past time for Arab leaders to appease the American street. If they let this crisis fester until Americans get desperate, there's no telling what we might do.

THE CASE FOR PESIMISSM: "Spoons" predicts that Arafat will slip the noose again:
When it comes to saving his own skin, though, Arafat is as canny an actor as the world has ever seen. This is a guy who should have been killed dozens of times over by now. From his involvement in the massacre of the Israeli Olympic team in 1972, to his personally ordering the murder of a U.S. ambassador and his aide in the Sudan, to the launching of the current intifada, it's astonishing that neither Israel nor the U.S. killed Arafat years ago. He has survived so long, however, for the simple reason that Arafat understands us better than we understand him. He knows exactly how far he can push us, and how far he cannot. He has become a master of bringing us right to the brink, and them backing off.
...Powell is going to walk out of Arafat's compound with what will be described as major concessions. Arafat will agree to a unilateral cease fire. He will agree to crack down on terrorism. He will agree to condemn suicide bombers to his people, in Arabic (he will not say, however, that such people are murderers and not martyrs, and Powell won't press the issue). He will also "agree" to enter into immediate talks on a political resolution to the conflict. We will hear the words "Tenet", and particularly "Mitchell", several times during the announcement.
Arafat will have effectively slipped the noose, and once again, the ball will be in Israel's court.
"Spoons" is too pessimistic, in my view. Even if Arafat does all of that, the next terrorist attack will reverse the momentum. And even the biggest proponents of the recent invasion of the West Bank have no illusion that the next bombing will be long in coming. So even if Arafat slips the noose this time, it will be re-fitted before long.

NOT A BLAST FROM THE PAST: Another great recent piece by Fouad Ajami on how Arafat is in his element. He points out some essential truths that the State Department would prefer to ignore:

The logic behind Arafat's ruthless method is easily seen. In the cold calculus, the balance of casualties now runs 3 to 1–in 18 months, 1,200 Palestinians have been killed for 370 Israelis. In the first intifada, which erupted in 1987 when Arafat was still away from the land, the ratio had been 25 to 1. The lieutenant who sat in for him at the Beirut summit, Farouk Qaddumi, cut to the heart of the matter. This second intifada is working, he said, because Israel "lost stability and security; psychological problems spread, and unemployment and emigration rose." Arafat aims at Israel's soul–to wear it down, to rob it of the sense of normalcy that has been its impossible dream since the beginning of its statehood.
As a gambler and adventurer averse to the normal work of nations, Arafat made peace with Israel only to break it. He had broken with the Arab world only to return to the Arab councils of power and to take up an old, failed history. He was unloved and distrusted by other Arabs. There was loathing of him in Beirut, a city he had set on fire for more than a decade, and contempt for him in Kuwait for his betrayal of the Kuwaitis in 1990's hour of need. But Arafat hoped that there would be uses for him and a new lease on life. This second intifada is his "gift" to the other Arabs: a macabre celebration of the "martyrs," a diversion from the verdict on the Arab condition rendered by the "boys of September 11" who gave the world a cruel illustration of the furies on the loose in Arab lands.
It was true to Arafat's way and to his history that he would try to hold America's campaign against terror hostage to his war against Israel. America is unloved in Arab lands, this argument runs, and its campaign can proceed only if Palestinian claims are satisfied. But this argument is supreme illusion. America indeed is unloved. In truth, the hatred for it is bottomless. Even if we cast Israel adrift, Arab opinion will cut us no slack.

A DOUBLE-HEADER: Two great piesces from Yossi Klein Halevi. The first one is in today's LA Times:

We Israelis watch the growing outrage against us and wonder whether the world has gone mad. How is it possible, we ask each other, that after suffering an unprecedented terrorist campaign, we're portrayed as bullies for finally trying to uproot the threat? Why does so much of the world seem to get indignant not when Israelis are being massacred and turned into a nation of terrorized shut-ins but when we hit back?
Tragically, the anti-terrorist offensive has caused great suffering and dislocation among innocent Palestinians. Any war that is televised produces horrific images. But the crucial moral difference between the Israeli government and Yasser Arafat's regime is that Israel doesn't deliberately target civilians. In fact, rather than use Israel's mighty air power to attack terrorist enclaves, the army has sent infantry into the narrow alleyways of West Bank towns.
There is no fully surgical way to fight the war of survival that has been forced on Israel. Indeed, no national movement has ever fought a dirtier and less justified war than the Palestinians, who could have ended the occupation had they accepted President Clinton's plan and who have since violated every civilized norm--from hiding gunmen behind priests in a holy place to smuggling suicide bombers in ambulances.
...U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has sarcastically asked whether the whole world can be wrong and only Israel right. The same question could have been asked in 1981, when Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. Then, too, the "whole world" condemned Israel as an outlaw. But who today isn't quietly grateful to Israel for having prevented Saddam Hussein from acquiring the bomb?
The Israeli army is performing a similar service for humanity today by establishing the principle that terrorism won't be indulged. Perhaps one day that too will be acknowledged.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the diplomatic siege against the Jewish state is being accompanied in Europe by the worst outbreak of violent anti-Semitism since the Holocaust, with Jews being beaten in Berlin and synagogues burned in France.
...Most Israelis have given up on the Europeans, who are seen here as incurable appeasers. But don't we have the right to expect more of Americans, especially at this fateful time?
Absolutely.
The second piece is in The Jewish Week. He describes the ways Israelis try to cope with the omnipresent threat of terror, with the following conclusions:
Yasir Arafat has inadvertently helped us cope by restoring to us a belief in the basic justness of our cause. Probably not since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Arab armies attacked Israel on its holiest day, have Israelis been less morally conflicted. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, followed by the first intifada of the late 1980s, demoralized and divided us. Now, though, most Israelis believe that we’re fighting for our lives.
“I’ve never felt more certain about why we have to fight,” said a friend of mine, a former paratrooper whose son was drafted recently into one of the army’s elite commando units. “That’s what allows me to sleep at night — when I can.”
Daily life persists; inertia sometimes can feel like victory. It is a relief to recall that not every ambulance siren announces a terrorist attack: Even during war, people are born, get sick and die of natural causes. Last week, I attended a memorial for a colleague, a survivor of the 20th century’s wars who’d managed to remain alive until the age of 82. Near the entrance to the cemetery were posted funeral notices for one of the young victims from Cafe Moment. My colleague’s widow greeted us with a smile. “At a time like this,” she said, “we have to put things in perspective. Michael lived a full life; there are other tragedies to mourn.”
The comfort of an ordinary death.

AGAIN: There has been a suicide bombing in the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market in Jerusalem. It is unclear if there have been any other fatalities.

THERE IS NO SOLUTION TO THIS MADNESS: I don't have the energy to give this ridiculous Times editorial the same attention I gave to April 9th's iteration, but the editors haven't learned any lesson.
Israel's long-term interest lies in nurturing Palestinian development, not demolishing it. While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's determination to strike back at terrorists is understandable, Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes, businesses and public utilities is not. Knocking down houses, destroying electricity pylons and interfering with health care, as Israeli forces have done across the West Bank, cannot be justified by any compelling military need.
Um...how about the fact that terrorists are enmeshed within the civilian population, using civilians as human shields and houses as bases? Getting to the terrorists seems like a compelling military need to me, though the Times apparently disagrees.
And while the Times is right that it is in Israel's ultimate long-term interest to have a functioning Palestinian economy, Keynes' aphorism was never more apt. In the long run, Israel will certainly be dead unless it can stop the terrorists now. If the Palestinian economy is a short-term casualty, that is certainly unfortunate, but Israel's primary "long-term interest" is survival.
These gains have been obliterated by the past 19 months of conflict, with the greatest damage concentrated in the past two weeks. Yasir Arafat bears much of the blame. Now Israel claims to have proof that he has not only failed to oppose terrorism but has directly authorized it.
Good. The Times' editors have read their own paper for a change. Is there any ramification of this proof of Arafat's perfidy?
Still, Israeli military tactics are responsible for much of the civilian destruction.
While the ostensible goal of Israel's offensive is capturing terrorists and uprooting their organizations, it has resulted in a prolonged siege affecting hundreds of thousands of civilians trying to go about their everyday lives. Mr. Sharon needs to make it clear to his commanders that Palestinian civilians are not Israel's enemy and that their lives, livelihoods and property deserve respect.
Better yet, with Secretary of State Colin Powell in Israel, Mr. Sharon should belatedly heed President Bush's call for immediate withdrawal. Continuing this offensive may yield more terrorist arrests, but at grievous cost to Israel's long-term interests.
Of course not. Sure, Arafat has been directing terror every step of the way, and he should pay a price, as long as it doesn't interfere with the necessity to get back to the process that led to...Arafat directing terror.

FOLLOWING THE MEMO: It's not quite the 67th paragraph, but buried in the middles of Serge Schmemann's latest dispatch is the following:
The Israeli police said today that they had found a belt with explosives in a Palestinian ambulance during a check at a roadblock inside the West Bank. The ambulance was headed toward Israel with the body of a Palestinian man, the police said, and they found the device alongside him. It was the second time in two weeks that Israel has reported finding explosives in an ambulance.
Any chance this will lead the Times & others to reasses their coverage of the Red Cross' complaining? I didn't think so.

THE FUSE IS LIT: This is big. Very big. I'm not sure even Sharon thought that the bureacracy of terror was this extensive.
I don't see any way Arafat can survive this. No Israeli governmet will or can negotiate with him with a straight face. When Powell's mission fails, this documentation will be exactly what the Bush administration needs in terms of political cover for allowing Sharon to kill or exile Arafat and finish destroying the PA. This will also mute the caterwauling of the Arab governments, most of whom live in fear of their own Muslim fundamentalists and are furious with Arafat anyway for involving Iran in the conflict. After Sharon initially confined Arafat to Ramallah in December, the sympathy from the Arab governments took a notable downturn after the Karine A shipment from Iran was discovered.
Here are links to documents from Bethlehem, Jenin and other documents from Arafat.

WILD HORSES CARRIED HIM AWAY: In yesterday's Ha'aretz, left-wing (even by Ha'aretz's standards) columnist Akiva Eldar attempts to be witty:
Since Israel ran the PA horses out of the barn and put its own horses in place, if the U.S. forces Sharon to pull them out, Powell best make sure that American horses replace them because otherwise wild horses in the form of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will take their place.
Eldar doesn't appreciate the metaphor. In the wake of the collapse of Camp David, Arafat let the terrorist horses out of the barn. And when someone lets horses out of the barn, he may truly desire and try to get them back. (Not that this was ever true about Arafat.) But the one who let them out is nevertheless responsible for the damage they cause, even if he lacks the power to prevent them from doing damage once they are loose.

CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE: Today's (Wednesday's) Washington Post has a tremendous amount of good stuff on Israel.
First, Charles Krauthammer carves up the intellectual fantasies of those who assert that a withdrawal from the territories occupied in the 1967 war will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
[F]or two decades, Israel was hectored to comply with U.N. resolutions demanding Israel's withdrawal. In May 2000, it complied. To ensure that there could be no possible residual territorial dispute, Israel asked the United Nations to draw the line demarcating the true Israeli-Lebanese border -- the so-called Blue Line -- then pulled back behind it.
...Hezbollah was not mollified. While its ostensible mission was the liberation of Lebanese territory, it did not disband. On the contrary. It occupied south Lebanon, imported huge new supplies of weapons from Iran and began sporadic cross-border attacks on Israel.
...Not only, therefore, is Lebanon the most dangerous piece of tinder in the region. It is the most instructive. The Arabs claim that their grievance is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Give it back and you'll have land for peace. Like the Lebanon peace?
Western observers totally missed the irony of the Arab summit whose "Saudi peace plan" ostensibly offered Israel peace in return for full territorial withdrawal. The offer was made in Beirut, capital of a country from which Israel had done precisely that -- fully withdraw -- and received in return a more entrenched, emboldened, heavily armed enemy ready to trigger a general war.
It gets better. To justify carrying on the war after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah concocted a territorial claim on a few acres called the Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah says it is Lebanese territory, and therefore occupied -- a position contrary to the internationally sanctioned Blue Line drawn by the United Nations, hardly a partisan of Israel.
What is the Arab League position on all this? Few Western observers actually read the Saudi peace plan adopted by the Arab League. If they had, they would have seen that the plan demands not just the usual withdrawal from Palestinian and Syrian territory but also from "remaining occupied Lebanese territories."
But there are no remaining occupied Lebanese territories. Thus the Arab League, in precisely the same document -- no, the same breath -- in which it ostensibly offers land for peace, endorses a totally fabricated, post-withdrawal Lebanese land claim that even the United Nations rejects. Why? Because it serves as an excuse for continuing the war against Israel.
Just end the occupation of the West Bank, say the Arabs, and we will guarantee Israel peace. Do you want to see Israel's future if it caves in to that demand? Look at Lebanon...
I don't agree with Krauthammer's assertion that the conflict has the potential to bring Armageddon, but the thrust of his piece is undeniable.
Second, Michael Kelly summarizes the facts that would be denied by those who distinguish between the Palestinina Authority and the terrorists:

[D]uring the current crisis, it has become impossible to maintain the fiction of Arafat as a pursuer of peace (impossible, that is, except for certain members of the news media and the Nobel Peace Prize committee). It has become impossible to deny that he is anything other than, as Sharon said, the architect of the Palestinian war and the dispatcher of Palestinian mass murder.
This is no longer a matter of belief, or rhetoric, but evidence:
• The Karine A. As Robert Satloff sums up in the current issue of the National Interest, Israeli, American and European officials have confirmed that Arafat's Palestinian Authority was the moving force, paymaster and operational supervisor of the attempt, foiled by the Israelis on Jan. 3, to smuggle 50 tons of Iranian-supplied rockets, mortars, anti-tank missiles, assault rifles and C-4 explosives by freighter into Gaza.
The smugglers' ship, the Karine A, was purchased by Adel Awadallah, the head of the Palestinian Authority's procurement arm, with $400,000 provided by Fuad Shobaki, director of the PA's Military Financial Administration and one of Arafat's closest advisers. The buy was supervised by two PA naval police officials, Fathi Razam and Omar Akawi.
• The Al Aqsa Martyrs invoice. On April 2 Israel made public an invoice that was found among documents taken by Israeli troops in Arafat's Ramallah compound. The invoice, titled "Financial Report" and dated Sept. 16, 2001, appears to be a bill to the Palestinian Authority from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which the United States officially recognizes as a terrorist organization and credits with a series of suicide bombings and shootings. It requests from Arafat's government payment for, among other things, electrical and chemical components for 30 bombs: "We need about 5-9 bombs a week for our cells in various areas." The Bush administration has found no reason to doubt Israeli's characterization of this document as genuine.
• The Tanzim and Fatah payments. These documents, found in Arafat's offices, authorize cash payments to various commanders and active operatives in the Tanzim and Fatah terrorist brigades, which are credited with numerous lethal attacks on Israelis. The authorizations appear to be signed by Arafat himself. Again, the U.S. government has no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the documents.
Most importantly:
It is possible, of course, to make peace with him still. But only by defeating him, and the forces under his command, and negotiating from the point of their surrender. And surrender stems from victory in war.

WARFARE IN THE TRENCHES: This Washington Post article is headlined "Defiant Sharon Losing Support in White House."
A closer read of the article, though, makes it appear that this is merely a continuation of the regular debate between the State Department types on the one hand, who are loath to allow Sharon free reign, and the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis on the other.
First, the decisive action-phobes:
After months of steadfast backing of Sharon by the Bush administration, senior White House aides are beginning to express doubts about whether the Israeli leader can be a long-term partner in achieving the administration's goals in the Middle East.
White House aides also fear that Sharon's intransigence in the face of Bush's repeated demands over the past week for an end to the Israeli attacks could make the president appear ineffective and erode his standing in the world.
As part of the emerging shift of opinion about the Israeli leader, some White House officials are now making a distinction between support for Israel and support for Sharon.
"Sharon is arguably doing what he thinks needs to be done," a senior administration official said. "After he's finished, what's next? The fear is that he knows no other way than being tough."
This might be reading something into nothing, but I find it interesting that the article distinguishes between the steadfast backing of Sharon by "the Bush administration" and the supposedly new questioning by "senior White House aides." Does that imply that those "senior White House aides" did not agree with the earlier steadfast backing? That's probably reading too closely, but it may be true.
A more likely tip-off is the fear that Sharon's actions may make the President appear ineffective in the world. Somehow, I don't think that fear is felt by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al. I detect a State Department following its usual instincts.
As another reminder that the headline may be a faction fighting for supremacy within the White House through the press, the article states:
Some administration officials said Sharon has been more receptive to Bush's request than is publicly apparent. "We're being precipitous if we base what we say only on what we see," one official said but would not elaborate.

THE STRONG HORSE RIDES THROUGH JENIN: Seth Gitell dissects the implications of the Israelis' victory in Jenin:
A Hamas official is conceding that a large number of his warriors surrendered their weapons. When these fearsome fighters ran out of ammunition, they stopped fighting. And they were unwilling (or unable) to give their own lives. This would seem to undermine the conventional wisdom about Hamas and other terrorist organizations--namely, that military victory over them is not possible, and that combat only leads to "desperation" and more violence. .
...Israel did not achieve this victory with high-altitude bombing. It put the lives of its own soldiers on the line; literally speaking, it spilled its own blood. In so doing, Israel demonstrated that if its very existence is in jeopardy, as it is now, it is willing to fight man-to-man. In doing so, Israel took direct aim at a key precept of its enemies: that the Israelis are so weak and materialistic that they are unwilling to put soldiers at risk.
In a sense, the message it sends is the exact opposite of Israel's hastened retreat from Southern Lebanon two years ago: Israel is sticking around this time around. And this is crucial, because the conflict between Israel and the Arab world is as much a psychological battle as it is a military one. In recent months, with the onslaught of suicide bombings, Israel's morale has seemed shaky. Sensing this weakness, its enemies have circled like sharks tasting blood. The victory at Jenin changes that psychological dynamic.

1+1=0: Via Instapundit, The Idler collects a number of the high-minded statements made by the NY Times' editors over the last several months regarding Arafat and Israel. It's amazing how many "last chances" a man can get. Why would Arafat think his one whould be any different?

HAPPY YOM HA-SHOAH, EVERYONE! Via Charles Johnson, an editorial cartoon from Arab News that shows just how that paper's readership celebrates the official Holocaust Rememberance Day. A warning: Don't click the link on a full stomach. And make sure you're sitting down.

THE PROBLEM THAT MUST NOT BE NAMED: The Arab-Israeli conflict has long been exacerbated by the unwillingness of the U.S. government to admit or act on certain indisputable truths. One of those truths is described by Michael Mandlebaum:

The Arab regimes bear a large share of the responsibility for the origins and the continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it is in their power to do a great deal to end it.
Unfortunately, Bush's well-chosen words, and whatever Powell tells the Arab leaders privately, are likely to have little effect. Perpetuating the conflict with Israel serves interests that are more important to these governments than is peace with Israel or the approval of the United States.
...[I]n the year 2000, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on virtually all of the territory captured in 1967, with a Jerusalem shared with Israel as its capital, the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia urged him to refuse, which he did. The war he started in the wake of his refusal finally triggered the Israeli military operations of the last several days.
...The Arab governments supply Arafat with the money and political support upon which his position as Palestinian leader depends. If they chose to do so, they could pressure him to make peace with Israel or encourage the Palestinians to find another leader willing to do so.
But they have chosen to do neither...
The conflict with Israel is a convenient, perhaps even indispensable, device for each regime to divert the attention of the chief victims of its dismal performance - those it rules. It is also a way to place the blame for their condition on an external enemy - Israel - rather than on those - the rulers themselves - who bear responsibility for it.
Thus, like the Jewish communities that were singled out for blame for plagues and political and economic troubles throughout European history, Israel functions as a scapegoat for the misfortunes of its Arab neighbors.
There's more, all on target.

THIS WEEK'S SIGN THAT THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US (SERIOUSLY!): Via Rod Dreher in "The Corner," a red heifer has apparently been born in Israel. Red heifers have an important part in purification rituals described in chapter 19 of the book of Numbers which were done in the Jewish Temple.

WALK TO DAYLIGHT: Joel Sherman notes how the Yankees have resumed drawing many more walks than their opponents, an important part of their recent dominance. Long-time readers of the defunct "Rob & Rany on the Royals" are familiar with their "Royals Walk Watch," where they constantly pointed out that a team which consistently had the worst walk differential in the league could not possibly win.
I would have preferred that Alfonso Soriano develop some more plate discipline before becoming the leadoff hitter, but if he continues to have 5 hits a game it doesn't really matter.

THE EXPERTS HAVE NO CLOTHES: Steven Den Beste has established himself as one of the most perceptive writers on the Web. Today's entry dissects the conventional wisdom about the Powell mission to the Middle East and the upcoming Iraqi campaign. I san't pick excerpts; go read the whole thing.

PREACHING TO THE UNINITIATED: A glowing review of Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract by Bob Ryan.

IT DEPENDS WHO'S COUNTING: In a dispatch for the NYT on the fighting in Jenin, David Rohde notes the following:
In a rare example of public criticism, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross demanded that Israeli forces allow aid convoys access to the area.
Perhaps it's rare for countries other than Israel (and the U.S., for that matter), but I've lost track of how many times the Red Cross has publicly criticized Israel.

THE TIMES LOSES IT ONCE AND FOR ALL: Today's lead editorial is a masterpiece, even by Times standards. It demands a full-length treatment:
The announcement last night that the Israeli military was pulling out of two Palestinian cities was welcome but it was far from clear that it signaled the start of the full, immediate withdrawal from the West Bank towns and refugee camps repeatedly requested by President Bush. Earlier in the day, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, brushed off Mr. Bush's demand in a defiant speech to the Knesset, insisting that the campaign would end only when its mission had been accomplished.
Check out the text of Sharon's speech, which the editors seem to not have read. In my opinion, the only "defiance" in the speech is Sharon's insistence on repeating facts which the Times would rather ignore.
But see for yourselves.
Perhaps Mr. Sharon does not understand. The president of the United States, speaking out of profound friendship and growing impatience, has asked him to withdraw "without delay." This was not a request made lightly. Mr. Bush has expressed sympathy with Israel's plight and made clear that its security and well-being are of the highest concern. He has sent his secretary of state to the region to try to end the bloodshed. Yet Mr. Sharon says he will remove the tanks and troops whenever it suits him. This is an insult to Mr. Bush and the United States.
It is unbelivable how churlish the Times can get when authorities - especially conservative or Israeli ones - do not obey its commands. Sharon stated that the incursion will continue"until the mission has been accomplished, until Arafat's terrorist infrastructures are uprooted and until murderers holed up in various places are captured." Is that identical to "whenever it suits him?" If so, he has good judgment.
...It is increasingly clear that the costs to broader Israeli interests far outweigh whatever short-term security benefits this military operation may be yielding. Mr. Sharon's actions may be netting some terrorists and some of the terrible tools they employ, but they are inflaming the fury of thousands more Palestinians and millions of Arabs whose governments are being asked by Mr. Bush to press for more responsible Palestinian leadership. The prestige of the United States is on the line in an effort to help Israel, and the Israeli government is doing nothing to make the job easier.
1) Let's see...what has not happened in the last week? Oh yes - there have been no successful suicide bombings since the Israeli operation got underway. That's a pretty broad Israeli interest. Would that have happened without the Israeli incursion? 18 months of experience says no.
2) What if Israel had not invaded? The Times need only consult its newest Pulitzer winner, Thomas Friedman, who recently described how the Palestinians feel that suicide bombings work. Is there any chance the attacks would not have continued and increased? As Friedman noted: "[T]he Palestinians have not chosen suicide bombing out of "desperation" stemming from the Israeli occupation. That is a huge lie.... President Clinton offered the Palestinians a peace plan that could have ended their "desperate" occupation, and Yasir Arafat walked away." Or, as Jonah Goldberg puts it succinctly: "The more hope, the more murder."
So, in sum - the Times would rather have Israel continue to have its citizens murdered in grisly, steadily-increasing terror attacks than inflame "the fury of thousands more Palestinians and millions of Arabs whose governments are being asked by Mr. Bush to press for more responsible Palestinian leadership." As anyone who's ever checked out MEMRI (which does not seem to include the Times editors) knows, those thousands of Palestinians and millions of Arabs had pretty inflamed furies already. A largely successful action to prevent such terror attacks seems worth the cost.
Israel's declared objective is to dismantle the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure, but Mr. Sharon has also targeted leaders and offices of the Palestinian Authority. Israeli gunfire, curfews and military checkpoints have abused the lives, livelihood and dignity of the civilian population.
For all those who still believed that there was a distinction between "the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure" and the "leaders and offices of the Palestinian Authority," the documents recently discovered and publicized by the Israelis should put paid to that concept. If the Times editors had followed the news lately (or even read Sharon's speech cited in its own pages or the work of its own Douglas Frantz), they might have figured it out.
Mr. Sharon says he needs more time to destroy the terrorist network. Israeli forces, however, have already badly damaged the Palestinian civilian infrastructure, with supplies of water, food and medicine disrupted, independent television shut down and residents trapped in their homes. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded since Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships rolled into the West Bank on March 29. The refusal of Israeli forces to let wounded Palestinians be removed to hospitals is inexplicable.
1) Elementary logic: Even assuming that Israel has "already badly damaged the Palestinian civilian infrastructure, with supplies of water, food and medicine disrupted, independent television shut down and residents trapped in their homes," why is that necessarily incompatible with needing "more time to destroy the terrorist network?" Presumably the Times feels that it is worth leaving the terrorist network in place rather than inflict the damage on Palestinian civilians. That is understandable, but if you are unwilling to risk civilian casualties, how can you ever attack terrorists who use civilian centers as human shields? I don't see any recognition of the issue.
2) I am reading the "Parody" section (unfortunately not available online) from this week's Weekly Standard, a supposed memo to journalists covering the Israeli invasion. Here are a couple of excerpts:
a) "In the West Bank, [w]e do not care if the terrorist organizers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Al Aksa are killed or captured. We will simply not ask that question."
The Times righteously states that "More than 200 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded." Did you notice any attempt to distinguish between terrorist and civilian casualties? Was there any intimation that any of those casualties may have been part of the "terrorist network?" Of course not.
b) "[R]eferences to the terrorist practice of using ambulances to transport explosives shall not be included in the top 67 paragraphs of any story."
The Times goes beyond this directive, not mentioning it at all. Is it really so "inexplicable" that the Israelis are chary about letting wounded Palestinians be transported to hospitals?
It is also true that the Arab states have reacted shamefully to Mr. Bush's efforts. The president asked them to condemn Palestinian terrorism and make clear that suicide bombers are murderers, not martyrs. There has been no response. King Mohammed VI of Morocco, greeting Mr. Powell in Casablanca yesterday, asked the American why he had not gone directly to Jerusalem, as if the Arabs had nothing to account for. In Bahrain, the American ambassador is the focus of fierce protests because at a mock United Nations session there for students, he requested that along with a moment of silence for Palestinian victims, a moment be observed for Israelis as well.
Mr. Powell's Mideast mission was never going to be easy. Even before the Israeli invasion, Arab leaders refused to denounce Palestinian suicide bombings. Mr. Arafat still refuses to call on his people to give up violence.
All true. But what conclusion is drawn?
A wise Israeli leader would use the Bush initiative to show that he stands ready to talk peace with any responsible partner. Instead, Mr. Sharon embarrasses Mr. Bush and gives the Arabs easy excuses.
Let's pretend to be a "wise Israeli leader." Would you rather: a) try to keep your citizens from being massacred, or b) forego the one course of action that can largely succeed in that aim in favor of showing the people described in the previous bolded section that you are ready to "talk peace." That doesn't seem to be a tough decision, but don't ask the Times to make it.
The Times editorials are often suffused with paternalistic conviction that the paper knows best, and all other objections should be stifled for that reason (parents' authority is self-justifying, so they certainly don't have to justify their decisions). When George Bush or Ariel Sharon refuses to understand that the proposed action is for his own good, the paper often gets churlish. All these qualities are on display in this editorial. Rarely, though, are the consequences so dire.
UPDATE: A warm welcome to all those who are visiting for the first time through Instapundit!

THE "DOMINO THEORY" REVISITED: Bernard Lewis suggests that democracy can take hold in Iraq faster than we think, and that if it happens, other countries in the region will undergo similar, positive change.
I have no idea if he is right, but Lewis has been on target for years in describing the rage endemic to Arab Middle Eastern societies and prophetic in predicting the results. Accordingly, his views should be taken more seriously than those who fell all over themselves to predict how the U.S. was doomed to fail in Afghanistan, among other things.

AXIS OF EVIL: From Best of the Web, an explosive item (pun not intended) from London's Daily Telegraph alleging that Iraq and the Palestinian Authority have been meeting to plan terrorist attacks:

They have been passed details of a meeting in Baghdad at the end of last month when an Arafat aide is said to have provided a list of strategic sites in Israel and Saudi Arabia that might be attacked in the event of American air strikes on Baghdad. The list of possible targets was presented to officials at the GIA, which is controlled by Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son.
Apart from agreeing to share intelligence, the Palestinians are said to have provided Iraqi security agents with 37 blank passports, obtained from a variety of Arab countries, that might be used by the Iraqis when mounting terrorist attacks.

The article also alleges that one reason that Secretary Powell's first stop is Morocco is because:

it was suggested that one of the purposes of Mr Powell's visit to Morocco was to discuss plans for Mr Arafat's exile. The US is said to have suggested that Mr Arafat should move to Morocco unless he can prove his ability to halt Palestinian violence and co-operate in progress towards peace talks.
Both the Moroccans and the Israelis are reported to have baulked, however, at Mr Arafat's demand for an entourage of 70 Palestinian officials to be guaranteed safe passage with him, including some who are on Israel's "wanted" list as terrorists.

Both points bear watching.

STANDARD RULES: This week's issue of The Weekly Standard has two articles which deserve to be discussed and remembered.

FIRST, THREE CHEERS FOR THE BOURGEOISIE: David Brooks has a monumental piece on why the Arabs and Europeans hate the U.S. and Israel. His thesis, in short, is that the U.S. and Israel are emblematic of bourgeois virtues and material success, and that the Arabs and Europeans are heirs to the tradition of "bourgeoisophobia," which emerged as soon as the bourgeois did. Taking any selection from Brooks' piece runs the risk of oversimplification, but here is a description of the phenomenon:
Bourgeoisephobia is really a hatred of success. It is a hatred held by people who feel they are spiritually superior but who find themselves economically, politically, and socially outranked. They conclude that the world is diseased, that it rewards the wrong values, the wrong people, and the wrong abilities. They become cynical if they are soft inside, violent if they are hard. In the bourgeoisophobe's mind, the people and nations that do succeed are not just slightly vulgar, not just over-compensated, not just undeservedly lucky. They are monsters, non-human beasts who, in extreme cases, can be blamelessly killed.
Brooks argues that:
[T]oday, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower.
And so just as the French intellectuals of the 1830s rose up to despise the traders and bankers, certain people today rise up to shock, humiliate, and dream of destroying America and Israel. Today's bourgeoisophobes burn with the same sense of unjust inferiority. They experience the same humiliation because there is nothing they can do to thwart the growing might of their enemies. They rage and rage. Only today's bourgeoisophobes are not just artists and intellectuals. They are as likely to be terrorists and suicide bombers. They teach in madrassas, where they are careful not to instruct their students in the sort of practical knowledge that dominates bourgeois schools. They are Muslim clerics who incite hatred and violence. They are erudite Europeans who burn with humiliation because they know, deep down, that both America and Israel possess a vitality and heroism that their nations once had but no longer do.
...The bourgeoisophobes have no politburo. There is no bourgeoisophobe central command. They have no plausible strategy for victory. They have only their nihilistic rage, their envy mixed with snobbery, their snide remarks, their newspaper distortions, their conspiracy theories, their suicide bombs and terror attacks--and above all, a burning sense that the rising, vibrant, and powerful peoples of America and Israel must be humiliated and brought low.
There is much, much more, and it all should be read.
I have one quibble, though. As anyone who's lived in Israel can tell you, the Israeli economy and attitudes towards social organization are much closer to Western Europe than to the U.S. Israel has come very far from a free-market standpoint since the early 1980s, but it could still use a version of Margaret Thatcher in many ways. So I don't think that anti-bourgeios sentiment is all that helpful in explaining European antipathy towards Israel. (Straightforward anti-semitism probably has more to do with it.)
Other sources for similar arguments are this article in the NY Review of Books by Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma, and this hilarious Mark Steyn piece.

SECOND, THEY CAN COUNTERFEIT THE GREAT TRAGIDIANS: Also, Norman Doidge has an extraordinary article on how evildoers like Yasser Arafat use the consciences of good people for their own ends. Drawing on a fascinating analogy from Shakespeare's Richard III, he argues:
[W]hile conscience allows us to understand ordinary crimes, it actually blinds us before the most extraordinary ones.
...Conscience, when it is functioning well--automatically and without the intervention of reason, so that we do the right thing without thinking--is not simply rational. It is a force, a blunt instrument before which the conscientious person is guilty until proven innocent. As the preventive agency in the mind, conscience blocks first, thinks later. Men like Arafat and Richard know this. That is why both men constantly charge others with crimes--to paralyze them. Both know it doesn't matter whether the charges are false. Richard brazenly accuses Anne of inspiring the murder of her husband, as Arafat accuses the West of causing terrorism.
It is this force inside the psyche of his enemies that the person without a conscience can so effectively enlist as a fifth column. Having himself no such inner force always second-guessing him, he can see it clearly in others--far more clearly than do those who are in its thrall and take each of its charges seriously. Arafat gets endless second chances because the conscience of the West is doing what a conscience does: second-guessing the West's own actions. That is why Arafat is always playing upon the conscience of the West, especially by his endless recourse to "international law" and invocation of "human rights," an utterly brazen ploy coming from a terrorist.

What Arafat, and the Arab countries, do not understand is the extent to which they are playing with fire. When the U.S. "street" understands how their best instincts have been used against them, the reaction will be something which Arabs will warn their children about for many, many generations. Ask Germany and Japan.

SORRY, VOL.II: A still-crushing work schedule and the second phase of Passover has resulted in another absence from the site. Certain "lost posts" are below, and I will resume posting more regularly.

A HISTORY LESSON: Victor Davis Hanson offers some perspective on U.S.-Arab-Israeli relations:

Does America's support for Israel contribute to the present unrest, and thus create a destabilizing preponderance of military strength for the Jewish state? Forget for the moment that our current aggregate aid to the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt is roughly the same amount as we give the Israelis, and instead think back to the first twenty years of Israel's existence. Then America gave almost no military hardware to Israel — except for a few outdated tanks and some short-ranged missiles. Its Air Force consisted mostly of French Mirages and Ouragans — largess that quickly ceased once the 1967 war broke out.
...The Palestinians now like to cite the unfairness of American-made "Apaches and F-16s" in Israel. Yet when their side had all the material advantages and a staggering edge in weaponry the Arabs still lost.
Has America shown a decided prejudice toward the Israeli side that explains the sudden Arab hostility toward the United States? Not really. An Israeli head of state had never officially been received at the White House until 1964 — nearly 20 years after the foundation of the Jewish State! For most of its early years, Israel depended on support initially from the Soviet Union and later France. Indeed, during the first three Middle East wars the United States sold weapons to nearly every Arab regime and had a military base in Libya. During the 1967 war it essentially supplied no weapons to Israel during the fighting — in dire worry over its military arrangements with many Arab countries and its access to Middle East oil. Nearly forty years ago, as today, Americans were giving Egypt free grain, shipping tanks to Jordan, cozying up to the Saudis, and lecturing Israel on restraint — and the Arab world liked us no better then than it does now.

BASEBALL PREVIEW: I know the season has already started, but better late than never.
AL East
1. Yankees
Can they lose? Sure – if they have several major injuries and everyone on the Red Sox is completely healthy. Will they lose? No. Look for Ted Lilly and Juan Rivera to make an impact as injury replacements, and for David Wells, El Duque and Sterling Hitchcock to rotate through the DL, solving the 3-for-2-spots dilemma.
2. Red Sox
I’ve already discussed the pros and cons of Dan Duquette’s reign. But the worst outcome of last year’s mess may be the loss of Joe Kerrigan as pitching coach. It would seem unlikely that Tony Cloninger would be as likely to work miracles with the motley crew of Derek Lowe, John Burkett, Dustin Hermanson and Darren Oliver. And all this is irrelevant if Pedro Martinez is not completely healthy all season. Since he hasn’t been completely healthy since 1998 and couldn’t get anyone out all spring, it looks like 84 years and counting.
3. Blue Jays
Now that they have a real G.M. in J.P. Riccardi, watch out for them next year. This year is a retrenching. Second place is possible if Boston implodes.
4-5. Orioles – Devil Rays
Two organizations rotted to the core – no talent, be it in the majors, the minors, or in management.
AL Central
1. White Sox
Decisions regarding their pitching leave a lot to be desired, but they have enough talent (and the rest of the division has little enough) that the race should not be close.
2. Twins
They were lucky last year and will need another year, but look out if a couple of bats develop.
3. Indians
They were due for a fall, but it’s going to be very hard due to avoidable actions on the part of its management (i.e., trading Roberto Alomar to save money and signing Matt Lawton and Rickey Gutierrez to long-term deals for about the same amount)
4. Tigers
Their long-term picture is bright thanks to a decent farm system and Dave Dombrowski running the team.
5. Royals
Yes, they have no money. But they wouldn’t have a clue what to do with it if they did. See Rany Jazayerli for details.
AL West
1. Mariners
In March 2001, if you’d told them that they’d win 95 games in 2002, they’d probably have taken it. It’s amazing how expectations change. Their dominance in recruiting players from the Pacific Rim may be the greatest threat to the Yankees that nobody talks about.
2. Athletics
If they decline, it won’t be because of the loss of Jason Giambi. It will be because one of their big three starting pitchers is hurt or regresses to the mean. I think Mark Mulder is likely to do either one, as he took the biggest step forward last year.
3. Rangers
Just what they needed – another great hitter in Hank Blalock. Still no pitching, though.
4. Angels
Underrated on-field management can’t make up for the fact that upper management wasted the second half of the 1990s.

NL East
1. Braves
They were in danger, but Gary Sheffield will cure many ills.
2. Mets
Their hitting will not be quite as good as people think. There is no more interesting experiment in baseball than the Mets’ starting rotation; Pedro Astacio, Bruce Chen, Jeff D’Amico, et al are all high-risk, high-reward types. The team could win 100 games or 75.
3. Marlins
If Dave Dombrowski and a good manager were in charge, this team would have an outstanding chance to replicate the 1969 Mets story; no other team has a comparable group of young pitching. With Jeff Torborg and Jeff Loria in town, that seems less likely.
4. Phillies
Larry Bowa’s act will quickly wear thin, especially when the organization is at war with its best player and did not improve itself in the off-season.
5. Expos
“The Team That Baseball Killed” – thanks to a revenue-sharing plan that created incentives for teams like the Expos to not even try to compete.
NL Central
1. Cardinals
Tony LaRussa, Tino Martinez and Jason Isringhausen are all overrated, but there is still plenty of talent on hand. What is Bud Smith doing in the minor leagues?
2. Astros
One of baseball’s best organizations will give Daryle Ward the full-time job he has deserved for three years and use a seasoned group of outstanding young pitchers. One of these years, they’ll actually win a playoff series.
3. Cubs
I think they will disappoint this year, as Don Baylor’s issues with young players may cost him his job. Watch out for them starting in 2003, as baseball’s best farm system kicks in.
4. Reds
By 2004, Griffey, Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns will be the best outfield in baseball and may be so for five years. They won’t win until they get a real manager and some starting pitchers better than Elmer Dessens.
5. Brewers
Yes, they have their new park. They are already learning – as Detroit did previously and Pittsburgh did simultaneously – that a new park doesn’t automatically deliver good players. At the rate they’re going, they should figure out how to produce those in about 15 years.
6. Pirates
Now that they have a real GM and “Operation Shutdown” has been terminated, there may be reason to hope. But the organization needs several years of care before it can recover.
NL West
1. Giants
They need some more pitching, but Barry Bonds should be good for about…65 or so home runs.
2. Diamondbacks
Age is going to catch up with this team sooner or later.
3. Padres
Watch out for this team in 2003, with their stockpile of young talent. (I’m still resentful over the D’Angelo Jiminez-for-Jay Witasik deal.)
4. Rockies
If they don’t win in the next two years, I’m going to conclude that no team can win in Denver. They could easily win the division this year.
5. Dodgers
This team is a couple of injuries (to Green and Brown) away from being the Orioles. Their manager, Jim Tracy, is extremely underrated.

GETTING THERE: Thomas Friedman gets close to the truth:

The world must understand that the Palestinians have not chosen suicide bombing out of "desperation" stemming from the Israeli occupation. That is a huge lie. Why? To begin with, a lot of other people in the world are desperate, yet they have not gone around strapping dynamite to themselves. More important, President Clinton offered the Palestinians a peace plan that could have ended their "desperate" occupation, and Yasir Arafat walked away. Still more important, the Palestinians have long had a tactical alternative to suicide: nonviolent resistance, à la Gandhi. A nonviolent Palestinian movement appealing to the conscience of the Israeli silent majority would have delivered a Palestinian state 30 years ago, but they have rejected that strategy, too.
The reason the Palestinians have not adopted these alternatives is because they actually want to win their independence in blood and fire. All they can agree on as a community is what they want to destroy, not what they want to build. Have you ever heard Mr. Arafat talk about what sort of education system or economy he would prefer, what sort of constitution he wants? No, because Mr. Arafat is not interested in the content of a Palestinian state, only the contours.
Let's be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation. This threatens all civilization because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire nations. That is why the whole world must see this Palestinian suicide strategy defeated.

But his solutions do not compute:
... Israel needs to deliver a military blow that clearly shows terror will not pay. ... Israel must tell the Palestinian people that it is ready to resume talks where they left off with Mr. Clinton, before this intifada.

First, the "strategy" behind Sharon's actions has actually not been so difficult to discern: he's been trying to "deliver a military blow that clearly shows terror will not pay" that falls short of all-out war. But recent events have shown that nothing short of all-out war will indeed make that point. Second, if Israel then offers to negotiate starting from where the Clinton talks left off...then hasn't terror paid off?

No Middle East correspondent has ever been better than Friedman at describing the details of 2+2. But he has a persistent habit of coming up with 5 as his answer.

THE ARSONIST: A great piece by the great Fouad Ajami on Arafat and his preference for conflict over peace.

GREAT MOMENTS IN AIRLINE SECURITY: As is our annual wont, our family went to Chicago to spend the first part of Passover with my in-laws. After we had boarded the plane, they paged my 2½-year old daughter to the front of the plane. Apparently, she had been selected for random screening, and since they had neglected to subject her to such screening before boarding (this was LaGuardia, after all) it would be necessary for her to disembark so they could screen her. My daughter was not amused, and neither were her parents.
I’m not saying that children should never be screened; anyone who thinks that children aren’t used as pawns for terrorism hasn’t followed the subject closely enough (the Palestinians have spent 15 years sacrificing their children’s lives in their war against Israel). But if you’re going to do so, shouldn’t you check out the parents as well? Or, in cases like ours, shouldn’t you check the seats vacated by the search subjects, in case they left a nasty surprise behind? (I stayed behind with child #2, and can confirm they did not do so.)

SORRY: Thanks to Passover and a crushing work schedule, I haven't posted in a long time. I intend for that to change.