Notes and Comments (CM)

ORWELL WOULD UNDERSTAND: In Israel last week, a "militant" went to a religious school and shot everyone in sight. Hamas sang the praises of this "martyr" and in Gaza there was dancing in the streets. On NPR a "reporter" explained that those attending the religious school are religious, as are many of the "settlers" in the West Bank which the Palestinians claim and that "explains" slaughtering these students as they sat studying their Bibles.

I would like to continue but I'm running out of quotation marks.

A question: If Muslims were mowed down in a mosque by an Israeli would NPR offer the same explanation - that they are in a mosque so they are religious and members of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas also are religious, so surely one can understand?

Other commentators on this and related issues below.

Tom Gross writes that the mainstream media were largely unwilling to broadcast the reaction in Gaza to the murders in Jerusalem.

Here is the footage of "impoverished" Gazans handing out sweets and candies to passing motorists honking their horns in joy. I strongly suggest you watch it and ask why the footage is not being broadcast on major Western TV networks. (The clip is from Israeli TV news taken from Palestinian TV news.) Might it spoil the sympathy for Palestinians that the BBC, CNN, and others are trying to ram down viewers' throats all the time?

More here.

Daniel Doron writes:

Israeli governments have done little to stop the massive rearmament of Hamas in Gaza with Iranian weapons, bought with Saudi money and transported into Gaza with the connivance of Egypt. ...

The Israeli leadership's lack of determination to win, and its chronic political weakness, have prevented it from resisting pressure from Europe and certain American circles (mostly the State Department and the CIA) to accommodate Hamas and strengthen the allegedly peace-loving Palestinian Authority. Amazingly, Israel keeps supplying Hamas, for "humanitarian reasons," with subsidized electricity and materiel including the steel and chemicals needed to produce the rockets that attack it. It keeps providing money and weapons to prop up the hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority.

So what is the one strategy that can win? ... Israel and Western democracies must treat the terrorists' mortal challenge as a war for survival, not as a series of skirmishes. And in war, you must fight to win, by all traditional means.

More here.

Andy McCarthy writes:

Earlier this week, I noted with relief that the administration had announced it would not intervene in federal court on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which is complaining about a $174 million judgment against it (and the PLO) for the terrorist murder of an American citizen. But of course, the president's virtually simultaneous decision to pay Fatah an extra $150M over Congress's objection will just about make the PA whole - in the unlikely event they ever actually make any effort to pay the American victims. Thus, if it wasn't clear enough already, U.S. taxpayers are now also paying the fines imposed on Palestinians for their acts of terrorism against Americans.

More here.

Ariel Cohen writes:

A biased and misleading report on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, published ... by eight British left-leaning international organizations, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, CARE International, etc., actually repeats Hamas' propaganda by blaming Israel for the near-disastrous situation on the ground in Gaza. In fact, Israel left the Strip in 2005, and it is Hamas which is trying to gain political capital by forcing the situation to deteriorate and provoking Israeli retaliation against terrorist targets, in which it often deliberately positions civilians to get hurt.

Hamas has allowed elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran and al-Qaida to gain a foothold in Gaza. The business of these organizations is global jihad, and Israel is but one front is that war.

Until the United States, the European Union, and the Arab countries understand this and translate the knowledge into policy, all negotiations will remain unreal, if not surreal.

Gaza and the attack in Jerusalem demonstrate Palestinian implacability toward Israel. The Western media has failed to cover the fact, disclosed by Israeli intelligence in a recent briefing to foreign ambassadors, that Hamas posts children on the rooftops of their rocket factories to prevent Israeli attacks. This is a crime against humanity as well as extreme child abuse.

More here.

The Weekly Standard's blog notes:

One thought about the Jerusalem massacre: the lack of moral outrage about the fact that the gunman disguised himself as a rabbinical student.

Although the media frequently covers protests by outraged Muslims throwing temper tantrums at any perceived disrespect to their religion, Reuters and other news outlets fail to focus on the transparent hypocrisy when writing about terrorist attacks against Jews and Catholics. Not only do the terrorist sympathizers celebrate attacks against other religions with street-parties, prayers, and sweets, they fail to condemn al Qaeda's bombing of mosques, which presumably contain an abundant supply of oh so sacred Korans.

EQUALLY ORWELLIAN: A bill to restore to American intelligence agencies the authority they formerly had to monitor, unfettered, the communications of foreign terrorists passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee said that every day that our spy shops don't have this authority our intelligence is being "degraded."

National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell, a former vice admiral of the Navy, an intelligence officer for 25 years, and head of the National Security Agency under President Clinton, said that without this authorization, vital intelligence is being "lost."

A letter sent by 25 state Attorneys General of both parties says that America's security is being "jeopardized" by the refusal of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow her members to vote on the bill - which, it is believed, would pass with bipartisan support in the House as well.

The moderate Blue Dog Democrats are pushing Pelosi to permit the vote.

And in an interview with National Journal, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign broke with his candidate's position opposing this bill - which also contains a provision granting legal protection to telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with the U.S. intelligence officials to detect and prevent acts of terrorism.

"I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity," former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. "They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context." Last month, Senator Obama voted to strip language in an intelligence bill that would have granted to Verizon, AT&T and other companies the immunity.

Regarding the telecoms, Senator Rockefeller has said: "What is the big payoff for the telephone companies? They get paid a lot of money? No. They get paid nothing. What do they get for this (for cooperating with intelligence officials to prevent terrorism)? They get $40 billion worth of suits, grief, trashing, but they do it."

I have publicly praised those Democrats - e.g. Rep. Joe Donnelly of Indiana - who have taken a principled stand on this issue and, by doing so, incurred the wrath of Speaker Pelosi, the trial lawyers who stand to make billions of dollars, MoveOn.org, the ACLU and CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations which has organized a campaign against the Senate bill).

Yet for some reason, in all the mainstream media coverage of this issue, those who support the bill are portrayed as "partisans," and those who oppose it are called "civil rights advocates" or something equally flattering. Why is that? Discuss among yourselves.

There's much more on this issue - the substance and principles, not the politics - here.

WAR 2.0: Alan Dershowitz believes there has been

a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle - even a just battle - has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women - some married with infant children - are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

More here.

WHEN AHMADINEJAD COMES TO CALL: Amir Taheri writes that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

had come to Iraq to show it was an Iranian playground. He ended up by showing that Iran's influence in Iraq is widely exaggerated.

To be sure, Tehran exerts influence through a number of Shiite militias it has recruited, trained and financed for years. And some insurgent groups depend on Iran as their main source of weapons, especially sophisticated explosive devices. Iran also remains Iraq's biggest trading partner and the second-biggest investor in the Iraqi economy. Iranian pilgrims account for more than 90 percent of all foreign visitors in Iraq.

Yet the visit highlighted one crucial fact: Few Iraqis wish to see their country dominated by the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.

Iraq proved too hot for Ahmadinejad. He had to get out as fast as he could.

More here.

COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS: Former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew writes

The costs of leaving Iraq unstable would be high. Jihadists everywhere would be emboldened. I have met many Gulf leaders and know that their deep fear is that a precipitate U.S. withdrawal would gravely jeopardize their security. ...

A hurried withdrawal from Iraq would cause the leaders of many countries to conclude that the American people cannot tolerate the nearly 4,000 casualties they have suffered in Iraq and that in a protracted asymmetrical war the U.S. government will not have its people's support to bear the pain that is necessary to prevail. And this even after the surge of 30,000 additional troops under Gen. David Petraeus has resulted in an improved security situation. ...

An additional concern is that a hasty U.S. withdrawal would leave Iran to become more of a power in the Gulf.

More here.

CHARMING: The Guardian (not exactly a hawkish or right-wing rag) reports that Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

More here.

-Cliff May