Out of Dallas comes a story about a 60 year old woman who wrestled away a gun from a 19 year old teenager trying to steal her car and shot him. The story's closing paragraph contains the cautionary note that has become obligatory for postmodern America.

"We don't recommend it," Sgt. McFarlin said of the woman's decision to confront her attacker. "Always the safe thing to do, unless you're in fear of imminent bodily injury, is to comply."

Complying is indeed the recommended option these days, whether it's with criminals or terrorists. Follow orders and hope you don't get hurt. How many women have been forced into cars at the threat of a knife or a gun, only to be taken away and raped and murdered. When people are taught to comply, imminent injury ceases to be a risk but a consequence.

Complying was the standard recommendation for airplane hijackings. This cultural programming was only broken on Flight 93, when the consequences of compliance had become clear. It is not in Afghanistan or Iraq, where the only truly decisive victory against terrorism occurred, but on that plane, when the passengers chose to resist their attackers and foil their plans.

The common denominator between crime and terrorism is that both are cultural threats to our society. They originate from cultures existing abroad and in the fringes of our own society. A criminal culture and a terrorist culture. They cannot be defeated purely through military means, they must be defeated at the cultural level, and that will only happen when a society of committed individuals resist them, rather than comply with them.

But we have been assiduously taught not to do this. We are taught to vest out faith and rights into the hands of government bodies who will handle our security for us. Our approach to terrorism is only an extension of our approach to crime, which is to slide back and forth between aggressive rhetoric and overbearing action to appeasement and downright romanticisation of the criminal and the terrorist. This romanticisation of murderers and criminals who challenge authority, itself stems from the loss of liberty inherent in a state which preaches government power as the ultimate good and the ultimate solution.

Once we transferred responsibility for our security from ourselves to a designated professional force and made it all but illegal, for people to defend others or themselves using force, we created the kind of society that could stand by as Kitty Genovese was attacked repeatedly over a half and allowed to die without any help.

We created a society perpetually afraid of crime and dependent on police brutality and ruthless policing to keep it at bay. By taking away the ability of ordinary citizens to protect themselves, we were left with the false choice of either weak policing and anarchy or ruthless policing and obscene erosions of individual freedoms.

All attempts to transfer individual responsibilities to the government however, are doomed to failure. A government educational system can never replace parents. Government policing can never take the place of individual deterrence and self-defense. Governments can defeat armed forces, but they cannot defeat a culture. Only one culture can defeat another culture and only one civilization can defeat another civilization.

The War on Terror was marked by a government that rushed to pass laws, that were promptly never taken advantage of, or misused for ordinary criminal prosecutions. While everyone from the President on down rushed to insure the public that everything was under control, attempts to give the American people a role in the War on Terror were either squashed or squandered. The government insisted on doing it on its own and worked hard to convince the public that this was a conventional threat that could be defeated by conventional means, because government always seeks to rhetorically recreate a situation along the parameters that place it within its sphere of control.

In the War on Terror, domestic terrorists have been barely touched, and the successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, ignored the fact that the real threat lay not from Osama Bin Laden, but from the growing Muslim immigration and accompanying legitimization of terrorism and delegitimization of self-defense, that has turned Europe's former great empires into supine chambers of appeasement before the spawn of Mohammedanism. Unable to admit the average American understands, the government's attempt to fight terrorism can only stop state sponsors of terrorism, but not the disease vector of terrorism itself, which is Islam.

The dream of Islamic supremacy cannot be blown up with a bomb. It can be defeated only by a superior culture. A culture that is unafraid of the truth and whose superiority rests in individual liberty and self-reliance, rather than on grand government programs that hunt mosquitoes with howitzer cannons.

Individual liberty is a free society's immunity mechanism that prevents it from being overcome by malignant ideologies. A socialist state which seeks to subdue the native energies, spirits and vigor of its people, turns a Democratic society into little more than an inferior version of the dictatorships and totalitarian ideologies it resists. Inferior because true totalitarian regimes are far more thorough, both in crushing their own people and in maintaining a police state over them.

A government cannot subdue the Islamic threat. Military force is an important component over defeating Islamic terrorism abroad, but we can score military victories over Islamic terrorism across the world, and yet see it spring up in new places every week. Because all that Islamists require is a weak government and a crumbling social structure to move in and begin taking over. Africa alone offers dozens of such places. So does Southeast Asia. So does Europe.

A government cannot subdue an ideology. Bombing another training camp in Pakistan does only a limited amount of good, when mosques are preaching Jihad recruiting terrorists in our own cities. Fighting Islamic terrorism abroad does little good, when our own schools and colleges are prosyletising students with classes on the glories of the Religion of Peace.

Terrorism is only the poison the snake spits. The snake itself is the rise of Islam as a force in the modern world. That snake stretches out from the sand pits of the Middle East, its coils draping across Asia and Europe and its fangs reaching across the ocean to America. The snake's body is composed of the numbers of its worshipers, of their mosques and charities and schools and institutions.

For the poison to seep in, they might prefer a Liberal Democrat President, but they would settle for a Republican one whose administration will counsel people not to worry, teach them to tape the windows shut and do nothing, especially not blame Islam or Muslims for terrorism. Especially not to fight back.

Since 9/11 Muslims boast that conversions to Islam have gone up. The murder of over 3000 Americans served as a kind of publicity stunt to launch the promotion of the religion responsible for it. The average American today is fed a dozen lies about Islam before breakfast, all of them sickeningly sweet. The empty debate rages about whether to pull in and out of Iraq, when the real battle for the West is being fought in Paris and Brussels and Rome and for that matter Detroit.

As the death toll in the unofficial war being fought in Europe rises, the media trumpets each dead American soldier. In Sweden women are told not to dress provocatively or meet the eyes of Muslim men. In Australia rhetoric against Muslims is punished with jail time. In England republication of cartoons offensive to Muslims is set to trigger a criminal prosecution. In America rumors of a supposed Koran in the toilet trigger police investigations.

All of it falls under a single banner. The same banner liberals and conservatives both, have spent too much time waving since the 70's. Whatever you do, don't fight back.

For the last few decades, apologists, the weak-minded and Palestinian sympathizers have had a ready made excuse for Palestinian terrorists. Israeli oppression and the supposed "helplessness" of the Arabs justified any atrocity.

When a mob tore to shreds two Israeli reservists who had taken a wrong turn, when Palestinian Arab terrorists killed a mother and her children in a drive by shooting, when suicide bombers blew themselves up in cafes, pizzerias and shopping malls; that same mantra was always trotted out, don't blame the murderers, blame the victims.

Now a gang of six serial rapists from a Bedouin village has been arrested, who assaulted girls as young as 13, in their words; "We are raping Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories."

The world has willingly gone along with justifications that began with, "We are murdering Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories." Will it draw the line here? Why should it. If the murders of women and children can be excused as part of the "resistance" to "Israeli oppression", if their murderers can be addressed as "Mr. President" and awarded Nobel Peace Prizes, why not their rapists?

The difference might be that rape reveals the cognitive dissonance at the heart of apologies for Palestinian terrorism. Rape is not an act of resistance, but an act of violence. Where apologists have worked hard to mischaracterize suicide bombing as the act of desperate people who lack tanks and jets with which to fight their wars, rape reveals the inner brutality at the heart of Arab terrorism. Acts not of resistance, but greed, brutality and lust.

A key part of the Sudanese genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by its Arab government and its militias was acts of mass rape and mutilation. But that is not only an issue in the Sudan, but everywhere the Muslim conquest expands its borders. Sweden, Norway, France and Australia have seen tremendous spikes in rapes carried out by Muslims, and an accordingly large campaign by the press and police to suppress the data and avoid talking about them.

The actions of these six Muslim Arab rapists is part of a larger pattern, going all the back to Mohammed, the founder of Islam, who rewarded the gangs of bandits who followed him with the loot and wives and daughters of his victims. These are not the actions and attitude of oppressed people, but of those who want to oppress.

The Palestinian Arabs are not an oppressed people, but an enraged one. Enraged by the humiliation by their own failure to destroy the Jews, time and time again. Humiliation for Arabs breeds rage, can only be redeemed by acts of violence, of which rape is just one in a catalog of atrocities. In Pakistan, gang rapes of a wife or daughter are often ordered by tribal elders as penalty for shame brought by one family to another. Over 150 such rapes were carried out in one year alone. This is the nature of Muslim honor.

Those apologists who will not try to actively defend the rapes will no doubt claim they are an aberration, but they are no aberration. They are part and parcel of a sick and twisted culture and when Arab and Muslim culture comes into contact with us, like Honor Killings, they are an inevitable export to our shores. They are what happens when we value a sob story over justice and cultural diversity over cultural integrity.

Rape has all too often been a crime, for which excuses have been made and the victim has been blamed. Terrorism too has become a crime for which the victim is blamed and the burden shifted away from the terrorist. In both cases this is done because the system sympathizes with the perpetrators and creates loopholes and justifications for them to escape justice. Anyone who wishes to find excuses and pretexts for rapists and terrorists will always find them, but a society and civilization is defined by the willingness of men to oppose crimes, not to excuse them and to stand up and fight against those who perpetrate them.

Not satisfied with giving Israel its first major ethnic cleansing of Jews, Kadima has now also given Israel its first Arab President.

After Olmert and Kadima contrived to manufactured a phony sex scandal against conservative President Moshe Katsav, in order to remove him and make way for Olmert ally, left-winger Shimon Peres, who had been chomping at the bit for the post, despite the fact that he was a national disgrace who had never won a single election; the Kadima mafia topped itself by giving Israel its first Arab President.

After Dalia Itzik took over the duties of President, she went abroad, turning over the post of President to Kadima MK, Majali Wahabe. Wahabe had been Sharon's advisor on Arab affairs and served various covert roles, occasionally described as Sharon's "private foreign minister."

Ironically for assuming the temporary Presidency, Majali Wahabi has been notorious for standing but not singing during the Israeli National Anthem. He was part of the general Druze strike last year and participated along with another Arab MK in discussions with Syrian officials and received an invitation to meet with the Syrian leadership in Damascus. He had also demanded in regard to MK Avigdor Lieberman, that people who "continue to speak in a racist tone... must be removed from our midst."

After this it is a matter of wait and see, to see what new depths Kadima will take Israel to, before this party, whose projected polled mandate is down to around 7 seats, is finally shown the door.

The new media like the old tends to be liberal dominated. While conservatives have created solid alternative communities like Free Republic and Little Green Footballs, the overall internet landscape is tilted toward the left. Certainly the corporate side of it is.

Google News, for example, routinely features content from pro-terrorist and anti-semitic sites in its news filter, while barring Little Green Footballs and a number of other conservative sites. (Probably the height of Google News' unprofessionalism is running satire items in its news feed.)

Old liberal media favors and promotes new liberal media. That's why when the press talks blogs, they talk Huffington Post, DailyKos or Wonkette and ignore or outright dismiss conservative blogs when they can. All that adds up to a continuation of the left's monopoly on ideas being perpetuated through the mass media. Like favors like.

LGF's current Digg fracas is reminiscent of Michelle Malkin's YouTube dustup. In both cases prominent figures in War on Terror blogs (Charles Johnson can't really be called a conservative) with their own communities were rebuffed by new media darlings, like YouTube and Digg, and launched attempts to fight it.

Malkin ultimately found that running Hotair was a better solution and in the end Pajamas Media may well launch a conservative Digg alternative, if there isn't one already.

That said, these types of battles are worth fighting, if only because the new media, unlike the old, can be shifted by individual action. The Digg and YouTube were essentially between entrenched communities of Muslims\Lefties and Neo-Nazis against Conservative\Zionist bloggers and vloggers.

I personally waded into Youtube, I've put up dozens of videos, some I produced myself, engaged in comment wars, had my videos taken down as "inappropriate content" when enough of the Muslims\Neo-Nazis voted them as objectionable content. That's the same thing that happened to Malkin and it's similar to what's happening to Little Green Footballs now on Digg.

Despite all the troubles though, my videos on Youtube and Google Video have topped 200,000 views. That's more than double my blog views over a significantly shorter period. More to the point the videos made a difference and an impact, as people have written to tell me. They've been reposted on other sites and passed around. One was played in a shul during a Tisha Ba'av service.

Yesterday I used Feedburner to put in Digg labels under every post, along with Technocrati and Del.icio.us bookmarks, Blogger's and Yahoo 360 BlogThis. The Digg's so far have resulted in Sunday's post getting over 25 Diggs and traffic. More to the point it provided a small dose of counter-opposition to the left wing propaganda that dominates Digg. And that's what it comes down to. Participating means having a voice.

The hysteria at Digg over LGF's participation is all too similar to the media hysteria over Fox News. Despite all the rage that's still going on, Fox News quickly became a top media outlet, unseating CNN. Progressives believe in their sovereign right to a monopoly on ideas and opinions. But that can be fought and resisted when we voice our own views and opinions, despite and perhaps even because of the blowback we inevitably receive.

My dugg posts received several hateful comments. My YouTube videos have attracted thousands of negative comments, threats and takedown notices. It doesn't worry me any. Backlashes of those kinds are a panicked reaction by people who cannot handle anything that clashes with their worldview. It's the intolerance of the weak.

LGF would do well to keep Digging, the moonbats burying their posts will sooner or later run out of energy, when they realize that they aren't stopping anything. If a YouTube video gets taken down, multiple copies of it should be put up the next day. That's what I did with the "Children Murdered by Palestinian Terrorists", which has been duplicated in three copies across YouTube. They can't win, except when we give up. And staying in the fight means maintaining a voice for truth and an opposition to the monopoly of ideas.

In another milestone for mainstreaming Israel-bashing, shielded by an incredibly dishonest excuse, we have the following piece from Wonkette. Just parsing the dishonesty requires beginning with the headline.

"John Edwards Expresses Concern Over Israel-Iran War, Loses Nomination"

This is the beginning of Wonkette's sarcastic tantrum. Like the rest of her post, it's completely dishonest. It implies that John Edwards was discussing a conflict between Israel and Iran, when his statement focused on Israel attacking Iran.

It minimizes his statement to "expressing concern." John Edwards did not do something as mild "express concern." He described Israel as the Greatest Threat to World Peace. That is a galaxy away from expressing concern. Describing a country that way suggests you consider it the enemy, or at least the biggest danger at the moment.

"Handsome boy John Edwards blew it by mentioning Israel in a possibly not-100% flattering light at a Hollywood talent agency meet & greet last month."

Of course calling a country the Greatest Threat to World Peace, is a long way from the "not-100% flattering light" Wonkette snidely mentions. Anymore than calling Wonkette the Greatest Idiot in the Blogsphere would be describing her in a not-100% flattering light."

But a typical component of Israel bashing is to claim that dialogue on Israel has been so suppressed that critics are persecuted for the mildest remarks. Then the bashers can argue that any criticism of them is motivated by this vast Jewish conspiracy. What they actually contrive to do, is do to their critics, what they claim their critics are trying to do to them, illegitimately stifle criticism.

This strawman is propped up by absurd posts like Wonkette's.

"But stating anything so obvious requires taking your lips off Israel’s ass for a few seconds, and that’s fatal for any American politician with presidential ambitions."

And so we've already switched over into portraying every politician as a slave of Israel. Especially Presidents. Of course we were already there in the previous paragraph. And once Senator Edwards' remarks are minimized as failing to kowtow to Israel, anyone who objects to them clearly wants every politician to kowtow to Israel. This is the kind of rhetoric you expect from David Duke or Paul Findley, or the extreme right or extreme left. But these days it's becoming mainstreamed in the Democratic party.

The dishonesty of this strawman isn't original, but it's the next paragraph where Wonkette really achieves a new plateau of dishonesty. Since she's just laid out a classic bit that leads up to the Jews controlling Washington, that sort of thing might be a turnoff to the remaining Jews in the Democratic Party who still haven't realized that the party these days, is filled with people who think like Wonkette does.

"This isn’t because Jews get upset or Israel’s feelings will get hurt or anything. It’s because of bats__t insane evangelical American Jesus Freaks who have to love and protect Israel so Jesus will come back and destroy it."

See how this justification works now. Wonkette can't possibly be engaging in a little Anti-semitic tirade about the ZOG, since she's now declaring that Israel and the Jews won't possibly be troubled by a Presidential candidate declaring Israel to be the Greatest Threat to World Peace. It's only the Christians who will object.

Israel-bashers have been using Christians for a while now to prop up their claim that they're not Anti-Jewish, just Anti-Zionist, which includes Christian Zionists. Wonkette, trying to continue playing to a liberal Democrat base, goes one step further by eliminating the Jews from the equation altogether.

Now the only victims of Israel-bashing will somehow be the Christians who don't actually live there, and not the people who do. The bizarrely convoluted nature of this position comes from a Democratic party unwilling to sink into open Israel-bashing just yet, no matter how much it may be simmering under the surface. That requires dishonest excuses like this one.

The question of whether Jewish liberals will be willing to grab onto that pretext will be decided by the measure of their desperation and their unwillingness to break ties with their old comrades. That kind of desperation can breed a denial that will even encompass a justification as baldly false as Wonkette's.

No one can be free, unless they choose it. And no one who chooses to be a slave, can ever be free.

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"Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.

Edwards criticized the Bush administration on Sunday for failing to engage directly with Iran to resolve problems with the Iraq war and Iran‘s effort to develop nuclear weapons.

"What we should be doing with Iran, both on the Iraq issue and the nuclear issue, is being much smarter than we‘re being now." Edwards said Bush‘s reluctance to open diplomatic lines with Iran and Syria was costing the United States in its efforts to stabilize Iraq.

Edwards said the United States should offer a serious package of economic incentives and make it public. He said Washington can encourage Tehran to give up its nuclear enrichment program by promising to give Iran nuclear fuel."

* * *

"The challenges in your own backyard – represent an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel," Edwards told the Herzliya Conference, referring mainly to the Iranian threat.

n his speech, Edwards criticized the United States' previous indifference to the Iranian issue, saying they have not done enough to deal with the threat.

Hinting to possible military action, Edwards stressed that "To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, let me reiterate—ALL options must remain on the table."

On the recent UN Security Council's resolution against Iran, Edwards said more serious political and economic steps should be taken. "Iran must know that the world won’t back down," he said.


* * *


So here we have the two faces of John Edwards. Like most politicians he says one thing to a Jewish audience and another thing entirely to his own political base. Which John Edwards is the real one?

It's pretty safe to say that it's the liberal John Edwards who says attacking Iran would be a serious mistake and that we can neutralize the problem with threats of more economic sanctions and promises of economic incentives and nuclear fuel for civilian use (as if we'd be able control this.)

In other words "Let's Make a Deal John."

When asked if we can live with a nuclear Iran, Edwards says, "I’m not ready to cross that bridge yet. I think that we have lots of opportunities that we’ve … We’re not negotiating with them directly, what I just proposed has not been done...But I’m not ready to cross that bridge yet.

And I think the reason people react the way they do -- I understand it, because, when George Bush uses this kind of language, it means something very different for most people. I mean when he uses this kind of language “options are on the table,” he does it in a very threatening kind of way."

Of course though when John Edwards says "all options are on the table", he doesn't actually mean it to be threatening, he means all options for appeasing Iran are on the table. You want nuclear fuel Mahmood, we'll give you nuclear fuel. You want billions of dollars in aid, we've got it. Come on down to John Edwards' Used Cars and Office of the President.

Like a lot of Democrats (and Republicans), Edwards will do some selective tough talking and selective appeasing, but in their minds it isn't Iran's plan to kill millions of people that is the gravest threat to world peace, but the possibility that Israel might take out Iran's nuclear weapons before the diplomats can buy enough time for Iran to use them or at least blackmail the world with them.

And this is why men like Edwards can never fight a War on Terror. Only negotiate a retreat.

Note: I originally put up this video some time ago, but the Arabs and various Neo-Nazis running loose on Youtube managed to successfully exploit Youtube's 'Flag' feature to take it down as "inappropriate content."

How a memorial to murdered children can qualify as inappropriate content is a question best addressed to the Islamic appeasers at Google, which is happy enough to allow "The Wisdom of Crowds" or more accurately," The Hatred of Mobs" to guide their content.

It's now back up again and anyone who had formerly linked to this, should probably relink to the new video.

The following is video footage of Mickey Levi מיקי לוי , now Deputy Chief of Police's infamous assault on Nadia Matar נדיה מטר at a Women in Green rally against the Oslo Accords during the Rabin government in March 1994.

Partial audio follows: "We came here for one thing. To remind the world and the government of Israel of the names of Israelis who were murdered from the beginning of the Oslo Peace Accords. No one in the world mourns for them, not Arafat, not the UN

David Misrati murdered in October 2003,

Efraim Ayubi 30 years old, murdered on November 7th, 2003

Shalom Lapid, 19 years old..."

At this point Nadia Matar is seized and dragged away. Later Mickey Levy accused Matar of attacking him. Nadia Matar was put on trial, which was only halted after this tape was released. Despite committing perjury, Micky Levi, a close associate of Ehud Olmert went on to be promoted and will now be Deputy Chief of Police.

Update: I dug this clipping out of my collection. I think it speaks for itself.

I predicted this back during Coral Ridge Ministries' "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" documentary that claimed Darwinism was the real source of Nazism and the Holocaust. I pointed out then that most such historical revisionism winds up taking a snake's turn and then pinning the whole thing on the Jews.

The left did it by claiming that the real source of the Holocaust and Nazism, was nationalism and then proceeding to identify Zionism with Nazism. Now we're seeing it done by claiming that evolution was invented by the Jews. Since the Jews now "invented" evolution and the Nazis were Darwinists, then the Nazis were really the Jews.

The second most powerful member of the Texas House of Representative, Warren Chisum passed on a memo from a Georgia House of Representatives member claiming that teaching evolution means teaching "Jewish religious beliefs."

This particular idea comes from a hate site Fixed Earth, which claims among its other ravings, that the earth doesn't rotate but remains in place, that Einstein was a Kabbalist, that ET is part of a conspiracy to teach people evolution, that Israel backed by Christian Zionists are plotting to take over Turkey and that there is a vast Jewish conspiracy to perpetuate Superstring Theory.

"So “superstrings theory” is yet another blatant example of how contra-scientific, Christ-hating Pharisee Kabbalist Occultists (using theoretical non-science and phony physics) have deceived the whole world into believing that 15 billion years of Big Bang Evolutionism has produced all that exists."

So if anyone seriously thought that there was ANYTHING in the world that Anti-semites couldn't blame Jews for, apparently we're now to blame for Superstring Theory. And gravity apparently. And trying to fool people into believing that the earth revolves around the sun. And wanting to invade Turkey.

Aside from its preoccupation with the Jewish conspiracy to perpetuate physics, Fixed Earth is basically a collection of the usual Anti-semitic ravings about the Talmud, Israel, Satan and "Kabbalic Judaism" done in twenty different colors, misspelled and underlined.

For all its rabid hatefulness, the site generally fall into the pathetic range, what is troubling is the willingness of politicians to pick up material from there. A pretext for relabeling evolution as religious is a tempting weapon to evolution opponents. So much so they're willing to traffic in a bigoted position in the vain hopes of scoring a point against their opponents. Instead all such an approach accomplishes is to delegitimize people on the side of creationism as bigots.

Fixed Earth not only engages in garden variety Anti-semitism. There's also your garden variety Holocaust denial. There's your claims of a vast Jewish conspiracy running the world. It's a whole lot to overlook and there's a whole lot of ugliness revolving there.

This should however be a reminder to some of the Jewish liberals in Europe and America endlessly complaining that Israel is the reason they're hated. Anti-semitism is not based on any reasonable grievance. It's based on people who blame everything that troubles them on the Jews. It existed long before the recreation of Israel. It may appear sometimes to have a rational basis, when its apologists are saner and more coherent than Fixed Earth's Marshall Hall. But in the end it all comes down to the same lunatic ravings, just some times better disguised than others.

For Marshall Hall, for Fixed Earth, for Warren Chisum and for all of them, here is the Stonecutter' Song from The Simpsons



Who invented gravity
Who propounds string theory
We do
We do

Who made Darwin famous overnight
Who really flew Franklin's kite
We do
We do

Who kabbalistically controls the Earth
Who travels coach from Sydney to Perth
We do
We do

Who made ET's bicycle fly
Who set the value of PI
We do
We do

Who stole Marshall Hall's brains
Who gives him constant gas pains
We do
We do

It's become second nature for civil authorities to claim a killing spree by a Muslim has nothing to do with his religion and instead resort to excuses like "depression", "financial problems" or "relationship problems."

In the latest Utah shooting, despite the fact that the killer's family had been prominent Muslim fighters, despite the fact that his own cousin sent an Islamic terrorist threat to the Governor of Connecticut saying, "09.11.01. Anthrax is deadly. You breathe and die. This is only the beginning. Americans will die. Death to America and Israel."

The press and law enforcement chose to ignore and deride any claims that his Islamic beliefs had anything to do with the attack. Even his home computer remained unexamined for clues as to why he carried out these attacks.

This follows a similar pattern of politically correct cover ups of Muslim killing sprees, including the attack in Portland and going back all the way to the LAX shooting at the El Al counter in 2002 by an Egyptian, which law enforcement insisted on claiming had been caused by "business problems" as well.

Then there's one of the grand daddies of them all. The Empire State Building Shootings.

In 1997, Ali Abu Kamal, a Palestinian, opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one man and wounding six others. He left behind notes describing his hatred for America and Israel. Instead the media focused on the official story that Kamal had been upset over (you guessed it) business failures.

Never mind that he carried a letter reading, "The Zionists are the paw that carried out their savage aggression. My restless aspiration is to murder as many of them as possible, and I have decided to strike at their own den in New York..."

Now a decade later, Kamal's daughter has confirmed what everyone knew, but the media and law enforcement insisted on denying, that Kamal's attack had been a terrorist attack.

Kamal's 48-year-old daughter Linda, who who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, told the Daily News that her dad wanted to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel - and revealed her mom's 1997 account was a cover story crafted by the Palestinian Authority.

"A Palestinian Authority official advised us to say the attack was not for political reasons because that would harm the peace agreement with Israel," she told The News on Friday.

"When we wanted to clarify that to the media, nobody listened to us. His goal was patriotic. He wanted to take revenge from the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis. He wrote that...he decided to avenge in the highest building in America to make sure they get his message."

The media and law enforcement of course "refused to get the message." They instead went into default cover up mode. As typically happens law enforcement is pressured not to designate the crime as a terrorist attack or driven by Islamic or Arab nationalist motives, but to relabel it under the usual categories that lone shooters are placed under, e.g. disgruntled or emotionally disturbed in some way.

With or without the help or the family, usually led by the press, this motive is constructed out of whole cloth and another Jihadist attack against Americans is covered up. And while America sleeps, the killings go on.

It's not depression though, or dissatisfaction or business failures. It's terrorism and the cover up must be fought.

"The Palestinians are not an oppressed people, but rather the irreconcilable remnants of a once-victorious but now defeated empire, living in an irredentist dream world in which a new Salahuddin will drive the new Crusaders into the sea."

Spengler

UPDATE: Video of Mickey Levy 's attack on Nadia Matar available here



Police chief Moshe Karadi who had defied the Knesset Commission investigating the Amona police riot is now finally being removed, not for the brutality his forces have engaged in against protesters opposed to the Kadima regime, but for corruption. Along with the resignation of Dan Halutz, this marks the removal of two of the top people responsible for the Pogrom at Amona.

They have not of course been removed for their actions at Amona, but because their general incompetence and corruption passed the point where it could be further tolerated.

The story however is far from over. Replacing outgoing Police Chief Moshe Karadi, will be the Chief Warden of Israel's prisons, Yaakov Ganot. Ganot had supervised the prisons during the Disengagement and prepared for the arrests of large numbers of civil disobedience protesters and maintained conditions in which prisoners have been deprived of civil rights and abused.



Worse yet, former Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy will become the new Deputy Police Chief. Mickey Levy is infamous for supervising the beating of protesters all the way back to the Oslo days. Then there's the utterly shameful case in which Women in Green head Nadia Matar and Mickey Levy.

At a 1994 demonstration, Levy assaulted Nadia Matar and dragged her to a police van. She was then charged in court with assaulting Levy. It took a subpoena of a Channel 2 tape to demonstrate that Levy was lying. However Levy was never charged with assault or perjury, instead of all charges against him were dropped. Olmert helped put him on the fast track to promotion and it was open news that Olmert intended to push Levy up the ladder. Now Mickey Levy, despite or rather because of his long history of police brutality and violent assaults against Zionist protesters is a step away from being chief of police.

It will take much more than the current resignations to clean up the extraordinarily dirty police, a system that became a good deal dirtier under Sharon and Olmert.



MiShenichnas Adar Yetzei Karadi

In time for Parshas Misphatim, at least some justice was done here.

Parshas Mishpatim is essentially an extensive selection of laws, as befits its name. After the transcendent spiritual closeness to G-d on Sinai, it seems a rather mundane topic, and yet the 10 Commandments themselves, were those of law. Moses is often described as the Lawgiver, yet in actuality it is G-d who is the Lawgiver.

Today is also Mevorchim Rosh Chodesh Adar, the blessing for the new month of Adar, which will begin on Sunday and Monday. Adar famously highlights Purim, the festival of lots, in which Haman cast lots to decide the date for the destruction of the Jewish people. The very use of lots is random, leaving things to the chaos of chance. Haman's people, the Amalekites, are described in a somewhat similar way, when it says, Asher Karcha Baderech, They Encountered You Along the Way.

Kara tends to be used to describe things that happen at random, by chance. Haman's impulse to wipe out the Jews also seems random. He encounters a single Jew, Mordechai, who does not bow to him, and decides to wipe out all the Jews. Amalek seem to also randomly have encountered the Jews and decided to attack them. It seems at odds that the greatest enemies of the Jews should be acting in such a random way.

These days we are very fond of trying to understand the motivations for killers. After the Utah shooting, we once again have loads of experts trying to determine motive. But yet this is a completely irrelevant task. We do not need to know the motive of a murderer, except to catch him. What is important about a murderer, is not his motives, but his act. That is what defines him as a murderer. Not the stories from friends and relatives of what a nice person he was or how much he suffered or what his justifications were. It's the act that counts.

Murder can be entirely random, but the consequences are not. That is law. When law moves its emphasis from punishing the act, to exploring and thus identifying with the state of mind of the murderer, justice ceases and moral relativism takes hold. Moral relativism by its very nature is random. It shapes itself to the circumstances, impulses and prejudices of the observers. Murder ceases to be murder. Law ceases to be law. The world becomes a jungle full of predators with justifications.

Law orders the chaos of human impulses, creates impassable barriers and systems that regulate human behavior and protect human beings from each other and from those administrating the law. G-d is the Lawgiver because order in all things properly comes from him. That is why a judge who rules justly is said to be a partner with G-d in Creation.

Randomness by contrast seeks to overthrow that order. The randomness of Amalek denies a central order to the world, denies G-d. Instead it views the world as a playground for its appetites. Amalek saw the Jews and decided to slaughter them. Haman felt offended and decided to take vengeance on an entire people. In doing so they showed that they did not respect any higher power, but their own impulses and saw the world as run by random chance.

It is why the Mishpatim of G-d, the Laws of G-d, stand in opposition to the Lots of Haman. And in the perfect retort, G-d turned the randomness of Haman's lots into an ordered result that pointed to the outcome he wanted. Just as he turned the seeming randomness of Haman's impulsive visit to Ahasverosh to demand Mordechai's hanging, into Mordechai's triumph.

Evil seeks to turn order into chaos, the chaos of blood and murder, justice is G-d's triumph over evil as the giver of laws.

"On the night of April 24, 2005, Christine Kramer - her body etched head to heel with two dozen stab wounds and almost completely drained of blood - summoned her last measure of strength to lift her thin right arm up off the floor of East 84th Street kitchen.

Her right thumb dangling and nearly severed, she pointed at her spouse of 27 years. "He stabbed me in the heart," she murmured to cops. "My husband."

Two days before that she had called her mother to tell her that she had given him divorce papers and that he had gone nuts. "She said, 'He's going to kill me, Mom! He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me!' "

And he did. Yesterday a jury of twelve people (I hesitate to even describe them as people) set her killer, Benjamin Odierno, a multimillionaire real estate tycoon free. He did a jig outside the courthouse, grinning happily. Then he went off to celebrate with his family and friends at Lusardi's.

And he had plenty to grin about. He stabbed his wife twenty-four times, cut himself twice to claim she had attacked and hired a lawyer, Jack Litman, who put his murder victim on trial claiming that she was mentally unstable because she was thrifty with household goods and had loudly argued with him.

That's all it took. With a jury. Now why am I blogging about this on a political blog? Because this case is also the story of why Israel can't seem to get a fair break in the coverage, why American soldiers are turned into villains and terrorists are turned into heroes. Why much of the world and a lot of Americans will claim that it's America that is at fault before and after 9/11.

It's a world where evil emerges grinning, just like Benjamin Odierno, and doing a little jig, while its victims sit in the criminals dock, baffled as to why the world is so unfair, until some of them begin to really believe themselves the guilty ones.

Let's take an analytical look at what Benjamin Odierno did. He set out to prevent a divorce settlement in which his wife would have gotten half his property, by murdering her. It's not an original idea. Plenty of men have done it, but he clearly planned it out.

He didn't merely kill his wife, he created a story... a story in which he was the victim and she was the perpetrator. A story that made him sympathetic and his victim, a crazy unlikeable woman. If you look at the basic facts of the case, a claim of self-defense when stabbing a woman 24 times from head to toe, isn't something that should convince even the worst idiot.

But it convinced 12 jurors. Some of them well educated and successful. It convinced them not because they're mental idiots, but like much of the West these days, because they're 'moral idiots.' Moral idiots are often quite educated. They're not genuinely intelligent, but they have the college education and trappings of intelligence. But they're idiots when it comes to matters of right and wrong.

Like a lot of Westerners today, they were never properly taught right from wrong. Their parents were likely the same products of a culture that had lost all touch with right and wrong. Their professors and teachers certainly were. In college they were taught moral relativism, rather than morality. In popular culture, they were taught that nothing is really wrong, except possibly bigotry and polluting the environment. In this fertile soil of moral idiocy, evil sprouts like weeds, unchecked.

Let's swing back to the Middle-East now. Over centuries Muslim Arabs had conquered and subjugated the Middle East, reduced every other race and religion in the area, to second class citizens. Their response to the Jewish resettlement of Israel was homicidal rage. They set out to kill millions of Jews. Like Benjamin Odierno, they did this with the help of a story, a fictional story of Jews displacing them from their land.

As time went on, the story evolved. A separate Palestinian nationality was manufactured, after Egypt and Jordan lost control over the area to Israel. A people with a passionate desire for their country, even though no such country had ever existed. But the story was developed and told and retold, emphasizing Israeli war crimes. Never mind that these "crimes" would have been a picnic in any of the other Arab states. Never mind that each time the Arabs had begun wars, with the open aim of mass murder.

Like Benjamin Odierno, the Arabs, like all experienced murderers, understood that the truth wouldn't matter. The story mattered. While Israel and its defenders insisted on repeatedly reciting the reality, investigating complaints, trying to argue a middle ground; the Arab propagandists disdained such things. Like Scheherezade, they held their international audience spellbound with their own Arabian Nights, with magic housekeys, tales of oppression and children in staged shots throwing stones at tanks.

The Arab approach was simply to circulate as many stories as possible, certain that some would stick. It was to stay on message, with a simple message. "Israel Stole Our Land. Israel Is Oppressing Us." By doing so they quickly made Israel into the perpetual defendant. The more Israel defended itself, the more the charges gained ground, because the discussion had shifted into a debate over whether Israel was guilty or not.

In "The Manchurian Candidate", Angela Lansbury's character flagrantly had her husband ,the Senator, give out random numbers of Communists in the Defense Department. When he complains, she tells him that "They're not discussing whether there are Communists in the Defense Department. They're discussing how many Communists are there in the Defense Department."

A smart lawyer does not work so much to prove his client innocent, as to shift the blame, on the victim, on the police, on anybody convenient. In the O.J. Simpson case, it was the LAPD who was really at fault. In rape cases, it's the victim who was really responsible. Lines on defense like that were the reason rape shield laws were created. Once the point of contention shifts from "Did he or didn't he do it" to the victim's culpability, the case has mostly been won already.

While Israel's Hasbara focused on dealing with the reality of what was going on, the Arabs spun a legend. Like in Liberty Valance, the legend that was better than the truth, was the one that got printed. Israel's insistence on addressing the situation that was actually going on, rather than simply creating a completely false storyline and peddling it to the exclusion of everything else; doomed its case, just as surely as the prosecution doomed Christine Kramer to not just be a murder victim, but a reviled one.

Let's take a look at the jury again. At the mindless minds of men and women who set a murderer free. You'll find them not just in juries, but answering questions in telephone surveys and voicing their opinions on political issues. They are what happens when the human soul remains unformed and the human character devoid of passionate convictions of right and wrong.

“It was very difficult to side with the prosecution when the majority of the character witnesses called were there for the defense,” said one juror, Randy Levine, 29, associate media director at an advertising firm.

"He didn't mean for this to happen," said juror Mark Flowers of Harlem.

Miri Samuel, another juror, agreed and said it seemed that Mrs. Odierno could have been the instigator of the couple’s fights. “Christine Odierno looked like someone who could possibly start the whole thing, and there was nothing to contradict that,” said Ms. Samuel, a sales representative for Estée Lauder.

Meanwhile, they said, Mr. Odierno came off as kind and grandfatherly.

“He was a simple, decent man who tried to live a simple, happy life,” Ms. Samuel said.

Another juror, Joanne McGrath, assistant dean of admissions at New York University School of Medicine, said Mr. Odierno ultimately saved himself. “Putting him on the stand was a big, big, big factor,” she said, “because he turned out to be a likable guy.”

Note that last part in particular, Benjamin Odierno was a likable guy. Now if Joanne McGrath had any shame at least, she would have at least avoided admitting that she was influenced by how likable a murderer was. But moral shame is an inaccessible concept for moral idiots. If Joanne went out with her slip showing she would be ashamed, but she doesn't even understand that she should feel shame when she informs the New York Times that she freed a man who stabbed his wife 24 times, because she found him likable.

Despite, or maybe she is assistant dean of admissions at New York University School of Medicine, Joanne McGrath is a moral idiot.

Meanwhile Miri Samuel thought Benjamin Odierno reminded her of her grandfather. Hopefully grandpa never decides to stab grandma, because we know for sure who Miri Samuel would side with. And it wouldn't be the woman whose body is lying bloodied and hacked apart on the floor.

As it turns out a lot of reporters had the tendency to call Arafat, grandfatherly. One BBC reporter even wept on television when he was being transported for medical treatment. Despite being a mass murderer, a terrorist who had ordered crimes too horrific for words, Arafat smiled benevolently and asked them how they were doing and invited them for tea. The blood on his hands didn't matter, he was grandfatherly.

Moral idiots do not make decisions based on right and wrong. They have no grasp of right and wrong. They make decisions based on what they are told to believe and their emotional pull to someone. If one side has a better story, they believe that story, because most of them aren't capable of actually discarding lies from the truth and seeing the basic reality of what is going on.

They believe the more appealing side and the Arab side has trotted through bushels of smiling and bloodied kids, for the cameras. It doesn't matter that they murder children, the way some people staple files. It doesn't matter that they themselves murdered some of the children they showed off for the cameras, as happened in Lebanon and with the Mohammed Al-Dura case. This is a degree of complexity beyond the grasp of the modern moral idiot who instinctively grasps for the smiling face and the better story, the one with no grey areas, told with the utter conviction of the professional liar, who has no holes in his story, because the entire story is a lie. The entire story is the hole.

The justice system is an adversarial system, in which both the lawyers and prosecutors are the adversaries of justice. Sometimes justice triumphs over both sides. Rarely.

The international arena is also an adversarial system, glued together by agendas, lies, interests and prejudices. As in the justice system, murder is not murder if you tell a really good story.

Jimmy Carter, freelance moral ambassador to the world, vociferous critic of any free country trying to protect itself from the menace of terrorism, particularly the United States and Israel... is taking a little trip to Africa.

Of course Carter will be going to Sudan. No, not to stop the genocide of Christians, Animists and Africans, by the Islamic Arab Sudanese government. No Carter will be going to lecture on preventing guinea worm infections. Now, no doubt guinea worm infections are a serious problem, but so is the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, the rape, torture and enslavement of many times that number.

Instead Carter arrived in Khartoum on February 9th and praised the Sudanese Federal Ministry of Health for its work in preventing infectious diseases. Carter attended a conference presided over by the head of the mass murdering Sudanese state, President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir himself.

While Carter goes on a book tour calling Israel an Apartheid State, there is no such venom directed to the Sudanese regime, which has murdered hundreds of thousands of its citizens, based on their race and religion. Instead Carter makes nice. He shakes hands. He praises their medical achievements. If it was the Munich Olympics, he'd have been in the stands with Adolf, talking about fighting cholera in Dusseldorf.

But don't think that Jimmy has entirely forgotten about the ongoing genocide in Sudan. Because of course Jimmy Carter, moral voice of authority, peacemaker and freelance diplomat, made a statement. Oh yes he did.

The new U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, is pushing for the deployment of a few more thousand UN Peacekeepers to stop the killing by arab militias. Enter Jimmy Carter to condemn the move.

"You can't resolve a conflict in an area as wide as Darfur, even with 50,000 troops. Troops are not the way to do it," Carter said. "The government in Khartoum is not going to let them in. Even with five times as many troops they still couldn't do it," he told Reuters on the eve of a trip to Sudan, where he is expected to meet with Bashir.

Oh yes, you wouldn't want Peacekeepers on the ground to actually try and stop the killing. And in any case, why Carter's Arab buddies who are doing the killing, wouldn't let them in any way. And so Carter, the great booster of the UN, helpfully tells us even UN Peacekeepers are a bad idea.

"The United Nations, Europe and the United States needed to push for a negotiated settlement first. The U.N., the EU and the U.S. need to harness all their tremendous influence to force all of the conflicting parties to negotiate a peace agreement and accept it. We need to emphasize a negotiated settlement."

That's the answer then. Continue the "negotiations" while the Sudanese government continues the genocide. By no means send in UN Peacekeepers to protect the millions in refugee camps. Let them die. Let the women be raped and their children murdered.

There's no talk of Apartheid. No condemnation of a regime that has carried out genocide and displaced millions from their homes. There's no book tour. There's negotiations in which the killing goes on and the Peacekeepers stay home.

Why is there no moral outrage from the Great Peanut Farmer of Georgia who has lust in his heart to smear Jews and Americans, but forbears from saying a harsh word for the people who perpetrated atrocities like this... but instead meets with them to praise their progress in fighting guinea worms?

"One of the most savage atrocities yet recorded in Sudan was laid bare yesterday when it was reported that Janjaweed militia shackled villagers and burned them alive during a raid in the Darfur region."

Why not only does Jimmy Carter not call for action, but instead shills for the Sudanese government and resists sending in UN Peacekeepers to protect the people being murdered there?

Sudan's Islamic Arab government has close ties to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has quietly backed Sudan's genocide, as part of an overall global Islamic campaign. Carter backs the murderers in Khartoum, just as he backs those in Ramallah. The rhetoric changes, but the agenda remains the same.

Jimmy Carter has been and remains a shill for mass murderers. Particularly Marxist and Muslim governments and groups, to which he cultivates close ties. While Carter plays at being the conscience of the world, he's the spokesman for bloody killers and he has blood on his hands too.

The video above shows astronaut Buzz Aldrin punching out a lunar conspiracy theorist who had been stalking and harassing him. While this happened a few years ago, the recent attempted abduction of Elie Wiesel by a Holocaust denier, who styled himself Eric Hunt, and then bragging about it on Holocaust denial websites.

9/11 conspiracy theorists have been harassing people for years, not just their obscene clustering and chants at Ground Zero. They've been particularly targeting eyewitnesses to the attacks. Like Val McClatchey.

"Val McClatchey snapped the single picture with her new digital camera. The wife and mother had been sitting on the edge of her sofa, clutching her second cup of coffee and watching the smoking towers of the World Trade Center on TV, when she heard the sudden surge of a plane engine, followed by a violent, house-shaking boom. Mrs. McClatchey grabbed the camera and ran onto the front porch of her house along Indian Lake.

"I didn't even aim. I was just like, 'Oh, my God,' " she said. She dropped the camera, jolting the battery loose, then tried in vain to call her husband, son and daughter. She had no idea what she'd captured until the state police put a call out to people in the area, asking for photos, debris and other evidence. She took a printout of her photo to the police, she said, and, within an hour, FBI agents were at her house.

The real estate agent has recently become a target of bloggers calling themselves "9-11 researchers," who are seeking to prove that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers, pierced the Pentagon and crashed United Airlines Flight 93.

They have visited Mrs. McClatchey's office and called her at home, posting satellite maps of her property and accusing her of digitally altering her photo to insert a fake smoke plume. People have called her at home, accusing her of being anti-American and of "holding the photo hostage." On a simple Google search, Mrs. McClatchey's name now pops up in the same sentence as "total fraud."

Given the headaches of a lawsuit and the blunt personal criticism from the bloggers, Mrs. McClatchey wonders if her quick decision to grab her camera that morning nearly five years ago and capture the last puff smoke that was Flight 93 was the right one. But she is glad to be able to give something back to the families of the dead, and thinks her photo will stand the test of time and conspiracy theorists.

"The truth speaks for itself," she said."

And that is exactly the problem for the conspiracy theorists struggling to replace the truth with their lies. The eyewitnesses.

They can finesse the facts of what happened by stringing together a bunch of claims, conspiracy theories buttressed by finding or manufacturing some inconsistencies. Put together into a book or video presentation or website, it can have an impact on the gullible.

But the eyewitnesses remain. It's why deniers hold a special hatred and obsessively pursue them. After all they represent the truth, the truth that the Holocaust happened and that Arab terrorists murdered thousands of Americans and that the Flight 93 passengers, unarmed, fought to retake control of the plane, to save lives on the ground.

The modern Holocaust deniers were a direct outgrowth of pro-Nazi lies put out by Nazi sympathizers in America. The 9/11 conspiracists are direct outgrowths of the far right and the far left's hatred of America and sympathy for its enemies. In both cases they're domestic enemies obsessed with covering up an atrocity in order to continue their campaigns against America and the Jews. It's no surprise that there's a good deal of crossover between Holocaust deniers and 9/11 deniers.

Both have gotten quite far. Holocaust deniers have an international platform now, thanks to Iran and the rest of the Muslim world, which has never made any secret of their sympathies for Hitler and Nazi Germany. (Indeed the birth of modern Palestinian Arab terrorism can be traced to the Pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem.)

9/11 conspiracists, are getting positive coverage, particularly in Europe, where embracing anything Anti-american is considered its own justification.

In fighting their war against memory and truth, they need to persecute and assault those living who still remember. With the death of aging Holocaust survivors, Holocaust deniers know their job will become much easier, when they no longer have to confront people who were actually there and bear the marks of it on them. 9/11 Deniers have no such comfort. It will be nearly a century before they can be rid of every eyewitness to 9/11. But like the Holocaust deniers, like all deniers, they will only grow shriller in their volume as they try to shout down the truth, while they wait.

As is rather well known, Muslims have the funny habit of appropriating other people's holy sites or just property and announcing that they're now a Muslim holy site. This is particularly helped, when Mohammed FBUH (Fleas Be Upon Him) had visited there, or someone had claimed he visited there or someone could make up a wacky story about him being taken there by an angel on a flying horse. (Seriously, if you've got an angel already, why do you also need the flying horse? It seems redundant.)

In any case Muslims have now announced the 5 new holy sites they will be naming. As per usual these sites will now become off limits to non-Muslims and Muslims will be entitled to fight a Jihad to recover them back into Muslim hands.



The White House

Mohammed HTFBUH (High Tax Fees Be Upon Him) reportedly visited the White House as a guest of President Millard Fillmore, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom (which was then called, the 'Give Me A Bribe and You Can Spend the Night Bedroom) and tried to molest some of the President's carriage horses.

As such the highest authorities in Islam (three blind clerics who live in Cairo and still think it's 1922 and want an end to British colonial rule) have announced that the White House from now is to be off-limits to non-Muslims unless they're there to serve incoming President, Barack Hussein Obama.



Walt Disney World

Muslims devoutly believe that an angel took Mohammed on a midnight ride on a flying horse through time all the way to Walt Disney World where Mohammed PBUH (Peas Be Upon Him) rode Mr. Toad's wild ride, shrieked in horror at all the costumed characters and had too much pizza and threw up on the teacup ride. The Koran does not state why the angel did this, but it is believed that Mohammed had a good time.

As such the Ummah (acronym for Uncivilized Mass of Muslim Antisemitic Haters) now claim Walt Disney World as the sole property of the Muslim nation where it will be used to train Jihadi warriors for possible future battles against giant rodents, talking dogs and enemies who attack from space.

In other words, every day at Disney World, will now be gay day.



McDonalds

McDonalds, all McDonalds everywhere belong to Muslims, as Mohammed is now believed to have also set foot in a McDonalds, while he was visiting Walt Disney World. Mohammed mistakenly ordered a hamburger, ate it all, demanded another and menaced the cashier with his sword. He was escorted out by security still threatening to smite the red shirted infidels.

From now on all McDonalds outlets anywhere are now to be under Muslim management and will boast the new McSheep Burger and the Suicide Bombed Fries, especially prepared by the patented Muslim method of having the fry cook blow himself up admist the fries.



Your House

Mohammed is once believed to have visited your house. As such it is now a Muslim holy site. You are please asked to vacate your house immediately, unless you wish to convert to Islam, in which case you will be allowed to remain as a lowly servant. Please do not protest. The devout wishes of a billion Muslims and their sacred religious feelings on the subject clearly outweigh your deed to your property and any legal rights you may have. Should you refuse, you will be murdered. In your sleep.

From now on the devout followers of Mohammed LBUH (Lease Be Upon Him) will take it upon themselves to eat all your rosebushes and bathe in your toilet. They will also pray eleven times a day for heavenly (moonly) assistance in killing you and reclaiming what was once imaginarily theirs.



Hell

It has come to the attention of the followers of the prophet that Mohammed once visited Hell and remained to reside there permanently. As such Hell is now the holiest Muslim site there is. Shortly all the remaining Muslims will be making pilgrimages there to be with their prophet.

All non-Muslims are asked to stay away from Hell, as this is now exclusively Muslim property, reserved for Muslims only.

We hope they will be very happy there.

"Hamas and Fatah Come Together in Bathouse Romps for Peace"

Make your own caption:

"E T phone home" Maralyn ben Moshe

"Wait! Wait! I think I hear the ocean! No. Sorry. That was my head." Yobeeone

In Parshas Yitro, when Yitro arrives to meet Moshe he repeatedly exclaims in wonder over G-d's goodness in redeeming the Jews, but it is something else that causes him to state, that he now knows that G-d is greater than all deities. What is that thing? It is the Egyptians drowning as they had drowned the Jewish children.

What is the significance of that? Is Yitro a vengeful person? Does he believe in G-d because he sees Him as a vengeful force?

Let's explore what happens next in this Parsha. Yitro proposes a full blown justice system. It's clear that Yitro is a person interested in justice. What he recognizes about G-d's actions is that they involved not merely the outpouring of wrath, for wrath is only a function of force. Force is power, but it alone is not something for a truly intelligent and moral person to worship. He recognizes the redemption of the Jews, but that alone does not convince him either, for mercy too is a function of power. Those who have power can show mercy. But not all mercy is proper or correct and like wrath, must be used properly.

Yitro's recognition of G-d's greatness came from seeing that balance of mercy and power, it came from seeing that G-d punished the wicked according to their deeds. This is justice and it was justice that Yitro valued. When we first read about him, he is reproving his daughters for failing to invite in the man who rescued them. And while we do not know for certain exactly what caused this downfall in his status at home, it was likely a pursuit of justice.

Sandwiched between the attack of Amalek and the giving of the Torah at Har Sinai, Yitro's arrival seems off-topic, a bit of personal trivia thrust among great events. Even his advice to Moshe seems a minor matter, but it isn't at all.

When Amalek attacks, he attacks those who had fallen behind. In an equitable society, no one falls behind. The commandments that are given at Har Sinai, many of them are concerned with systems of justice enacted against murder, theft and enslavement... among others. For that society to exist, Yitro was needed to bring his concern for justice in the enactment of a system of justice.

While Moshe's ability to lead the Jewish people would always be superior because of his divine link, the Jewish people as a society would not always be able to count on prophets or count on those in power being divinely inspired. They would not a reliable system of justice transcending the tribal systems of leadership, one that rose above elders and aimed for a higher standard of fairness. Only then would they be prepared to receive commandments that required justice to punish the wicked and free the innocent.

Having been transformed by the revelation of G-d's justice at the sea, Yitro wanted to bring that same standard of justice to the Jewish people.

Let's consider this opening paragraph from the Associated Press describing today's incident at the Temple Mount.

"JERUSALEM - Israeli police stormed the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, firing stun grenades and tear gas to disperse thousands of Muslim worshippers who hurled stones, bottles and trash in an eruption of outrage over Israeli renovation nearby."

The story leads with Israel police storming an holy Islamic shrine. Only in the second half of the sentence do we hear anything at all about Muslim violence. More subtly the structure of the sentence treats the stone throwing as a response to Israeli police, never mentioning the fact that the police entered the grounds, in response to the stone throwing.

The distorted opening sentence makes it seem like the "worshippers" were defending themselves, when they were in fact the attackers.

"Riot police with their helmet visors pulled down scuffled with worshippers, some of them middle-aged or elderly. Medics tended several injured people lying on the stone pavement. Jewish worshippers were evacuated from the Western Wall plaza at the foot of the compound."

Only in the final sentence is there any reference to the fact that Muslim stone throwing from that height poses a severe risk to the people below. Of course the article does not actually mention this, it mentions the evacuation but in a paragraph about the actions of the Israeli police, thus making it seem the evacuation was caused by the actions of the police, rather than the stone throwers.

"About 200 police streamed on to the hilltop compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, to try to quell Muslims rioting over the repair work on a centuries-old ramp, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said."

The piece mentions the Muslim name for it first and the Jewish name second. While the article emphasizes that it is Islam's third holiest site, it does not mention that it is the holiest site for Jews.

The complex, home to the golden-capped Dome of the Rock shrine and Al Aqsa mosque, is sacred for Muslims, who believe that it is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The compound is venerated by Jews as the site of their biblical temples.

Can you see the difference in the two sentences? The Muslim section describing their attachment to the area is given three times the space for the Jewish section. The Muslim section gives details and descriptions intended to project a glorious vision. The Jewish section is curt and dismissive and treats it as a matter of history.

The language also sets them apart. It's described as "sacred for Muslims" but "venerated by Jews." Venerating something is not anywhere as emotionally powerful as holding it sacred. Where the Muslim attachment is treated as explicitly religious, the Jewish one appears to be purely historical.

The article has two quotes from the Jewish side, the tangled quote by the police spokesman which is not placed into quotation marks and appears to be mixed with the reporter's own commentary and two word excerpts from the Foreign Minister's statement. None of them have entire sentences quoted.

The article however quotes four Arab Muslim figures, three of them in quotation marks and gives their exact words extensive space. Two of them repeat the same thing. The content of their quotes have less to do with the mosque and more with threatening Israel.

The reporter who the article, Dalia Nammari, is of course an Arab

Before we begin, let's meet David Bascombe.

David lives in Cleveland in a brownstone walk up. He has a dog, a terrier, and likes to play tennis on the weekends. During the week he works as a financial analyst at a small firm. Every Friday he goes to Red Lobster dressed in a worn navy blue jacket that went out of style a decade ago. Every morning he reads the paper back to front, beginning with the sports section. Each time he finishes he sighs, scratches the scar on his chin that he got when he fell off the roof as a boy, finishes his cereal with bits of banana crumbled inside and drives to work in his red Honda Civic. Though he would never admit it to anyone, he enjoys the life he lives.

David is a potential person. That is he may or may not exist.

Why would he not exist? For starters, because you want to kill him.

It's not because you hate him, David is a fairly mild sort of person it would take a lot of effort and energy to hate. You aren't out to kill him out of vengeance or any kind of bloodthirsty feelings. He's simply inconvenient. David is in the way.

Perhaps he's taking up the apartment you desperately want to expand into. Or he's right above you at the office and without him, that promotion and the life you want, would be yours. There are a thousand possible reasons, but what it comes down to is your life would be much better, if he was gone. If he had never existed.

But you're not a violent person. You certainly could never see yourself actually killing someone. Spilling their blood on your shoes. You want David gone. Out of this world. But you certainly don't want to be a murderer, not just because of the law, but because it would weigh on your conscience. Still there has to be a way and there is.

After gathering some crucial information, you step into a time machine (this is the future after all) and travel back in time to the night David was conceived. Before David's father can step inside, you corner him and give him some very bad news. You tell him his wife has been cheating him. With the aid of a little futuristic technology you even provide him with proof.

The fight David's parents have that night will very likely lead to their divorce, at the very least it will insure that David is not conceived that night. As you step back into your time machine which whisks you over to your present time, you know you are returning to a world in which David does not exist.

There may be an adult male living in the world that is named Bascombe, even David, and may have the genetic similarity to David, of one brother to another, but David himself is gone. There is no one driving that red Honda Civic to work every morning or wearing that out of style jacket or reading the paper while scratching his chin. You got rid of that person. You committed the perfect crime.

After all there's no body anywhere. No murder weapon. No blood. As far as the world is concerned, you haven't done anything at all. As far as your conscience is concerned, you certainly struck no fatal blow, you didn't watch the light in David's eyes go out as he died. You just neatly and cleanly insured that he would never be born.

Are you a murderer?

Someone who knew and cared about David might feel that you are. Even random people reading this might agree. After all here was a man who lived his life and even in some small subtle ways, loved, who has been snuffed out. Surely there should be some accountability for that crime.

And yet you can easily answer that, 'where's the crime?' Habeus Corpus, present the body. David never existed, so how could he have been murdered? The very act that annihilated him insured that his murdered could never be held accountable for it. For how can you kill someone who never existed? How can you kill a potential person?

For anyone's who made it this far and is wondering what the point of this little scenario is, it's this. We are all potential people. A particular series of events insured that we were born, grew up, formed a personality and identity and now sit reading these lines of text and the 'Us' that reads them thinks about them through the refraction of that personality.

Like us David was a potential person. Unlike us David no longer exists. His potential has been removed. His potential was, you might say, aborted.

Was killing David murder? Some people might feel that way because we got to know David. Because he had a personality and identity and a life. Or the potential for one. So do most babies who are aborted.

There are no time machines but there are abortion clinics. The process is messier than how David was removed from existence, but the end result is the same. A person who would have existed, no longer does. The odds for a fetus in America coming to term and developing into a full grown human being, are all told pretty good. When the process is interrupted, another David Bascombe dies. Unknown and unmourned, because no one ever knew him or got the chance to know him.

Is it murder? Is killing someone who never had a chance to be born murder? Does it change if you call him a baby instead of a fetus, does it change if he has a name? Does it change if you can see him eating cereal by the window thinking of the weekend.

Murder comes in many forms. Recently there was a case of a dying man flying for a desperately needed liver transplant with time running out. He was bloated with water retention from his liver problems and a United Airlines ticket agent told him he would have to pay for a second ticket if he wanted to fly. He didn't have the money.

Had someone not paid his second fare, he might well have died. He would have died out of sight of the ticket agent. She didn't need to lift a hand or take a single action to kill him. All she had to do was deny him access to the plane. She didn't need to want to kill him either. But he would have been dead anyway, more than arguably murdered.

He goes on living today but many aren't so lucky.

The debates over abortion often get stuck in the same timeworn murky territory, rape, incest, risk to the life of the mother, when does life begin, which trimester. There are no easy answers to these questions. But most abortions aren't done because of rape, incest or risk to the life of the mother. They occur because the pregnancy is inconvenient. Because it will dramatically disrupt life, sometimes wreck it and maybe disastrously so.

The practical arguments over the morality all too often fall into extremes with no shades of grey in between. But the shades are many. Depersonalizing the baby by calling it a fetus or personalizing it by calling it a baby, is one tactic, two viewpoints. Does a developing life have rights? Does a person who is yet to be, have a right to live?

We all became who we are because no one stepped in at a crucial moment and prevented us from coming to be. We are all potential people. We exist because no one stopped us from existing. Looked at from a purely 'Here and Now' standpoint a fetus is nothing more than a collection of cells. Abortion is a rejection of the future, a rejection of the person who will come to be.

A person's journey through life can be expressed as a three dimensional path. The continuity of that journey is the totality of that life. The path extends behind us and ahead of us. There are no easy answers, only the choices we make and there are times in our life when we hold another person's life in our hands.

(Due to an unscheduled absence Sultan Knish will not be able to post today. Instead we present this guest editorial from Thuggee High Priest Mola Ram)

Thuggee: Religion of Peace

by Mola Ram

We live in a diverse society composed of many different ethnic backgrounds and religions, yet we continue to be plagued by ignorant stereotyping from those who see us as different.

The Thuggee faith has been particularly hard hit by such cruel stereotyping. The derogatory word 'Thug' stems from the name of our worshipers. Thuggees are widely stereotyped as being murderous robbers who will strangle you with a handkerchief and rifle your purse at a moment's notice. Even our deity Kali is portrayed as some sort of Goddess of Murder. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Thuggee is a Religion of Peace. As worshipers of Kali we kneel before her and gain inner peace by submitting our earthly desires to her. As Thuggees we practice charity and kindness. We visit the sick and distribute our earnings to the poor. We accompany travelers on poorly lit roads and help them find their way. Sometimes they ask us to hold things for them and we do. For as long as it takes. Sometimes they need to borrow a scarf and then they need help adjusting that scarf around their neck. And we do. Till it's just right.

Thuggees have led the way in including women in our religion. Thuggees will practice our rites on men and women equally. For that matter Thuggees are not known to discriminate by race. Black, white, asian, homosexual. It makes no difference to us. All we care about is making sure your scarf fits.

As Thuggees we contribute to whatever society we happen to live in and contrary to the stereotypes of Thuggees as robbers, there is not a single Thuggee serving time for a white collar crime anywhere. Not one. Instead Thuggees have prospered in the IRS, Wall Street and many of us are excellent surgeons specializing in heart transplants.

Finally Thuggees do not exclude any religion. Many of our members have been Hindus and many Muslims as well. In fact Muslims have been some of our best recruits. And now that you've learned a lot more about the Thuggee faith, perhaps your stereotypes have been dispelled and you can realize that we are merely another part of the great mosaic of your nation.

Say you seem cold. Winter is coming and perhaps you could use a scarf. Just a little one. Oh go ahead, just try it on. I promise to make it fit snugly. There just around the neck and flip it over and... MOLA RAM SUDA RAM MOLA RAM SUDA RAM... YOU CANNOT RESIST...MOLA RAM SUDA RAM...I WILL DEVOUR YOUR HEART...MOLA RAM SUDA RAM...MOLA RAM SUDA RAM...MOLA RAM SUDA RAM


(Mola Ram is the President of the Mola Ram Thugee Studies Center at Harvard University)

Even as the Palestinian Authority's two ruling parties are busy killing each other in the streets, Secretary of State Rice continues to talk about peace and a Palestinian state.

It's 2007. Nearly 15 years ago Israel made major concessions to the PLO, giving up territory to it, arming it, supplying it and conducting extensive negotiations with it. Today territories held by it are enemy soil from which rockets fall on Israeli towns and where terrorists arm, train and set out from to murder Israeli soldiers and civilians.

After a decade and a half the Palestinian Authority has not set up anything remotely resembling a state, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have poured in every year from around the world. While those in power in Fatah have profited handsomely from that aid, beginning with Arafat, the area under their control is a disaster area.

America pushed for democractic elections and for Israeli withdrawals. Both of those happened and ended with Hamas in power. Now the US is backing and arming Fatah in the power struggle, despite the fact that Fatah remains a terrorist group, that money given to Fatah routinely disappears into the coffers of top officials and that rather than pursuing peace, Fatah has done nothing but pursue war.

All this seems like madness until we realize one simple thing. When Condoleeza Rice, political pundits, diplomats and the media discuss Peace, this is an ideal that has nothing to do with an actual state of peace on the ground. When you hear a news anchor talking about the importance of peace and you wonder why he can't see how insane this is while the gunfire continues, it's because he isn't talking about a condition of peace in which the fighting and terrorism ends. He's talking about Peace (capital P), as an ideal.

Liberals fanatically advocate absolute ideals as a shield for their policies and utterly ignoring the context and reality of their implementation on the ground, while treating anyone who opposes them as enemies of that ideal. Thus pointing out that the peace process is a failure and a sham makes you an enemy of Peace (again capital P), while advocating Peace is never wrong even if the only thing it produces on the ground is more war.

It's the same reason Democratic Senators can call for negotiations with Iran, even when it's clear to anyone that the Iranian government is run by fanatics who are determined to have nuclear weapons no matter what. But Peace is an absolute good, and Peace is achieved by Diplomacy (another capital letter), it doesn't matter that in this case all Diplomacy will achieve is the death of millions. The very same people who insisted on diplomacy to Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia will pursue the same course with Iran even as they smugly congratulate themselves on their moral enlightenment and ethical superiority to the warmongers.

When ideals are divorced from reality and policies from context, the results are horrific. While advocates of Peace are quick to follow the script and call their opponents fanatics, they're the fanatics because they utterly refuse to modify their worldview or the policies they advocate when they go wrong. George W. Bush has done so twice in his administration already. By contrast the average leftist is saying exactly what he was saying before 9/11, after 9/11 and probably dating back to the Vietnam War.

When Carter goes on his book tour calling Israel as an Apartheid state and the reason why there's still no peace, he's following that same fanatical playbook, which ultimately leads where all fanaticism leads, to genocide.

While Nazi warplanes were pounding London and American troops joining the war were on their way to England, left wing groups protested that the real reason the troops were coming was to suppress the Labor movement. As demented as this seems to any sane person, it's just as reasonable as advocating negotiations with genocidal regimes like North Korea and Iran and shouting vociferously that the whole thing is a plot by the Bush Administration to benefit Haliburton. These same lunatics were screaming No Blood for Oil when we invaded Afghanistan, though it wasn't clear what oil was to be found there. They got lucky the second time around when we invaded a country that was an actual oil producer.

Like those Labor Unionists in WW2, they have a vision of what is really going on, guided by the ramblings of Noam Chomsky and a hundred other conspiracy theorists. The real villains in this vision are America and Israel. The terrorists are only the dupes of the evil machinations of Christian and Jewish religious fanatics they shout, even as they stand shoulder to shoulder with members of Muslim organizations advocating the imposition of Muslim religious law.

But absolutes ignore reality and the fanatical pursuit of ideals lead inexorably to madness. While Hamas and Fatah go on killing each other and rockets rain down on Israeli towns, Secretary of State Rice talks of a Palestinian state.

Immigration of British Jews to Israel has doubled in the last year alone. Attacks on Britain’s Jews have risen to the highest level since records began.

"A study published today shows the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents has almost tripled in 10 years, with more than half the attacks last year taking place in London.

The findings prompted the report’s authors to warn of a “wave of hatred” against Jews. The number of incidents increased to 594 last year, up by 31 per cent on the previous year.

Violent assaults soared to 112, up by more than a third on 2005."

Britain expelled its Jews twice. Are we seeing the beginning of a third expulsion now? Or an exodus?

The Second Holocaust Is Looming by Benny Morris

"The second Holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or ten years' time, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will covoke in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Ahmedinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go ahead. The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases. Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads. Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries and Home Guard units.

With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 8,000 square miles), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel. A million or more Israelis, in the greater Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem areas, will die immediately. Millions will be seriously irradiated. Israel has about seven million inhabitants. No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli. It will be quite impersonal.

Or he may well take into account a counter-strike and simply, irrationally (to our way of thinking), be willing to pay the price. As his mentor, Khomeini, put it in a speech in Qom in 1980: 'We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. I say, let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant.' For these worshipers at the cult of death, even the sacrifice of the homeland is acceptable if the outcome is the demise of Israel.

As with the first, the second Holocaust will have been preceded by decades of preparation of hearts and minds, by Iranian and Arab leaders, Western intellectuals and media outlets. Different messages have gone out to different audiences -- but all have (objectively) served the same goal, the demonization of Israel. Muslims the world over have been taught: 'The Zionists\the Jews are the embodiment of evil' and 'Israel must be destroyed.' And Westerners, more subtly, were instructed: 'Israel is a racist oppressor state' and 'Israel, in this age of multi-culturalism, is an anachronism and superfluous'. Generations of Muslims and at least a generation of Westerners have been brought up on these catechisms.

The build-up to the second Holocaust (which, incidentally, in the end, will probably claim roughly the same number of lives as did the first) has seen an international community fragmented and driven by separate, selfish appetites - Russia and China obsessed with Muslim markets; France, with Arab oil - and the United States driven by the debacle in Iraq into a deep isolationism. Iran has been left free to pursue its nuclear destiny and Israel and Iran, to face off alone.

But an ultimately isolated Israel will prove unequal to the task, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. Last summer, led by a party hack of a prime minister and a small-time trade unionist as defense minister, and deploying an army trained for quelling incompetent and poorly-armed Palestinians gangs in the occupied territories and overly concerned about both sustaining and inflicting casualties, Israel failed in a 34-day mini-war against a small Iran-backed guerrilla army of Lebanese fundamentalists (albeit highly motivated, well-trained and well-armed). That mini-war thoroughly demoralized the Israeli political and military leaderships.

Since then, the ministers and generals, like their counterparts in the West, have looked on glumly as Hizbullah's patrons have been arming with doomsday weapons. Perversely, the Israeli leaders may even have been happy with Western pressures urging restraint. Most likely they deeply wished to believe Western assurances that somebody, somehow - the UN, G-7 - would pull the radioactive chestnuts out of the fire. There are even those who fell for the outlandish idea that a regime-change in Teheran, driven by a reputedly secular middle class, would ultimately stymie the mad mullahs.

But even more to the point, the Iranian program presented an infinitely complex challenge for a country with Israel's limited conventional military resources. Taking their cue from the successful Israel Air Force's destruction in 1981 of Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor, the Iranians duplicated and dispersed their facilities and buried them deep underground (and the Iranian targets are about twice as far from Israel as was Baghdad). Taking out with conventional weapons the known Iranian facilities would take an American-size air force working round-the-clock for more than a month. At best, Israel's air force, commandos and navy could hope to hit only some of the components of the Iranian project. But, in the end, it would remain substantially intact -- and the Iranians even more determined (if that were possible) to reach the Bomb as soon as possible. (It would also, without doubt, immediately result in a world-embracing Islamist terrorist campaign against Israel (and possibly its Western allies) and, of course, near-universal vilification. Orchestrated by Ahmedinejad, all would clamor that the Iranian program had been geared to peaceful purposes.). At best, an Israeli conventional strike could delay the Iranians by a year or two.

In short order, therefore, the incompetent leadership in Jerusalem would soon confront a doomsday scenario, either after launching their marginally effective conventional offensive or in its stead, of launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Iranian nuclear program, some of whose components were in or near major cities. Would they have the stomach for this? Would their determination to save Israel extend to pre-emptively killing millions of Iranians and, in effect, destroying Iran?

This dilemma had long ago been accurately defined by a wise general: Israel's nuclear armory was unusable. It could only be used 'too early or 'too late.' There would never be a "right" time. Use it 'too early,' meaning before Iran acquired similar weapons, and Israel would be cast in the role of international pariah, a target of universal Muslim assault, without a friend in the world; 'too late' would mean using its nuclear weapons after the Iranians had struck. What purpose would that serve?

So Israel's leaders will grit their teeth and hope that somehow things will turn out for the best. Perhaps, after acquiring the Bomb, the Iranians will behave 'rationally'? But the Iranians are driven by a higher logic. And they will launch their rockets. And, as with the first Holocaust, the international community will do nothing. It will all be over, for Israel, in a few minutes - not like in the 1940s, when the world had five long years in which to wring its hands and do nothing. After the Shihabs fall, the world will send rescue ships and medical aid for the lightly charred. It will not nuke Iran. For what purpose and at what cost? An American nuclear response would lastingly alienate the whole of the Muslim world, deepening and universalizing the ongoing clash of civilizations. And, of course, it would not bring Israel back. (Would hanging a serial murderer bring back his victims?) So what would be the point?

Still, the second Holocaust will be different in the sense that Ahmedinejad will not actually see and touch those he so wishes dead (and, one may speculate, this might cause him disappointment as, in his years of service in Iranian death squads in Europe, he may have acquired a taste for actual blood). In the next Holocaust there will be no such heart-rending scenes, of perpetrators and victims mired in blood. But it will be a Holocaust nonetheless."