Watching "Nightline"

I seldom do, but noted, from Instapundit, that it's about anti-semitism. I find the way the issue is presented ("Can one criticize Jews without being anti-semitic?) kind of suggestive. Obviously, we're supposed to say yes. But I don't think most people support Israel's moves against terrorism because of racial prejudice. This program suggests that there's a huge swell of negative feeling toward Israel which isn't being expressed because we don't want to be called anti-semitic.

ABC is really bothered about being called anti-semitic. That's their problem. They seem to think the crucial thing is comparing one side or the other to Hitler or the Nazis. I wonder why this is worse than calling people the Taliban, as has been going on a lot in American politics lately.

Of course, Nazism was crime on a larger scale than the Taliban, but it was not qualitatively different. Stalin and Mao killed more of their own people than Hitler killed Jews. But calling someone a Nazi seems to have a special cachet.

I've always thought of "Nazi" as another word for fascist. And I don't think of Sharon or the Israeli people (who are not all Jews) as fascists. Sharon was elected freely, and his job is on the bubble. He can be thrown out whenever he loses popular support. Arafat, and his benefactors in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Arabia have more in common with fascism than with liberal democracy, even the French version. The fact that the Palestinians justify atrocities like teenage human bombs as a fight for freedom doesn't make them equivalent to the Founding Fathers.

The fact that European intellectuals can't see that shows how low their intellect has slipped.
Blaming Israel for the suffering of the Palestinian common man is the same argument as blaming the U. S. for the suffering of the Iraqis, and it's patently stupid. Nobody can help people who are saddled with dictators like Saddam and Yassir, except by deposing them and making sure they don't come back. This is what we're doing in Afghanistan, and what Israel is doing in the West Bank, if we would quit interfering. The Palestinian people are suffering needlessly. But it isn't Ariel Sharon who caused it.