InstaPundit.Com quotes Jerry Pournelle:

Imagine that Israel draws a boundary, and expels all the Palestinians from within it; we hope with compensation. What's outside is now Palestine.

The world gives Palestine a present: the Brits get to run it, rule of law, police, courts, exactly as they ran Hong Kong. This will go for 25 years after which there will be an election.

No taxes: the government is paid for by the international community. There can be some money for infrastructure but again the Brits administer all this.

Think of Hong Kong 1950 and again in 1975. Palestine would be richer than socialist high tax Israel.

But let's remember that Greater Palestine used to be a British protectorate. It was a pain in the butt, and they couldn't get rid of it fast enough. No Islamic state will ever function like Hong Kong. Individual initiative and competition in anything except warfare and idiot martyrdom would be suppressed as anti-Islam.
Islam is about a millenium behind the times, and it has no mechanism for modernizing, except for weaponry needed to conquer the Infidel. It can't change its scriptures, and it has no central authority to reinterpret them. Neither do the Jews, but they long ago decided that education and freedom were good ideas. Their country is composed of too many nationalities and secular groups to allow a strictly religious state. But for Islam religion IS the state and its mandate is to rule the world, not to peacefully coexist.

In Rubble of a Refugee Camp, Bitter Lessons for 2 Enemies William Burns says, "It's obvious that what happened in Jenin camp has caused enormous suffering for thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians."

From what I've seen on the news, this "enormous suffering" is the loss of power and water and some homelessness. Not quite like being killed by pipe bombs. Once again, the suffering is due to the pig-headed insistence of the Palestinian Authority to conduct war by terrorism against the Israelis. The Palestinian people could make great progress by lynching Arafat and his cronies, and letting the infiltrators from Iraq, Syria, Iran and Lebanon know that they'll hang with him if they stick around. It seems pretty obvious that a god who tells you to offer your children up as sacrifices to hatred and totalitarianism is not a god we should trust. The real God, I am confident, will not be endorsing this version of Islam.

The Salt Lake Tribune -- Stay the Course Despite "Sharon's devastating invasion of Palestinian cities in the West Bank," the Tribune says we have to keep trying.

First of all, why is nobody pointing out the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority in this whole thing? They parcel out the money and explosives to terrorists who strap them onto young people and send them off like torpedoes. What do we expect the Israelis to do in response?

Oh, yes. They're supposed to do what the U.S. didn't do when it was attacked for the fourth or fifth time by murder-bombers. We went after the people who were behind them, but Israel has to just grin and bear it.

I think that there is some reflex among leftists to always side with the weak, no matter how depraved and nasty they are. If they do something atrocious, it's excused because of their despair and hopelessness. If they get lambasted like they deserve, the powerful side is roundly condemned for the sin of being well-armed and able to defend itself.

Israel's big sin is being educated, modern, technological and tough as nails. But the criminal minds who launch these young martyr wannabes should have thought of that before they decided to kill their parents, wives and children with shrapnel. If the Palestinians can't figure out this basic truth of survival, they deserve what they get. As far as I can see, the Israelis did not target the innocent in their incursions. The fact that the terrorists holed up in refugee camps. offices and churches made those places targets, and the ones to blame are the terrorists, not the Israelis.

As far as Europe is concerned, if you treat people like they treated Jews for the past 2000 years, and sooner or later they will decide, "Never again!" and get tough. When did England, France, the Netherlands and the rest get so concerned about the poor Arabs? It must have been after they had colonized these areas and destroyed the Ottoman Empire. Now that they are no more superpowers, they are full of solicitude and pious advice for the only really tough powers left, Israel and the U.S.

If they want to protect the Palestinians, they should intervene, guarantee Israel that the terrorism will stop and then make it happen. Then there will be peace, and not until then. We over here have had our own experience with peacekeeping, and we know that sending a bunch of soldiers armed with olive branches doesn't stop terrorists and butchers. If we send troops over there, they should do the same thing the Israelis did, which is coincidentally the same thing we're doing in Afghanistan.

"U.S. Envoy Calls Jenin Camp a 'Terrible Tragedy' `I just think what we are seeing here is a terrible human tragedy,'' William Burns, assistant secretary of state for the Near East, told Reuters in the camp's flattened center."

Yes, it's always a tragedy when any group of people throws its life and future away for an apostate and nihilistic religious vision.
This incursion was not a massacre. It was a police action, forced by the determination of a minority of Palestinians to throw themselves off a cliff to spite and kill Jews. The best thing anybody could do there is depose Arafat and his thugs, make it a crime to aid and abet Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., and enforce it strictly so that they can get back to the process of building a country.

FrontPage Magazine | Jamie Glazov -- Suicide For Allah

Asks some pertinent questions about Islam and the practice of young women becoming suicide bombers.

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.

Eric Olsen at Tres Producers writes that he felt sympathy for the Palestinians until reading about their enormous self-pity.

I wrote:

What would have been better is if they had had a popular uprising and killed Arafat and his thugs when they first entered the West Bank. Or held their own elections and found leaders who would promote education and industry in their territories. Or driven out all terrorists and told Iraq, Syria and Iran what they could do with their munitions.

Come to think of it, it would have been better if they'd been born Jews or Christians or any other religion than Islam.

Homicide or Suicide

Today's Best of the Web has this:

The Los Angeles Times surveys opinions of the term homicide bombers, which the White House, Fox News Channel and others have adopted to replace suicide bombers. We're with Christoper Hitchens, who tells the Times: " 'Homicide bomber' weakens it if anything. Bombing itself is a neutral act nowadays--we bombed Afghanistan, after all. The term should be 'suicide murderers.' Suicide detonations in public spaces are murders and should be called that."

Meanwhile, an anti-Israel piece by Salon's Eric Boehlert (requires subscription) includes the following astonishing aside: "Fox News . . . adopted Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer's suggestion that suicide bombers be called 'homicide bombers,' to make clear that they're killing others, not just themselves--a case of pandering to the pro-Israel side." Is it really Boehlert's view that acknowledging the slaughter of Jewish civilians constitutes "pandering"?

How about "omnicide bombers?" They are killing themselves, Israelis, the future and peace.

The Sun Newspaper - The Jewish faith is not an evil religion

Well, Duh! But one has to wonder about a religion that allows its young to believe that they can get a fast track to heaven by blowing themselves to pieces to kill any other of God's children. Al Aqsa Brigade, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad--they all claim to be doing God's work by killing Jews. Al Qaeda, as well.

If Islam is not an evil religion, it's faithful must rise up against this abominable practice and cleanse their own house. Until then, I'll have trouble believing their protestations of being a religion of peace.

An excellent commentary from Pete DuPont on the failures of environmentalists' forecasts of gloom and doom.

Ehrlich and his fans are perfect examples of the Technocratic stasists discussed in Virginia Postrel's book The Future and Its Enemies.

Check out this new group, Common Good. In an era where the trial lawyers have nearly bought the entire Democrat Party, our legal system is in big trouble. I hope these people can make a difference, but I'm not sanguine.

InstaPundit.Com posted the link to the CAIR site at 10:48 p.m. In less than half an hour the votes went from 94% for trying Sharon as a war criminal to 87% against and from 500+ to 4200+ votes cast.

Maybe Muslims aren't supposed to use the internet.

Yahoo! News - Powell Mulls Summit Without Arafat

It's about time!