Terror Under Hamas Vs. Under Abbas

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism

The cameras don’t often linger at the site of a suicide bombing in Israel. Most reporters prefer the “territories,” where they can set up shop and await a staged stone-throwing. The Palestinian Authority is the journalist’s one-stop shop for all the fake David vs. Goliath images his heart desires. Simple metaphors for simple, bigoted minds, which is the stuff he traffics in. The Associated Press, ABC, or the Canadian CBC prefer to peddle this phony illusion.

CNN is careful to count the terrorist among the dead. If you tune into that network, take care to subtract one or two (depending on the trash implicated) to arrive at the number of human beings who died.

The latest scene of carnage was “a falafel restaurant in a gritty, working-class section of Tel Aviv,” as The New York Times reported. It was carried out by Islamic Jihad, which hasn’t yet been invited to join the Palestinian government, but enjoys Hamas’ firm support.

The blast killed nine people and wounded 60. There’s something else the networks rarely mention: the injuries caused by these demonic devices. As I have written:

the task facing Israeli medics has become a routine. Surgeons must slice open the victims of these fiendish devices, picking from the flesh and burrowing in the bone for embedded shards of shrapnel, ball bearings and nails. The rat poison is a diabolic touch, intended to intensify internal bleeding. If they survive, victims are left maimed and wracked by life-long disfigurement and pain.

Another little-mentioned fact has to do with the Israeli barrier; it is the reason there haven’t been attacks for so long. The wall that makes liberals, libertarians, and plain old bigots like Bob Novak shriek like stuck pigs has cut by 80 percent the deaths by suicide bombers in Israel proper.

What has changed since the Hamas hit men usurped Mahmoud Abbas’ al Aqsa Brigades in the gangland that is the Palestinian Authority? Not much:

Hamas applauded the attack, calling the April 17 bombing “a legitimate response to Israeli ‘aggression'”; Abbas applauded the attack, stating that “these kinds of attacks harm the Palestinian interest, and we as an authority and government must move to stop it.”

Contrary to MSM prattle, the blast has not exposed a rift among Palestinian leaders; it has exposed a difference in style. Abbas and his goons are of the Arafat school of Taqiyya: they lie in order to make The Community and the Quran look good. Hamasniks don’t beat around the bush. They expect to be loved just the way they are.

Moussaoui Not Mad, Just Bad (And Honest About It)

Crime, Iraq, Islam, Terrorism

According to the Associated Press, Moussaoui said that “it made his day to hear accounts of Americans suffering from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and he would like to see similar attacks—every day.”

Family members of Sept. 11 victims exited the courtroom adamant Moussaoui should die, his callousness and cruelty having sealed his fate. Had he sniveled, sworn he had experienced an epiphany, or accepted the diagnosis of schizophrenia he was generously offered, victims may have looked upon him more favorably—as a victim too, perhaps (I can just hear the cliché, “We are all victims of this Islamic deadly ideology.”)

But Moussaoui stuck to his guns. Indeed, the Islamic terrorist is perfectly candid about why he kills, or schemes on killing. He doesn’t resort to the-camel-ate-my homework excuses, but tells it like he sees it. He kills us because he hates us.

The common criminals inhabiting Western jails, however, have made an art of using the therapeutic idiom, which they imbibe from their psychotherapist tutors, to work backwards and discover the exculpating “roots” of their behavior. Islamic criminals are different. They haven’t yet learned that “Daddy doesn’t love me” is a sufficient excuse for any crime committed in the West. They don’t need excuses—they are proud of their faith and the ghastly deeds they say it commands. These brutes exhibit not the slightest need to give their barbarism a palatable pedigree. It is Western intellectuals and pundits, not Arabs and Muslims, who developed the root-causes theories of terrorism. This is why Islamic criminals are so much more believable. When they tell us why they kill, we can take them at their word.

The evil Moussaoui also mocked Navy Lt. Nancy McKeown, who wept on the stand as she described the death of two of her subordinates. “I think it was disgusting for a military person to cry,” he snarled. “She is military; she should expect people at war with her to want to kill her.” The sounds of her sniffing meekly in front of him, he said, had made his day.

Here I have to agree with him. A representative of the military crying in front of her assailant exudes mush, not mettle. As I pointed out in “Osama’s Snickering at our Military,” OBL and his ascetic Islamists know full well that “the mentality that pervades the military, including the top brass,” is the “let-it-all-hang-out credo,” and that one is encouraged to parade emotions like one would a Purple Heart. Islamists despise us for it. More importantly, they don’t fear us because of it.

Frankly, I think that in front of the enemy, the military should suck it up.

The Rummy Red Herring

Iraq, Politics, Republicans, The Military, War

On the six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals calling for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: other than that they are going by the book so as to get a book deal, this amounts to meaningless musical chairs. It suggests that if one could locate the source of dysfunction in this administration, things would be on the mend. That’s an error. The perennial calls for resignations or for a reshuffling serve to obscure profound matters of policy and principle, matters the government and most pointy heads can’t and won’t grapple with due to moral and intellectual deficits.

Morality Play Featuring Mohammed

Islam, Media, The Zeitgeist

There is no mystery as to why Comedy Central blackened out the image of Mohammed in a recent episode of South Park; the network openly confessed to mortally fearing Muslim reaction. But why was it almost compelled simultaneously to depict Jesus in such a demeaning position?
I think that, in stream-of-consciousness mode, the episode got out of hand, gathering its own momentum and becoming the stage for a little morality play. On display was the dynamic interaction between the bully barbarians and the civil and servile West, with the writers assuming the atavistic, base persona of the aggressors.
Thus, once the victim (the West) was deemed metaphorically supine and the aggressor had smelt his blood—and fear—he, Ã la the Muslim Ummah, moved in for the kill, compelling the dhimmi to squat and perform degrading acts. (I can almost hear cries of, “Dance, Jew, dance.”)