Shelby Steele in the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 28, in an article entitled, “Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism”:

“The simple back-and-forth of war can create the illusion that both sides have a legitimate point to make even when this is not so, and it is clear that Hezbollah’s cause has greatly benefited from war’s ëequalizing’ effect. This Shiite militia seems to have known that merely fighting Israel would gain legitimacy for its cause. A cease-fire would make it a ëpartner’ in peace. The Goliath Israeli military would make it a David whose passion proved the truth of its cause. But amid all the drama of this war there has been very little talk of exactly what Hezbollah’s cause is.”

Later on in the same article, Steele talks about white guilt as it pertains to the worldview of Israel and America:

“White guilt in the West – especially in Europe and on the American left – confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don’t hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism – not their continuance – forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.”

Professor Thomas Sowell, in a syndicated column published on July 21 in Jewish WorldReview.com:

[People in our educational system graduate and] “cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts. ëPeace’ movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoricÖ.
“Take the Middle East.
“People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.”

Mark Steyn in the New York Sun, Aug. 28, talking about the release of the two Fox News Network reporters who were forcibly converted to Islam by their captors:

“Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a June address in New York to the Israel Policy Forum:
“We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want to be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies.”

Debbie Schlussel, an indefatigable reporter and columnist from Michigan, attended a fundraising dinner that was to benefit the Islamic Relief Fund in Dearbor, Mich., in 2004. It was shortly after Americans Paul Johnson and Nicholas Berg were beheaded by Muslims in Iraq. She circulated this information in a column she posted in her archive on Aug. 31.

“The evening’s ëentertainment’ consisted of young boys – some apparently as young as seven – simulating beheadings and shootings of other young boys who donned the American, Israeli, and British flags. Then they put red scarves over their heads to symbolize bloodÖand no head. Afterward, they took off the flags and stomped on them. Almost every Islamic leader in town was there, clapping in ecstasy. So was U.S. Congressman John Conyers, who will run the House Judiciary Committee if the Democrats regain control of Congress.”

In an interview in the German magazine Der Spiegel, Jimmy Carter showed his ignorance of the history of the Middle East and his strong bias against Israel. Michael Radu published parts of the interview on Frontpage Magazine on Aug. 31 and also commented on it:

“To Der Spiegel’s question, ëBut wasn’t Israel the first to get attacked?’ Carter replied: ëI don’t think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza.’
“There are more errors than words in this statement. To begin with, the whole interview was primarily regarding Lebanon, and even Hezbollah admits that there are precisely two Lebanese ëprisoners’ in Israel, one of whom is the murderer of an infant. Second, Israel did not bomb ëthe entire nation of Lebanon,’ even taking the dubious description of that balkanized country as a ënation.’ Christian, Druze and most Sunni areas were not touched. Third, notice his characterization of Hezbollah and whatever Gaza group kidnapped Israeli soldiers on sovereign, internationally recognized Israeli territory as ëmilitants,’ not terrorists. That moral confusion by itself would have deserved another Nobel Peace Prize, and was natural coming from a president who described the Iranian kidnappers of American diplomats as ëstudents’ and forbade killing them during the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt.”

An anonymous posting that circulates frequently on the Internet:

ï If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.
ï If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.

And paraphrasing columnist Charles Krauthammer from his seminal feature article in the Weekly Standard in the mid ë90s: If Israel is extinguished, more than likely there will not be more Jews.

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