From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Palestinian
Family Planning
The Boston Globe editorial board looks at the Gaza civil war, and finds it's
the fault of the Jews:
The people of Gaza are the true victims of the civil war most of all because the fighting is destroying their future. With the military wing of Hamas poised to seize complete control of Gaza in what Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rightly called a "coup attempt," Gaza's residents stand to lose whatever hope remained of achieving independence and a decent life in a viable Palestinian state.
The Hamas campaign to eradicate Fatah from Gaza is certainly not the sole cause of Gazans' misery. They long suffered from Israel's suffocating occupation, and then from Ariel Sharon's foolishly unilateral withdrawal in 2005, a move that allowed Hamas to bid for power with the misleading claim that its rockets and suicide bombings had driven Israeli soldiers and settlers out of Gaza.
According to the Globe, Israel is to blame both for its "occupation" and for having ended it--the latter of which "allowed Hamas to bid for power." But "the people of Gaza" are innocent victims. It somehow escapes the Globe's notice that Hamas came to power because Palestinians voted for it. The Globe denies that Palestinians are responsible for their own actions, and thereby dehumanizes them under a pretense of compassion.
The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, reports on a foiled terror plot:
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said Wednesday that it thwarted a double suicide attack set for Tel Aviv and Netanya last month, orchestrated by Islamic Jihad and meant to be carried out by two Palestinian women, one of them pregnant.
One of the women, Fatma Zak, 39, a mother of eight in her ninth month of pregnancy, has been director of Islamic Jihad's women labor department in Gaza City for the past four years. As part of her job, she was in direct contact with senior terrorists and served as a go-between for women interested in becoming suicide bombers. . . .
The two women admitted the plot and confessed to being Islamic Jihad operatives. They said they had used Israel's humanitarian policy to acquire entrance permits on a false medical pretext.
One wonders how the Globe editorialists would spin this one. Israeli occupation has made it so difficult for Palestinian women to obtain family planning services that some have resorted to desperate measures to exercise their right to choose.
Rumsfeld
Was Right
"A leading Democratic lawmaker lashed out at the former leaders of Germany
and France, calling former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a 'political
prostitute,' " the Associated Press reports from Washington:
"I am so glad that the era of Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder in Germany is now gone," [California's Rep. Tom] Lantos said to applause.
He said when the United States asked Schroeder to support its decision to go to war in Iraq "he told us where to go."
"I referred to him as a political prostitute, now that he's taking big checks from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. But the sex workers in my district objected, so I will no longer use that phrase," Lantos said. . . .
Lantos said Chirac "should go down to the Normandy beaches. He should see those endless rows of white marble crosses and stars of David representing young Americans who gave their lives for the freedom of France."
He said under the successors of Schroeder and Chirac, Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France, relations with the United States "will take a very positive turn"
A few years ago Donald Rumsfeld was disparaging "old Europe" while Lantos's fellow Democrats were accusing the Bush administration of alienating America's allies, most notably Germany and France. It looks as though Rumsfeld was right, and the allies have come around, to the extent that they are capable of doing so. Once again, reports of the Bush administration's failure were greatly exaggerated.
Life Imitates 'Team America'
- Hans Blix: "Let me see your whole palace or else." Kim
Jong Il: "Or else what?" Blix: "Or else we will
be very, very angry with you. And we will write you a letter telling you how
angry we are."--from "Team
America: World Police" (2004)
- "Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop 'surge' policy was a failure. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter."--Agence France-Presse, June 13
This
Just Makes Us Cry
"Pentagon officials are bracing for a fight with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) over her desire to allow lawmakers' adult children to tag along on
taxpayer-funded travel for free," reports the Hill:
Pelosi wants them to be able to fill the role of lawmakers' spouses when the latter are unable to make a trip because of health issues or work commitments. . . .
Taxpayer watchdog groups and ethics advocates said they were surprised Pelosi would seek more perks for members.
"One of the things she was praised for when she came in was her sweeping reforms on gifts and travel," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen. "It is very disheartening if she is, in fact, backsliding on this."
We're so disillusioned. We really thought the Democrats were going to be different!
Obama
Campaign Infiltrated
In a post on the Puffington Host, liberal lawyer Robert Bauer makes "the
progressive case for a Libby pardon." What gives this story a man-bites-dog
quality is that, as the Hill
reports, Bauer works as chief counsel for the campaign of Barack Obama, the
No. 2 Democratic candidate for president. The closest Bauer himself comes
to mentioning this is a vague disclaimer: "All the views expressed in this
post are those of the author and not of any client of his firm."
The Hill reports that "Obama's campaign said the senator would not ask for Bauer's resignation, adding that he is 'still our lawyer.' " And it's nice of them to be so open-minded. But wait. Look at this passage from Bauer's Puffington Host post:
A pardon is just what Bush's opponents should want. A pardon brings the president into the heart of the case. It compels him to do what he has so far managed to avoid: accept in some way responsibility for the conduct of his Administration in communicating with the public about national security and in its treatment of dissent. If the pardon would be politically explosive, then this is what the administration's critics, hungering for accountability, have been waiting for.
How cynical! And Bauer is working for a campaign that has declared a global war on cynicism. It's as if President Bush had named Ayman al-Zawahiri his campaign physician.
He
Doesn't Have a Leg to Stand On
"Jeff Adams, one of Canada's top Paralympics contenders, claims a positive
drug test was the result of a bizarre incident in a Toronto goth bar,"
United Press International reports from the Ontario capital:
Adams, a six-time world champion in wheelchair racing, received a two-year suspension after testing positive for cocaine. In a news conference Tuesday at his lawyer's office, he said a woman he did not know forced cocaine into his mouth in the since-closed bar Vatikan, The Toronto Star reported.
"There was no cheating," he said. "There was no performance enhancing. But I'm being sanctioned [sic] in the same way as a cheater. The substance was involuntarily consumed."
Adams may be handicapped, but his explanation just sounds lame.
Homer
Nods
Contrary to an item yesterday, Ex
Parte Merryman, which held that President Lincoln could not suspend
habeas corpus, was not a Supreme Court decision but rather a decision of the
Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The relevant Supreme Court case is Ex
Parte Milligan (1866).
No One Will
Be Watching Us, Why Don't We Do It in the Road?
"Baby-Making at a Crossroads"--headline, MSNBC.com, June 13
Chemical
Weapons
"Group Calls on City to Drop Chlorine Gas"--headline, Times (Trenton,
N.J.), June 14
Global
Warming Isn't Fast Enough
"Santa Cruz City Leads Effort to Jump Start Climate Changes"--headline,
Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, June 13
So
Global Warming Diminishes Hurricanes?
"Storm Felled by Fever"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 13
Michael
Kinsley, Call Your Office
"Puerto Rico Aims to Trap Roaming Monkeys"--headline, Associated Press,
June 13
News
You Can Use
"Outdoors: Don't Trash Carp, Hook 'Em With an 'Ugly Bugger' "--headline,
Idaho Statesman (Boise), June 12
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Ruling Party Wins 97% in Egypt's Elections"--headline, Jerusalem
Post, June 13
- "Tyson Recall Does Not Affect Local Stores"--headline, Texarkana
(Texas) Gazette, June 13
- "Missing Businessman Supposedly Spotted in Cyprus"--headline,
Baltic
Times (Riga, Latvia), June 13
- "For Sale: Ghost Town in the Middle of Nowhere, Just $250,000"--headline,
Idaho
Statesman, June 11
- "Canada Jumps 38 Spots in FIFA Rankings"--headline, CBC.ca, June 13
The
Party's Over
From the (Bridgeport) Connecticut Post, another story that reads like something
out of the Onion:
Connecticut for Lieberman Party Chairman John Orman called Tuesday for Sen. Joe Lieberman to resign, saying his advocacy of a military strike against Iran could explode into a global conflict.
"He has crossed the line," said Orman, a professor of politics at Fairfield University. "His unilateral warmongering could lead to a new World War III." . . .
Orman, a former Democrat, switched party affiliation and took over the Connecticut for Lieberman Party earlier this year. Lieberman created the party last August to run for re-election as an independent after losing the state's Democratic primary to Ned Lamont of Greenwich. However, Lieberman never joined the new party and remains a registered Democrat.
Orman issued a news release Tuesday asking Lieberman to immediately resign and urging Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell to appoint Susan Henshaw, secretary of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, as his replacement.
The Post doesn't say whether Henshaw supports Orman's demand for Lieberman's ouster, but it's quite possible that Lieberman has lost the support of both members of the party that bears his name.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ed Lasky, Ezzie Goldish, Joel Goldberg, Lyle Katz, Ethel Fenig, David Shapero, Eric Rassbach, Thomas Mayer, Lewis Chilton, Steve Karass, Charles Bryan, Christopher Green, Walter Vokomer, Matthew Franck, Joseph Everard, Tom Dziubek, Joe Bacon, Michael Throop, Don Hubschman, Bryan Fischer, James Eckert, Yaakov Har-Oz, Charlie Gaylord, Daniel Foty, Bryan Fischer and Marion Dreyfus. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Al Qaeda's American harbor: A bad decision likely to be overturned.
- Dan Henninger: F***, s*** and other typos.
- Jay Cost: Is there a third-term curse? No, but 2008 looks tough for Republicans anyway.
