The President's omission of Israel as a country affected by Islamic terror strengthens the positions of the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad immensely - any distancing between Israel and America is a huge victory for the Islamofascist propaganda machine. And there is no doubt that this omission is noted and celebrated in Ramallah and Gaza City.
Repeat a lie enough times and people will start to believe it. This has certainly worked here.
Bush's radar skips Israel
President Bush, in back-to-back speeches defending the Iraq war, has crossed Israel off the list of countries hit by Islamic terrorists.
In his address yesterday to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Bush said: "The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on Sept. 11, blew up commuters in London and Madrid, murdered tourists in Bali, killed workers in Riyadh and slaughtered guests at a wedding in Amman, Jordan."
In Annapolis last week, he listed the same countries, adding the massacre of Iraqi children and their parents, who had just been hit outside an Iraqi hospital.
How could Israel fail to make the President's cut? Especially yesterday, after a suicide bomber killed five and wounded 60 in Netanya on Monday. Not to mention that Israel has been the prime target of terror forever.
Is this an oversight by Israel's greatest friend in the White House? Or could it be an effort to appease the Arab world?
Certainly no oversight. In 11 speeches over the past three months in which Bush has talked about terror, he only mentioned Israel three times - once before Jewish Republicans. Yesterday, he left them out again. "The enemy must be defeated on every battle front, from the streets of Western cities to the mountains of Afghanistan to the tribal regions of Pakistan to the islands of Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa."
If he forgot them last week, he was reminded by the Zionist Organization of America, in a tough press release that was cited by a reporter in the White House briefing the day after the Annapolis speech.
Q. "Why did the President do this, given 1,700 Israel citizens murdered by Islamo-fascists, and 10,000 more maimed by them since 1993?"
Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman: "There's no stronger friend and supporter of Israel."
Q. "Why did he not mention that with all those other countries?"
McClellan: "I don't think that's the way to look at it."
I think Bush put a blue pencil through Israel, and I think he did it because he's in big trouble with the war and all he can think about is appeasing the Arabs.
He likes to compare himself to Winston Churchill. The President should keep these words of his in mind: "If you feed the crocodiles, you'll be his last meal."