Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Pity the poor Hamas "moderate"

Ahmed Yousef, advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, is the West's point man when trying to make Hamas look more moderate.

He's the one who wrote the Washington Post op-ed last June trying to convince Americans that Hamas was the same as Fatah and deserved a chance. He's the one who the New York Times honored with another op-ed where he asks the world to give the "hudna" a chance ("Pause for Peace.") He was glowingly depicted in the Christian Science Monitor as "moderate and cooperative."

Earlier this week, Asharq al-Awsat wrote about the divisions in Fatah and Hamas, and it wrote "Some sources within the movement had severely criticized Yousef for his declared statements and positions, some going further to describe them as 'Fatah-inclined'."

Oooh, that's gotta hurt.

But he lived up to his reputation on Wednesday when he told reporters that the Hamas charter is obsolete, that Hamas would attend the Annapolis conference if invited and that being friendly with the United States is in Hamas' interests.

Predictably, today Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar denied everything Yousef said, saying that Hamas was against the Annapolis meeting and that its charter calling for the destruction of Israel is still in effect.

It certainly isn't easy trying to show Hamas' moderate side when that side is nonexistent.

November 9, 1947: "Arab threats are empty"

As the UN partition of Palestine loomed, a team of American "experts" opined that there is no way that the combined Arab armies would attack the Jewish state. As printed in the November 9, 1947 Palestine Post:

It is instructive to read this article now and see where these experts were wrong.

Militarily, they were quite correct. Although they ignored Egypt's army (as well as Iraq's), their estimation of the weaknesses of the Arabs besides Jordan were pretty accurate.

They were experts as far as facts on the ground as well as the relative capabilities of the armies. Their failure was in making assumptions as to how the Arab side thinks. Like countless other "experts" before and since, they assume that the Arab side would be logical when deciding whether to attack the Jewish state. They took no consideration of the importance of pride and honor to the Arab mind, which is often the exact opposite of logic.

The idea of a Jewish state in their midst was simply unacceptable, and the thought of defeat as not entertained. Making the assumption that the Arab side thinks the same way as Westerners would when weighing starting a battle is a major, and literally fatal, mistake.

Similar "experts" are still endemic throughout the world, where they predict with confidence that the Arab side will certainly make certain compromises because it makes the most sense. As with these 1947 experts, they almost always know more about current factual circumstances than they do about history, and they fail to draw the proper conclusions from the correct facts.

al-Ha'aretz admits it will ignore scandals against people it likes

In an scathing op-ed in the Jerusalem Post yesterday, Isi Liebler slams Ha'aretz:

CURRENT EDITOR David Landau is an observant Jew wearing a black kippa. He made aliya from London and is a highly talented writer....
Since he assumed the role of editor at Haaretz, the newspaper's traditional bias relating to the Israel-Palestinian conflict has intensified.
Landau concentrates much of his wrath on religious Zionists, regarding those who settled across the Green Line as messianic lunatics and the greatest threat to Israel. This obviously makes him a darling of the ultra-Left.
Today Landau allegedly even refuses to correct articles containing blatantly false information if they conflict with his political agenda. According to the Web site of the highly respected American Jewish media watchdog organization CAMERA, not only did Landau decline to consider its complaints regarding alleged falsehoods published in Haaretz, he even went on record informing the JTA that "as a matter of principle" he had instructed his staff not to respond to criticism from CAMERA because they were a "McCarthyite" organization.
NEEDLESS to say, this casts an ugly shadow on a daily newspaper purporting to represent the highest levels of journalistic integrity. It is now widely accepted that many policies promoted by Haaretz are effectively supportive of Israel's adversaries.
In fact, Nahum Barnea, the distinguished Yediot Aharonot columnist, went so far as to describe senior Haaretz journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Haas and Akiva Eldar as failing to pass the "lynch test" - i.e., even failing to condemn Palestinians when they murdered two Israelis in a lynch mob in Ramallah at the onset of the second intifada.
More recently, consistent with frequent Haaretz depictions of Israel as a racist entity, the paper's chief Arab affairs expert, Danny Rubinstein, told a UN body that Israel was indeed an apartheid state.
...BUT IT was only recently that Landau threw away all semblance of journalistic integrity and publicly confessed to crossing the ultimate red line that distinguishes reputable journalism from propaganda.
According to The Jerusalem Post, at the recent Russian Limmud Conference in Moscow, Landau, one of the few non-Russian-speaking participants, dropped a bombshell. He stunned those present by boasting that his newspaper had "wittingly soft-pedalled" alleged corruption by Israeli political leaders including prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, when, in the opinion of Haaretz, the policies of those leaders were advancing the peace process.
When participants challenged him concerning the morality of such an approach, Landau responded with the extraordinary assertion that "more immorality happens every day at a single roadblock [in Judea and Samaria] than in all the scandals put together."
He then unashamedly assured those present that Haaretz was ready to repeat the process in order "to ensure that Olmert goes to Annapolis."
...THE ISRAELI Press Council code of ethics contains clauses explicitly condemning such practices. Article 40 (and 16a): "A newspaper or a journalist shall not refrain from publishing information where there is a public interest in its publication, including for reasons of political, economic or other pressures."
Article 7: "Mistakes, omissions or inaccuracies which are in the publication of facts must be corrected speedily…."
If in the face of such violations of their charter by the editor of one of their most prestigious newspapers the Press Council fails to publicly condemn such behavior, it should be dissolved and the public must demand an accounting.
Exploiting a newspaper as a propaganda vehicle for a clique of leftist ideologues willing to do anything, including suppressing or "soft-pedalling" information about potentially criminal actions in order to pursue a private agenda must not be tolerated in a country which purports to adhere to ethical and democratic norms of conduct.

Israel Matzav asks if even the most left-wing American publications would do something like this.

Yisrael Medad wrote a letter to the Jerusalem Post saying that this is old news:

Isi Leibler's drubbing of Haaretz editor David Landau for his remarks at a recent Limmud Conference in Moscow comes, unfortunately, two years late ("Shame on 'Haaretz,'" November 7). Landau's admission that he ordered the low-keying of corruption by Israeli political leaders in order to protect the peace process - known as the "etrog behavior" of left-wing journalists, a phrase coined by Amnon Abromovitch - was first uttered at a Limmud conference in Nottingham, England. It was proudly declared in response to a question I had put to him from the last rows of a lecture hall filled with almost 300 people about the journalistic ethics of the absence of criticism of political corruption.

Like now, also then: When challenged, Landau declared that the "peccadilloes" of Ariel Sharon were minor compared to the greater damage, in his opinion, caused by revenant Jewish residents in the communities throughout Judea and Samaria.

His remarks were generally accepted, which caused me disappointment in the morality of the participating British Jews.

Augean Stables comments:

Landau’s boast that he had intentionally “soft-pedaled” allegations of corruption against Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert in order not to weaken their support as they worked toward a peace process should jolt any observer who understands the value of a responsible free press in a democratic society. The fact that Landau felt comfortable airing such a transgression is perhaps more alarming. It suggests an atmosphere among journalists in Israel, indeed across the West, that condones the promotion of a certain ideology at the expense of the standards that should serve as a guide to Western media.

Everyone has biases, of course, and it is perhaps too much to ask for journalists to banish all their biases when they report. It is literally impossible. Decisions must be made not only in the writing but also in how much prominence to give a story, which photos to publish, how the headline is phrased - it is not an enviable job to be objective when working under such limitations.

But there is a huge difference between the subconscious bias, mostly left-leaning, that most journalists have and a de facto policy of bias that Ha'aretz is not only admitting but boasting about. Landau is bragging about his own immorality in the pursuit of his version of "the higher good," which he is deciding for the benefit of his reading public and of Israel itself. This is not just another case of media bias - this is a scandal that should shake the foundations of Israeli journalism.

When Edmund Burke, referring to the press, said "Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all," he was making the assumption that there is at least a pretense of objectivity that underpins journalism. Ha'aretz is succeeding making the Fourth Estate irrelevant, as those members of the press who consciously try to exercise power will be the ones who lose it.

Egyptian intelligence minister blames Israel for Gaza weapons smuggling

Palestine Press Agency writes that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman blames Israel for the smuggling of weapons into Gaza (autotranslated, cleaned up):

Egypt says that one of the main sources [from which] Hamas receives arms and ammunition are Israeli army soldiers who sell them weapons and ammunition. Suleiman added that most of the smuggling of arms and explosive materials for the Gaza Strip are by sea and soldiers of the Israeli Navy failed to stop them.

Remember that Egypt stands to lose some $200 million in US handouts if it does not do more to stop the huge smuggling operations into Gaza, and any doubts they can plant about the reality would help their case.

Just yesterday, one of those mythical smuggling tunnels from Gaza to Egypt collapsed, injuring 3.

1977 Israeli law: Attempting to give away land a capital crime

Martin Sherman in YNet notices:

The following is a verbatim quotation from the existing law in Israel:

A person who, with intent that any area be withdrawn from the sovereignty of the State or placed under the sovereignty of a foreign state, commits an act calculated to bring this about, is liable to life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Israeli Penal Code – 1977, Section 97(b)

Read the whole article.

Interpol:arrest Iranians involved in Argentina bombings

From AFP:

Interpol's decision to uphold arrest warrants against five Iranian suspects in a deadly 1994 bombing against a Jewish organization in Argentina was welcomed by Israel Thursday, but slammed by Iran.

"It sends the following message to the terrorists - that even if takes time, they need to know that they will eventually be brought to book," Israel's ambassador to Argentina Raphael Eldad told public radio.

Iran, which had fought hard to have the arrest warrants lifted, reacted angrily to the decision taken by a two-thirds majority at the world police body's annual general assembly in the Moroccan city of Marrakech.

"Iran strongly denounces the decision of Interpol to uphold the warrants requested by the Argentine judiciary," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement issued in Tehran.

"Although the issuing of such warrants by Interpol does not amount to a confirmation of Argentina's claims of Iranian involvement in the AIMA [Argentine Israeli Mutual Association] bombing, we were not expecting this professional body to tarnish its legal status by accepting the political will of the Zionist regime," he said.

"Transferring the pressures from the Argentine government to Interpol in order to fulfil political aims is a matter of great sorrow, and is contrary to international law and utterly rejected and unacceptable," said Hosseini.

He added that Iran would continue "to fight through legal channels for the rights of its citizens" facing the arrest warrants, who include former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian and former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, as well as three diplomats.

Arrest warrants were initially issued against three other senior Iranians, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, in November last year, but they were lifted by Interpol's executive committee in March.

The Israeli ambassador acknowledged that there was no immediate prospect of any arrest being made in connection with the July 1994 bombing, which leveled the seven-floor AIMA building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.

"I hope that the arrest warrants will be carried out, but I am not very optimistic, as Iran is not in the habit of cooperation in this sort of affair," Eldad said.

In a statement after Wednesday's meeting, Interpol president Jackie Selebi insisted that the agency had treated both sides "fairly and impartially" in reviewing the arrest warrants.

Argentina's chief prosecutor Alberto Nisman rejected any suggestion that the warrants were politically motivated, and also acknowledged that it was unlikely that Iran would extradite the suspects.

85 were killed in two bombings at Jewish centers in Argentina in 1994.

Australia's defense minister gets it

I'll leave Aussie Dave (whose blog I am now a contributor to) to give more context to this, but this was nice to read:

THERE is a direct link between security in the Middle East and Australia’s security situation, according to Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson.

He described the situation in Israel as vital to Australia.

“No longer can we accept the fact that this has nothing to do with us, it has everything to do with us,” Dr Nelson told the State Zionist Council of Victoria’s Annual Assembly last week.

Dr Nelson, the member for Bradfield – an electorate in Sydney’s north with a 4500-strong Jewish population – and a strong supporter of Israel, told the assembly that despite being located so far from Israel, the tiny Jewish country is vital to Australia’s security interests.

He told the audience that Israel’s survival and growth was important and that it would be “a bulwark against the kind of madness that is being promoted by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ambitions of the Iranians”. He also said he hoped the upcoming peace talks between Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be fruitful.

Saudi king talks peace, presents sword to Pope

One year ago, Pope Benedict XVI inflamed the Muslim world by quoting a Byzantine emperor from 1391 as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Muslim reaction was, predictably, violence, with at least two killed and many more cases or arson and threats.

Now, the Saudi king has visited the Pope discussing "peace, justice and moral values." And the King didn't come empty-handed - he gave the Pope "a traditional Middle Eastern gift — a golden sword studded with jewels."

The King, representing Islam as the "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, " certainly showed his esteem for the Pope and for his calls for peace - by giving him a weapon.

November 1947 and Annapolis déjà vu

I have been looking at the pages of the Palestine Post from sixty years ago, in the run-up to the UN vote on partitioning Palestine. Reading the stories then, and comparing them to what is happening today in anticipation of Annapolis, one gets an intense feeling of déjà vu.

Sixty years ago in October and November there was a lull in Arab terror attacks against Jews. All actions seemed to be taking place diplomatically. Arab leaders were trying to do everything possible to stop the vote or influence nations to vote against it. It appeared to be a losing battle, already the Soviet Union and the White House were supporting it (although the State Department was ambivalent), but that didn't stop Saudi Prince Faisal from declaring to the Russian UN delegate that if partition passed, Saudi Arabia would quit the UN.

The relative quiet in Palestine seems even starker relative to violence in the rest of the Arab world: over 250 had been killed in one day in Syrian factional fighting in early November.

The Arab leaders were specifically refraining from inciting the masses in order to put their best face forward as the world watched. They made it very clear, though, that should partition pass they would start a campaign of terror and war against the Jews to ensure that a Jewish state can never be created. Westerners were not as impressed with these threats, thinking it was all just so much Arab hyperbole.

Today we are in a similar waiting period. The "moderate" Palestinian Arabs have already made their demands clear and they have made their threats equally clear should things not go exactly the way they want in Annapolis.

Most people now think that Annapolis will be a failure. But not as many people are thinking ahead to the day after. To get an idea of what might happen, look at what happened immediately after the vote (from Time):

While city crowds celebrated, Arabs ambushed two buses in an orange grove southeast of Tel Aviv, sprayed them with gunfire. Five Jews died, 14 were wounded. Arab prisoners attacked Jews in Acre prison. In Damascus, Syria, Moslem youths stoned the U.S. Legation, tore down the U.S. flag, and then looted the Russian-Syrian Cultural Center.
In Cairo, Arab League Secretary Abdel Rahman Azzam Pasha joined other Arab leaders in promising warfare on the Jews: "I cannot say where and when I will place my troops. I can only say we will fight and are preparing for victory." Azzam Pasha had just returned from a flying visit to Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud. In Azzam Pasha's pocket, said aides, was Ibn Saud's promise to use most of his U.S. oil royalties (about $20,000,000 a year) to modernize his Bedouin army and to arm Palestinian Arabs for the war on Zionism.
The Arab Higher Committee for Palestine pushed a recruiting drive for Arab soldiers, setting a quota for each Arab village: a minimum of 30 men from each, up to 120 in the larger ones.
The Arabs planned uprisings, an economic blockade, concentrated attacks on outlying Jewish settlements and pinpoint attacks against the long exposed borders of the crazy-quilt Jewish state. The Arabs seemed resigned to the prospect of an armed struggle. They regarded partition in its present form as so outrageous that there was no alternative.

Like making compromises for peace.

How do you treat a hostile entity?

If you are Israel, you help it build sewage treatment plants:

Ahead of the winter and fearing that sewage cesspools in Gaza could once again spill over and flood nearby villages, the IDF Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) has stepped up efforts to enable the Palestinians to complete the construction of a new sewage plant in the coming months.

...Defense officials explained that the decision to expedite the construction was made despite Hama's control over Gaza.

"We are doing this to help the Palestinians and to prevent another overflow," a defense official said. "There are security risks involved, but this is an important project and it is our job to figure out how to deal with them."

...To help facilitate the new plant's construction, the IDF has tracked down non-metal pipes that can be used in the facility without fear of their going toward Kassam rocket production, as metal pipes imported into Gaza have in the past.

In addition, the IDF has allowed the Palestinian water authority officials to work alongside the border fence near Beit Hanun, even though the construction has been used in the past as a cover for the launching of rockets and attacks against Israel.

When in history has any nation so bent over backwards to help its implacably hostile neighbor? Look at all the resources the hated IDF is giving to helping Palestinian Arabs who support Israel's destruction.

In the past, Hamas and others have used this very same Israeli generosity and benevolence against it. And even so, Israel continues to assist the terrorists and their supporters for humanitarian reasons.

Anyone who tries to claim that the conflict is symmetric, that both sides are equally at fault or that both sides are equally intolerant, would need to provide examples of Arab benevolence helping Israel. The very absurdity of imagining an Arab government donating money to Zaka or Hadassah Hospital or Mogen Dovid Adom is proof enough that there is no moral comparison between the two sides.

Morning links

Daled Amos on how little the Israeli economy needs a "peace" deal.

Israel Matzav on the thousands of Palestinian Arabs who want to become Israeli citizens.

Augean Stables on Wafa Sultan being more American than Americans..

Atlas Shrugs has a spreadsheet with lots of terror statistics worldwide.

Soccer Dad on understanding Condi's motivations.

Alan Dershowitz on "Democrats and Waterboarding."

Dan Gillerman's full statement to the UN on human rights.

Harvard professors: Being Jewish isn't a religious thing

At Harvard University, the Hillel is celebrating a week-long "Jewbilation". One of the events invited three Jewish Harvard faculty to discuss what Judaism means to them. The answers are saddening:

For the roundtable discussion called “Jewish in 2007,” some 60 people gathered at Hillel to hear Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz, former Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, and Professor Stephen A. Marglin talk about how they have merged their intellectual and spiritual lives.

In Dershowitz’s case, the famed law professor claims that he hasn’t.

A self-described “agnostic at best,” Dershowitz was the first to explain the nuances of his “secular, perverse, and confrontational” Judaism.

“I am absolutely sure that there is no God who writes Bibles and answers human prayers,” Dershowitz said. “The God I don’t believe in is very much the Jewish God.”

Organizer Asher A. Fredman ’08 said he hoped the discussion, part of a week of events called “Jewbilation,” would give students a chance to reflect on the role of Judaism in their lives.

During the talk, Marglin reinforced Dershowitz’s emphasis on personal choice in religious practice.

“We all have to make our own decisions in light of our own histories and exceptions,” he said.
...
Marglin also considers himself to be culturally Jewish, but his beliefs make him a “secular humanist.”

He added that he continued to practice Judaism for the sense of community it provides.

“Through Judaism, I learned that I could be something other than a self-interested individual, that I could be a member of a community, a link in a chain that went from family to clan to village,” Margolin said.

“This was something that nothing had prepared me for: not my upbringing nor my work at Harvard,” he said.

Gross echoed Margolin’s words, saying, “What I feel most powerfully about being Jewish is being a member of a community.”

“This community has sustained me throughout much of my life,” Gross said.

What these esteemed academics are saying is that while it might be important for them personally to identify as being Jewish, for all their intelligence they have absolutely no answer to tell their children if asked why they should remain Jewish.

They belong to a Judaism of superficiality, of convenience, and, in Dershowitz' case, of redefinition.

It is telling that the Jewish campus organization couldn't find a single professor who actually subscribes to basic Jewish beliefs.

The cycle of violence continues....

An Islamic Jihad leader succumbed to his wounds from Hamas/Islamic Jihad clashes last month.

Naturally, there was a big noisy funeral.

Naturally, Islamic Jihad members chose that solemn occasion to throw stones at a nearby Hamas headquarters.

And just as naturally, Hamas responded with live fire, killing one and wounding four more.

We'll see what the death toll will be at this next person's funeral.

My count of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other this year climbs to 571.

UPDATE 11/8: A bomb meant to kill IDF soldiers exploded prematurely in Nablus, killing one. 572.

The Vast Gentile Conspiracy

After hearing an aged British professor launch a diatribe about how Jews control the media in the United States, Carol Gould decided to investigate:

If one accepts that the Sulzbergers are Episcopalian, they can be eliminated as ‘Jewish’ controllers of the New York Times. The Knight Ridder group controls many newspapers. Betty Scripps, who is a stalwart of my local Washington National Opera company, is not exactly a Hadassah lady. The mighty Scripps Howard empire, which rose to prominence a century ago alongside the Cowles dynasty, still controls numerous publications. Names like Gannett, Robinson and McClatchey dominate other media empires, along with Sumner Redstone of Viacom and Boisfueillet Jones of the Washington Post. Then there is the Southern Tennant-Bryan empire. Add to this mix Ted Turner, Murdoch, Dow Jones, Luce and Hearst and I do not see any Jewish conspiracy.

Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson are the three heavyweight network news anchors, and I do not recall any Jews ever sitting in these chairs in my lifetime. Peter Jennings was a fierce critic of Israeli policies and made this known in his ABC News reports. Israel is covered infinitely less on American television than on British media, but when it is it is often portrayed with a critical eye, most particularly on CNN.

The opinion-formers in the United States in primetime are non-Jews: Gwyn Ifyl, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Bill O’Reilly and finally Keith Olbermann, who is of German Lutheran extraction. In fact, except for the occasional appearance by Bill Kristol, the vast array of television and radio punditry is the exclusive realm of Christian commentators.

It may be time to create a GentileWatch website!

Rumsfeld correct on Gulf Arab mentality

Last week a bunch of internal, informal memos written by Donald Rumsfeld were leaked out and caused a minor embarrassment to the White House. In one of them, Rumsfeld wrote that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims "from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed. An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."

Not surprisingly, the terror-supporting CAIR complained, and the White House distanced itself from the memo.

The White House on Thursday sympathized with Arab-Americans who took offense to a memo that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote saying that "oil wealth has made Muslims averse to physical labor."
Rumsfeld's belief is "not at all in line with the president's views," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
Asked about Rumsfeld's memo, Perino acknowledged that some Arab-American groups took offense to his comment.
"We are aware that we have a lot of work to do in order to win hearts and minds across the Arab world and the Muslim world and I can understand why they would be offended by those comments," she said.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Rumsfeld's comment reflects the "stereotypical attitude" that led the United States to invade Iraq.
"Our policy was never based on reality," Hooper said. "It was based on the wild ideas of those who wanted to invade the region. ... It shows you what kind of wrong-headed policymakers we had at the time."

The problem is that Rumsfeld's observations were dead-on accurate if you understand that he was referring to residents of the oil-rich Gulf states. In context, it is clear that this was what he was talking about.

Anyone reading the Saudi-based Arab News for any period of time will see more than a few stories about the problems Saudis have with the sheer number of foreign workers they've brought in, legally or illegally, and not only from Pakistan or Korea but also from poor countries in Africa. Amnesty International estimates over seven million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia alone, with limited rights.

And this is not a new phenomenon - hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs migrated to the Gulf in the fifties and sixties, not only because the the economic opportunities there but also because the local Arabs were simply lazy and the Palestinian Arabs who were willing to move and get off the UNRWA dole were hard working and ambitious. It has been observed that Palestinian Arabs essentially built Kuwait's entire infrastructure.

As far as the other half of Rumsfeld's observations, that young spoiled Arabs are ripe for recruiting into terror groups, this is also beyond dispute. As studies have shown, the average terrorist is not poor but comes from the middle class and has above-average wealth and education - and in Saudi Arabia, the middle class means that you only have two or three maids in your house.

It is not a stretch to think that these young men are the prime recruits for terror. As was reported this week, Saudi Arabia is the "hub of world terror."

So what exactly did Rumsfeld say that was wrong or offensive? His observations and inferences were as accurate as any can be about a group of people.

If the White House wants to capture the "hearts and minds" of the Arab world, it will not succeed by pandering to fantasies and myths. Distancing itself from the truth about the Arab world and the sources of terrorism is a giant step backwards.
(h/t Jihad Watch)