* Is a big new peace plan — including a land-swap with Egypt — in the works? Reuters thinks so.
* Itamar Marcus brings us a translated video of the PA Imam praying for Yassir Arafat’s death as a shahid: view video here. Here’s the text:
“Regarding the threats of this Nazi mass murderer [Ariel Sharon] against President Arafat, we hereby tell him: We are not like you, because we do not desire life. If you threaten to kill President Arafat, we will pray to Allah: “Grant the President Shahada (Martyrdom) for you.” Yes, we do not pray – like other preachers pray – for longevity for the rulers; here in Palestine we pray: “Lord, grant the President Shahada for you”.” [PA TV Sermon by Ibrahim Madiras, April 30, 2004]
* Robert Spencer was denied a TV appearance on ‘a prominent network’ because ‘one of its directors is pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab, and he felt that [Spencer] was too hostile to Arabs.’ Also, Spencer in FrontPage Magazine on ‘Why They Hate Us’:
Committed mujahedin will never be mollified by any amount of good will or economic aid or anything else from the West. They won’t be happy if every prisoner gets his own hot tub and copy of the New Yorker. They are dedicated to the proposition that no non-Sharia government has any right to exist, and that Allah commands that all non-Sharia governments must be fought. As the principal obstacle to this, we are directly in the line of fire. There are two possible outcomes as far as they’re concerned: death, or victory. Not negotiations, not peaceful coexistence, not mutual understanding. Those who abused the Iraqi prisoners should be punished, above all for stimulating anti-U.S. hatred among Muslims. But no one should be deceived into thinking that such abuse is the cause of that hatred.
* Fisking the latest Tom Friedman column: Jeff Jarvis and Allah
* While the IDF battles Hezbollah in the north, Shawn Macomber profiles ‘Hezbollah TV’
* Brilliant novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick in the New York Observer, on the oldest hatred:
We thought it was finished. In the middle of the twentieth century, and surely by the end of it, we thought it was finished, genuinely finished, the bloodlust finally slaked. We thought it was finished, that heads were hanging—the heads of the leaders and schemers on gallows, the heads of the bystanders and onlookers in shame. The Topf company, manufacturer of the ovens, went belatedly out of business, belatedly disgraced and shamed. Out of shame German publishers of Nazi materials concealed and falsified the past. Out of shame Paul de Man, lauded and eminent Yale intellectual, concealed his early Nazi lucubrations. Out of shame Mircea Eliade, lauded and eminent Chicago intellectual, concealed his membership in Romania’s Nazi-linked Iron Guard. Out of shame memorials to the murdered rose up. Out of shame synagogues were rebuilt in the ruins of November 9, 1938, the night of fire and pogrom and the smashing of windows. Out of shame those who were hounded like prey and fled for their lives were invited back to their native villages and towns and cities, to be celebrated as successful escapees from the murderous houndings of their native villages and towns and cities. Shame is salubrious: it acknowledges inhumanity, it admits to complicity, it induces remorse. Naïvely, foolishly, stupidly, hopefully, a-historically, we thought that shame and remorse—world-wide shame, world-wide remorse—would endure. Naïvely, foolishly, stupidly, hopefully, a-historically, we thought that the cannibal hatred, once quenched, would not soon wake again.
It has awakened.
