Mr. Fisk is at it again.

Terror, terror, terror. Like a punctuation mark, the word infects every Israeli speech, every American speech, almost every newspaper article.

Yeah, kind of hard to think about other subjects with all those suicide bombers dissassembling themselves and those in their immediate environs every couple hours. Just what is it that we're supposed to discuss amidst the flying body parts?

When will someone admit the truth: that the Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a dirty colonial war which will leave both sides shamed and humiliated?

We do admit that it's a colonial war, Bobby. It's an attempt by the Wahabbi empire to colonize Jewish Palestine, replacing its inhabitants with more lunatics.

Just listen to what Sharon has been saying in the past 24 hours. "Arafat is an enemy. He decided on a strategy of terror and formed a coalition of terror." That's pretty much what President Bush said about Osama bin Laden. But what on earth does it mean? That Arafat is actually sending off the suicide bombers, choosing the target, the amount of explosives?

Yes, that's right, Bob. [rolling eyes heavenward]

He's picking the targets, calculating the charge size, lovingly packing each bomb and attaching them to the strap, choosing the wardrobe, and kissing each Islamakazi's forehead as he sends him out to get his virgins. After all, if he's not doing all that, he can't be said to be responsible, right?

You know, it's just like when George Bush pores over relief maps of Afghanistan, calling in orders to the pilots as he watches via cockpit camera.

"No, not that hill--the one over there, to the right. Wait for it...wait for it...now!"

If he was, then surely Sharon would have sent his death squads after the Palestinian leader months ago. After all, his killers have managed to murder dozens of Palestinian gunmen already, including occasional women and children who get in the way.

His "death squads"? His "killers"?

Yes, he probably would, except that Mr. Powell has been holding him back. Though he may not be doing so any longer.

Now we have an Israeli officer ? according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv ? advising his men to study the tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second World War. "If our job is to seize a densely packed refugee camp or take over the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an (Israeli) officer to carry out without casualties on both sides, he must before all else analyse and bring together the lessons of past battles, even ? shocking though this might appear ? to analyse how the German army operated in the Warsaw ghetto."

Pardon? What on earth does this mean? Does this account for the numbers marked by the Israelis on the hands and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners earlier this month? Does this mean that an Israeli soldier is now to regard the Palestinians as sub-humans ? which is exactly how the Nazis regarded the trapped and desperate Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944?

Yes, I remember how those crazy Jews were strapping bombs to themselves and detonating them next to women and babies. It's in all the revisionist history books, doncha know?

No, Bob, it just means that they are looking to all historical instances of urban warfare for guidance as to the best tactics to win. They don't intend to lose. It doesn't mean that they're going to make the Palestinians into lampshades.

But now everyone is cashing in on the "war against terror". When Macedonian cops gun down seven Arabs, they announce that they are participating in the global "war on terror". When Russians massacre Chechens, they are now prosecuting the "war on terror". When Israel fires at Arafat's headquarters, it says it is participating in the "war on terror". Must we all be hijacked into America's dangerous self-absorption with the crimes of 11 September?

Yes, we are so dangerously self absorbed. We can't be bothered with sending brigades of philosophers to Afghanistan--all we can do is selfishly liberate it. Just what are we thinking, to want to prevent more terrorism at home, when we should instead be taking anger management courses?

I'm sorry, but this stuff just defies parody.

Must this vile war between Palestinians and Israelis be distorted in so dishonest a way?

Well, you're the expert, Bob. You tell us.

Bravo, good sir! I only wish I was putting such good stuff on my site.

Fisk like to get pounded. You're doing him a favor! One thing I'd like to find about about Fisk. If it was one of our bombs instead of pro Taliban Afghanis who almost killed him last December, would he be so understanding of our military?

What is really important about Fisk is that he does not even bother to deny what the Muslims in general and Bin Laden & Arafat in particular have been doing. The Arabs' usual line is to deny the very possibility of Muslim involvment in any atrocity and then go out to the streets to commemorate, for once, with candies in their hands instead of dinamite in their ambulances (does anybody get the irony of, say, Palestinians celebrating an action atributed to the Mossad?). But Fisk will usually be among the first to admit who was responsible for what. Then he will spin. This way he keeps some kind of journalistic credibility and helps his friends out of the public relations hole their friends usually dig themselves in through idiotic denial and transparent doublespeak.
What is really important about Fisk is that he does not even bother to deny what the Muslims in general and Bin Laden & Arafat in particular have been doing. The Arabs' usual line is to deny the very possibility of Muslim involvement in any atrocity and then go out to the streets to commemorate, for once, with candies in their hands instead of dinamite in their ambulances (does anybody get the irony of, say, Palestinians celebrating an action attributed to the Mossad?). But Fisk will usually be among the first to admit who was responsible for what. Then he will spin. This way he keeps some kind of journalistic credibility and helps his friends out of the public relations hole they usually dig themselves in through idiotic denial and transparent doublespeak.
He probably sees himself as a heroic anti-colonial propagandist, a defender of people oppressed by the "white man's burden". The colonized have, as Frantz Fanon would say and Sartre repeat, the right to use the cruellest violence in order to achieve freedom. What's left out of this pictures is the clear fact that the Jews were a people oppressed, exploited and, for all practical purposes, colonized in Europe (the Polish and Ukrainian lands in which most of them had lived for centuries were "illegally" taken over in the 1790' by the Russian empire). They have also been "ethnically cleansed" for centuries. But what do the Arabs have to do with this? If nothing else (but there is much else) it should be remembered that most Jews went to Israel as refugees, many indeed as "boat-people". Should all "foreigners" and refugees be expelled from the holy Muslim/Arab lands? To me this sounds identical to what rightwing Europeans want to do with their own foreigners. Someone could argue that the Jews didn't stay in Arab lands only as guests, but created their own country. Yes, of course. But even refugees are entitled to all human right, among them that of not being expelled. The creation of Israel was the only way they found to protect those rights. Was there any other?

Excellent takedown, but Fisk is so full of crap that it's like shooting fish in a barrel. But he has achieved a certain claim to fame. He is a verb now.

To Fisk.
To Bobbit.
To Lewenski.
To Bork.

I would do the conjugations, but I'm tired tonight.

"...and kissing each Islamakazi's forehead as he sends him out to get his virgins."

Islamakazi -- nice neologism!

I can't take credit for it. I first saw Mark Steyn use it.

Yet another bombing...its time to get off the fence. All these brainless monkeys coming to Arfat aid in nauseating he is a tin pot dictator and nothing more. Shoot him, put him in prison, exile him just get him out of the picture.